Ursule burnt this letter without mentioning it to Savinien. Two days later she received another, in these terms:
You were wrong, dear Ursule, not to reply to him who loves you better than his life. You fancy you will marry Savinien, but you are strangely mistaken. That marriage will never take place. Madame de Portenduère, who will see you no more at her house, is going this morning to le Rouvre, on foot, in spite of the weak state she is in, to ask Mademoiselle du Rouvre in marriage for Savinien. He will finally yield. What objection can he make? The young lady’s uncles will settle their fortune on their niece at her marriage. That fortune amounts to sixty thousand francs a year.
This letter tortured Ursule’s heart by making her acquainted with the torments of jealousy, pangs hitherto unknown, which, to her finely organized nature, so alive to suffering, swamped the present, the future, and even the past in grief. From the moment when she received this fatal missive, she sat motionless in the doctor’s armchair, her eyes fixed on vacancy, and lost in a sorrowful reverie. In an instant the chill of death had come on her instead of the glow of exquisite life. Alas! It was worse; it was, in fact, the dreadful awakening of the dead to find that there is no God—the masterpiece of that strange genius Jean Paul. Four times did La Bougival try to persuade Ursule to eat her breakfast; she saw the girl take up her bread and lay it down again, unable to carry it to her lips. When she ventured to offer a remonstrance, Ursule stopped her with a wave of the hand, saying Hush! in a terrible tone, as despotic as it had hitherto always been sweet. La Bougival, watching her mistress through a glass door between the rooms, saw her turn alternately as red as if fever were consuming her, and then blue, as though an ague fit had followed the fever. By about four o’clock, when Ursule rose every few minutes to look whether Savinien were coming, and Savinien came not, she became evidently worse. Jealousy and doubt destroy all the bashfulness of love. Ursule, who till now had never allowed her passion to be detected in the least gesture, put on her hat and her little shawl, and ran into the passage to go out and meet Savinien; but a remnant of reserve brought her back into the little sitting-room. There she wept.
When the curé came in the evening, the poor old nurse stopped him on the threshold.
“Oh, Monsieur le Curé, I do not know what ails Mademoiselle; she—”
“I know,” said the priest sadly, silencing the frightened attendant.
The Abbé then told Ursule what she had not dared to ask: “Madame de Portenduère had gone to dine at le Rouvre.”
“And Savinien?”
“He too.”
Ursule shuddered nervously—a shudder which thrilled the Abbé Chaperon as though he had received a shock from a Leyden jar, and he felt a painful turmoil at his heart.
“So we shall not go to her house this evening,” said he. “But, indeed, my child, you will be wise never to go there again. The old lady might receive you in a way that would wound your pride. We, having brought her to listen to the idea of your marriage to Savinien, cannot imagine what ill-wind has blown to change her views in an instant.”
“I am prepared for anything; nothing can astonish me now,” said Ursule in a tone of conviction. “In such extremities it is a great comfort to feel that I have done nothing to offend God.”
“Submit, my dear daughter, and never try to inquire into the ways of Providence,” said the curé.
“I do not wish to show any unjust suspicion of M. de Portenduère’s character—”
“Why do you no longer call him Savinien?” asked the Abbé, observing a certain bitterness in Ursule’s tone.
“My dear Savinien!” she went on, with a burst of tears. “Yes, my good friend,” she said, sobbing, “a voice assures me that his heart is as noble as his birth. He has not merely told me that he loves me; he has proved it in a thousand delicate ways, and by heroically controlling the ardor of his passion. Lately, when he took my hand that I held out to him, when Monsieur Bongrand proposed to me for a notary, I declare to you that it was the first time I had ever offered it to him. Though he began, indeed, by a jest, blowing me a kiss across the street, since then our affection has never once, as you know, overstepped the strictest limits; but I may tell you—you who read my whole soul excepting the one spot which is open only to the angels—well, this affection is in me the foundation of many virtues. It has enabled me to accept my poverty; it has, perhaps, softened the bitterness of the irreparable loss for which I mourn now more in my garments than in my heart! Yes, I have done wrong—for my love has been greater than my gratitude to my godfather; and God has avenged him! How could I help it? What I valued myself for was as Savinien’s wife. I have been too proud; and it is that pride, perhaps, that God is punishing. God alone, as you have often told me, ought to be the spring and end of all we do.”
The curé was touched as he saw the tears rolling down her cheeks, already paler. The greater the poor girl’s confidence had been, the lower she had fallen.
“However,” she went on, “reduced once more to my orphaned state, I shall be able to accustom
