“Wait!” cried the young man. He made La Bougival sit down, and hastily wrote these few lines:
My Dear Ursule—Your letter breaks my heart, for you are inflicting on yourself much useless pain, and for the first time our hearts have failed to understand each other. That you are not already my wife is because I cannot yet marry without my mother’s consent. After all, are not eight thousand francs a year, in a pretty cottage on the banks of the Loing, quite a fortune? We calculated that, with La Bougival, we could save five thousand francs a year. You allowed me one evening in your uncle’s garden to regard you as my promised wife, and you cannot by yourself alone break the ties which bind us both. Need I tell you that I plainly declared, yesterday, to Monsieur du Rouvre that, even if I were free, I would not accept a fortune from a young lady whom I did not know? My mother refuses to see you any more; I lose the happiness of my evenings, but do not abridge the brief moments when I may speak with you at your window. Till this evening, then—Nothing can part us.
“Go now, my good woman. She must not have a moment’s needless anxiety.”
That afternoon, on his return from the walk he took every day on purpose to pass by Ursule’s dwelling, Savinien found her somewhat the paler for all these sudden agitations.
“I feel as though I had never till this moment known what a happiness it is to see you!” said she.
“You yourself said to me,” replied Savinien, with a smile, “that ‘Love cannot exist without patience; I will wait’—for I remember all your words. But have you, my dear child, divided love from faith? Ah! this is the end of all our differences. You have always said that you loved me more than I could love you. But have I ever doubted you?” he asked, giving her a bunch of wildflowers chosen so as to symbolize his feelings.
“You have no reason to doubt me,” she replied, “Besides, you do not know all,” she added, in a tone of uneasiness.
She had given orders that no letters to her by post should be taken in. But without her being able to guess by what conjuring trick the thing had been done, a few minutes after Savinien had left her, and she had watched him round the turning of the Rue des Bourgeois out of the High Street, she found on her armchair a piece of paper on which was written:
Tremble! The lover scorned will be worse than a tiger.
Notwithstanding Savinien’s entreaties, she would not, out of prudence, trust him with the dreadful secret of her fears. The ineffable joy of seeing him again, after believing him lost to her, could alone enable her to forget the mortal chill which came over her. Everyone knows the intolerable torment of awaiting an indefinite misfortune. Suffering then assumes the proportions of the unknown, which is certainly infinitude, to the mind. To Ursule it was the greatest anguish. She found herself starting violently at the slightest sound; she distrusted the silence; she suspected the walls of conspiracies. Her peaceful sleep was broken. Goupil, without knowing anything of her constitution—as fragile as that of a flower—had, by the instinct of wickedness, hit on the poison that would blight it—kill it.
The next day, however, passed without any shock. Ursule played the piano till very late, and went to bed almost reassured, and overpowered by sleep. At about midnight she was roused by a band, consisting of a clarinet, a hautbois, a flute, a cornet-à-piston, a trombone, a bassoon, a fife, and a triangle. All the neighbors were at their windows. The poor child, upset by seeing a crowd in the street, was struck to the heart on hearing a hoarse, vulgar, man’s voice crying out:
“For the fair Ursule Mirouët, a serenade from her lover!”
At church next morning all the town was in a hubbub; and as Ursule entered and quitted the church, she saw the Square filled with groups staring at her, and displaying the most odious curiosity. The serenade had set every tongue wagging, for everyone was lost in conjecture. Ursule got home more dead than alive, and went out no more, the curé having advised her to say vespers at home. On going in she saw, lying in the passage paved with red brick that ran from the street to the courtyard behind, a letter that had been slipped under the door; she picked it up and read it, prompted by the desire for some explanation. The least sensitive reader can imagine her feelings as she saw these terrible words:
Make up your mind to be my wife, rich and adored. I will have you. If you are not mine alive, you shall be, dead. You may ascribe to your refusal misfortunes which will not fall on you alone.—He who loves you and will some day possess you.
Strange irony! at the moment when the gentle victim of this conspiracy was drooping like a plucked flower, Mesdemoiselles Massin, Dionis, and Crémière were envying her lot.
“She is a happy girl,” they were saying, “Men are devoted to her, flatter her taste, are ready to quarrel for her. The serenade was delightful, it would seem! There was a cornet-à-piston!”
“What is a cornet-à-piston?”
“A new sort of musical instrument—there—as long as that!” said Angélique Crémière to Pamela Massin.
Early next day Savinien went off to Fontainebleau to inquire who had ordered the musicians of the regiment stationed there; but as there were two men to each instrument, it was impossible to ascertain which had gone to Nemours, since the Colonel prohibited them from playing for private persons without his leave. Monsieur de Portenduère had an interview with the public prosecutor, Ursule’s legal guardian, and explained to him the serious effect such scenes must have on a young girl
