Three days later, in the middle of the night, a second serenade was given by three violins, a flute, a guitar, and a hautbois. On this occasion the musicians made off by the road to Montargis, where there was just then a troupe of actors. Between two pieces a strident and drunken voice had proclaimed:
“To the daughter of Bandmaster Mirouët.”
Thus all Nemours was apprised of the profession of Ursule’s father, the secret the old doctor had so carefully kept.
But this time Savinien did not go to Montargis; he received in the course of the day an anonymous letter from Paris containing this terrible prophecy:
You shall not marry Ursule. If you wish her to live, make haste and surrender her to him who loves her more than you do; for he has become a musician and an artist to please her, and would rather see her dead than as your wife.
By this time the town doctor of Nemours was seeing Ursule three times a day, for this covert persecution had brought her to the point of death. Plunged, as she felt herself, by a diabolical hand into a slough of mud, the gentle girl behaved like a martyr; she lay perfectly silent, raising her eyes to heaven without tears, awaiting further blows with fervent prayer, and hoping for the stroke that might be her death.
“I am glad to be unable to go downstairs,” said she to Monsieur Bongrand and the Abbé, who stayed with her as much as possible. “He would come, and I feel unworthy to meet the looks with which he is in the habit of making me blest. Do you think he doubts me?”
“Why, if Savinien cannot discover the moving spirit of all this shameful business, he means to ask for the intervention of the Paris police,” said Bongrand.
“The unknown persons must know that they have killed me,” she replied. “They will be quiet now.”
The curé, Bongrand, and Savinien puzzled themselves with conjectures and suppositions. Savinien, Tiennette, La Bougival, and two devoted adherents of the curé’s constituted themselves spies, and were constantly on the watch for a whole week; but Goupil could never be betrayed by a sign, he pulled all the wires with his own hand. The Justice was the first to suspect that the author of the evil was frightened at his own success. Ursule was as pale and weak as a consumptive English girl. The spies relaxed their efforts. There were no more serenades nor letters. Savinien ascribed the cessation of these odious means to the secret energy of the law-officers, to whom he had sent the letters written to Ursule, to himself, and to his mother.
The armistice was of no long duration. When the doctor had checked the course of Ursule’s nervous fever, just as she was recovering her spirit, one morning, about the middle of July, a ladder of ropes was found attached to her window. The postilion who had ridden with the night mail deposed that a little man was in the act of coming down it just as he was passing; but in spite of his wishing to stop, his horses, having set off down hill from the bridge, at the corner of which stood Ursule’s little house, had carried him some way out of Nemours.
An opinion, suggested in Dionis’ drawing-room, attributed these manoeuvres to the Marquis du Rouvre, at that time in great need of money, who, it was supposed, by hastening Savinien’s marriage with his daughter, would be able to save the Château of le Rouvre from his creditors. Madame de Portenduère also, it was said, looked with favor on anything that could discredit, dishonor, and blight Ursule; but when the young girl seemed likely to die, the old lady was almost conquered.
This last stroke of malice so much distressed the Curé Chaperon that it made him ill enough to compel him to remain at home for some days. Poor Ursule, in whom this cruel attack had brought on a relapse, received by post a note from the curé, which was not refused, as his writing was familiar.
“My child, leave Nemours, and so discomfit the malice of your unknown enemies. Perhaps what they aim at is to imperil Savinien’s life. I will tell you more when I can go to see you.”
This note was signed, “Your devoted friend Chaperon.”
When Savinien, almost driven mad, went to call on the priest, the poor man read and reread the letter, so much was he horrified at the perfection with which his writing and signature had been imitated, for he had written nothing, and, if he had written, he would not have employed the post to carry a letter to Ursule. The mortal anguish to which this last villainy reduced Ursule compelled Savinien once more to apply to the public prosecutor, showing him the forged letter from the Abbé.
“It is murder,” said the young man to the lawyer. “Murder is being committed by means not provided against by law, on the person of an orphan placed under your protection by the Civil Code.”
“If you can discover any means of interfering,” replied the public prosecutor, “I am ready to adopt them; but I know of none. This rascally anonymous letter gives the best advice. Mademoiselle Mirouët must be sent to the care of the Ladies of the Adoration. Meanwhile, by my order, the commissary of police at Fontainebleau will authorize you to carry weapons in your own defence. I myself have been to le Rouvre, and Monsieur du Rouvre is justifiably indignant at the suspicions that have attached to him. Minoret, my deputy’s father, is in treaty for the purchase of his château. Mademoiselle du Rouvre is to marry a rich Polish Count. Monsieur du Rouvre himself was about to leave the neighborhood on the day of my visit, to escape being seized for debt.”
Désiré, questioned
