In 1778, when Rousseau’s Nouvelle Héloïse was the rage, and men sometimes married for love, he married the daughter of Valentin Mirouët, the famous harpsichord player, herself a fine musician, but weakly and delicate, who died of the Revolution. Minoret was intimate with Robespierre, to whom he had once caused a gold medal to be awarded for a dissertation on these questions: “What is the origin of the opinion by which part of the shame attaching to the disgraceful punishment of a guilty man is reflected on all his family? Is this opinion generally useful or mischievous? And, supposing it to be mischievous, by what means can we avert the disastrous results?” The Academy of Arts and Sciences at Metz, to which Minoret belonged, must still have the original copy of this discourse. Although, thanks to this friendship, the doctor’s wife had nothing to fear, she lived in such dread of being sent to the scaffold that this invincible terror aggravated an aneurism due to a too sensitive nature. In spite of all the precautions a man could take who idolized his wife, Ursule met the tumbrel full of condemned victims, and among them, as it happened, Madame Roland. The spectacle caused her death. Minoret, who had spoiled his Ursule, had refused her nothing, so that she had led a life of extravagant luxury, at her death found himself almost a poor man. Robespierre appointed him first physician to a hospital.
Although the name of Minoret had been somewhat famous during the vehement discussions to which Mesmerism had given rise, a fame which had recalled him now and then to his relations’ memory, the Revolution was so powerful a solvent, and broke up so many family connections, that in 1813 no one at Nemours knew even of Doctor Minoret’s existence, when an unexpected meeting suggested to him the idea of returning, as hares do, to die in his form.
In traveling through France, where the eye is so soon fatigued by the monotony of the wide plains, who has not known the delightful sensation of discerning, from the top of a hill where the road turns or descends, and where he expected to see a dull landscape, a green valley watered by a stream, and a little town sheltered under a cliff, like a hive in the hollow of an old willow-tree? As he hears the postilion’s cry of “Come up!” while he walks at his horse’s side, the traveler shakes off sleep, and admires as a dream within a dream some lovely scene which is to the stranger what a fine passage in a book is to the reader—a brilliant idea of Nature’s. This is the effect produced by the sudden view of Nemours on the road from Burgundy. It is seen from the height in an amphitheatre of naked rocks, gray, white, and black, like those which are scattered throughout the Forest of Fontainebleau; and from among them shoot up solitary trees, standing out against the sky, and giving a rural aspect to this sort of tumbledown rampart. This is the end of the long wooded slope which rises from Nemours to Bouron, sheltering the road on one side. At the foot of these cliffs spreads a meadow-land, through which the Loing flows, in level pools ending in little waterfalls. This exquisite tract of country, cut through by the Montargis road, is like an elaborate opera scene, the effects seem so carefully worked up.
One morning the doctor, who had been sent for by a rich invalid in Burgundy, and who was hastening back to Paris, not having mentioned at the last change of horses which road he wished to take, was unwittingly brought through Nemours, and between two naps saw once more the landscape familiar to his childhood. The doctor had by this time lost many of his old friends. The disciple of the Encyclopedia had lived to see La Harpe a convert, had buried Lebrun-Pindare, and Marie-Joseph de Chénier, and Morellet, and Madame Helvétius. He had seen the quasi overthrow of Voltaire under the attacks of Geoffroy, Fréron’s successor. Hence he was thinking of retiring. And when the post-chaise stopped at the top of the High Street of Nemours, his good feeling prompted him to inquire after his family. Minoret-Levrault himself came out to see the doctor, who recognized in the postmaster his eldest brother’s son. This nephew introduced as his wife the only daughter of old Levrault-Crémière, who, twelve years ago, had left her the posting business and the handsomest inn in Nemours.
“Well, nephew,” said the doctor, “and have I any other heirs?”
“My aunt Minoret, your sister, married a Massin-Massin.”
“Yes, the intendant at Saint-Lange.”
“She died a widow, leaving one daughter, who has lately married a Crémière-Crémière, a very nice fellow, who so
