“Cousin,” said Minoret, “our uncle had accustomed you to an easier life than you now enjoy.”
“It is possible to be very happy without much money,” said she.
“I have been thinking that money would help to make you happy,” replied Minoret, “and I came to offer you some, out of respect for my uncle’s memory.”
“You had a very natural course open to your respect for him,” said Ursule severely. “You might have left his house just as it was, and have sold it to me, for you ran the price up so high only in the hope of finding treasure hoarded there—”
“At any rate,” said Minoret, evidently ill at ease, “if you had twelve thousand francs a year, you would be in a position to marry the better.”
“I have not such an income.”
“But if I were to give it to you, on condition of your purchasing an estate in Brittany, in Madame de Portenduère’s part of the country, she would then consent to your marrying her son?—”
“Monsieur Minoret, I have no right to so large a sum, and could not possibly accept it from you. We are scarcely related, and still less are we friends. I have suffered too much already from slander to wish to give any cause for evil speaking. What have I done to deserve such a gift? On what pretext could you make me such a present? These questions, which I have a right to ask you, everyone will answer in his own way. It will be interpreted as compensation for some injury, and I decline to recognize any. Your uncle did not bring me up in ignoble sentiments. We can accept gifts only from a friend. I could not feel any affection for you, and should necessarily prove ungrateful, so I do not choose to run the risk of such ingratitude.”
“You refuse!” exclaimed the colossus; the idea of anybody’s refusing a fortune would never have entered his head.
“I refuse,” repeated Ursule.
“But on what grounds have you any claim to offer such a fortune to Mademoiselle?” asked the old lawyer. “You have an idea; have you an idea?”
“Well, yes; the idea of getting her away from Nemours, that my son may leave me in peace; he is in love with her, and insists on marrying her.”
“Well, we will see about that,” replied the Justice, settling his spectacles. “Give us time to reflect.”
He escorted Minoret home, quite approving his anxiety as to the future on Désiré’s account, gently blaming Ursule’s hasty decisiveness, and promising to make her listen to reason. As soon as Minoret was within doors, Bongrand went to the posting stables, borrowed a horse and gig, and hurried off to Fontainebleau, where he inquired for Désiré, and was informed that he was at an evening party at the sous-préfet’s. The Justice, quite delighted, went on thither. Désiré was playing a rubber with the public prosecutor’s wife, the wife of the sous-préfet, and the general of the regiment stationed there.
“I have come the bearer of good news,” said Monsieur Bongrand to Désiré, “You are in love with Ursule Mirouët, and your father no longer objects to the marriage.”
“Ursule Mirouët! I am in love with her?” cried Désiré, laughing. “What put Ursule Mirouët into your head? I remember seeing her occasionally at old Doctor Minoret’s, my great-granduncle, a little girl who is certainly lovely; but she is outrageously pious; and if I, like everybody else, did justice to her charms, I never troubled my head with caring for her washed-out complexion,” and he smiled at the lady of the house—a “sprightly brunette,” to use a last century phrase. “Where were you dug up, my dear Monsieur Bongrand? All the world knows that my father is sovereign lord over lands worth forty-eight thousand francs a year, lying round his Château du Rouvre, so all the world knows that I have forty-eight thousand perpetual and funded reasons for not caring for the ward of the law. If I were to marry a mere nobody, these ladies would think me a great fool.”
“You have never teased your father about Ursule?”
“Never.”
“You hear him, monsieur,” said the Justice to the lawyer, who had been listening, and whom he now buttonholed in a corner, where they stood talking for about a quarter of an hour.
An hour later the Justice, having returned to Nemours and to Ursule’s house, sent La Bougival to fetch Minoret, who came at once.
“Mademoiselle—” said Bongrand, as Minoret came in.
“Accepts?” Minoret put in, interrupting him.
“No, not yet,” replied the Justice, settling his spectacles. “She had some scruples regarding your son’s condition, for she had been very much ill used on the score of a similar passion, and knows the value of peace and quiet. Can you swear to her that your son is crazed with love, and that you have no object in view but that of preserving our dear Ursule from some fresh Goupilleries?”
“Oh yes, I swear it!” said Minoret.
“Stop a minute, Master Minoret!” said the Justice, taking one of his hands out of his trousers-pocket to slap Minoret on the back, making him start. “Do not so lightly commit perjury.”
“Perjury!”
“It lies between you and your son, who, at Fontainebleau, at the sous-préfet’s house, and in the presence of four persons and the public prosecutor of the district, has just sworn that he never once thought of his cousin Ursule Mirouët. You must therefore have had other reasons for offering her such an immense sum? I perceived that you were making very rash statements, and I have been to Fontainebleau myself.”
Minoret stood aghast at his own blunder.
“Still, there is no harm, Monsieur Bongrand, in offering to a young relative what will facilitate a marriage, which, as it would seem, will make her happy, and in seeking some excuse to overcome her modesty.”
Minoret, who in his extremity had hit on an almost admissible plea, wiped his brow, wet with large drops of sweat.
“You know my motives for refusing,” replied Ursule. “I can but beg
