“Come in, come up!” cried the Abbé to the Justice, who was just passing the house.
Bongrand entered the room at the very moment when the priest was putting on his spectacles to read three numbers written by the dead doctor’s hand on the colored vellum-paper guard placed inside the boards by the binder, and which Ursule had just detected.
“What is the meaning of that? Our worthy friend was too great a booklover to spoil the guard of a binding,” said the Abbé Chaperon; “here are three numbers written between a first number, preceded by an M, and another preceded by an U.”
“What do you say?” cried Bongrand. “Let me look at that. —Good God!” he exclaimed, “is not this enough to open the eyes of an atheist, by proving to him the existence of Providence? Human justice is, I believe, the development of a divine idea brooding over the universe.”
He seized Ursule and kissed her on the forehead.
“Oh! my child, you shall be happy—rich—and through me!”
“What is it?” said the curé.
“My dear monsieur!” cried La Bougival, taking the tail of the Justice’s blue coat, “let me embrace you for what you say.”
“But explain yourself,” said the curé, “that we may not rejoice vainly.”
“If, in order to be rich, I must give anybody pain,” said Ursule, who had an inkling of a criminal trial, “I—”
“But think,” said the lawyer, interrupting Ursule, “of the happiness you will give our dear Savinien.”
“But you are mad!” said the curé.
“No, my dear curé,” said Bongrand. “Listen. Certificates of consols are numbered in as many series as there are letters of the alphabet, and each number bears the letter of its series; but certificates to bearer cannot have any letter, since they are inscribed in no name. Hence, what you here see proves that, on the day when the good man placed his money in state securities, he made a note of the number of his certificate for fifteen thousand francs a year under the letter M—for Minoret; of the numbers of three certificates to bearer; and of that of Ursule Mirouët under the letter U, number 23,534, which, as you see, immediately follows that of the certificate for fifteen thousand francs. This coincidence proves that these numbers are those of five certificates acquired on the same day, and noted by the old man in case of loss. I had advised him to put Ursule’s money into certificates to bearer, and he must have invested his own money, the money he intended for Ursule, and her little property all on the same day. I am now going to Dionis to look at the inventory. If the number of the certificate he left in his own name is 23,533, letter M, we may be certain that he invested through the same stockbroker, and on the same day: Firstly, his own money in one lump sum; secondly, his savings in three sums, in certificates to bearer; and thirdly, his ward’s money; the register of transfer will afford irrefutable proof. Ah, Minoret the wisehead, I have got you! Mum’s the word, my friends!”
The Justice left the curé, Ursule, and La Bougival lost in admiration of the ways by which God brings innocence to happy issues.
“The finger of God is here!” cried the Abbé Chaperon.
“Will they do him any hurt?” asked Ursule.
“Oh, mademoiselle,” cried La Bougival, “I would give the rope to hang him with!”
The Justice was by this time at the house where Groupil was already the successor designate of Dionis, and went into the office with a careless air.
“I want a little information,” said he to Groupil, “as to the estate of Doctor Minoret.”
“What is it?” asked Goupil.
“Did the old man leave one or more certificates of investment in three percents?”
“He left fifteen thousand francs of income in three percents,” said Goupil, “in one certificate. I entered it myself.”
“Then just look in the inventory,” said the Justice.
Goupil took down a box, turned over the contents, took out the document in question, looked through it, and read, “Item, one certificate—there, read for yourself—number 23,533, letter M.”
“Be so kind as to hand over to me an extract of the particulars from the inventory before one o’clock. I will wait for it.”
“What can you want it for?” asked Goupil.
“Do you wish to become notary?” retorted the Justice, looking sternly at the expectant successor to Dionis.
“I should think so!” cried Goupil. “I am sure I have eaten dirt enough to earn my title of Maître. I beg you to understand, monsieur, that the wretched office clerk known as Goupil has no connection with Maître Jean-Sebastien-Marie Goupil, notary at Nemours, and husband to Mademoiselle Massin. The two men do not know each other; they are not even alike in any particular. Do you not see me?”
Monsieur Bongrand then remarked Goupil’s dress. He wore a white stock, a shirt of dazzling whiteness with ruby studs, a red velvet waistcoat, a coat and trousers of fine black cloth and Paris make. He had neat boots, and his hair, carefully combed and smoothed, was elegantly scented. In short, he seemed to have been metamorphosed!
“You are, in fact, another man,” said Bongrand.
“Morally as well as physically, monsieur. Wisdom comes with work; and money is the fountain of cleansing—”
“Morally as well as physically?” said the Justice, settling his spectacles.
“Dear me, monsieur, is a man with a hundred thousand crowns a year ever a democrat? Regard me as a respectable man, who has a taste for refinement, and for loving his wife,” he added, as Madame Goupil came in. “I am so much altered,” said he, “that I think my cousin Madame Crémière quite witty. I have taken her in hand; and even her daughter no longer
