I shall be grateful to you till my latest breath, for the way in which you have proceeded, and will justify your confidence.
This terrible event upset the whole town of Nemours. The excited crowd that gathered round Minoret’s gate showed Savinien that his revenge had been taken in hand by One more powerful than he. The young man went at once to Ursule, and the young girl and the curé alike felt more horror than surprise. The next day, after the first treatment, when the Paris doctors and surgeons had given their advice, which was unanimous as to the necessity for amputating both legs. Minoret, pale, dejected, and heartbroken, came, accompanied by the curé, to Ursule’s house, where he found Bongrand and Savinien.
“Mademoiselle,” said he, “I am guilty towards you; but though all the ill I have done cannot be entirely repaired, some I can expiate. My wife and I have made up our minds to give you, as an absolute possession, our estate of le Rouvre if we preserve our son—as well as if we have the terrible grief of losing him.” As he ceased speaking, the man melted into tears.
“I may assure you, my dear Ursule,” said the curé, “that you may and ought to accept a part of this gift.”
“Do you forgive us?” said the colossus humbly, and kneeling at the feet of the astonished girl. “In a few hours the operation is to be performed by the first surgeon of the Hôtel-Dieu; but I put no trust in human science; I believe in the omnipotence of God! If you forgive me, if you will go and ask God to preserve us our son, he will have strength to endure this torment, and we shall have the happiness of keeping him, I am sure of it.”
“Let us all go to the church!” said Ursule, rising. She no sooner was on her feet than she gave a piercing shriek, fell back in her chair, and fainted away. When she recovered her senses, she saw her friends, with the exception of Minoret, who had rushed off to find a doctor, all with their eyes fixed on her, anxiously expecting her to speak a word. That word filled every heart with horror.
“I saw my godfather at the door,” she said. “He signed to me that there was no hope.”
And, in fact, the day after the operation. Désiré died, carried off by fever and the revulsion of the humors which follows on such operations. Madame Minoret, whose heart held no sentiment but that of motherhood, went mad after her son’s funeral, and was taken by her husband to the care of Doctor Blanche, where she died in January 1841.
Three months after these events, in January 1837, Ursule married Savinien, with Madame de Portenduère’s consent. Minoret intervened at the signing of the contract to settle on Mademoiselle Mirouët, by deed of gift, his estate of le Rouvre, and twenty-eight thousand francs a year in consols, reserving of all his fortune only his uncle’s house and six thousand francs a year. He is become the most charitable and pious man in Nemours, churchwarden of the parish, and the providence of the unfortunate.
“The poor have taken the place of my child,” he says.
If you have ever observed by the roadside, in districts where the oak is lopped low, some old tree, bleached, and, as it would seem, blasted, but still throwing out shoots, its sides riven, crying out for the axe, you will have an idea of the old postmaster, white-haired, bent, and lean, in whom the old folks of the district can trace nothing of the happy lout whom we saw watching for his son at the beginning of this tale; he no longer takes snuff in the same way even; he bears some burden besides his body. In short, it is perceptible in everything that the hand of God has been heavily laid on that form to make it a terrible example. After hating his uncle’s ward so bitterly, this old man, like Doctor Minoret himself, has so set his affections on Ursule, that he is the self-constituted steward of her property at Nemours.
Monsieur and Madame de Portenduère spend five months of the year in Paris, where they have purchased a splendid house in the Faubourg St.-Germain. After bestowing her house at Nemours on the Sisters of Charity, to be used as a free school, Madame de Portenduère the elder went to live at le Rouvre, where La Bougival is the head gatekeeper. Cabirolle’s father, formerly the guard of the “Ducler,” a man of sixty, has married La Bougival, who owns twelve hundred francs a year in consols, besides the comfortable profits of her place. Cabirolle’s son is Monsieur de Portenduère’s coachman.
When, in the Champs-Élysées, you see one of those neat little low carriages, known as “escargots” (or snail-shells), drive past, and admire a pretty fair woman leaning lightly against a young man, her face surrounded by a myriad of curls, like light foliage, and eyes like luminous periwinkle flowers, full of love—if you should feel the sting of envious wishes, remember that this handsome couple, the favorites of God, have paid in advance their tribute to the woes of life. These married lovers will probably be the Vicomte de Portenduère and his wife. There are not two such couples in Paris.
“It is the prettiest happiness I ever saw,” said the Comtesse d’Estorade, not long since.
So give those happy children your blessing instead of envying them, and try to find an Ursule Mirouët—a young girl brought up by three old men, and that best of mothers—Adversity.
Goupil, who is helpful to everybody, and justly regarded as the
