Ursule Mirouët

wittiest man in Nemours, is esteemed by the little town; but he is punished in his children, who are hideous, rickety, and hydrocephalous. His predecessor, Dionis, flourishes in the Chamber of Deputies, of which he is one of the greatest ornaments, to the great satisfaction of the King of the French, who sees Madame Dionis at every State ball. Madame Dionis relates to all the town of Nemours the particulars of her reception at the Tuileries, and the grandeurs of the King’s Court. She is Queen at Nemours, by virtue of a King who is certainly popular in that sense.

Bongrand is President of the Court of Justice at Melun, his son on the high road to becoming a very respectable public prosecutor.

Madame Crémière still says the funniest things in the world. She writes tambour “tambourg,” and says it is because her pen splutters. On the eve of her daughter’s marriage, she told her, in concluding her advice to her, that a wife ought to be the toiling caterpillar of her home, and keep a sphinx’s eye on everything. Indeed, Goupil is making a collection of his cousin’s absurd blunders, a Crémièriana.

“We have had the grief of losing our good Abbé Chaperon this winter,” says the Vicomtesse de Portenduère, who nursed him during his illness. All the district attended his funeral. Nemours is fortunate, for this saintly man’s successor is the venerable Curé de Saint-Lange.

Endnotes

1. Madame Crémière’s capsulingies are impossible to translate; an equivalent is all that can be attempted. ↩

2. See “The Ball at Sceaux.” ↩

Colophon

Ursule Mirouët
was published in 1841 by
Honoré de Balzac.
It was translated from French in 1901 by
Clara Bell.

This ebook was transcribed and produced for
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The cover page is adapted from
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