Kitabı oku: «Ursula», sayfa 7

CHAPTER VII. A TWO-FOLD CONVERSION

On rising, the doctor, sure that no one had crossed the threshold of his house since he re-entered it, proceeded (but not without extreme trepidation) to verify his facts. He was himself ignorant of any difference in the bank-notes and also of the misplacement of the Pandect volumes. The somnambulist was right. The doctor rang for La Bougival.

“Tell Ursula to come and speak to me,” he said, seating himself in the center of his library.

The girl came; she ran up to him and kissed him. The doctor took her on his knee, where she sat contentedly, mingling her soft fair curls with the white hair of her old friend.

“Do you want something, godfather?”

“Yes; but promise me, on your salvation, to answer frankly, without evasion, the questions that I shall put to you.”

Ursula colored to the temples.

“Oh! I’ll ask nothing that you cannot speak of,” he said, noticing how the bashfulness of young love clouded the hitherto childlike purity of the girl’s blue eyes.

“Ask me, godfather.”

“What thought was in your mind when you ended your prayers last evening, and what time was it when you said them.”

“It was a quarter-past or half-past nine.”

“Well, repeat your last prayer.”

The girl fancied that her voice might convey her faith to the sceptic; she slid from his knee and knelt down, clasping her hands fervently; a brilliant light illumined her face as she turned it on the old man and said: —

“What I asked of God last night I asked again this morning, and I shall ask it till he vouchsafes to grant it.”

Then she repeated her prayer with new and still more powerful expression. To her great astonishment her godfather took the last words from her mouth and finished the prayer.

“Good, Ursula,” said the doctor, taking her again on his knee. “When you laid your head on the pillow and went to sleep did you think to yourself, ‘That dear godfather; I wonder who is playing backgammon with him in Paris’?”

Ursula sprang up as if the last trumpet had sounded in her ears. She gave a cry of terror; her eyes, wide open, gazed at the old man with awful fixity.

“Who are you, godfather? From whom do you get such power?” she asked, imagining that in his desire to deny God he had made some compact with the devil.

“What seeds did you plant yesterday in the garden?”

“Mignonette, sweet-peas, balsams – ”

“And the last were larkspur?”

She fell on her knees.

“Do not terrify me!” she exclaimed. “Oh you must have been here – you were here, were you not?”

“Am I not always with you?” replied the doctor, evading her question, to save the strain on the young girl’s mind. “Let us go to your room.”

“Your legs are trembling,” she said.

“Yes, I am confounded, as it were.”

“Can it be that you believe in God?” she cried, with artless joy, letting fall the tears that gathered in her eyes.

The old man looked round the simple but dainty little room he had given to his Ursula. On the floor was a plain green carpet, very inexpensive, which she herself kept exquisitely clean; the walls were hung with a gray paper strewn with roses and green leaves; at the windows, which looked to the court, were calico curtains edged with a band of some pink material; between the windows and beneath a tall mirror was a pier-table topped with marble, on which stood a Sevres vase in which she put her nosegays; opposite the chimney was a little bureau-desk of charming marquetry. The bed, of chintz, with chintz curtains lined with pink, was one of those duchess beds so common in the eighteenth century, which had a tuft of carved feathers at the top of each of the four posts, which were fluted on the sides. An old clock, inclosed in a sort of monument made of tortoise-shell inlaid with arabesques of ivory, decorated the mantelpiece, the marble shelf of which, with the candlesticks and the mirror in a frame painted in cameo on a gray ground, presented a remarkable harmony of color, tone, and style. A large wardrobe, the doors of which were inlaid with landscapes in different woods (some having a green tint which are no longer to be found for sale) contained, no doubt, her linen and her dresses. The air of the room was redolent of heaven. The precise arrangement of everything showed a sense of order, a feeling for harmony, which would certainly have influenced any one, even a Minoret-Levrault. It was plain that the things about her were dear to Ursula, and that she loved a room which contained, as it were, her childhood and the whole of her girlish life.

Looking the room well over that he might seem to have a reason for his visit, the doctor saw at once how the windows looked into those of Madame de Portenduere. During the night he had meditated as to the course he ought to pursue with Ursula about his discovery of this dawning passion. To question her now would commit him to some course. He must either approve or disapprove of her love; in either case his position would be a false one. He therefore resolved to watch and examine into the state of things between the two young people, and learn whether it were his duty to check the inclination before it was irresistible. None but an old man could have shown such deliberate wisdom. Still panting from the discovery of the truth of these magnetic facts, he turned about and looked at all the various little things around the room; he wished to examine the almanac which was hanging at a corner of the chimney-piece.

“These ugly things are too heavy for your little hands,” he said, taking up the marble candlesticks which were partly covered with leather.

He weighed them in his hand; then he looked at the almanac and took it, saying, “This is ugly too. Why do you keep such a common thing in your pretty room?”

“Oh, please let me have it, godfather.”

“No, no, you shall have another to-morrow.”

So saying he carried off this possible proof, shut himself up in his study, looked for Saint Savinien and found, as the somnambulist had told him, a little red dot at the 19th of October; he also saw another before his own saint’s day, Saint Denis, and a third before Saint John, the abbe’s patron. This little dot, no larger than a pin’s head, had been seen by the sleeping woman in spite of distance and other obstacles! The old man thought till evening of these events, more momentous for him than for others. He was forced to yield to evidence. A strong wall, as it were, crumbled within him; for his life had rested on two bases, – indifference in matters of religion and a firm disbelief in magnetism. When it was proved to him that the senses – faculties purely physical, organs, the effects of which could be explained – attained to some of the attributes of the infinite, magnetism upset, or at least it seemed to him to upset, the powerful arguments of Spinoza. The finite and the infinite, two incompatible elements according to that remarkable man, were here united, the one in the other. No matter what power he gave to the divisibility and mobility of matter he could not help recognizing that it possessed qualities that were almost divine.

He was too old now to connect those phenomena to a system, and compare them with those of sleep, of vision, of light. His whole scientific belief, based on the assertions of the school of Locke and Condillac, was in ruins. Seeing his hollow ideas in pieces, his scepticism staggered. Thus the advantage in this struggle between the Catholic child and the Voltairean old man was on Ursula’s side. In the dismantled fortress, above these ruins, shone a light; from the center of these ashes issued the path of prayer! Nevertheless, the obstinate old scientist fought his doubts. Though struck to the heart, he would not decide, he struggled on against God.

But he was no longer the same man; his mind showed its vacillation. He became unnaturally dreamy; he read Pascal, and Bossuet’s sublime “History of Species”; he read Bonald, he read Saint-Augustine; he determined also to read the works of Swedenborg, and the late Saint-Martin, which the mysterious stranger had mentioned to him. The edifice within him was cracking on all sides; it needed but one more shake, and then, his heart being ripe for God, he was destined to fall into the celestial vineyard as fall the fruits. Often of an evening, when playing with the abbe, his goddaughter sitting by, he would put questions bearing on his opinions which seemed singular to the priest, who was ignorant of the inward workings by which God was remaking that fine conscience.

“Do you believe in apparitions?” asked the sceptic of the pastor, stopping short in the game.

“Cardan, a great philosopher of the sixteenth century said he had seen some,” replied the abbe.

“I know all those that scholars have discussed, for I have just reread Plotinus. I am questioning you as a Catholic might, and I ask if you think that dead men can return to the living.”

“Jesus reappeared to his disciples after his death,” said the abbe. “The Church ought to have faith in the apparitions of the Savior. As for miracles, they are not lacking,” he continued, smiling. “Shall I tell you the last? It took place in the eighteenth century.”

“Pooh!” said the doctor.

“Yes, the blessed Marie-Alphonse of Ligouri, being very far from Rome, knew of the death of the Pope at the very moment the Holy Father expired; there were numerous witnesses of this miracle. The sainted bishop being in ecstasy, heard the last words of the sovereign pontiff and repeated them at the time to those about him. The courier who brought the announcement of the death did not arrive till thirty hours later.”

“Jesuit!” exclaimed old Minoret, laughing, “I did not ask you for proofs; I asked you if you believed in apparitions.”

“I think an apparition depends a good deal on who sees it,” said the abbe, still fencing with his sceptic.

“My friend,” said the doctor, seriously, “I am not setting a trap for you. What do you really believe about it?”

“I believe that the power of God is infinite,” replied the abbe.

“When I am dead, if I am reconciled to God, I will ask Him to let me appear to you,” said the doctor, smiling.

“That’s exactly the agreement Cardan made with his friend,” answered the priest.

“Ursula,” said Minoret, “if danger ever threatens you, call me, and I will come.”

“You have put into one sentence that beautiful elegy of ‘Neere’ by Andre Chenier,” said the abbe. “Poets are sublime because they clothe both facts and feelings with ever-living images.”

“Why do you speak of your death, dear godfather?” said Ursula in a grieved tone. “We Christians do not die; the grave is the cradle of our souls.”

“Well,” said the doctor, smiling, “we must go out of the world, and when I am no longer here you will be astonished at your fortune.”

“When you are here no longer, my kind friend, my only consolation will be to consecrate my life to you.”

“To me, dead?”

“Yes. All the good works that I can do will be done in your name to redeem your sins. I will pray God every day for his infinite mercy, that he may not punish eternally the errors of a day. I know he will summon among the righteous a soul so pure, so beautiful, as yours.”

That answer, said with angelic candor, in a tone of absolute certainty, confounded error and converted Denis Minoret as God converted Saul. A ray of inward light overawed him; the knowledge of this tenderness, covering his years to come, brought tears to his eyes. This sudden effect of grace had something that seemed electrical about it. The abbe clasped his hands and rose, troubled, from his seat. The girl, astonished at her triumph, wept. The old man stood up as if a voice had called him, looking into space as though his eyes beheld the dawn; then he bent his knee upon his chair, clasped his hands, and lowered his eyes to the ground as one humiliated.

“My God,” he said in a trembling voice, raising his head, “if any one can obtain my pardon and lead me to thee, surely it is this spotless creature. Have mercy on the repentant old age that this pure child presents to thee!”

He lifted his soul to God; mentally praying for the light of divine knowledge after the gift of divine grace; then he turned to the abbe and held out his hand.

“My dear pastor,” he said, “I am become as a little child. I belong to you; I give my soul to your care.”

Ursula kissed his hands and bathed them with her tears. The old man took her on his knee and called her gayly his godmother. The abbe, deeply moved, recited the “Veni Creator” in a species of religious ecstasy. The hymn served as the evening prayer of the three Christians kneeling together for the first time.

“What has happened?” asked La Bougival, amazed at the sight.

“My godfather believes in God at last!” replied Ursula.

“Ah! so much the better; he only needed that to make him perfect,” cried the old woman, crossing herself with artless gravity.

“Dear doctor,” said the good priest, “you will soon comprehend the grandeur of religion and the value of its practices; you will find its philosophy in human aspects far higher than that of the boldest sceptics.”

The abbe, who showed a joy that was almost infantine, agreed to catechize the old man and confer with him twice a week. Thus the conversion attributed to Ursula and to a spirit of sordid calculation, was the spontaneous act of the doctor himself. The abbe, who for fourteen years had abstained from touching the wounds of that heart, though all the while deploring them, was now asked for help, as a surgeon is called to an injured man. Ever since this scene Ursula’s evening prayers had been said in common with her godfather. Day after day the old man grew more conscious of the peace within him that succeeded all his conflicts. Having, as he said, God as the responsible editor of things inexplicable, his mind was at ease. His dear child told him that he might know by how far he had advanced already in God’s kingdom. During the mass which we have seen him attend, he had read the prayers and applied his own intelligence to them; from the first, he had risen to the divine idea of the communion of the faithful. The old neophyte understood the eternal symbol attached to that sacred nourishment, which faith renders needful to the soul after conveying to it her own profound and radiant essence. When on leaving the church he had seemed in a hurry to get home, it was merely that he might once more thank his dear child for having led him to “enter religion,” – the beautiful expression of former days. He was holding her on his knee in the salon and kissing her forehead sacredly at the very moment when his relatives were degrading that saintly influence with their shameless fears, and casting their vulgar insults upon Ursula. His haste to return home, his assumed disdain for their company, his sharp replies as he left the church were naturally attributed by all the heirs to the hatred Ursula had excited against them in the old man’s mind.

CHAPTER VIII. THE CONFERENCE

While Ursula was playing variations on Weber’s “Last Thought” to her godfather, a plot was hatching in the Minoret-Levraults’ dining-room which was destined to have a lasting effect on the events of this drama. The breakfast, noisy as all provincial breakfasts are, and enlivened by excellent wines brought to Nemours by the canal either from Burgundy or Touraine, lasted more than two hours. Zelie had sent for oysters, salt-water fish, and other gastronomical delicacies to do honor to Desire’s return. The dining-room, in the center of which a round table offered a most appetizing sight, was like the hall of an inn. Content with the size of her kitchens and offices, Zelie had built a pavilion for the family between the vast courtyard and a garden planted with vegetables and full of fruit-trees. Everything about the premises was solid and plain. The example of Levrault-Levrault had been a warning to the town. Zelie forbade her builder to lead her into such follies. The dining-room was, therefore, hung with varnished paper and furnished with walnut chairs and sideboards, a porcelain stove, a tall clock, and a barometer. Though the plates and dishes were of common white china, the table shone with handsome linen and abundant silverware. After Zelie had served the coffee, coming and going herself like shot in a decanter, – for she kept but one servant, – and when Desire, the budding lawyer, had been told of the event of the morning and its probably consequences, the door was closed, and the notary Dionis was called upon to speak. By the silence in the room and the looks that were cast on that authoritative face, it was easy to see the power that such men exercise over families.

“My dear children,” said he, “your uncle having been born in 1746, is eighty-three years old at the present time; now, old men are given to folly, and that little – ”

“Viper!” cried Madame Massin.

“Hussy!” said Zelie.

“Let us call her by her own name,” said Dionis.

“Well, she’s a thief,” said Madame Cremiere.

“A pretty thief,” remarked Desire.

“That little Ursula,” went on Dionis, “has managed to get hold of his heart. I have been thinking of your interests, and I did not wait until now before making certain inquiries; now this is what I have discovered about that young – ”

“Marauder,” said the collector.

“Inveigler,” said the clerk of the court.

“Hold your tongue, friends,” said the notary, “or I’ll take my hat and be off.”

“Come, come, papa,” cried Minoret, pouring out a little glass of rum and offering it to the notary; “here, drink this, it comes from Rome itself; and now go on.”

“Ursula is, it is true, the legitimate daughter of Joseph Mirouet; but her father was the natural son of Valentin Mirouet, your uncle’s father-in-law. Being therefore an illegitimate niece, any will the doctor might make in her favor could probably be contested; and if he leaves her his fortune in that way you could bring a suit against Ursula. This, however, might turn out ill for you, in case the court took the view that there was no relationship between Ursula and the doctor. Still, the suit would frighten an unprotected girl, and bring about a compromise – ”

“The law is so rigid as to the rights of natural children,” said the newly fledged licentiate, eager to parade his knowledge, “that by the judgment of the court of appeals dated July 7, 1817, a natural child can claim nothing from his natural grandfather, not even a maintenance. So you see the illegitimate parentage is made retrospective. The law pursues the natural child even to its legitimate descent, on the ground that benefactions done to grandchildren reach the natural son through that medium. This is shown by articles 757, 908, and 911 of the civil Code. The royal court of Paris, by a decision of the 26th of January of last year, cut off a legacy made to the legitimate child of a natural son by his grandfather, who, as grandfather, was as distant to a natural grandson as the doctor, being an uncle, is to Ursula.”

“All that,” said Goupil, “seems to me to relate only to the bequests made by grandfathers to natural descendants. Ursula is not a blood relation of Doctor Minoret. I remember a decision of the royal court at Colmar, rendered in 1825, just before I took my degree, which declared that after the decease of a natural child his descendants could no longer be prohibited from inheriting. Now, Ursula’s father is dead.”

Goupil’s argument produced what journalists who report the sittings of legislative assemblies are wont to call “profound sensation.”

“What does that signify?” cried Dionis. “The actual case of the bequest of an uncle to an illegitimate child may not yet have been presented for trial; but when it is, the sternness of French law against such children will be all the more firmly applied because we live in times when religion is honored. I’ll answer for it that out of such a suit as I propose you could get a compromise, – especially if they see you are determined to carry Ursula to a court of appeals.”

Here the joy of the heirs already fingering their gold was made manifest in smiles, shrugs, and gestures round the table, and prevented all notice of Goupil’s dissent. This elation, however, was succeeded by deep silence and uneasiness when the notary uttered his next word, a terrible “But!”

As if he had pulled the string of a puppet-show, starting the little people in jerks by means of machinery, Dionis beheld all eyes turned on him and all faces rigid in one and the same pose.

“But no law prevents your uncle from adopting or marrying Ursula,” he continued. “As for adoption, that could be contested, and you would, I think, have equity on your side. The royal courts would never trifle with questions of adoptions; you would get a hearing there. It is true the doctor is an officer of the Legion of honor, and was formerly surgeon to the ex-emperor; but, nevertheless, he would get the worst of it. Moreover, you would have due warning in case of adoption – but how about marriage? Old Minoret is shrewd enough to go to Paris and marry her after a year’s domicile, and give her a million by the marriage contract. The only thing, therefore, that really puts your property in danger is your uncle’s marriage with the girl.”

Here the notary paused.

“There’s another danger,” said Goupil, with a knowing air, – “that of a will made in favor of a third person, old Bongrand for instance, who will hold the property in trust for Mademoiselle Ursula – ”

“If you tease your uncle,” continued Dionis, cutting short his head-clerk, “if you are not all of you very polite to Ursula, you will drive him into either a marriage or into making that private trust which Goupil speaks of, – though I don’t think him capable of that; it is a dangerous thing. As for marriage, that is easy to prevent. Desire there has only got to hold out a finger to the girl; she’s sure to prefer a handsome young man, cock of the walk in Nemours, to an old one.”

“Mother,” said Desire to Zelie’s ear, as much allured by the millions as by Ursula’s beauty, “If I married her we should get the whole property.”

“Are you crazy? – you, who’ll some day have fifty thousand francs a year and be made a deputy! As long as I live you never shall cut your throat by a foolish marriage. Seven hundred thousand francs, indeed! Why, the mayor’s only daughter will have fifty thousand a year, and they have already proposed her to me – ”

This reply, the first rough speech his mother had ever made to him, extinguished in Desire’s breast all desire for a marriage with the beautiful Ursula; for his father and he never got the better of any decision once written in the terrible blue eyes of Zelie Minoret.

“Yes, but see here, Monsieur Dionis,” cried Cremiere, whose wife had been nudging him, “if the good man took the thing seriously and married his goddaughter to Desire, giving her the reversion of all the property, good-by to our share in it; if he lives five years longer uncle may be worth a million.”

“Never!” cried Zelie, “never in my life shall Desire marry the daughter of a bastard, a girl picked up in the streets out of charity. My son will represent the Minorets after the death of his uncle, and the Minorets have five hundred years of good bourgeoisie behind them. That’s equal to the nobility. Don’t be uneasy, any of you; Desire will marry when we find a chance to put him in the Chamber of deputies.”

This lofty declaration was backed by Goupil, who said: —

“Desire, with an allowance of twenty-four thousand francs a year, will be president of a royal court or solicitor-general; either office leads to the peerage. A foolish marriage would ruin him.”

The heirs were now all talking at once; but they suddenly held their tongues when Minoret rapped on the table with his fist to keep silence for the notary.

“Your uncle is a worthy man,” continued Dionis. “He believes he’s immortal; and, like most clever men, he’ll let death overtake him before he has made a will. My advice therefore is to induce him to invest his capital in a way that will make it difficult for him to disinherit you, and I know of an opportunity, made to hand. That little Portenduere is in Saint-Pelagie, locked-up for one hundred and some odd thousand francs’ worth of debt. His old mother knows he is in prison; she is crying like a Magdalen. The abbe is to dine with her; no doubt she wants to talk to him about her troubles. Well, I’ll go and see your uncle to-night and persuade him to sell his five per cent consols, which are now at 118, and lend Madame de Portenduere, on the security of her farm at Bordieres and her house here, enough to pay the debts of the prodigal son. I have a right as notary to speak to him in behalf of young Portenduere; and it is quite natural that I should wish to make him change his investments; I get deeds and commissions out of the business. If I become his adviser I’ll propose to him other land investments for his surplus capital; I have some excellent ones now in my office. If his fortune were once invested in landed estate or in mortgage notes in this neighbourhood, it could not take wings to itself very easily. It is easy to make difficulties between the wish to realize and the realization.”

The heirs, struck with the truth of this argument (much cleverer than that of Monsieur Josse), murmured approval.

“You must be careful,” said the notary in conclusion, “to keep your uncle in Nemours, where his habits are known, and where you can watch him. Find him a lover for the girl and you’ll prevent his marrying her himself.”

“Suppose she married the lover?” said Goupil, seized by an ambitious desire.

“That wouldn’t be a bad thing; then you could figure up the loss; the old man would have to say how much he gives her,” replied the notary. “But if you set Desire at her he could keep the girl dangling on till the old man died. Marriages are made and unmade.”

“The shortest way,” said Goupil, “if the doctor is likely to live much longer, is to marry her to some worthy young man who will get her out of your way by settling at Sens, or Montargis, or Orleans with a hundred thousand francs in hand.”

Dionis, Massin, Zelie, and Goupil, the only intelligent heads in the company, exchanged four thoughtful smiles.

“He’d be a worm at the core,” whispered Zelie to Massin.

“How did he get here?” returned the clerk.

“That will just suit you!” cried Desire to Goupil. “But do you think you can behave decently enough to satisfy the old man and the girl?”

“In these days,” whispered Zelie again in Massin’s year, “notaries look out for no interests but their own. Suppose Dionis went over to Ursula just to get the old man’s business?”

“I am sure of him,” said the clerk of the court, giving her a sly look out of his spiteful little eyes. He was just going to add, “because I hold something over him,” but he withheld the words.

“I am quite of Dionis’s opinion,” he said aloud.

“So am I,” cried Zelie, who now suspected the notary of collusion with the clerk.

“My wife has voted!” said the post master, sipping his brandy, though his face was already purple from digesting his meal and absorbing a notable quantity of liquids.

“And very properly,” remarked the collector.

“I shall go and see the doctor after dinner,” said Dionis.

“If Monsieur Dionis’s advice is good,” said Madame Cremiere to Madame Massin, “we had better go and call on our uncle, as we used to do, every Sunday evening, and behave exactly as Monsieur Dionis has told us.”

“Yes, and be received as he received us!” cried Zelie. “Minoret and I have more than forty thousand francs a year, and yet he refused our invitations! We are quite his equals. If I don’t know how to write prescriptions I know how to paddle my boat as well as he – I can tell him that!”

“As I am far from having forty thousand francs a year,” said Madame Massin, rather piqued, “I don’t want to lose ten thousand.”

“We are his nieces; we ought to take care of him, and then besides we shall see how things are going,” said Madame Cremiere; “you’ll thank us some day, cousin.”

“Treat Ursula kindly,” said the notary, lifting his right forefinger to the level of his lips; “remember old Jordy left her his savings.”

“You have managed those fools as well as Desroches, the best lawyer in Paris, could have done,” said Goupil to his patron as they left the post-house.

“And now they are quarreling over my fee,” replied the notary, smiling bitterly.

The heirs, after parting with Dionis and his clerk, met again in the square, with face rather flushed from their breakfast, just as vespers were over. As the notary predicted, the Abbe Chaperon had Madame de Portenduere on his arm.

“She dragged him to vespers, see!” cried Madame Massin to Madame Cremiere, pointing to Ursula and the doctor, who were leaving the church.

“Let us go and speak to him,” said Madame Cremiere, approaching the old man.

The change in the faces of his relatives (produced by the conference) did not escape Doctor Minoret. He tried to guess the reason of this sudden amiability, and out of sheer curiosity encouraged Ursula to stop and speak to the two women, who were eager to greet her with exaggerated affection and forced smiles.

“Uncle, will you permit me to come and see you to-night?” said Madame Cremiere. “We feared sometimes we were in your way – but it is such a long time since our children have paid you their respects; our girls are old enough now to make dear Ursula’s acquaintance.”

“Ursula is a little bear, like her name,” replied the doctor.

“Let us tame her,” said Madame Massin. “And besides, uncle,” added the good housewife, trying to hide her real motive under a mask of economy, “they tell us the dear girl has such talent for the forte that we are very anxious to hear her. Madame Cremiere and I are inclined to take her music-master for our children. If there were six or eight scholars in a class it would bring the price of his lessons within our means.”

“Certainly,” said the old man, “and it will be all the better for me because I want to give Ursula a singing-master.”

“Well, to-night then, uncle. We will bring your great-nephew Desire to see you; he is now a lawyer.”