Ursula

The doctor’s friends

Curiously enough, though it explains the old proverb that “extremes meet,” the materialistic doctor and the cure of Nemours were soon friends.  The old man loved backgammon, a favorite game of the priesthood, and the Abbe Chaperon played it with about as much skill as he himself.  The game was the first tie between them.  Then Minoret was charitable, and the abbe was the Fenelon of the Gatinais.  Both had had a wide and varied education; the man of God was the only person in all Nemours who was fully capable of understanding the atheist.  To be able to argue, men must first understand each other.  What pleasure is there in saying sharp words to one who can’t feel them?  The doctor and the priest had far too much taste and had seen too much of good society not to practice its precepts; they were thus well-fitted for the little warfare so essential to conversation.  They hated each other’s opinions, but they valued each other’s character.  If such conflicts and such sympathies are not true elements of intimacy we must surely despair of society, which, especially in France, requires some form of antagonism.  It is from the shock of characters, and not from the struggle of opinions, that antipathies are generated.

The Abbe Chaperon became, therefore, the doctor’s chief friend.  This excellent ecclesiastic, then sixty years of age, had been curate of Nemours ever since the re-establishment of Catholic worship.  Out of attachment to his flock he had refused the vicariat of the diocese.  If those who were indifferent to religion thought well of him for so doing, the faithful loved him the more for it.  So, revered by his sheep, respected by the inhabitants at large, the abbe did good without inquiring into the religious opinions of those he benefited.  His parsonage, with scarcely furniture enough for the common needs of life, was cold and shabby, like the lodging of a miser.  Charity and avarice manifest themselves in the same way; charity lays up a treasure in heaven which avarice lays up on earth.  The Abbe Chaperon argued with his servant over expenses even more sharply than Gobseck with his—­if indeed that famous Jew kept a servant at all.  The good priest often sold the buckles off his shoes and his breeches to give their value to some poor person who appealed to him at a moment when he had not a penny.  When he was seen coming out of church with the straps of his breeches tied into the button-holes, devout women would redeem the buckles from the clock-maker and jeweler of the town and return them to their pastor with a lecture.  He never bought himself any clothes or linen, and wore his garments till they scarcely held together.  His linen, thick with darns, rubbed his skin like a hair shirt.  Madame de Portenduere, and other good souls, had an agreement with his housekeeper to replace the old clothes with new ones after he went to sleep, and the abbe did not always find out the difference.  He ate his food off pewter with iron forks and spoons.  When he received his assistants and sub-curates on days of high solemnity (an expense obligatory on the heads of parishes) he borrowed linen and silver from his friend the atheist.

“My silver is his salvation,” the doctor would say.

These noble deeds, always accompanied by spiritual encouragement, were done with a beautiful naivete.  Such a life was all the more meritorious because the abbe was possessed of an erudition that was vast and varied, and of great and precious faculties.  Delicacy and grace, the inseparable accompaniments of simplicity, lent charm to an elocution that was worthy of a prelate.  His manners, his character, and his habits gave to his intercourse with others the most exquisite savor of all that is most spiritual, most sincere in the human mind.  A lover of gayety, he was never priest in a salon.  Until Doctor Minoret’s arrival, the good man kept his light under a bushel without regret.  Owning a rather fine library and an income of two thousand francs when he came to Nemours, he now possessed, in 1829, nothing at all, except his stipend as parish priest, nearly the whole of which he gave away during the year.  The giver of excellent counsel in delicate matters or in great misfortunes, many persons who never went to church to obtain consolation went to the parsonage to get advice.  One little anecdote will suffice to complete his portrait.  Sometimes the peasants,—­rarely, it is true, but occasionally,—­unprincipled men, would tell him they were sued for debt, or would get themselves threatened fictitiously to stimulate the abbe’s benevolence.  They would even deceive their wives, who, believing their chattels were threatened with an execution and their cows seized, deceived in their turn the poor priest with their innocent tears.  He would then manage with great difficulty to provide the seven or eight hundred francs demanded of him—­with which the peasant bought himself a morsel of land.  When pious persons and vestrymen denounced the fraud, begging the abbe to consult them in future before lending himself to such cupidity, he would say:—­

“But suppose they had done something wrong to obtain their bit of land?  Isn’t it doing good when we prevent evil?”

Some persons may wish for a sketch of this figure, remarkable for the fact that science and literature had filled the heart and passed through the strong head without corrupting either.  At sixty years of age the abbe’s hair was white as snow, so keenly did he feel the sorrows of others, and so heavily had the events of the Revolution weighed upon him.  Twice incarcerated for refusing to take the oath he had twice, as he used to say, uttered in “In manus.”  He was of medium height, neither stout nor thin.  His face, much wrinkled and hollowed and quite colorless, attracted immediate attention by the absolute tranquillity expressed in its shape, and by the purity of its outline, which seemed to be edged with light.  The face of a chaste man has an unspeakable radiance.  Brown eyes with lively pupils brightened the irregular features, which were surmounted by a broad forehead.  His glance wielded a power which came of a gentleness that was not devoid of strength.  The arches of his brow formed caverns shaded by huge gray eyebrows which alarmed no one.  As most of his teeth were gone his mouth had lost its shape and his cheeks had fallen in; but this physical destruction was not without charm; even the wrinkles, full of pleasantness, seemed to smile on others.  Without being gouty his feet were tender; and he walked with so much difficulty that he wore shoes made of calf’s skin all the year round.  He thought the fashion of trousers unsuitable for priests, and he always appeared in stockings of coarse black yarn, knit by his housekeeper, and cloth breeches.  He never went out in his cassock, but wore a brown overcoat, and still retained the three-cornered hat he had worn so courageously in times of danger.  This noble and beautiful old man, whose face was glorified by the serenity of a soul above reproach, will be found to have so great an influence upon the men and things of this history, that it was proper to show the sources of his authority and power.

Minoret took three newspapers,—­one liberal, one ministerial, one ultra,—­a few periodicals, and certain scientific journals, the accumulation of which swelled his library.  The newspapers, encyclopaedias, and books were an attraction to a retired captain of the Royal-Swedish regiment, named Monsieur de Jordy, a Voltairean nobleman and an old bachelor, who lived on sixteen hundred francs of pension and annuity combined.  Having read the gazettes for several days, by favor of the abbe, Monsieur de Jordy thought it proper to call and thank the doctor in person.  At this first visit the old captain, formerly a professor at the Military Academy, won the doctor’s heart, who returned the call with alacrity.  Monsieur de Jordy, a spare little man much troubled by his blood, though his face was very pale, attracted attention by the resemblance of his handsome brow to that of Charles XII.; above it he kept his hair cropped short, like that of the soldier-king.  His blue eyes seemed to say that “Love had passed that way,” so mournful were they; revealing memories about which he kept such utter silence that his old friends never detected even an allusion to his past life, nor a single exclamation drawn forth by similarity of circumstances.  He hid the painful mystery of his past beneath a philosophic gayety, but when he thought himself alone his motions, stiffened by a slowness which was more a matter of choice than the result of old age, betrayed the constant presence of distressful thoughts.  The Abbe Chaperon called him a Christian ignorant of his Christianity.  Dressed always in blue cloth, his rather rigid demeanor and his clothes bespoke the old habits of military discipline.  His sweet and harmonious voice stirred the soul.  His beautiful hands and the general cut of his figure, recalling that of the Comte d’Artois, showed how charming he must have been in his youth, and made the mystery of his life still more mysterious.  An observer asked involuntarily what misfortune had blighted such beauty, courage, grace, accomplishment, and all the precious qualities of the heart once united in his person.  Monsieur de Jordy shuddered if Robespierre’s name were uttered before him.  He took much snuff, but, strange to say, he gave up the habit to please little Ursula, who at first showed a dislike to him on that account.  As soon as he saw the little girl the captain fastened his eyes upon her with a look that was almost passionate.  He loved her play so extravagantly and took such interest in all she did that the tie between himself and the doctor grew closer every day, though the latter never dared to say to him, “You, too, have you lost children?” There are beings, kind and patient as old Jordy, who pass through life with a bitter thought in their heart and a tender but sorrowful smile on their lips, carrying with them to the grave the secret of their lives; letting no one guess it,—­through pride, through disdain, possibly through revenge; confiding in none but God, without other consolation than his.

Monsieur de Jordy, like the doctor, had come to die in Nemours, but he knew no one except the abbe, who was always at the beck and call of his parishioners, and Madame de Portenduere, who went to bed at nine o’clock.  So, much against his will, he too had taken to going to bed early, in spite of the thorns that beset his pillow.  It was therefore a great piece of good fortune for him (as well as for the doctor) when he encountered a man who had known the same world and spoken the same language as himself; with whom he could exchange ideas, and who went to bed late.  After Monsieur de Jordy, the Abbe Chaperon, and Minoret had passed one evening together they found so much pleasure in it that the priest and soldier returned every night regularly at nine o’clock, the hour at which, little Ursula having gone to bed, the doctor was free.  All three would then sit up till midnight or one o’clock.

After a time this trio became a quartette.  Another man to whom life was known, and who owed to his practical training as a lawyer, the indulgence, knowledge, observation, shrewdness, and talent for conversation which the soldier, doctor, and priest owed to their practical dealings with the souls, diseases, and education of men, was added to the number.  Monsieur Bongrand, the justice of peace, heard of the pleasure of these evenings and sought admittance to the doctor’s society.  Before becoming justice of peace at Nemours he had been for ten years a solicitor at Melun, where he conducted his own cases, according to the custom of small towns, where there are no barristers.  He became a widower at forty-five years of age, but felt himself still too active to lead an idle life; he therefore sought and obtained the position of justice of peace at Nemours, which became vacant a few months before the arrival of Doctor Minoret.  Monsieur Bongrand lived modestly on his salary of fifteen hundred francs, in order that he might devote his private income to his son, who was studying law in Paris under the famous Derville.  He bore some resemblance to a retired chief of a civil service office; he had the peculiar face of a bureaucrat, less sallow than pallid, on which public business, vexations, and disgust leave their imprint,—­a face lined by thought, and also by the continual restraints familiar to those who are trained not to speak their minds freely.  It was often illumined by smiles characteristic of men who alternately believe all and believe nothing, who are accustomed to see and hear all without being startled, and to fathom the abysses which self-interest hollows in the depths of the human heart.

Below the hair, which was less white than discolored, and worn flattened to the head, was a fine, sagacious forehead, the yellow tones of which harmonized well with the scanty tufts of thin hair.  His face, with the features set close together, bore some likeness to that of a fox, all the more because his nose was short and pointed.  In speaking, he spluttered at the mouth, which was broad like that of most great talkers,—­a habit which led Goupil to say, ill-naturedly, “An umbrella would be useful when listening to him,” or, “The justice rains verdicts.”  His eyes looked keen behind his spectacles, but if he took the glasses off his dulled glance seemed almost vacant.  Though he was naturally gay, even jovial, he was apt to give himself too important and pompous an air.  He usually kept his hands in the pockets of his trousers, and only took them out to settle his eye-glasses on his nose, with a movement that was half comic, and which announced the coming of a keen observation or some victorious argument.  His gestures, his loquacity, his innocent self-assertion, proclaimed the provincial lawyer.  These slight defects were, however, superficial; he redeemed them by an exquisite kind-heartedness which a rigid moralist might call the indulgence natural to superiority.  He looked a little like a fox, and he was thought to be very wily, but never false or dishonest.  His wiliness was perspicacity; and consisted in foreseeing results and protecting himself and others from the traps set for them.  He loved whist, a game known to the captain and the doctor, and which the abbe learned to play in a very short time.

This little circle of friends made for itself an oasis in Mironet’s salon.  The doctor of Nemours, who was not without education and knowledge of the world, and who greatly respected Minoret as an honor to the profession, came there sometimes; but his duties and also his fatigue (which obliged him to go to bed early and to be up early) prevented his being as assiduously present as the three other friends.  This intercourse of five superior men, the only ones in Nemours who had sufficiently wide knowledge to understand each other, explains old Minoret’s aversion to his relatives; if he were compelled to leave them his money, at least he need not admit them to his society.  Whether the post master, the sheriff, and the collector understood this distinction, or whether they were reassured by the evident loyalty and benefactions of their uncle, certain it is that they ceased, to his great satisfaction, to see much of him.  So, about eight months after the arrival of the doctor these four players of whist and backgammon made a solid and exclusive little world which was to each a fraternal aftermath, an unlooked for fine season, the gentle pleasures of which were the more enjoyed.  This little circle of choice spirits closed round Ursula, a child whom each adopted according to his individual tendencies; the abbe thought of her soul, the judge imagined himself her guardian, the soldier intended to be her teacher, and as for Minoret, he was father, mother, and physician, all in one.

After he became acclimated old Minoret settled into certain habits of life, under fixed rules, after the manner of the provinces.  On Ursula’s account he received no visitors in the morning, and never gave dinners, but his friends were at liberty to come to his house at six o’clock and stay till midnight.  The first-comers found the newspapers on the table and read them while awaiting the rest; or they sometimes sallied forth to meet the doctor if he were out for a walk.  This tranquil life was not a mere necessity of old age, it was the wise and careful scheme of a man of the world to keep his happiness untroubled by the curiosity of his heirs and the gossip of a little town.  He yielded nothing to that capricious goddess, public opinion, whose tyranny (one of the present great evils of France) was just beginning to establish its power and to make the whole nation a mere province.  So, as soon as the child was weaned and could walk alone, the doctor sent away the housekeeper whom his niece, Madame Minoret-Levrault had chosen for him, having discovered that she told her patroness everything that happened in his household.

Ursula’s nurse, the widow of a poor workman (who possessed no name but a baptismal one, and who came from Bougival) had lost her last child, aged six months, just as the doctor, who knew her to be a good and honest creature, engaged her as wetnurse for Ursula.  Antoinette Patris (her maiden name), widow of Pierre, called Le Bougival, attached herself naturally to Ursula, as wetmaids do to their nurslings.  This blind maternal affection was accompanied in this instance by household devotion.  Told of the doctor’s intention to send away his housekeeper, La Bougival secretly learned to cook, became neat and handy, and discovered the old man’s ways.  She took the utmost care of the house and furniture; in short she was indefatigable.  Not only did the doctor wish to keep his private life within four walls, as the saying is, but he also had certain reasons for hiding a knowledge of his business affairs from his relatives.  At the end of the second year after his arrival La Bougival was the only servant in the house; on her discretion he knew he could count, and he disguised his real purposes by the all-powerful open reason of a necessary economy.  To the great satisfaction of his heirs he became a miser.  Without fawning or wheedling, solely by the influence of her devotion and solicitude, La Bougival, who was forty-three years old at the time this tale begins, was the housekeeper of the doctor and his protegee, the pivot on which the whole house turned, in short, the confidential servant.  She was called La Bougival from the admitted impossibility of applying to her person the name that actually belonged to her, Antoinette—­for names and forms do obey the laws of harmony.

The doctor’s miserliness was not mere talk; it was real, and it had an object.  From the year 1817 he cut off two of his newspapers and ceased subscribing to periodicals.  His annual expenses, which all Nemours could estimate, did not exceed eighteen hundred francs a year.  Like most old men his wants in linen, boots, and clothing, were very few.  Every six months he went to Paris, no doubt to draw and reinvest his income.  In fifteen years he never said a single word to any one in relation to his affairs.  His confidence in Bongrand was of slow growth; it was not until after the revolution of 1830 that he told him of his projects.  Nothing further was known of the doctor’s life either by the bourgeoisie at large or by his heirs.  As for his political opinions, he did not meddle in public matters seeing that he paid less than a hundred francs a year in taxes, and refused, impartially, to subscribe to either royalist or liberal demands.  His known horror for the priesthood, and his deism were so little obtrusive that he turned out of his house a commercial runner sent by his great-nephew Desire to ask a subscription to the “Cure Meslier” and the “Discours du General Foy.”  Such tolerance seemed inexplicable to the liberals of Nemours.

The doctor’s three collateral heirs, Minoret-Levrault and his wife, Monsieur and Madame Massin-Levrault, junior, Monsieur and Madame Cremiere-Cremiere—­whom we shall in future call simply Cremiere, Massin, and Minoret, because these distinctions among homonyms is quite unnecessary out of the Gatinais—­met together as people do in little towns.  The post master gave a grand dinner on his son’s birthday, a ball during the carnival, another on the anniversary of his marriage, to all of which he invited the whole bourgeoisie of Nemours.  The collector received his relations and friends twice a year.  The clerk of the court, too poor, he said, to fling himself into such extravagance, lived in a small way in a house standing half-way down the Grand’Rue, the ground-floor of which was let to his sister, the letter-postmistress of Nemours, a situation she owed to the doctor’s kind offices.  Nevertheless, in the course of the year these three families did meet together frequently, in the houses of friends, in the public promenades, at the market, on their doorsteps, or, of a Sunday in the square, as on this occasion; so that one way and another they met nearly every day.  For the last three years the doctor’s age, his economies, and his probable wealth had led to allusions, or frank remarks, among the townspeople as to the disposition of his property, a topic which made the doctor and his heirs of deep interest to the little town.  For the last six months not a day passed that friends and neighbours did not speak to the heirs, with secret envy, of the day the good man’s eyes would shut and the coffers open.

“Doctor Minoret may be an able physician, on good terms with death, but none but God is eternal,” said one.

“Pooh, he’ll bury us all; his health is better than ours,” replied an heir, hypocritically.

“Well, if you don’t get the money yourselves, your children will, unless that little Ursula—­”

“He won’t leave it all to her.”

Ursula, as Madame Massin had predicted, was the bete noire of the relations, their sword of Damocles; and Madame Cremiere’s favorite saying, “Well, whoever lives will know,” shows that they wished at any rate more harm to her than good.

The collector and the clerk of the court, poor in comparison with the post master, had often estimated, by way of conversation, the doctor’s property.  If they met their uncle walking on the banks of the canal or along the road they would look at each other piteously.

“He must have got hold of some elixir of life,” said one.

“He has made a bargain with the devil,” replied the other.

“He ought to give us the bulk of it; that fat Minoret doesn’t need anything,” said Massin.

“Ah! but Minoret has a son who’ll waste his substance,” answered Cremiere.

“How much do you really think the doctor has?”

“At the end of twelve years, say twelve thousand francs saved each year, that would give one hundred and forty-four thousand francs, and the interest brings in at least one hundred thousand more.  But as he must, if he consults a notary in Paris, have made some good strokes of business, and we know that up to 1822 he could get seven or eight per cent from the State, he must now have at least four hundred thousand francs, without counting the capital of his fourteen thousand a year from the five per cents.  If he were to die to-morrow without leaving anything to Ursula we should get at least seven or eight hundred thousand francs, besides the house and furniture.”

“Well, a hundred thousand to Minoret, and three hundred thousand apiece to you and me, that would be fair.”

“Ha, that would make us comfortable!”

“If he did that,” said Massin, “I should sell my situation in court and buy an estate; I’d try to be judge at Fontainebleau, and get myself elected deputy.”

“As for me I should buy a brokerage business,” said the collector.

“Unluckily, that girl he has on his arm and the abbe have got round him.  I don’t believe we can do anything with him.”

“Still, we know very well he will never leave anything to the Church.”