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The next day Minoret, who had always refused to let Ursula learn music, sent to Paris for a piano, made arrangements at Fontainebleau for a teacher, and submitted to the annoyance that her constant practicing was to him. One of poor Jordy's predictions was fulfilled, the girl became an excellent musician.
Bouvard went alone into a bedroom which adjoined the salon where he left Minoret, whose distrust was instantly awakened; but Bouvard returned at once and took him into the bedroom, where he saw the mysterious Swedenborgian, and also a woman sitting in an armchair. The woman did not rise, and seemed not to notice the entrance of the two old men. "What! no tub?" cried Minoret, smiling.
"Come," said Minoret to his wife and son, "why don't you bow to my uncle?" "I shouldn't be mistress of myself before that little hypocrite," cried Zelie, carrying off her son. "I advise you, uncle, not to go to mass without a velvet cap," said Madame Massin; "the church is very damp."
The eyes of this woman closed gently before the hand of the Swedenborgian, which was stretched towards her at a little distance, and she took the attitude in which Minoret had first seen her. When her hand and that of the doctor were again joined, he asked her to tell him what was happening in his house at Nemours at that instant. "What is Ursula doing?" he said.
"Pooh, cousin; I dare say the good man is only taking her to the door of the church," replied the post master. "It is a fine day, and he is out for a walk." "I tell you he is holding a prayer-book, and looks sanctimonious you'll see him." "They hide their game pretty well," said Minoret, "La Bougival told me there was never any talk of religion between the doctor and the abbe.
"My son could then marry the daughter of a marshal of France, or the daughter of some old family whose influence would get him a fine place under the government in Paris," said Minoret, opening his huge snuff-box and offering a pinch to Goupil. "Very good; but will you play fair?" cried Goupil, shaking his fingers. Minoret pressed the clerk's hands replying: "On my word of honor."
The Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences at Metz, to which Minoret belonged, must possess this dissertation in the original. Though, thanks to this friendship, the Doctor's wife need have had no fear, she was so in dread of going to the scaffold that her terror increased a disposition to heart disease caused by the over-sensitiveness of her nature.
"I can assure you, my dear Ursula," said the abbe, "that you can and that you ought to accept a part of this gift." "Will you forgive me?" said Minoret, humbly kneeling before the astonished girl. "The operation is about to be performed by the first surgeon of the Hotel-Dieu; but I do not trust to human science, I rely only on the power of God.
I may have said to Goupil how annoyed I was at seeing her in Nemours. My son Desire fell in love with her, and I didn't want him to marry her, that's all." "Goupil has confessed everything, Monsieur Minoret." There was a moment's silence, but it was terrible, when all three persons examined one another. Zelie saw a nervous quiver on the heavy face of her colossus.
Beholding him, we feel that the hand of God was laid upon that figure to make it an awful warning. After hating so violently his uncle's godchild the old man now, like Doctor Minoret himself, has concentrated all his affections on her, and has made himself the manager of her property in Nemours.
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