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Dazzled by his hopes, and his ears flushed with blood, Minoret sprang the lock with the point of his knife as rapidly as a burglar could have done it.
"Monsieur de Portenduere is here and wishes to speak to you," said Cabirolle. "Show him in," answered Zelie. The twilight shadows prevented Madame Minoret from noticing the sudden pallor of her husband, who shuddered as he heard Savinien's boots on the floor of the gallery, where the doctor's library used to be. A vague presentiment of danger ran through the robber's veins.
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.
An alarming circumstance hastened the confession which Minoret was inclined to make to Zelie; the sword of Damocles began to move above their heads. Towards the middle of October Monsieur and Madame Minoret received from their son Desire the following letter:
Bongrand was already at Goupil's, now the appointed successor of Dionis, but he entered the office with a careless air. "I have a little matter to verify about the Minoret property," he said to Goupil. "What is it?" asked the latter. "The doctor left one or more certificates in the three-per-cent Funds?" "He left one for fifteen thousand francs a year," said Goupil; "I recorded it myself."
Lecoeur was too much afraid of Goupil to complain. All Nemours knew before night that Minoret had given Dionis security to enable Goupil to buy his practice. The latter wrote to Savinien denying his charges against Minoret, and telling the young nobleman that in his new position he was forbidden by the rules of the supreme court, and also by his respect for law, to fight a duel.
"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.
You are lord of Rouvre and all those farms and mills and meadows and with your investments in the Funds, you have an income of one hundred thousand francs " "I haven't anything in the Funds," cried Minoret, hastily. "Pooh," said Bongrand; "this is just as it was about your son's love for Ursula, first he denied it, and now he asks her in marriage.
This is my will: I, Denis Minoret, doctor of medicine, settled in Nemours, being of sound mind and body, as the date of this document will show, do bequeath my soul to God, imploring him to pardon my errors in view of my sincere repentance.
Ursula crossed the town, entered the post house and went into Zelie's old room, where the spectre showed her Minoret unfolding the letters, reading them and burning them. "He could not," said Ursula, telling her dream to the abbe, "light the first two matches, but the third took fire; he burned the papers and buried their remains in the ashes.
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