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Updated: June 24, 2025
"If that's the sort of charivari they like," said the post master, "they are quite right to keep it to themselves." "Monsieur Bongrand must be fond of whist to stand such a dreadful racket," said Madame Cremiere. "I shall never be able to play before persons who don't understand music," Ursula was saying as she sat down beside the whist-table.
Bongrand easily convinced that official of the theft of the three certificates by one or other of the heirs, presumably by Minoret. "His conduct is explained," said the procureur. As a measure of precaution the magistrate at once notified the Treasury to withhold transfer of the said certificates, and told Bongrand to go to Paris and ascertain if the shares had ever been sold.
These great little events were carefully studied by Bongrand, who became convinced that Goupil held some mysterious power over Minoret, and he determined to find out its cause. Though the public opinion of the little town recognized Ursula's perfect innocence, she recovered slowly.
It precisely happened that Bongrand entered the gallery with the hesitating step of a timid beginner, and Claude felt a pang at his heart as he saw him give a glance at his neglected picture and then another at Fagerolles', which was bringing on a riot. At that moment the old painter must have been acutely conscious of his fall.
The abbe and Monsieur Bongrand kept secret the object of this journey, said to be for Ursula's health, which disturbed and greatly puzzled the relations.
The exclamation was echoed at the card-table, where Bongrand, the Nemours doctor, and old Minoret were victims to the presumption with which the collector, in order to propitiate his great-uncle, had proposed to take the fourth hand at whist. Ursula left the piano. The doctor rose as if to receive the abbe, but really to put an end to the game.
He himself was, perhaps, about to raise his hand, when Bongrand, who had hitherto remained silent, with the blood rising to his cheeks in the anger he was trying to restrain, abruptly went off like a pop-gun, most unseasonably giving vent to the protestations of his rebellious conscience. 'But, curse it all! there are not four among us capable of turning out such a piece of work!
"There must be an end put to this," he said to himself as he re-entered his own home. When Ursula came down, bring her certificates and those of La Bougival, she found Monsieur Bongrand walking up and down the salon with great strides. "Have you no idea what the conduct of that huge idiot means?" he said. "None that I can tell," she replied. Bongrand looked at her with inquiring surprise.
"What do you think of that?" said the collector to the post master and the women, who seemed stupefied by the angry address of Bongrand. "Call him a magistrate!" cried the post master. Ursula meanwhile was sitting on her little sofa in a half-fainting condition, her head thrown back, her braids unfastened, while every now and then her sobs broke forth.
Her eyes were dim and their lids swollen; she was, in fact, in a state of moral and physical prostration which might have softened the hardest hearts except those of the heirs. "Ah! Monsieur Bongrand, after my happy birthday comes death and mourning," she said, with the poetry natural to her. "You know, you, what he was. In twenty years he never said an impatient word to me.
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