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At last, one evening, he went up to Monsieur Bongrand in the Grand'Rue, the latter being on his way to take Ursula to Madame de Portenduere's, where the whist parties had begun again. "Monsieur Bongrand, I have something important to say to my cousin," he said, taking the justice by the arm, "and I am very glad you should be present, for you can advise her."
Madame de Portenduere's sole possessions were a farm which brought a rental of forty-seven hundred francs, and her town house. In opposition to this very insignificant Faubourg St.
Cabirolle, the former conductor of the "Ducler," a man sixty years of age, has married La Bougival and the twelve hundred francs a year which she possesses besides the ample emoluments of her place. Young Cabirolle is Monsieur de Portenduere's coachman.
"At any rate he is saved!" said Ursula. "But ah! to try to humiliate a man like you!" "Wait till I return, my child," said the old man leaving her. When the doctor re-entered Madame de Portenduere's salon he found Dionis the notary, accompanied by Monsieur Bongrand and the mayor of Nemours, witnesses required by law for the validity of deeds in all communes where there is but one notary.
To show offence or to complain of Madame de Portenduere's manners was a rock on which a man of small mind might have struck, but Minoret was too accomplished in the ways of the world not to avoid it. He began to talk to the viscount of the danger Charles X. was then running by confiding the affairs of the nation to the Prince de Polignac.
Madame de Portenduere's bedroom, the gloomiest in the house, also looked into the court; but the widow spent all her time in the salon on the ground floor, which communicated by a passage with the kitchen built at the end of the court, so that this salon was made to answer the double purpose of drawing-room and dining-room combined.
"Well, then the rest is my notary's business," she added, pushing away the papers and treating the affair with the disdain she wished to show for money. To abase wealth was, according to Madame de Portenduere's ideas, to elevate the nobility and rob the bourgeoisie of their importance.
Three months after these events, in January, 1837, Ursula married Savinien with Madame de Portenduere's consent. Minoret took part in the marriage contract and insisted on giving Mademoiselle Mirouet his estate at Rouvre and an income of twenty-four thousand francs from the Funds; keeping for himself only his uncle's house and ten thousand francs a year.
"Well, well! Adieu, monsieur," replied Goupil, with a parting glance of gall and hatred and defiance. "Do you wish to be the wife of a notary who will settle a hundred thousand francs on you?" cried Bongrand entering Madame de Portenduere's little salon, where Ursula was seated beside the old lady.
There is nothing the matter with me," cried Ursula, meeting Madame de Portenduere's eyes rather than give too much meaning to her words by looking at Savinien. "I cannot know, madame," said Savinien to his mother, "whether Mademoiselle Ursula suffers, but I do know that you are torturing me."
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