Ursula, Honoré de Balzac [positive books to read .txt] 📗

of the world. If you were
a man to express that thought, it would be to me the sentence of
an agonizing death; if you did not express it, I should watch
suspiciously every cloud upon your brow.

Dear Savinien, I have preferred you to all else on earth. I was
right to do so, for my godfather, though jealous of you, used to
say to me, "Love him, my child; you will certainly belong to each
other one of these days." When I went to Paris I loved you
hopelessly, and the feeling contented me. I do not know if I can
now return to it, but I shall try. What are we, after all, at this
moment? Brother and sister. Let us stay so. Marry that happy girl
who can have the joy of giving to your name the lustre it ought to
have, and which your mother thinks I should diminish. You will not
hear of me again. The world will approve of you; I shall never
blame you--but I shall love you ever. Adieu, then!

"Wait," cried the young man. Signing to La Bougival to sit down, he scratched off hastily the following reply:--

My dear Ursula,--Your letter cuts me to the heart, inasmuch as you
have needlessly felt such pain; and also because our hearts, for
the first time, have failed to understand each other. If you are
not my wife now, it is solely because I cannot marry without my
mother's consent. Dear, eight thousand francs a year and a pretty
cottage on the Loing, why, that's a fortune, is it not? You know
we calculated that if we kept La Bougival we could lay by half our
income every year. You allowed me that evening, in your uncle's
garden, to consider you mine; you cannot now of yourself break
those ties which are common to both of us.--Ursula, need I tell
you that I yesterday informed Monsieur du Rouvre that even if I
were free I could not receive a fortune from a young person whom I
did not know? My mother refuses to see you again; I must therefore
lose the happiness of our evenings; but surely you will not
deprive me of the brief moments I can spend at your window? This
evening, then--Nothing can separate us.

"Take this to her, my old woman; she must not be unhappy one moment longer."

That afternoon at four o'clock, returning from the walk which he always took expressly to pass before Ursula's house, Savinien found his mistress waiting for him, her face a little pallid from these sudden changes and excitements.

"It seems to me that until now I have never known what the pleasure of seeing you is," she said to him.

"You once said to me," replied Savinien, smiling,--"for I remember all your words,--'Love lives by patience; we will wait!' Dear, you have separated love from faith. Ah! this shall be the end of our quarrels; we will never have another. You have claimed to love me better than I love you, but--did I ever doubt you?" he said, offering her a bouquet of wild-flowers arranged to express his thoughts.

"You have never had any reason to doubt me," she replied; "and, besides, you don't know all," she added, in a troubled voice.

Ursula had refused to receive letters by the post. But that afternoon, without being able even to guess at the nature of the trick, she had found, a few moments before Savinien's arrival, a letter tossed on her sofa which contained the words: "Tremble! a rejected lover can become a tiger."

Withstanding Savinien's entreaties, she refused to tell him, out of prudence, the secret of her fears. The delight of seeing him again, after she had thought him lost to her, could alone have made her recover from the mortal chill of terror. The expectation of indefinite evil is torture to every one; suffering assumes the proportions of the unknown, and the unknown is the infinite of the soul. To Ursula the pain was exquisite. Something without her bounded at the slightest noise; yet she was afraid of silence, and suspected even the walls of collusion. Even her sleep was restless. Goupil, who knew nothing of her nature, delicate as that of a flower, had found, with the instinct of evil, the poison that could wither and destroy her.

The next day passed without a shock. Ursula sat playing on her piano till very late; and went to bed easier in mind and very sleepy. About midnight she was awakened by the music of a band composed of a clarinet, hautboy, flute, cornet a piston, trombone, bassoon, flageolet, and triangle. All the neighbours were at their windows. The poor girl, already frightened at seeing the people in the street, received a dreadful shock as she heard the coarse, rough voice of a man proclaiming in loud tones: "For the beautiful Ursula Mirouet, from her lover."

The next day, Sunday, the whole town had heard of it; and as Ursula entered and left the church she saw the groups of people who stood gossiping about her, and felt herself the object of their terrible curiosity. The serenade set all tongues wagging, and conjectures were rife on all sides. Ursula reached home more dead than alive, determined not to leave the house again,--the abbe having advised her to say vespers in her own room. As she entered the house she saw lying in the passage, which was floored with brick, a letter which had evidently been slipped under the door. She picked it up and read it, under the idea that it would obtain an explanation. It was as follows:--

"Resign yourself to becoming my wife, rich and idolized. I am resolved. If you are not mine living you shall be mine dead. To your refusal you may attribute not only your own misfortunes, but those which will fall on others.

"He who loves you, and whose wife you will be."

Curiously enough, at the very moment that the gentle victim of this plot was drooping like a cut flower, Mesdemoiselles Massin, Dionis, and Cremiere were envying her lot.

"She is a lucky girl," they were saying; "people talk of her, and court her, and quarrel about her. The serenade was charming; there was a cornet-a-piston."

"What's a piston?"

"A new musical instrument, as big as this, see!" replied Angelique Cremiere to Pamela Massin.

Early that morning Savinien had gone to Fontainebleau to endeavor to find out who had engaged the musicians of the regiment then in garrison. But as there were two men to each instrument it was impossible to find out which of them had gone to Nemours. The colonel forbade them to play for any private person in future without his permission. Savinien had an interview with the procureur du roi, Ursula's legal guardian, and explained to him the injury these scenes would do to a young girl naturally so delicate and sensitive, begging him to take some action to discover the author of such wrong.

Three nights later three violins, a flute, a guitar, and a hautboy began another serenade. This time the musicians fled towards Montargis, where there happened then to be a company of comic actors. A loud and ringing voice called out as they left: "To the daughter of the regimental bandsman Mirouet." By this means all Nemours came to know the profession of Ursula's father, a secret the old doctor had sedulously kept.

Savinien did not go to Montargis. He received in the course of the day an anonymous letter containing a prophecy:--

"You will never marry Ursula. If you wish her to live, give her up
at once to a man who loves her more than you love her. He has made
himself a musician and an artist to please her, and he would
rather see her dead than let her be your wife."

The doctor came to Ursula three times in the course of that day, for she was really in danger of death from the horror of this mysterious persecution. Feeling that some infernal hand had plunged her into the mire, the poor girl lay like a martyr; she said nothing, but lifted her eyes to heaven, and wept no more; she seemed awaiting other blows, and prayed fervently.

"I am glad I cannot go down into the salon," she said to Monsieur Bongrand and the abbe, who left her as little as possible; "_He_ would come, and I am now unworthy of the looks with which _he_ blessed me. Do you think _he_ will suspect me?"

"If Savinien does not discover the author of these infamies he means to get the assistance of the Paris police," said Bongrand.

"Whoever it is will know I am dying," said Ursula; "and will cease to trouble me."

The abbe, Bongrand, and Savinien were lost in conjectures and suspicions. Together with Tiennette, La Bougival, and two persons on whom the abbe could rely, they kept the closest watch and were on their guard night and day for a week; but no indiscretion could betray Goupil, whose machinations were known to himself only. There were no more serenades and no more letters, and little by little the watch relaxed. Bongrand thought the author of the wrong was frightened; Savinien believed that the procureur du roi to whom he had sent the letters received by Ursula and himself and his mother, had taken steps to put an end to the persecution.

The armistice was not of long duration, however. When the doctor had checked the nervous fever from which poor Ursula was suffering, and just as she was recovering her courage, a rope-ladder was found, early one morning in July, attached to her window. The postilion of the mail-post declared that as he drove past the house in the middle of the night a small man was in the act of coming down the ladder, and though he tried to pull up, his horses, being startled, carried him down the hill so fast that he was out of Nemours before he stopped them. Some of the persons who frequented Dionis's salon attributed these manoeuvres to the Marquis du Rouvre, then much hampered in means, for Massin held his notes to a large amount. It was said that a prompt marriage of his daughter to Savinien would save Chateau du Rouvre from his creditors; and Madame de Portenduere, the gossips added, would approve of anything that would discredit and degrade Ursula and lead to this marriage of her son.

So far from this being true, the old lady was well-nigh vanquished by the sufferings of the innocent girl. The abbe was so painfully overcome by this act of infernal wickedness that he fell ill himself and was kept to the house for several days. Poor Ursula, to whom this last insult had caused a relapse, received by post a letter from the abbe, which was taken in by La Bougival on recognizing the handwriting. It was as follows:--

My child,--Leave Nemours, and thus evade the malice of your enemies. Perhaps they are seeking to endanger Savinien's life. I will tell you more when I am able to go to you.

Your devoted friend,

Chaperon.

When Savinien, who was almost maddened by these proceedings, carried this letter to