Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/100

 Héloïse, he did not consider he had the right to deprive Ursule of the benefits offered by the Catholic religion. The doctor, seated on a bench below the window of the Chinese study, then felt the curé press his hand.

“Yes, curé, every time that she speaks to me of God, I shall send her to her friend Sapron,” he said, imitating Ursule’s childish way of speaking. “I want to see if religious feeling is innate. And so I have done nothing for or against the tendencies of this young mind; but I have already appointed you in my heart as her spiritual father.”

“God will count this to you, I hope,” replied the Abbé Chaperon, gently striking his hands together and lifting them towards the sky as if in brief mental prayer.

And so, from the age of six, the little orphan fell under the curé’s religious influence, as she had already fallen under that of her old friend Jordy.

The captain, formerly a professor in one of the old military colleges, and applying himself by choice to grammar and the differences between the European tongues, had studied the problem of a universal language. This learned man, patient like all old masters, made it his delight to teach Ursule to read and write, whilst teaching her the French language and all that she had to know of arithmetic. The doctor’s vast library permitted the choice of books suitable for a child, and which might amuse as well as instruct it. The soldier and the curé left this intelligence to thrive upon the ease and