Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/121

 “The young girl and the nurse of whom you are thinking.”

“What is the garden like?” asked Minoret.

“On the right as you go in by the little stairway leading down to the river, there is a long brick gallery in which I see books, and ending in a rambling barracks decorated with little wooden bells and red eggs. On the left, the wall is covered with a clump of climbing plants, Virginia creeper, and Virginia jasmine. In the centre is a little sundial. There are many pots of flowers. Your ward examines her flowers, shows them to her nurse, makes holes with a dibble and puts in some seeds—The nurse is raking the paths—Although this young girl is as pure as an angel, there is a dawning of love within her, faint as the morning twilight.”

“For whom?” asked the doctor, who till now, was persuaded that no one could tell him anything without being somnambulistic. He always believed there was some jugglery.

“You know nothing about it, although you were lately somewhat anxious when she grew into a woman,” she said smiling. “The working of her heart has followed that of Nature—”

“And it is a common working-woman who speaks like this?” cried the old doctor.

“In this state people express themselves with peculiar clearness,” replied Bouvard.

“But whom does Ursule love?”

“Ursule does not know that she is in love,” replied the woman, with a little movement of the head,