Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/160

 he is the screen of your heirs; they have all been breakfasting at the post-house with Dionis, they must have planned something.”

The notary, conducted by Ursule, came to the bottom of the garden. After the greetings and several trifling sentences, Dionis was granted a moment’s private hearing. Ursule and Bongrand retired to the salon.

“We will think it over! I will see!” said Bongrand to himself, repeating the doctor’s last words, “that is what clever people always say; death overtakes them and they leave the beings who are dear to them, in distress.”

The mistrust that highly gifted men inspire in business men is extraordinary; they will not trust them in the least while recognizing them in the greatest affairs. But perhaps this mistrust is an encomium. Seeing them dwelling at the summit of human affairs, business people do not believe superior men capable of descending to the infinite littlenesses of the details which, like the interests in finance and the microscopies in natural science, end by equalizing capital and forming worlds. Mistaken fallacy! A man of good feeling and a man of genius see everything. Bongrand, nettled at the doctor’s silence, but moved doubtless through interest in Ursule and believing her to be imperiled, resolved to defend her against the heirs. He was frantic at the thought of knowing nothing of the old man’s conversation with Dionis.

“However pure Ursule may be,” he thought,