Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/164

 the doctor would have given Ursule a dowry of one hundred thousand francs, these two young people ought to have made the best of households; his Eugene was a loyal and charming fellow. Perhaps he had boasted too much about this Eugene, and perhaps old Minoret’s distrust came from that.

“I shall fall back upon the mayor’s daughter,” thought Bongrand, “but Ursule without a dowry is worth more than Mademoiselle Levrault-Crémière with her million. Now, we must manoeuvre so as to bring about Ursule’s marriage with this young Portenduère, if however, she loves him.”

After having shut the door on the side of the library and the garden door, the doctor led his ward to the window looking out upon the water’s edge.

“What is the matter with you, cruel child?” he said to her, “your life is my life. What would become of me without your smile?”

“Savinien in prison!” she replied.

After these words, a torrent of tears fell from her eyes and the sobs came.

“She is saved!” thought the old man, who was feeling her pulse with a father’s anxiety. “Alas! she has all my poor wife’s sensitiveness,” he said to himself whilst going to fetch a stethoscope which he placed on Ursule’s heart while applying his ear to it.

“Come, all goes well,” he said to himself.—“I did not know, my dearest, that you already loved him so much,” he resumed, looking at her. “But think of me as if it were yourself, and tell me all that has passed between you.”