Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/189



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Nine o’clock was striking when the little door contrived within the large one closed upon the curé, who eagerly rang at the doctor’s gate. From Tiennette the Abbé Chaperon fell into the hands of La Bougival, for the old nurse said:

“You are very late, Monsieur le Curé!” just as the other had said: “Why do you leave madame so early when she is in trouble?”

The curé found a large party in the doctor’s green and brown salon, for Dionis had been to reassure the heirs, by calling on Massin to repeat his uncle’s words to him.

“I think,” he said, “that Ursule has a love in her heart which will give her nothing but sorrow and anxiety; she seems to be romantic—thus do notaries term excessive sensitiveness,—and we shall see her long remain single. Therefore, no suspicion; show her particular attention, and be your uncle’s servants, for he is more cunning than a hundred Goupils,” added the notary, not knowing that Goupil is a corruption of the latin word, vulpes, a fox.

And so, Mesdames Massin and Crémière, their husbands, the postmaster and Désiré formed, with the Nemours doctor and Bongrand, a noisy and unwonted company at the doctor’s house. As