Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/198

 shops and the boulevards; but nothing interested or amused her.

“What do you want to do?” said the old man.

“To see Sainte-Pélagie,” she obstinately replied.

Then Minoret took a cab and drove her as far as the Rue de la Clef, where the carriage stopped in front of the ignoble façade of the former monastery, now transformed into a prison. The sight of these high, gray walls where all the windows were barred, and the wicket can only be entered by stooping—awful lesson!—this gloomy pile in a quarter full of misery where it stands up amidst deserted streets like a crowning misery: all these melancholy things overcame Ursule and made her weep a little.

“What!” she said, “are young men imprisoned for money? how can a debt give a money-lender even greater power than the king? And so he is there!” she cried, “and where, godfather?” she added, looking from window to window.

“Ursule,” said the old man, “you make me play the fool. This is not forgetting him.”

“But,” she rejoined, “if I must give him up, may I not feel any interest in him? I can love him and marry nobody else.”

“Ah!” cried the kind old man, “there is so much reason in your infatuation, that I am sorry I brought you here.”

Three days later, the old man had the receipts in due form, the claims, and all the documents establishing Savinien’s freedom. This settlement, including the agent’s fees, had been effected for the