Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/206

 Tiennette came as early as five o’clock to reserve a fillet of beef.”

“Well, Dionis, this is a fine piece of work!” said Massin, hastening to meet the notary, who was coming into the market-place.

“Well, what? All is going well,” replied the notary. “Your uncle has sold his stock, and Madame de Portenduère has asked me to call upon her to sign a bond of a hundred thousand francs mortgaged upon her property and lent by your uncle.”

“Yes, but if the young people were to marry?”

“It is as if you were to tell me that Goupil was my successor,” replied the notary.

“The two things are not impossible,” said Goupil.

Upon her return from mass, the old lady sent word to her son by Tiennette to come to see her.

This little house had three rooms on the first story. Madame de Portenduère’s and that of her late husband were on the same side, separated by a large dressing-room lighted by a borrowed light, and uniting again in a little anteroom opening upon the staircase. The window of the other room, occupied at all times by Savinien, looked out, as did his father’s, on the road. The staircase extended behind, in such a way as to provide this room with a small study lighted on the side of the courtyard by a round window. Madame de Portenduère’s room, the gloomiest in the whole house, looked out upon the courtyard; but the widow passed her days in the parlor on the ground floor, communicating by a corridor with the kitchen, which was built at the