Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/240

 my birthday even greater than my mother could by giving me life a second time—?”

“I know what you want to ask me,” said Ursule, interrupting him. “Here, this is my answer”—she added, taking the hair chain from her apron pocket and offering it to him with a nervous trembling which betokened unbounded joy. “Wear this,” she said, “for love of me! May my gift keep you from all perils by reminding you that my life is linked with yours!”

“Ah! the little minx, she is giving him a chain of her hair,” the doctor was saying to himself. “How did she manage it? Cutting her beautiful fair tresses!—would she then give him my blood?”

“Would you think me very wrong, before going, to ask you to give me a solemn promise that you will never have any other husband than me?” said Savinien, kissing the chain, unable to restrain a tear as he looked at Ursule.

“If I have not already told it to you too plainly, I who went to contemplate the walls of Sainte-Pélagie when you were there,” she replied, blushing, “I now repeat it to you, Savinien: I will never love anyone but you and will never belong to anyone but you.”

At sight of Ursule, half-hidden in the thicket, the young man could not resist the pleasure of clasping her to his heart and kissing her on the forehead; but she gave a faint cry and sank upon the bench, and when Savinien sat down beside her, asking her pardon, he saw the doctor standing before them.