Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/254

 Dionis’s practice, and I will break off Monsieur de Portenduère’s marriage with Ursule?”

“How?” asked the giant.

“Do you think I am fool enough to tell you my plan?” replied the head clerk.

“Well, my boy, set them by the ears and we will see,” said Zélie.

“I am not going to enter at all upon such worries for a ‘we shall see!’ The young man is a swaggerer who might kill me, and I should have to be roughshod, and be his match with sword and pistol. Set me up, and I will keep my word.”

“Prevent this marriage and then I will set you up,” replied the postmaster.

“You have been nine months considering whether you should lend me fifteen thousand wretched francs to buy the practice of Lecœur, the attorney, and do you expect me to trust to this promise? Go, you will lose your uncle’s inheritance, and it will be a good job.”

“Were it only a question of fifteen thousand francs and Lecœur’s practice, it might be managed,” replied Zélie, “but to be your security for fifty thousand crowns!”

“But I will pay,” said Goupil, darting a bewitching glance at Zélie which encountered the postmistress’s haughty look.

It was like poison on steel.

“We will wait,” said Zélie.

“The evil genius be with you!” thought Goupil. “If ever I get them in my power,” he said to