Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/257

 fear of hastening the fatal end, excused his parishioner from coming to hear mass in church, and allowed him to read the services at home; for the doctor carefully fulfilled all his religious duties; the further he went toward the grave, the more he loved God. The eternal light more and more explained to him difficulties of all kinds. At the beginning of the new year, Ursule persuaded him to sell his carriage and horses, and to dismiss Cabirolle. The justice of the peace, whose anxiety about Ursule’s future was far from being quieted by the old man’s half-confidences, broached the delicate question of inheritance, by explaining one evening to his old friend the necessity of emancipating Ursule. The ward would then be able to receive a tutelary account and come into possession; which would operate to her advantage. In spite of this overture, the old man, who however had already consulted the justice of the peace, did not at all entrust him with the secret of his arrangements about Ursule; but he adopted the course of emancipation. The more the justice of the peace persisted in wishing to know the means his old friend had taken to enrich Ursule, the more suspicious grew the doctor. At last Minoret positively dreaded confiding to the justice of the peace his thirty-six thousand francs of stock to bearer.

“Why,” said Bongrand, “do you risk any chance?”

“Between two chances,” replied the doctor, “one avoids the most uncertain.”