Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/258

 Bongrand conducted the matter of emancipation so quickly that it was finished on the day Mademoiselle Mirouët attained her twentieth year. This anniversary was to be the old doctor’s last fête, and, seized no doubt with a presentiment of his coming end, he celebrated this day sumptuously by giving a small dance to which he invited all the boys and girls of the four families, Dionis, Crémière, Minoret and Massin. Savinien, Bongrand, the curé, his two curates, the Nemours doctor and Mesdames Zélie Minoret, Massin and Crémière, as well as Schmucke, were the guests at the big dinner which preceded the ball.

“I feel that I am going,” said the old man to the notary at the close of the evening. “So I must beg you to come to-morrow to draw up the guardian’s account that I must give Ursule, so as to avoid complicating my inheritance. Thank God! I have not wronged my heirs of a farthing, and have only disposed of my income. Messieurs Crémière, Massin, and Minoret, my nephew, are members of the family council appointed for Ursule, they will assist at this examination of accounts.”

These words, overheard by Massin and hawked about the ballroom, spread joy amongst the three families, who for four years had been living in continual alternations, at one time believing themselves rich, at another disinherited.

“It is a tongue dying out,” said Madame Crémière.

When, toward two in the morning, nobody was