Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/261

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This authentic rendering of the account had been recommended by the justice of the peace, who dreaded the effects of Doctor Minoret’s death, and who, unfortunately, was right. The day following the acceptance of the guardian’s account which gave Ursule ten thousand six hundred francs and fourteen hundred francs a year, the old man was seized with an attack of faintness which compelled him to keep to his bed. In spite of the secrecy surrounding the doctor’s house, the rumor of his death spread over the town, where the heirs ran through the streets like the beads of a chaplet of which the string has broken. Massin, who came to inquire, was told by Ursule herself that the old man was in bed. Unfortunately, the Nemours doctor had declared that the moment at which Minoret should take to his bed would be that of his death. From that time, in spite of the cold, the heirs stood in the streets, in the market-place or on their doorsteps, busy chattering about this long-expected event, and watching for the moment when the curé should carry the Sacrament to the old doctor with all the array in use in provincial towns. And so, when, two days after, the Abbé Chaperon, accompanied by his curate and the choir boys, preceded by the sexton bearing the cross, crossed the Grand’ Rue, the heirs joined him in order to occupy the house, prevent all purloining (231)