Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/279



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In the provinces, and especially in the small towns where everyone possesses his own house, it is difficult enough to find lodgings. Moreover, in buying an establishment of any kind, the house nearly always forms part of the sale. The justice of the peace, to whom the attorney for the crown had entrusted the orphan’s interests, saw no other way of removing her from the inn than by making her buy a little house in the Grand’Rue, at the corner of the bridge on the Loing, with the house-door opening on a passage, and having only one parlor on the ground floor with two windows looking on the street, and behind which there was a kitchen, with a French window looking on an inner court about thirty feet square. A small staircase lighted on the riverside by borrowed lights, led to the second story, composed of three rooms over which were two attics. The justice of the peace took two thousand francs out of La Bougival’s savings to pay the first part of the cost of the house, which was worth six thousand francs, and he obtained terms for the remainder. In order to find room for the books Ursule wished to buy back, Bongrand had the inner partition of the two rooms on the second floor destroyed, after having noticed that the depth of the house corresponded to the length of the body of the library. Savinien and the justice of the peace so