Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/280

 hurried on the workmen who were cleaning, painting and renovating the little house, that, toward the end of March, the orphan was able to leave her inn, and discovered in this ugly house a room similar to the one from which the heirs had hunted her, for it was full of her own furniture that the justice of the peace had recovered at the raising of the seals. La Bougival, located above, could come down at the call of a bell placed at the head of her young mistress’s bed. The room destined for the library, the ground-floor parlor and the kitchen, still empty, only stained, freshly papered and painted, were waiting for the purchases the goddaughter was to make at the sale of her godfather’s furniture. Although they knew Ursule’s character, the justice of the peace and the curé dreaded this sudden transition for her to a life devoid of the refinements and luxury to which the deceased doctor had insisted upon accustoming her. As to Savinien, he wept about it. And so he had secretly given the workmen and the upholsterer more than one compensation in order that Ursule should find no difference, at least in the interior, between the old and the new room. But the young girl, who derived all her happiness from Savinien’s eyes, showed the gentlest resignation. In these circumstances, she enchanted her two old friends and proved to them, for the thousandth time, that heart sorrows only could make her suffer. The grief that the loss of her godfather caused her was too deep for her to feel the bitterness of this change of fortune, which, nevertheless, contributed