Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/283

 “But who knows what price these infamous heirs may not put on all you wish to have?”

From Montargis to Fontainebleau nothing was talked of but the Minoret heirs and the million they were looking for; but the most minute searches made in the house since the raising of the seals, had not led to any discovery. The Portenduère debt of a hundred and twenty-nine thousand francs, the fifteen thousand francs’ income from the three per cents, then at seventy-six, and which gave a capital of three hundred and eighty thousand francs, the house, valued at forty thousand francs, and its rich furniture, produced a total of about six hundred thousand francs which seemed to everybody a sufficiently handsome compensation. Minoret then had several gnawing anxieties. La Bougival and Savinien, who, as well as the justice of the peace, persisted in believing in the existence of some will, used to arrive at the close of each sitting and ask Bongrand the result of the searches. Sometimes the old man’s friend would exclaim, just as the men of business and the heirs were leaving: “I don’t understand it at all!” As, to many superficial people, two hundred thousand francs made a fine provincial fortune for each heir, nobody thought of asking how the doctor had been able to keep up his style of household with only fifteen thousand francs, since he had left untouched the interest on the Portenduère debt. Bongrand, Savinien and the curé alone took up this question in Ursule’s interest, and, by