Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/302

 Court as the wife of a minister, and one of the highest in the land. As he can see you every day without your being able to see him, put one of La Bougival’s pots of carnations in the window; in this way you will have told him that he may call.”

Ursule burnt this letter without mentioning it to Savinien. Two days after she received another letter, thus worded:

“You were wrong, dear Ursule, not to answer him who loves you better than his life. You think you will marry Savinien, but you deceive yourself strangely. This marriage will never take place, Madame de Portenduère, who will no longer receive you at her house, is going this morning to Rouvre, on foot, in spite of the condition of suffering she is in, to ask the hand of Mademoiselle du Rouvre for Savinien. Savinien will finally yield. How can he object? the young lady’s uncles are securing their fortune on their niece by settlement. This fortune consists of sixty thousand francs a year.”

This letter devastated Ursule’s heart by teaching her the tortures of jealousy, a suffering hitherto unknown, which, in an organization so fine and sensitive to pain, clouded the present, future and even the past with grief. From the moment she had this fatal paper, she remained in the doctor’s armchair, her gaze fixed upon space, lost in a sorrowful dream. In one instant she felt the chill of death instead of the ardor of glorious life. Alas! it was worse: in reality it was the cruel awakening of the dead finding that there is no God, the masterpiece of that singular genius called Jean-Paul. Four times