Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/304

 Chaperon shiver as if he had received the discharge of an electrical jar, and moreover felt himself strongly stirred to the heart.

“And so we shall not go to her house to-night,” said the curé, “but, my child, you would do well not to go there any more. The old lady would receive you in such a way as to hurt your pride. We who had led her to listen to the mention of your marriage do not know from whence blows the wind which has changed her all in a moment.”

“I am prepared for everything, and am no longer astonished at anything,” said Ursule in tones of conviction. “In extremes of this kind it is a great consolation to feel that one has not offended God.”

“Submit yourself, my dear daughter, without searching out the ways of Providence,” said the curé.

“I do not wish to suspect Monsieur de Portenduère’s character unjustly—”

“Why do you no longer call him Savinien?” asked the curé, who observed some slight bitterness in Ursule’s accents.

“My dear Savinien’s,” she resumed, weeping. “Yes, my kind friend,” she continued, sobbing, “a voice keeps telling me that his heart is as noble as his blood. Not only has he confessed to me that he loved me above everything, but he has proved it to me by infinite delicacy and by heroically restraining his ardent passion. When he recently took the hand that I held out to him when Monsieur Bongrand was suggesting that notary as a husband for