Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/308

 “Poor girl! What has she done to you then?” asked the clerk, surprised.

“She bores me!” said Minoret roughly.

“Wait till Monday, and then you shall see how I will pester her,” rejoined Goupil, examining the old postmaster’s countenance.

The next day, the old Bougival went to Savinien’s and said, holding out a letter:

“I do not know what the dear child has written to you, but she is like a corpse this morning.”

From this letter to Savinien cannot one imagine the sufferings that had beset Ursule during the night?

“MY DEAR SAVINIEN, “I have been told that your mother wishes you to marry Mademoiselle du Rouvre, and perhaps she is right. You are now between a life of what is almost poverty and a life of wealth, between the fiancée of your heart and a society wife, between obedience to your mother’s and your own choice, for I still believe that you have chosen me. Savinien, if you have any determination to make, I want it to be made in all freedom; I give you back the word you gave, not to me, but to yourself at a moment which will never fade from my memory, and which, like all the days that have followed since, was of angelic purity and sweetness. This remembrance is enough for my lifetime. Were you to persist in your vow, my happiness would hereafter be troubled by a dark and terrible idea. In the midst of our privations, now so cheerfully borne, you might, later on, think to yourself that, had you followed the dictates of the world, all might have been very different for you. Were you the man to give utterance to this thought, it would mean to me the sentence of a miserable death; and, did you not say it, I should suspect the slightest cloud that