Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/311

 chill which had just seized her. To everybody it is horrible torture to wait for indefinite calamity. Suffering then assumes the proportions of the unknown, which is certainly the infinite of the soul. But, to Ursule, it was the very greatest misery. She inwardly experienced fearful starts at the slightest noise, she mistrusted silence, and suspected her walls of complicity. At last her peaceful sleep became disturbed. Goupil, completely ignorant of the flower-like delicacy of such a constitution, had yet through the instinct of evil, discovered the poison that was to blight and kill her. And yet, the following day passed without any surprise. Ursule played the piano very late and went to bed almost reassured and overcome with sleep. About midnight, she was awakened by a concert composed of a clarionette, a hautboy, a flute, a cornopean, a trombone, a bassoon, a flageolet and a triangle. All the neighbors were at the windows. The poor child, already startled at seeing people in the road, received a terrible shock upon hearing a man’s hoarse, vulgar voice crying:

“For pretty Ursule Mirouët from her lover!”

The next day, Sunday, the whole town was in an uproar, and as Ursule entered and left the church she saw numerous groups in the market-place gossiping about her and evincing a horrible curiosity. The serenade set all tongues going, for everyone was lost in conjecture. Ursule reached her house more dead than alive and did not go out again, the curé having advised her to say vespers at home.