Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/33

 the old man is taking Ursule accidentally to church. It is fine, and our uncle is going for a walk.”

“Cousin, our uncle holds a prayer-book; and he has a hypocritical look! In short, you will see him.”

“They were hiding their game very well,” answered the big postmaster, “for La Bougival told me that there was never any question of religion between the doctor and the Abbé Chaperon. Besides, the curé of Nemours is the most honest man in the world, he would give his last shirt to a beggar; he is incapable of a mean action; and dissipating an inheritance is—”

“But it is robbery,” said Madame Massin.

“It’s worse!” cried Minoret-Levrault, exasperated by his garrulous cousin’s remark.

“I know,” replied Madame Massin, “that the Abbé Chaperon, although a priest, is an honest man; but he is capable of anything for the poor! He will have bored, and bored, and bored beneath my uncle, and the doctor will have sunk into bigotry. We were quite easy, and here he is perverted. A man who has never believed in anything and who had principles! Oh! we are all done for. My husband is all upset about it”

Madame Massin, whose words were like so many arrows stinging her big cousin, made him walk along, in spite of his embonpoint, as rapidly as herself to the great astonishment of the people who were going to mass. She wanted to overtake this uncle Minoret and point him out to the postmaster.