Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/342

 again! the looks my godfather gives me! The last time, he hung on to my dress to see me longer. I woke up with tears streaming down my face.”

“Do not worry, he will not return,” said the curé.

Without losing an instant, the Abbé Chaperon went to Minoret’s and begged him to give him a moment’s interview in the Chinese pavilion, only stipulating that they should be alone.

“Nobody can hear us?” said the Abbé Chaperon.

“No one,” replied Minoret.

“Monsieur, my character is well known to you,” said the old man, fixing a gentle but watchful glance upon Minoret’s face. “I have to speak about the gravest and most extraordinary things, which concern you alone and about which you may be sure I shall preserve the closest secrecy, but it is impossible that I should not inform you of them. When your uncle was alive, there used to be there,” said the priest, pointing to the spot where it had stood, “a small Boule sideboard with a marble top,”—Minoret grew livid,—“and, underneath this marble, your uncle had put a letter for his ward—”

And the curé related, without omitting the slightest incident, Minoret’s own conduct to Minoret himself. The former postmaster, upon hearing the detail of the two matches that went out before kindling, felt his hair rising on his scalp.

“Who could have invented such nonsense?” he said to the curé in a choking voice when the recital was over.