Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/348

 the peace, securing his spectacles. “Give us time to think it over.”

He accompanied Minoret as far as his house, all the time commending his anxiety for Désiré’s future, rather blaming Ursule’s precipitation and promising to make her listen to reason. As soon as Minoret had got home, Bongrand went to the postmaster, borrowed his horse and gig, hurried to Fontainebleau, asked for the deputy and was told that he must be spending the evening at the sub-prefect’s. The justice of the peace, delighted, called there. Désiré was playing a game of whist with the prosecutor’s wife, the sub-prefect’s wife and the colonel of the regiment then in garrison.

“I have come to tell you good news,” said Monsieur Bongrand to Désiré, “you love your cousin Ursule Mirouët, and your father is no longer opposed to your marriage.”

“I love Ursule Mirouët?” cried Désiré, laughing, “why do you assume it to be Ursule Mirouët? I recollect having sometimes seen this little girl, who is certainly very beautiful, at the house of the late Minoret, my great-uncle; but she is extremely religious; and if, like everyone else, I have done justice to her charms, I have never had my head turned by this rather insipid blonde,” said he, smiling at the sub-prefect’s wife,—she was a piquant brunette, according to the old expression of the last century.—“Where do you come from, my dear Monsieur Bongrand? Everyone knows that my father is lord paramount of forty-eight thousand