Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/357

 so well, would know how to help him out of this tiresome dilemma. Three per cent stock was then at eighty francs, so it was a question, with arrears, of restoring nearly a million! To return a million, without there being any proof as to its being stolen! this was no light matter. And so Minoret spent all September and part of October a prey to his remorse and irresolution. To the great astonishment of the whole town, he grew thin.

A dreadful event hurried on the disclosure that Minoret was longing to make to Zélie; the sword of Damocles stirred over their heads. Toward the middle of October, Monsieur and Madame Minoret received the following letter from their son:

“MY DEAR MOTHER,

“If I have not been to see you since the holidays, it is, first, because I was on duty in the absence of Monsieur le Procureur du Roi, and then because I knew Monsieur de Portenduère was waiting for me to visit Nemours to pick a quarrel with me. Tired, perhaps, of putting off the revenge that he wished to wreak upon our family, the viscount came to Fontainebleau, where he had made an appointment with one of his friends from Paris, after having secured the co-operation of the Vicomte de Soulanges, who is major of the hussars now in garrison here. He called upon me very politely, accompanied by these two gentlemen, and told me that my father was undoubtedly the author of the infamous persecutions practised upon Ursule Mirouët, his future wife; he proved it to me by explaining to me Goupil’s confession in the presence of witnesses, and also the conduct of my father, who first had refused to fulfil the promises made to Goupil to reward him for his treacherous inventions, and who, after having provided him with funds for the negotiation of the attorney’s office at Nemours, had,