Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/367

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The Abbé Chaperon observed a priestly silence. As often happens in such circumstances, he thought far oftener than he wanted to of the robbery half-confessed by Minoret, and of Savinien’s happiness so obviously delayed by Ursule’s want of fortune; for the old lady secretly admitted to her confessor how wrong she had been to have refused consent to her son’s marriage during the doctor’s lifetime. The next day, on leaving the altar, after mass, he was seized with an idea which inwardly assumed all the force of a spoken declaration; he signed to Ursule to wait for him, and went with her before breakfasting.

“My child,” said the curé, “I want to see the two volumes in which the godfather in your dreams declares he put his bonds and bills.”

Ursule and the curé went up to the library and there took out the third volume of the Pandects. Upon opening it, the old man, not without astonishment, noticed the mark made by the papers upon the leaves, which, offering less resistance than the cover, still preserved the imprint of the bonds. Then, in another volume, he recognized the species of gap produced by the continued presence of some packet and the outline of it in the middle of the two pages in folio. (337)