Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/381

 our son’s recovery, even as we shall if we have the fearful misfortune of losing him.”

And the man burst into tears at the end of this sentence.

“I can assure you, my dear Ursule,” said the curé, “that you can and ought to accept part of this gift.”

“Will you forgive us?” said the colossus humbly, going down upon his knee before the astonished girl. “In a few hours, the operation is to be performed by the head surgeon of the Hôtel-Dieu; but I do not trust human science at all, I believe in God’s omnipotence! If you forgive me, if you will go and ask God to spare us our son, he will have the strength to bear this torture, and I am certain that we shall have the happiness of saving him.”

“Let us go to church!” said Ursule, rising.

Once risen, she gave a piercing shriek, fell back upon the sofa and fainted. When she regained consciousness she saw her friends, save Minoret who had rushed out to fetch a doctor, all anxiously watching her, waiting for her to speak. Her words struck a chill in every heart.

“I saw my godfather at the door,” she said, “and he signed to me that there was no hope.”

In fact, the day after the operation, Désiré died, carried off by fever and the revulsion of the humors which follows upon these operations. Madame Minoret, who had no other feeling in her heart than that of maternity, went mad after her son’s burial and was put by her husband under the care of Doctor Blanche, where she died in 1841.