Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/76

 from the recognized impossibility of applying her Christian name of Antoinette to her person, for names and figures obey the laws of harmony.

The doctor’s avarice was no mere empty word, but there was an object in it. From 1817, he cut off two newspapers and stopped subscribing to his periodicals. His yearly expenditure, that all Nemours could reckon, never exceeded eighteen hundred francs a year. Like all old men, his needs in linen, booting and clothes were almost nothing. Every six months, he made a journey to Paris, doubtless to receive and himself invest his income. During fifteen years, he did not say one word that related to his affairs. His trust in Bongrand came very late; it was only after the Revolution of 1830, that he unfolded his schemes to him. Such were the only things in the doctor’s life then known to the bourgeoisie and his heirs. As to his political opinions, as his house tax was only one hundred francs, he mixed himself up in nothing, and scouted Royalist and Liberal subscriptions alike. His known horror for parsons and his deism were so averse to manifestations, that he turned out of doors a commercial traveler sent by his great-nephew Désiré Minoret-Levrault to sell him a Curé Meslier and the Discours by General Foy. Such mistaken tolerance seemed unaccountable to the Liberals of Nemours.

The doctor’s three collateral heirs, Minoret-Levrault and his wife, Monsieur and Madame Massin-Levrault junior, Monsieur and Madame Crémière-Crémière—whom we will call simply Crémière,