Ursule Mirouët (Tomlinson translation)/Part II/2
*
For two days, the disagreement between the Portenduères and Doctor Minoret was the subject of conversation for the heirs, who paid tribute to Dionis’s genius, and now looked upon their inheritance as saved. And so, in a century in which ranks are leveled, in which the rage for equality places all individuals on a level and threatens everything, even military subordination, the last entrenchment of power in France; in which, consequently, the passions have no other obstacles to overcome than personal antipathies or the want of balance between fortunes, the obstinacy of an old Bretonne and Doctor Minoret’s dignity raised barriers between these two lovers that were fated, as in bygone times, less to destroy than to strengthen love. To a passionate man, every woman is worth what she costs him; now, Savinien foresaw a struggle, efforts and uncertainties which were already making this young girl dear to him; he wanted to win her. Perhaps our feelings obey the laws of Nature upon the duration of her creations; a long life has a long childhood!
The next morning, on rising, both Ursule and Savinien thought of the same thing. This understanding would have given rise to love even had it not already been the most delightful proof. When the young girl slightly parted her curtains in order to allow her eyes the strictly necessary space for looking over at Savinien’s house, she perceived her lover’s face above the opposite window-fastening. When one thinks of the immense service windows render to lovers, it seems natural enough that they should be made an object for taxation. After having thus protested against her godfather’s hardness of heart, Ursule lowered the curtains and opened her windows to shut the outer blinds through which she could in future see without being seen. She went up to her room at least seven or eight times during the day and always found the young viscount writing, tearing up paper and beginning to write again, doubtless to her!
The next morning, upon waking Ursule, La Bougival brought her the following letter:
TO MADEMOISELLE URSULE.
“MADEMOISELLE,
“I do not delude myself at all as to the mistrust a young man must inspire who has placed himself in the position from which I escaped only through your guardian’s intervention; in future I must offer more security than anyone else; therefore, mademoiselle, it is with the deepest humility that I throw myself at your feet to confess my love to you. This declaration is not prompted by passion; it springs from a certainty that embraces the whole life. A foolish passion for my young aunt, Madame de Kergarouët, threw me into prison; in the complete disappearance of my memories, and of this image which has been obliterated by yours, will you not see a mark of sincere love? From the moment I saw you asleep, and so graceful in your childish slumber, at Bouron, you have occupied my mind like a queen who takes possession of her empire. I will not have any other for wife than you. You have all the distinction that I wish for in her who is to bear my name. The education you have received and the dignity of your heart place you on a level with the most exalted positions. But I mistrust myself too much to try to portray you to yourself, I can only love you. After having heard you yesterday I remembered those sentences which seem written for you:
“‘Made to attract all hearts and charm the eye, both gentle and intelligent, clever and rational, polished as if her life had been passed in courts, simple as the hermit who has never known the world, the fire of her soul is tempered by the divine modesty in her eyes.’
“I have felt the value of this beautiful soul which reveals itself in the slightest things about you. That is what gives me the courage to ask you, if you do not yet love anyone, to let me prove to you by my attentions and my conduct that I am worthy of you. It is a matter of life to me; you cannot doubt but that all my strength will be employed not only to please you, but still more to merit your esteem, which is equivalent to that of the whole earth. With this hope, Ursule, and if you will allow me to worship you in my heart, Nemours will be a paradise to me, and the most difficult undertakings will only afford me gratification which shall be ascribed to you as one ascribes all to God. Tell me then that I may call myself
“YOUR SAVINIEN.”
Ursule kissed this letter; then, after having read it again and clung to it with foolish emotion, she dressed herself to go and show it to her godfather.
“Mon Dieu! I had almost left without saying my prayers!” she said, returning to kneel at her priedieu.
A few moments after, she went down to the garden and there found her guardian, to whom she gave Savinien’s letter to read. Both sat down on the bench, under the clump of climbing plants, opposite the Chinese pavilion; Ursule waiting for some remark from the old man, and the old man reflecting much too long a time for an impatient girl. Finally, the result of their secret interview was the following letter, which the doctor had doubtless partly dictated:
“MONSIEUR,
“I cannot but feel very much honored by the letter in which you offer me your hand; but at my age, and according to the laws of my bringing up, I was obliged to show it to my guardian, who is all the family I have, and whom I love both as a father and a friend. Here are the cruel objections he has given me and which must serve as my answer. I am, Monsieur le Vicomte, a poor girl whose future fortune depends entirely, not only on my godfather’s good will, but still more on the uncertain measures he will take to elude the ill-will that his heirs bear me. Although I am the legitimate daughter of Joseph Mirouët, bandmaster in the Forty-fifth Infantry Regiment, as he was my guardian’s natural half-brother, a suit, although for no reason, might be brought against a young girl who would be defenceless. You see, monsieur, that my small fortune is not my greatest misfortune. I have many reasons for being humble. It is for your sake, not for my own, that I submit such observations to you, which are often of little weight with loving, devoted hearts. But you must also consider, monsieur, that if I did not lay them before you I should be suspected of wishing to make your tenderness overlook obstacles that the world, and your mother particularly, would deem insurmountable. I shall be sixteen in four months. Perhaps you will acknowledge that we are both too young and too inexperienced to fight the miseries of a life started without any other income than that which I owe to the kindness of the late Monsieur de Jordy. Besides, my guardian does not wish me to marry before I am twenty. Who knows what fate is reserving for you during those four years, the best of your life? Do not blight it then for a poor girl.
“After having stated to you, monsieur, my dear guardian’s reasons, who, far from opposing my happiness, desires to contribute to it with all his power, and hopes to see his protection, which must soon grow feeble, replaced by a tenderness equal to his own, it only remains for me to tell you how much I am touched both by your offer and the kind compliments which accompany it. The prudence which dictates this answer comes from an old man to whom life is well known; but the gratitude that I convey to you is that of a young girl whose mind knows no other feeling.
“Thus, monsieur, I can sign myself in all sincerity,
“Your servant,
“URSULE MIROUET.”
Savinien did not reply. Was he making fresh attempts with his mother? Had this letter quenched his love? A thousand such questions, all insoluble, tortured Ursule horribly, and, indirectly, the doctor, who suffered from his dear child’s slightest agitation. Ursule would often go up to her room and look across at Savinien, whom she could see, thoughtfully sitting at his table and constantly turning his gaze upon her windows. At the end of a week, not before that, she received the following letter from Savinien, the delay being accounted for by an increase of love:
TO MADEMOISELLE URSULE MIROUET.
“DEAR URSULE,
“Here, godfather,” said Ursule, holding out this letter to him through an impulse of pride.
“Ah! my child!” cried the doctor, after having read the letter, “I am even more pleased than you are. The gentleman has, by this resolution, redeemed all his faults.”
After dinner, Savinien called upon the doctor, who was then walking with Ursule along the balustrade of the terrace by the river. The viscount had received his clothes from Paris, and the lover had not failed to enhance his natural advantages by as careful and elegant a dress as if it were a question of pleasing the beautiful, proud Comtesse de Kergarouët. When she saw him coming toward them from the steps, the poor little thing clasped her uncle’s arm just as if she were holding back from a precipice, and the doctor heard deep, muffled palpitations which made him shudder.
“Leave us, my child,” he said to his ward, who sat down on the steps of the Chinese pavilion after having allowed Savinien to take her hand, and kiss it respectfully.
“Monsieur, would you give this dear young girl to a naval captain?” said the young viscount to the doctor, in a low voice.
“No,” said Minoret, smiling, “we might have to wait too long; but—to a lieutenant.”
Tears of joy moistened the young man’s eyes, and he squeezed the old man’s hand very affectionately.
“Then I will go,” he replied, “and study and try to learn in six months what the pupils at the Naval College have learnt in six years.”
“Go?” said Ursule, rushing toward them from the steps.
“Yes, mademoiselle, to be worthy of you. And so, the more haste I make, the more affection I shall be showing you.”
“To-day is the third of October,” she said, looking at him with infinite tenderness, “go after the nineteenth.”
“Yes,” said the old man, “we will keep the day of Saint-Savinien.”
“Then good-bye,” cried the young man, “I must spend this week in Paris, and make the necessary applications, preparations and purchases of books and mathematical instruments, win the minister’s favor, and obtain the best possible terms.”
Ursule and her godfather conducted Savinien as far as the gate. After having seen him re-enter his mother’s house, they saw him come out accompanied by Tiennette, who was carrying a small trunk.
“Why, if you are rich, do you force him to serve in the navy?” said Ursule to her godfather.
“I think that it will soon be I who will have created his debts,” said the doctor, smiling. “I do not force him at all; but the uniform, my dear love, and the Cross of the Legion of Honor gained in a fight, will efface many stains. In four years, he may succeed in commanding a vessel, and that is all I ask of him.”
“But he may perish,” she said, looking at the doctor with a white face.
“Lovers, like drunkards, have a god of their own,” replied the doctor, jokingly.
During the night, unknown to her godfather, the poor little thing, with the help of La Bougival, cut off enough of her long and beautiful fair hair to make a chain; then, on the third day, she coaxed her music master, old Schmucke, to promise to see that her hair was not changed and that the chain was finished for the following Sunday. Upon his return, Savinien informed the doctor and his ward that he had signed his engagement. On the twenty-fifth he was to be at Brest. Invited by the doctor to dine on the eighteenth, he spent nearly two whole days at his house; and, in spite of the most prudent recommendations, the two lovers could not help betraying their good understanding to the eyes of the curé, the justice of the peace, the Nemours doctor and La Bougival.
“Children,” said the old man, “you are risking your happiness by not keeping the secret to yourselves.”
At last, on his birthday, after mass, during which they had exchanged several looks, Savinien, watched by Ursule, crossed the road and came into the little garden where they both found themselves almost alone. The doctor was indulgently reading his newspapers in the Chinese pavilion.
“Dear Ursule,” said Savinien, “will you make my birthday even greater than my mother could by giving me life a second time—?”
“I know what you want to ask me,” said Ursule, interrupting him. “Here, this is my answer”—she added, taking the hair chain from her apron pocket and offering it to him with a nervous trembling which betokened unbounded joy. “Wear this,” she said, “for love of me! May my gift keep you from all perils by reminding you that my life is linked with yours!”
“Ah! the little minx, she is giving him a chain of her hair,” the doctor was saying to himself. “How did she manage it? Cutting her beautiful fair tresses!—would she then give him my blood?”
“Would you think me very wrong, before going, to ask you to give me a solemn promise that you will never have any other husband than me?” said Savinien, kissing the chain, unable to restrain a tear as he looked at Ursule.
“If I have not already told it to you too plainly, I who went to contemplate the walls of Sainte-Pélagie when you were there,” she replied, blushing, “I now repeat it to you, Savinien: I will never love anyone but you and will never belong to anyone but you.”
At sight of Ursule, half-hidden in the thicket, the young man could not resist the pleasure of clasping her to his heart and kissing her on the forehead; but she gave a faint cry and sank upon the bench, and when Savinien sat down beside her, asking her pardon, he saw the doctor standing before them.
“My dear monsieur,” he said, “Ursule is a regular sensitive-plant, that a harsh word would kill. With her, you ought to moderate the outburst of love. Oh! if you had loved her for sixteen years, you would have been content with her promise,” he added, by way of revenge for the remark with which Savinien had concluded his last letter.
Two days after, Savinien left In spite of the letters he wrote regularly to Ursule, she fell a prey to an apparently causeless illness. Like beautiful fruit attacked by worms, one thought was gnawing at her heart. She lost appetite and her beautiful color. When her godfather first asked her what she felt:
“I want to see the sea,” she said.
“It is difficult to take you to any seaport in December,” replied the old man.
“Can I go then?” she said.
If high winds arose, Ursule would feel greatly disturbed, believing, in spite of the learned distinctions of her godfather, the curé and the justice of the peace between the winds of sea and those of the land, that Savinien was fighting a hurricane. The justice of the peace made her happy for several days with an engraving of a midshipman in uniform. She would read the newspapers, fancying they might give some news of the cruise for which Savinien had left. She devoured Cooper’s naval romances, and tried to learn the naval terms. These proofs of fixity of thought, often pretended by other women, were so natural to Ursule that she saw each of Savinien’s letters in a dream, and never failed to foretell them the very morning, while relating the dream that was their forerunner.
“Now,” she said to the doctor, the fourth time that this fact took place without the curé and the doctor being at all surprised: “I am easy; no matter how far away Savinien may be, if he should be wounded, I shall feel it at that very moment.”
The old doctor remained sunk in deep meditation, which the justice of the peace and the curé judged to be of a painful nature, from the expression of his face.
“What is the matter with you?” they both asked when Ursule had left them alone.
“Will she live?” replied the old doctor. “Will such a delicate, tender flower be able to withstand any heart-sorrows?”
Nevertheless, the “little dreamer,” as the curé nicknamed her, was working ardently; she understood the importance of a good education for a woman of the world, and all the time that was not given to singing, the study of harmony and composition, she spent reading the books that the Abbé Chaperon selected for her from her godfather’s library. Even whilst leading this busy life, she was suffering, but without complaint. Sometimes, she would remain whole hours looking at Savinien’s window. On Sunday, coming from mass, she would follow Madame de Portenduère, contemplating her with tenderness, for, in spite of her harshness, she loved her as being Savinien’s mother. Her piety increased, she went to mass every morning, for she firmly believed that her dreams were a favor from God. Alarmed at the ravages caused by this lovesickness, on Ursule’s birthday the doctor promised to take her to Toulon to see the departure of the Algerian expedition, without informing Savinien, who was to take part in it. The justice of the peace and the curé kept secret the object of the doctor’s journey, which appeared to be undertaken for Ursule’s health, and which very much puzzled the Minoret heirs. After having seen Savinien once more, in midshipman’s uniform, after having boarded the admiral’s beautiful vessel, to which the minister had recommended young Portenduère, Ursule, at her lover’s entreaty, went to breathe the air of Nice, and traveled down the coast of the Mediterranean as far as Genoa, where she learnt of the arrival of the fleet before Algiers and of the good news of the landing. The doctor would have liked to continue this journey through Italy, as much to distract Ursule as in some degree to finish her education by enlarging her ideas by the comparison of customs and country, and by the charms of the land where dwell the masterpieces of art, and where so many civilizations have left their brilliant traces; but the news of the resistance opposed by the throne to the electors of the famous Chamber of 1830 recalled the doctor to France, where he brought back his ward in a state of blooming health, and enriched by a charming little model of the vessel upon which Savinien was serving.
SAVINIEN'S LETTER.
Copyrighted 1897 by G. B. & Son
