On this assurance, enforced by a nudge from Zelie, Minoret agreed to the purchase, and furnished the funds to pay off the mortgage due to the doctor's estate. The deed of sale was immediately drawn up by Dionis. Towards the end of June Bongrand brought the balance of the purchase money to Madame de Portenduere, advising her to invest it in the Funds, where, joined to Savinien's ten thousand, it would give her, at five per cent, an income of six thousand francs. Thus, so far from losing her resources, the old lady actually gained by the transaction. But she did not leave Nemours. Minoret thought he had been tricked,--as though Bongrand had had an idea that Ursula's presence was intolerable to him; and he felt a keen resentment which embittered his hatred to his victim. Then began a secret drama which was terrible in its effects,--the struggle of two determinations; one which impelled Minoret to drive his victim from Nemours, the other which gave Ursula the strength to bear persecution, the cause of which was for a certain length of time undiscoverable. The situation was a strange and even unnatural one, and yet it was led up to by all the preceding events, which served as a preface to what was now to occur.
Madame Minoret, to whom her husband had given a handsome silver service costing twenty thousand francs, gave a magnificent dinner every Sunday, the day on which her son, the deputy procureur, came from Fontainebleau, bringing with him certain of his friends. On these occasions Zelie sent to Paris for delicacies--obliging Dionis the notary to emulate her display. Goupil, whom the Minorets endeavored to ignore as a questionable person who might tarnish their splendor, was not invited until the end of July. The clerk, who was fully aware of this intended neglect, was forced to be respectful to Desire, who, since his entrance into office, had assumed a haughty and dignified air, even in his own family.
"You must have forgotten Esther," Goupil said to him, "as you are so much in love with Mademoiselle Mirouet."
"In the first place, Esther is dead, monsieur; and in the next I have never even thought of Ursula," said the new magistrate.
"Why, what did you tell me, papa Minoret?" cried Goupil, insolently.
Minoret, caught in a lie by a man whom he feared, would have lost countenance if it had not been for a project in his head, which was, in fact, the reason why Goupil was invited to dinner,--Minoret having remembered the proposition the clerk had once made to prevent the marriage between Savinien and Ursula. For all answer, he led Goupil hurriedly to the end of the garden.
"You'll soon be twenty-eight years old, my good fellow," said he, "and I don't see that you are on the road to fortune. I wish you well, for after all you were once my son's companion. Listen to me. If you can persuade that little Mirouet, who possesses in her own right forty thousand francs, to marry you, I will give you, as true as my name is Minoret, the means to buy a notary's practice at Orleans."
"No," said Goupil, "that's too far out of the way; but Montargis--"
"No," said Minoret; "Sens."
"Very good,--Sens," replied the hideous clerk. "There's an archbishop at Sens, and I don't object to devotion; a little hypocrisy and there you are, on the way to fortune. Besides, the girl is pious, and she'll succeed at Sens."
"It is to be fully understood," continued Minoret, "that I shall not pay the money till you marry my cousin, for whom I wish to provide, out of consideration for my deceased uncle."
"Why not for me too?" said Goupil maliciously, instantly suspecting a secret motive in Minoret's conduct. "Isn't it through information you got from me that you make twenty-four thousand a year from that land, without a single enclosure, around the Chateau du Rouvre? The fields and the mill the other side of the Loing make sixteen thousand more.
Come, old fellow, do you mean to play fair with me?"
"Yes."
"If I wanted to show my teeth I could coax Massin to buy the Rouvre estate, park, gardens, preserves, and timber--"
"You'd better think twice before you do that," said Zelie, suddenly intervening.
"If I choose," said Goupil, giving her a viperish look; "Massin would buy the whole for two hundred thousand francs."
"Leave us, wife," said the colossus, taking Zelie by the arm, and shoving her away; "I understand him. We have been so very busy," he continued, returning to Goupil, "that we have had no time to think of you; but I rely on your friendship to buy the Rouvre estate for me."
"It is a very ancient marquisate," said Goupil, maliciously; "which will soon be worth in your hands fifty thousand francs a year; that means a capital of more than two millions as money is now."
"My son could then marry the daughter of a marshal of France, or the daughter of some old family whose influence would get him a fine place under the government in Paris," said Minoret, opening his huge snuff-box and offering a pinch to Goupil.
"Very good; but will you play fair?" cried Goupil, shaking his fingers.
Minoret pressed the clerk's hands replying:--
"On my word of honor."
