Ursule Mirouët

It is a real pleasure, my dear niece, to dedicate to you a book of which the subject and the details have gained the approbation—so difficult to secure—of a young girl to whom the world is as yet unknown, and who will make no compromise with the high principles derived from a pious education. You young girls are a public to be dreaded; you ought never to be suffered to read any book less pure than your own pure souls, and you are forbidden certain books, just as you are not allowed to see society as it really is. Is it not enough, then, to make a writer proud, to know that he has satisfied you? Heaven grant that affection may not have misled you! Who can say? The future only, which you, I hope, will see, though he may not, who is your uncle

Part I

The Heirs in Alarm

As you enter Nemours coming from Paris, you cross the canal of the Loing, whose banks form a rural rampart to the pretty little town, and afford many picturesque walks. Since 1830, unfortunately, many houses have been built beyond the bridge. If this suburb increases, the aspect of the town will lose much of its attractive originality.

But in 1829 the country on each side of the road lay open, and the postmaster, a tall, burly man of about sixty, as he sat on the highest point of the bridge one fine morning, could command a view of what he would have called a ribbon-road.

The month of September was lavishing its wealth. The atmosphere quivered with heat above the grass and stones, not a cloud flecked the ethereal blue, of which the vivid transparency was uniform to the very horizon, showing the extreme rarity of the air. Indeed, Minoret-Levrault, the postmaster in question, was obliged to shade his eyes with his hand not to be quite dazzled. Out of patience with waiting, he looked now at the lovely meadows spreading away to the right, where his after-crop was growing apace, and now at the densely wooded hills to the left, stretching from Nemours to Bouron. And in the valley of the Loing, where the noises on the road came back echoed from the hill, he could hear the gallop of his own horses, and the cracking of his postilions’ whips.

Could anyone but a postmaster get out of patience with gazing at a field full of cattle, such as Paul Potter painted, under a sky worthy of Raphael, by a canal overhung with trees, like a picture by Hobbema? Anyone who knows Nemours, knows that nature there is as beautiful as art, whose mission it is to spiritualize nature; the landscape there has ideas, and suggests thoughts.

Still, on seeing Minoret-Levrault, an artist would have left his place to sketch this country townsman; he was so original by sheer force of being common. Combine all the characteristics of the brute and you get Caliban, who certainly is a great creation. Where matter predominates, sentiment ends. The postmaster, a living proof of this axiom, had one of those countenances in which the student finds it hard to discern the soul through the violent purple hues of the coarsely developed flesh. His little bored blue cap with a peak, fitted closely to a head so huge as to prove that Gall’s science of phrenology has not yet dealt with the exceptions to his rules. The shining gray hair, which formed a fringe to the cap, showed that white hairs may be the result of other causes than overworked brains or severe grief.

His large ears were almost bursting round the edges from the fullness of too abundant blood, which seemed ready to spurt out after the smallest exertion. His complexion showed purple blotches under a brown pigment, the result of constant exposure to the sun. His gray eyes, restless and deep set, hidden under two black bushes of eyebrow, were like the eyes of the Kalmucks seen in Paris in 1815; if they glistened now and then, it could only be under the influence of a covetous idea. His nose, squat at the base, took a sudden turn up like the foot of a kettle. Thick lips harmonized with an almost disgusting double chin, rough with the stubble of a beard shaved scarcely twice a week, which rubbed a dirty necktie into a state of worn string; a very short neck, in rolls of fat, and puffy cheeks, completed this image of stupid strength, such as sculptors give to their caryatides. Minoret-Levrault was like one of those statues, with the difference that they support something, while he had enough to do to support himself.

You will meet with many an Atlas like him. The man’s torso was a huge block, a bull standing on his hind legs. Powerful arms terminated in thick, hard hands, broad and strong, apt at wielding the whip, the reins, and the pitchfork, hands which were no joke in the eyes of his postilions. The enormous stomach of this giant rested on legs as thick as the body of a full-grown man, and feet like an elephant’s. Rage was no doubt rare in this man, but when it broke out it would be terrible, apoplectic. Though he was violent and incapable of reflection, the man had done nothing to justify the sinister threats of his appearance. When anyone trembled before the giant, his postboys would say, “Oh, he is not a bad fellow!”

The “Master” of Nemours, to make use of an abbreviation common in many countries, wore a shooting jacket of bottle-green velveteen, trousers of striped green duck, and a vast yellow mohair waistcoat. In the waistcoat pocket an enormous snuffbox was evident, outlined by a black ring. That a snub nose argues a big snuffbox is a rule almost without exception.

Minoret-Levrault, as a son of the Revolution, and a spectator of the Empire, had never concerned himself with politics; as to his religious opinions, he had never set foot in a church but to be married; as to his principles in domestic life, they were contained in the Civil Code. He thought everything permissible that was not forbidden or indictable by law. He had never read anything but the local newspaper and some manuals relating to his business. He was regarded as a skilful agriculturist, but his knowledge was purely empirical.

In Minoret-Levrault, then, the mind did not give the lie to the body. He spoke rarely, and before delivering himself he always took a pinch of snuff to gain time to find, not ideas, but words. If he had been talkative, he would have seemed a failure.

When you think that this sort of elephant, without a trunk and without intelligence, was called Minoret-Levrault, must you not recognize, with Sterne, the occult power of names, which sometimes mask and sometimes label the character of their owners? In spite of these conspicuous disadvantages, in thirty-six years, the Revolution helping, he had made a fortune of thirty thousand francs a year, in meadow land, arable land, and woods.

Though Minoret, who had shares in the Nemours Messageries Company, and an interest in the Gatinais Company at Paris, was still hard at work, it was not so much from habit as for the sake of his only son, for whom he wished to prepare handsome prospects. This son, who, in the peasants’ phraseology, had become a gentleman, had just ended his studies for the law, and on the reopening of the courts was to be sworn as a qualified attorney. Monsieur and Madame Minoret-Levrault—for behind the colossus a woman is evident, a wife, without whom such a fortune would have been impossible—had left their son free to choose his career, as a notary at Paris, as public prosecutor in some country town, as receiver-general, stockbroker, or postmaster. What fancy might he not allow himself, to what profession might he not aspire, as the son of a man of whom it was said from Montargis to Essonne, “Father Minoret does not know how much he has”?

This idea had received fresh confirmation when, four years since, after selling his inn, Minoret built himself a splendid house and stables, and removed the posting business from the High Street to the riverside. The new buildings had cost two hundred thousand francs, which gossip doubled for thirty miles round. The posting-stage at Nemours required a great number of horses; it worked as far as Fontainebleau on the Paris side, and beyond the roads to Montargis and Montereau; the relays were long, and the sandy soil about Montargis justified the imaginary third horse, which is always paid for and never seen. A man of Minoret’s build, and of Minoret’s wealth, at the head of such a concern, might well be called without abuse of words the Master of Nemours. Though he never gave a thought to God or the Devil, and was a practical materialist—as he was a practical agriculturist, a practical egoist, a practical miser—Minoret had hitherto enjoyed unmixed happiness, if a merely material existence may be regarded as happy. On seeing the pad of flesh which covered the man’s top vertebrae and pressed on his occiput, and especially on hearing his shrill, thin voice, which contrasted ludicrously with his bull-neck, a physiologist would have understood at once why this great, coarse, burly countryman adored his only son, and perhaps why he had so long awaited his birth—as the name given to the child, Désiré, sufficiently indicated. In short, if love, as betraying a rich physical nature, is the promise of great things in a man, philosophers will understand the causes of Minoret’s failure.

His wife, whom the son happily resembled, vied with his father in spoiling the boy. No child’s nature could hold out against such idolatry. And, indeed, Désiré, who knew the extent of his power, was clever enough to draw on his mother’s savings-box and dip his hand in his father’s purse, making each of his fond parents believe that he had not applied to the other. Désiré, who played at Nemours a far more grateful part than that of a prince in his father’s capital, had indulged all his fancies at Paris just as he did in his little native town, and had spent more than twelve thousand francs a year. But then, for this money, he had acquired ideas which would never have come into his head at Nemours; he had cast his provincial skin, he had learned the power of money, and had seen that the legal profession was a means of rising in the world. During the last year he had spent ten thousand francs more by forming intimacies with artists, journalists, and their mistresses.

A somewhat alarming confidential letter might have accounted, in case of need, for the postmaster’s anxious lookout, a letter in which his son asked his sanction for a marriage; but Madame Minoret-Levrault, fully occupied in preparing a sumptuous meal in honor of the success and the return of the fully-fledged lawyer, had sent her husband out on the road, desiring him to ride forward if he saw no signs of the diligence. The diligence by which this only son was to arrive usually reached Nemours at about five in the morning, and it was now striking nine! What could cause such a delay? Had there been an upset? Was Désiré alive? Had he even broken a leg?

Three volleys of cracking whips rattle out, rending the air like the report of firearms; the red waistcoats of the postboys are just in sight, ten horses neigh at once! The master takes off his cap and waves it; and he is seen. The best mounted of the postilions, who is returning with two dappled gray post-horses, touches up the beast he is riding, outstripping five sturdy diligence horses, and the Minorets of the stable, three carriage horses, and comes up to the master.

“Have you seen the ‘Ducler’?”

On the highroads all the coaches have names—fantastical enough: they are spoken of as the “Caillard,” the “Ducler” (the diligence between Nemours and Paris), the “Grand-Bureau.” Every new company’s coach is the “Rival.” At the time when the Lecomtes ran coaches, their vehicles were known as the “Comtesses.”

“The ‘Caillard’ did not overtake the ‘Comtesse’ but the ‘Grand-Bureau’ caught her skirts, anyhow!—The ‘Caillard’ and the ‘Grand-Bureau’ have done for the ‘Françaises’ ”—the coaches of the Messageries Françaises or royal mails. If you see a postboy going fit to split, and refusing a glass of wine, question the guard; he will cock his nose and stare into space, and reply, “The Rival is ahead!” “And we cannot even see her!” adds the postilion. “The wretch! he has not given his passengers time to eat!” “As if he had any!” retorts the guard. “Whip up Polignac!” All the worst horses are called Polignac. These are the standing jokes and subjects of conversation between the postilions and the guards at the top of the coaches. In France every profession has its own slang.

“Did you see inside the ‘Ducler’?”

“Monsieur Désiré?” says the postilion, interrupting his master. “Why, you must have heard us! Our whips gave due notice of her. We made sure you would be on the road.”

“Why is the diligence four hours late?”

“The tire of one of the wheels came off between Essonne and Ponthierry. But there was no accident; Cabirolle fortunately discovered it as we were going up the hill.”

At this instant a woman in her Sunday best—for the bells of all the churches of Nemours were summoning the inhabitants to midday Mass—a woman of about six-and-thirty, addressed the postmaster.

“Well, cousin,” said she, “you would not believe me! Our uncle is in the High Street with Ursule, and they are going to Mass.”

In spite of the license of modern romance in the matter of local coloring, it is impossible to carry realism so far as to repeat the horrible abuse, mingled with oaths, which this news, so undramatic as it would seem, brought from the wide mouth of Minoret-Levrault; his thin voice became a hiss, and his face had the appearance which the country folk ingeniously refer to as “sunstroke.”

“Are you certain?” he asked after his first explosion of rage.

The postilions as they went by touched three hats to the master, who seemed neither to see nor hear them. Instead of waiting for his son, Minoret-Levrault returned up the High Street with his cousin.