there was a rap at the door.

"There is our dear abbe," said the old lady, who rose, leaving Ursula
alone, and advancing to meet the Abbe Chaperon,--an honor she had not
paid to the doctor and his niece.

The old man smiled to himself as he looked from his goddaughter to
Savinien. To show offence or to complain of Madame de Portenduere's
manners was a rock on which a man of small mind might have struck, but
Minoret was too accomplished in the ways of the world not to avoid
it. He began to talk to the viscount of the danger Charles X. was
then running by confiding the affairs of the nation to the Prince de
Polignac. When sufficient time had been spent on the subject to avoid
all appearance of revenging himself by so doing, he handed the old lady,
in an easy, jesting way, a packet of legal papers and receipted bills,
together with the account of his notary.

"Has my son verified them?" she said, giving Savinien a look, to which
he replied by bending his head. "Well, then the rest is my notary's
business," she added, pushing away the papers and treating the affair
with the disdain she wished to show for money.

To abase wealth was, according to Madame de Portenduere's ideas, to
elevate the nobility and rob the bourgeoisie of their importance.

A few moments later Goupil came from his employer, Dionis, to ask for
the accounts of the transaction between the doctor and Savinien.

"Why do you want them?" said the old lady.

"To put the matter in legal form; there have been no cash payments."

Ursula and Savinien, who both for the first time exchanged a glance with
offensive personage, were conscious of a sensation like that of touching
a toad, aggravated by a dark presentiment of evil. They both had the
same indefinable and confused vision into the future, which has no name
in any language, but which is capable of explanation as the action of
the inward being of which the mysterious Swedenborgian had spoken to
Doctor Minoret. The certainty that the venomous Goupil would in some
way be fatal to them made Ursula tremble; but she controlled herself,
conscious of unspeakable pleasure in seeing that Savinien shared her
emotion.

"He is not handsome, that clerk of Monsieur Dionis," said Savinien, when
Goupil had closed the door.

"What does it signify whether such persons are handsome or ugly?" said
Madame de Portenduere.

"I don't complain of his ugliness," said the abbe, "but I do of his
wickedness, which passes all b