to
sign the draft. The clerk, seeing the flush of seigniorial fever on the
face of the imbecile and colossal Machiavelli, threw him an "au revoir,"
by way of farewell, accompanied with a glance which would have made any
one but an idiotic parvenu, lost in contemplation of the magnificent
chateau built in the style in vogue under Louis XIII., tremble in his
shoes.

"Are you not going to wait for me?" he cried, observing that Goupil was
going away on foot.

"You'll find me on our path, never fear, papa Minoret," replied Goupil,
athirst for vengeance and resolved to know the meaning of the zigzags of
Minoret's strange conduct.

Since the day when the last vile calumny had sullied her life Ursula, a
prey to one of those inexplicable maladies the seat of which is in the
soul, seemed to be rapidly nearing death. She was deathly pale, speaking
only at rare intervals and then in slow and feeble words; everything
about her, her glance of gentle indifference, even the expression of her
forehead, all revealed the presence of some consuming thought. She was
thinking how the ideal wreath of chastity, with which throughout all
ages the Peoples crowned their virgins, had fallen from her brow.
She heard in the void and in the silence the dishonoring words, the
malicious comments, the laughter of the little town. The trial was
too heavy, her innocence was too delicate to allow her to survive the
murderous blow. She complained no more; a sorrowful smile was on her
lips; her eyes appealed to heaven, to the Sovereign of angels, against
man's injustice.

When Goupil reached Nemours, Ursula had just been carried down from her
chamber to the ground-floor in the arms of La Bougival and the doctor.
A great event was about to take place. When Madame de Portenduere became
really aware that the girl was dying like an ermine, though less injured
in her honor than Clarissa Harlowe, she resolved to go to her and
comfort her. The sight of her son's anguish, who during the whole
preceding night had seemed beside himself, made the Breton soul of the
old woman yield. Moreover, it seemed worthy of her own dignity to revive
the courage of a girl so pure, and she saw in her visit a counterpoise
to all the evil done by the little town. Her opinion, surely more
powerful than that of the crowd, ought to carry with it, she thought,
the influence of race. This step, which the abbe came to announce, made
so great a change in Ursula that the doctor, who was a