hether the
post master, the sheriff, and the collector understood this distinction,
or whether they were reassured by the evident loyalty and benefactions
of their uncle, certain it is that they ceased, to his great
satisfaction, to see much of him. So, about eight months after the
arrival of the doctor these four players of whist and backgammon made
a solid and exclusive little world which was to each a fraternal
aftermath, an unlooked for fine season, the gentle pleasures of which
were the more enjoyed. This little circle of choice spirits closed
round Ursula, a child whom each adopted according to his individual
tendencies; the abbe thought of her soul, the judge imagined himself her
guardian, the soldier intended to be her teacher, and as for Minoret, he
was father, mother, and physician, all in one.

After he became acclimated old Minoret settled into certain habits of
life, under fixed rules, after the manner of the provinces. On Ursula's
account he received no visitors in the morning, and never gave dinners,
but his friends were at liberty to come to his house at six o'clock and
stay till midnight. The first-comers found the newspapers on the table
and read them while awaiting the rest; or they sometimes sallied forth
to meet the doctor if he were out for a walk. This tranquil life was not
a mere necessity of old age, it was the wise and careful scheme of a man
of the world to keep his happiness untroubled by the curiosity of
his heirs and the gossip of a little town. He yielded nothing to that
capricious goddess, public opinion, whose tyranny (one of the present
great evils of France) was just beginning to establish its power and
to make the whole nation a mere province. So, as soon as the child was
weaned and could walk alone, the doctor sent away the housekeeper whom
his niece, Madame Minoret-Levrault had chosen for him, having discovered
that she told her patroness everything that happened in his household.

Ursula's nurse, the widow of a poor workman (who possessed no name but a
baptismal one, and who came from Bougival) had lost her last child, aged
six months, just as the doctor, who knew her to be a good and honest
creature, engaged her as wetnurse for Ursula. Antoinette Patris (her
maiden name), widow of Pierre, called Le Bougival, attached herself
naturally to Ursula, as wetmaids do to their nurslings. This blind
maternal affection was accompanied in this instance by household
devotion. Told of the doc