d get you made a deputy. My future depends on yours, and I
sha'n't let you commit any follies."

"I am rich enough to care only for happiness," replied Desire.

"What are you two plotting together?" cried Zelie, beckoning to the two
friends, who were standing in the middle of the courtyard, to come into
the house.

The doctor disappeared into the Rue des Bourgeois with the activity of
a young man, and soon reached his own house, where strange events had
lately taken place, the visible results of which now filled the minds
of the whole community of Nemours. A few explanations are needed to make
this history and the notary's remark to the heirs perfectly intelligible
to the reader.

CHAPTER V. URSULA

The father-in-law of Doctor Minoret, the famous harpsichordist and
maker of instruments, Valentin Mirouet, also one of our most celebrated
organists, died in 1785 leaving a natural son, the child of his old age,
whom he acknowledged and called by his own name, but who turned out a
worthless fellow. He was deprived on his death bed of the comfort of
seeing this petted son. Joseph Mirouet, a singer and composer, having
made his debut at the Italian opera under a feigned name, ran away with
a young lady in Germany. The dying father commended the young man, who
was really full of talent, to his son-in-law, proving to him, at the
same time, that he had refused to marry the mother that he might not
injure Madame Minoret. The doctor promised to give the unfortunate
Joseph half of whatever his wife inherited from her father, whose
business was purchased by the Erards. He made due search for his
illegitimate brother-in-law; but Grimm informed him one day that after
enlisting in a Prussian regiment Joseph had deserted and taken a false
name and that all efforts to find him would be frustrated.

Joseph Mirouet, gifted by nature with a delightful voice, a fine figure,
a handsome face, and being moreover a composer of great taste and much
brilliancy, led for over fifteen years the Bohemian life which Hoffman
has so well described. So, by the time he was forty, he was reduced to
such depths of poverty that he took advantage of the events of 1806
to make himself once more a Frenchman. He settled in Hamburg, where he
married the daughter of a bourgeois, a girl devoted to music, who fell
in love with the singer (whose fame was ever prospective) and chose
to devote her life to him. But after fifteen years of Bohemia, Joseph
Mirou