elatives, Ursule
included. She is at the time a fine young woman, beloved by a young
gentleman of the place. The rest of the novel tells how the big
postmaster contrives to destroy the part of the will favourable to
Ursule and to steal certain moneys that belong to her; how Minoret's
ghost appears in dreams and signs to confound the guilty man and his
guilty wife, who are at last induced to confess their ill deeds, the
repentance being hastened by the death of their son Desire; and, in
fine, how Ursule marries Monsieur de Portenduere and is happy.

In its general construction, the book holds well together, and the
characters in the main are depicted without exaggeration, while the
traits of individuality are ingeniously marked. The Doctor and Ursule
are less firmly and informingly delineated. As usual, when Balzac
shows us the figure of a virtuous girl in an ordinary domestic circle,
he represents her with passive rather than active qualities. She has
no strong likes or dislikes, no particular mental bias, and possesses
but small attractiveness. In fact, the novelist seems at a loss to
imagine. In the case of Ursule, we see that she cultivates flowers,
but we do not feel that she is fond of them. As for the Doctor, he
would have or might have been less a puppet, had the author himself
judged with wiser reserve the mysterious forces that exist in the
world of sub-consciousness.

His belief in these forces being alloyed with much superstition, he
was always consulting fortune-tellers, even those that divined by
cards. One of them, a certain Balthazar, who was subsequently
convicted and imprisoned for dishonesty, told him that his past life
had been one series of struggles and victories, a reading too
agreeable to be doubted; and that he would soon have tranquillity, a
prophecy which unhappily was not fulfilled. Concerning the prospects
of a union with Madame Hanska, the cartomancer was mute, though he
described the lady in language sufficiently clever for his client to
acknowledge the likeness. His clairvoyance was exceedingly limited;
otherwise he would have warned his client of the approaching death of
Count Hanski, this event taking place towards the close of the year.

Occupied with her own affairs, which were complicated by her husband's
illness, and perhaps also resenting the falling off in the number of
her distant worshipper's epistles, caused by an indisposition in the
spring and a visit to Brittany to recuper