Ursula and her godfather were sitting at dessert in the pretty dining-room decorated with Chinese designs in black and gold lacquer (the folly of Levrault-Levrault) when the justice of peace arrived. The doctor offered him (and this was a great mark of intimacy) a cup of his coffee, a mixture of Mocha with Bourbon and Martinique, roasted, ground, and made by himself in a silver apparatus called a Chaptal.
"Well," said Bongrand, pushing up his glasses and looking slyly at the old man, "the town is in commotion; your appearance in church has put your relatives beside themselves. You have left your fortune to the priests, to the poor. You have roused the families, and they are bestirring themselves. Ha! ha! I saw their first irruption into the square; they were as busy as ants who have lost their eggs."
"What did I tell you, Ursula?" cried the doctor. "At the risk of grieving you, my child, I must teach you to know the world and put you on your guard against undeserved enmity."
"I should like to say a word to you on this subject," said Bongrand, seizing the occasion to speak to his old friend of Ursula's future.
The doctor put a black velvet cap on his white head, the justice of peace wore his hat to protect him from the night air, and they walked up and down the terrace discussing the means of securing to Ursula what her godfather intended to bequeath her. Bongrand knew Dionis's opinion as to the invalidity of a will made by the doctor in favor of Ursula; for Nemours was so preoccupied with the Minoret affairs that the matter had been much discussed among the lawyers of the little town. Bongrand considered that Ursula was not a relative of Doctor Minoret, but he felt that the whole spirit of legislation was against the foisting into families of illegitimate off-shoots. The makers of the Code had foreseen only the weakness of fathers and mothers for their natural children, without considering that uncles and aunts might have a like tenderness and a desire to provide for such children. Evidently there was a gap in the law.
"In all other countries," he said, ending an explanation of the legal points which Dionis, Goupil, and Desire had just explained to the heirs, "Ursula would have nothing to fear; she is a legitimate child, and the disability of her father ought only to affect the inheritance from Valentine Mirouet, her grandfather. But in France the magistracy is unfortunately overwise and very consequential; it inquires into the spirit of the law. Some lawyers talk morality, and might try to show that this hiatus in the Code came from the simple-mindedness of the legislators, who did not foresee the case, though, none the less, they established a principle. To bring a suit would be long and expensive.
Zelie would carry it to the court of appeals, and I might not be alive when the case was tried."
"The best of cases is often worthless," cried the doctor. "Here's the question the lawyers will put, 'To what degree of relationship ought the disability of natural children in matters of inheritance to extend?' and the credit of a good lawyer will lie in gaining a bad cause."
"Faith!" said Bongrand, "I dare not take upon myself to affirm that the judges wouldn't interpret the meaning of the law as increasing the protection given to marriage, the eternal base of society."
Without explaining his intentions, the doctor rejected the idea of a trust. When Bongrand suggested to him a marriage with Ursula as the surest means of securing his property to her, he exclaimed, "Poor little girl! I might live fifteen years; what a fate for her!"
"Well, what will you do, then?" asked Bongrand.
"We'll think about it--I'll see," said the old man, evidently at a loss for a reply.
Just then Ursula came to say that Monsieur Dionis wished to speak to the doctor.
"Already!" cried Minoret, looking at Bongrand. "Yes," he said to Ursula, "send him here."
"I'll bet my spectacles to a bunch of matches that he is the advance-guard of your heirs," said Bongrand. "They breakfasted together at the post house, and something is being engineered."
The notary, conducted by Ursula, came to the lower end of the garden.
After the usual greetings and a few insignificant remarks, Dionis asked for a private interview; Ursula and Bongrand retired to the salon.
The distrust which superior men excite in men of business is very remarkable. The latter deny them the "lesser" powers while recognizing their possession of the "higher." It is, perhaps, a tribute to them.
Seeing them always on the higher plane of human things, men of business believe them incapable of descending to the infinitely petty details which (like the dividends of finance and the microscopic facts of science) go to equalize capital and to form the worlds. They are mistaken! The man of honor and of genius sees all. Bongrand, piqued by the doctor's silence, but impelled by a sense of Ursula's interests which he thought endangered, resolved to defend her against the heirs.
He was wretched at not knowing what was taking place between the old man and Dionis.
"No matter how pure and innocent Ursula may be," he thought as he looked at her, "there is a point on which young girls do make their own law and their own morality. I'll test here. The Minoret-Levraults," he began, settling his spectacles, "might possibly ask you in marriage for their son."
The poor child turned pale. She was too well trained, and had too much delicacy to listen to what Dionis was saying to her uncle; but after a moment's inward deliberation, she thought she might show herself, and then, if she was in the way, her godfather would let her know it. The Chinese pagoda which the doctor made his study had outside blinds to the glass doors; Ursula invented the excuse of shutting them. She begged Monsieur Bongrand's pardon for leaving him alone in the salon, but he smiled at her and said, "Go! go!"
