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Ursula
If you have ever noticed by the wayside, in countries where they poll the oaks, some old tree, whitened and as if blasted, still throwing out its twigs though its trunk is riven and seems to implore the axe, you will have an idea of the old post master, with his white hair, – broken, emaciated, in whom the elders of the town can see no trace of the jovial dullard whom you first saw watching for his son at the beginning of this history; he does not even take his snuff as he once did; he carries something more now than the weight of his body. Beholding him, we feel that the hand of God was laid upon that figure to make it an awful warning. After hating so violently his uncle’s godchild the old man now, like Doctor Minoret himself, has concentrated all his affections on her, and has made himself the manager of her property in Nemours.
Monsieur and Madame de Portenduere pass five months of the year in Paris, where they have bought a handsome house in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. Madame de Portenduere the elder, after giving her house in Nemours to the Sisters of Charity for a free school, went to live at Rouvre, where La Bougival keeps the porter’s lodge. Cabirolle, the former conductor of the “Ducler,” a man sixty years of age, has married La Bougival and the twelve hundred francs a year which she possesses besides the ample emoluments of her place. Young Cabirolle is Monsieur de Portenduere’s coachman.
If you happen to see in the Champs-Elysees one of those charming little low carriages called ‘escargots,’ lined with gray silk and trimmed with blue, and containing a pretty young woman whom you admire because her face is wreathed in innumerable fair curls, her eyes luminous as forget-me-nots and filled with love; if you see her bending slightly towards a fine young man, and, if you are, for a moment, conscious of envy – pause and reflect that this handsome couple, beloved of God, have paid their quota to the sorrows of life in times now past. These married lovers are the Vicomte de Portenduere and his wife. There is not another such home in Paris as theirs.
“It is the sweetest happiness I have ever seen,” said the Comtesse de l’Estorade, speaking of them lately.
Bless them, therefore, and be not envious; seek an Ursula for yourselves, a young girl brought up by three old men, and by the best of all mothers – adversity.
Goupil, who does service to everybody and is justly considered the wittiest man in Nemours, has won the esteem of the little town, but he is punished in his children, who are rickety and hydrocephalous. Dionis, his predecessor, flourishes in the Chamber of Deputies, of which he is one of the finest ornaments, to the great satisfaction of the king of the French, who sees Madame Dionis at all his balls. Madame Dionis relates to the whole town of Nemours the particulars of her receptions at the Tuileries and the splendor of the court of the king of the French. She lords it over Nemours by means of the throne, which therefore must be popular in the little town.
Bongrand is chief-justice of the court of appeals at Melun. His son is in the way of becoming an honest attorney-general.
Madame Cremiere continues to make her delightful speeches. On the occasion of her daughter’s marriage, she exhorted her to be the working caterpillar of the household, and to look into everything with the eyes of a sphinx. Goupil is making a collection of her “slapsus-linquies,” which he calls a Cremiereana.
“We have had the great sorrow of losing our good Abbe Chaperon,” said the Vicomtesse de Portenduere this winter – having nursed him herself during his illness. “The whole canton came to his funeral. Nemours is very fortunate, however, for the successor of that dear saint is the venerable cure of Saint-Lange.”
ADDENDUM
The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy
Bouvard, Doctor
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
Dionis
The Member for Arcis
Estorade, Madame de l’
Letters of Two Brides
The Member for Arcis
Kergarouet, Comte de
The Purse
The Ball at Sceaux
Lupeaulx, Clement Chardin des
The Muse of the Department
Eugenie Grandet
A Bachelor’s Establishment
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
The Government Clerks
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
Marsay, Henri de
The Thirteen
The Unconscious Humorists
Another Study of Woman
The Lily of the Valley
Father Goriot
Jealousies of a Country Twon
A Marriage Settlement
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Letters of Two Brides
The Ball at Sceaux
Modeste Mignon
The Secrets of a Princess
The Gondreville Mystery
A Daughter of Eve
Mirouet, Ursule (see Portenduere, Vicomtesse Savinien de)
Nathan, Madame Raoul
The Muse of the Department
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
The Government Clerks
A Bachelor’s Establishment
Eugenie Grandet
The Imaginary Mistress
A Prince of Bohemia
A Daughter of Eve
The Unconscious Humorists
Portenduere, Vicomte Savinien de
The Ball at Sceaux
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
Beatrix
Portenduere, Vicomtesse Savinien de
Another Study of Woman
Beatrix
Ronquerolles, Marquis de
The Imaginary Mistress
The Peasantry
A Woman of Thirty
Another Study of Woman
The Thirteen
The Member for Arcis
Rouvre, Marquis du
The Imaginary Mistress
A Start in Life
Rouvre, Chevalier du
The Imaginary Mistress
Rubempre, Lucien-Chardon de
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
The Government Clerks
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
Schmucke, Wilhelm
A Daughter of Eve
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
Cousin Pons
Serizy, Comtesse de
A Start in Life
The Thirteen
A Woman of Thirty
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
Another Study of Woman
The Imaginary Mistress
Trailles, Comte Maxime de
Cesar Birotteau
Father Goriot
Gobseck
A Man of Business
The Member for Arcis
The Secrets of a Princess
Cousin Betty
Beatrix
The Unconscious Humorists
Vandenesse, Marquise Charles de
Cesar Birotteau
The Ball at Sceaux
A Daughter of Eve