Bongrand made a thoughtful inclination of his head; and Goupil left the house to negotiate on the best terms he could for the sheriff’s practice.  The others remained with Ursula and did their best to restore the peace and tranquillity of her mind, already much relieved by Goupil’s confession.

“You see, my child, that God was not against you,” said the abbe.

Minoret came home late from Rouvre.  About nine o’clock he was sitting in the Chinese pagoda digesting his dinner beside his wife, with whom he was making plans for Desire’s future.  Desire had become very sedate since entering the magistracy; he worked hard, and it was not unlikely that he would succeed the present procureur du roi at Fontainebleau, who, they said, was to be advanced to Melun.  His parents felt that they must find him a wife,—­some poor girl belonging to an old and noble family; he would then make his way to the magistracy of Paris.  Perhaps they could get him elected deputy from Fontainebleau, where Zelie was proposing to pass the winter after living at Rouvre for the summer season.  Minoret, inwardly congratulating himself for having managed his affairs so well, no longer thought or cared about Ursula, at the very moment when the drama so heedlessly begun by him was closing down upon him in a terrible manner.

“Monsieur de Portenduere is here and wishes to speak to you,” said Cabirolle.

“Show him in,” answered Zelie.

The twilight shadows prevented Madame Minoret from noticing the sudden pallor of her husband, who shuddered as he heard Savinien’s boots on the floor of the gallery, where the doctor’s library used to be.  A vague presentiment of danger ran through the robber’s veins.  Savinien entered and remaining standing, with his hat on his head, his cane in his hand, and both hands crossed in front of him, motionless before the husband and wife.

“I have come to ascertain, Monsieur and Madame Minoret,” he said, “your reasons for tormenting in an infamous manner a young lady who, as the whole town knows, is to be my wife.  Why have you endeavored to tarnish her honor? why have you wished to kill her? why did you deliver her over to Goupil’s insults?—­Answer!”

“How absurd you are, Monsieur Savinien,” said Zelie, “to come and ask us the meaning of a thing we think inexplicable.  I bother myself as little about Ursula as I do about the year one.  Since Uncle Minoret died I’ve not thought of her more than I do of my first tooth.  I’ve never said one word about her to Goupil, who is, moreover, a queer rogue whom I wouldn’t think of consulting about even a dog.  Why don’t you speak up, Minoret?  Are you going to let monsieur box your ears in that way and accuse you of wickedness that’s beneath you?  As if a man with forty-eight thousand francs a year from landed property, and a castle fit for a prince, would stoop to such things!  Get up, and don’t sit there like a wet rag!”

“I don’t know what monsieur means,” said Minoret in his squeaking voice, the trembling of which was all the more noticeable because the voice was clear.  “What object could I have in persecuting the girl?  I may have said to Goupil how annoyed I was at seeing her in Nemours.  My son Desire fell in love with her, and I didn’t want him to marry her, that’s all.”