“Haste in such matters always means the loss of at least fifteen per cent,” said the notary.  “Besides, you can’t get your money under seven or eight days.”

When Ursula heard that Savinien would have to say at least a week longer in jail she begged her godfather to let her go there, if only once.  Old Minoret refused.  The uncle and niece were staying at a hotel in the Rue Croix des Petits-Champs where the doctor had taken a very suitable apartment.  Knowing the scrupulous honor and propriety of his goddaughter he made her promise not to go out while he was away; at other times he took her to see the arcades, the shops, the boulevards; but nothing seemed to amuse or interest her.

“What do you want to do?” asked the old man.

“See Saint-Pelagie,” she answered obstinately.

Minoret called a hackney-coach and took her to the Rue de la Clef, where the carriage drew up before the shabby front of an old convent then transformed into a prison.  The sight of those high gray walls, with every window barred, of the wicket through which none can enter without stooping (horrible lesson!), of the whole gloomy structure in a quarter full of wretchedness, where it rises amid squalid streets like a supreme misery,—­this assemblage of dismal things so oppressed Ursula’s heart that she burst into tears.

“Oh!” she said, “to imprison young men in this dreadful place for money!  How can a debt to a money-lender have a power the king has not? He there!” she cried.  “Where, godfather?” she added, looking from window to window.

“Ursula,” said the old man, “you are making me commit great follies.  This is not forgetting him as you promised.”

“But,” she argued, “if I must renounce him must I also cease to feel an interest in him?  I can love him and not marry at all.”

“Ah!” cried the doctor, “there is so much reason in your unreasonableness that I am sorry I brought you.”

Three days later the worthy man had all the receipts signed, and the legal papers ready for Savinien’s release.  The payings, including the notaries’ fees, amounted to eighty thousand francs.  The doctor went himself to see Savinien released on Saturday at two o’clock.  The young viscount, already informed of what had happened by his mother, thanked his liberator with sincere warmth of heart.

“You must return at once to see your mother,” the old doctor said to him.

Savinien answered in a sort of confusion that he had contracted certain debts of honor while in prison, and related the visit of his friends.

“I suspected there was some personal debt,” cried the doctor, smiling.  “Your mother borrowed a hundred thousand francs of me, but I have paid out only eighty thousand.  Here is the rest; be careful how you spend it, monsieur; consider what you have left of it as your stake on the green cloth of fortune.”