I shall be sixteen in four months.  Perhaps you will admit that we are both too young and too inexperienced to understand the miseries of a life entered upon without other fortune than that I have received from the kindness of the late Monsieur de Jordy.  My godfather desires, moreover, not to marry me until I am twenty.  Who knows what fate may have in store for you in four years, the finest years of your life? do not sacrifice them to a poor girl.

Having thus explained to you, monsieur, the opinions of my dear godfather, who, far from opposing my happiness, seeks to contribute to it in every way, and earnestly desires that his protection, which must soon fail me, may be replaced by a tenderness equal to his own; there remains only to tell you how touched I am by your offer and by the compliments which accompany it.  The prudence which dictates my letter is that of an old man to whom life is well-known; but the gratitude I express is that of a young girl, in whose soul no other sentiment has arisen.

Therefore, monsieur, I can sign myself, in all sincerity,

Your servant,
Ursula Mirouet.

Savinien made no reply.  Was he trying to soften his mother?  Had this letter put an end to his love?  Many such questions, all insoluble, tormented poor Ursula, and, by repercussion, the doctor too, who suffered from every agitation of his darling child.  Ursula went often to her chamber to look at Savinien, whom she usually found sitting pensively before his table with his eyes turned towards her window.  At the end of the week, but no sooner, she received a letter from him; the delay was explained by his increasing love.

  To Mademoiselle Ursula Mirouet: 

Dear Ursula,—­I am a Breton, and when my mind is once made up nothing can change me.  Your godfather, whom may God preserve to us, is right; but does it follow that I am wrong in loving you?  Therefore, all I want to know from you is whether you could love me.  Tell me this, if only by a sign, and then the next four years will be the finest of my life.

A friend of mine has delivered to my great-uncle, Vice-admiral Kergarouet, a letter in which I asked his help to enter the navy.  The kind old man, grieved at my misfortune, replies that even the king’s favor would be thwarted by the rules of the service in case I wanted a certain rank.  Nevertheless, if I study three months at Toulon, the minister of war can send me to sea as master’s mate; then after a cruise against the Algerines, with whom we are now at war, I can go through an examination and become a midshipman.  Moreover, if I distinguish myself in an expedition they are fitting out against Algiers, I shall certainly be made ensign—­but how soon? that no one can tell.  Only, they will make the rules as elastic as possible to have the name of Portenduere again in the navy.