e gave it, terror filled
their hearts.

"I saw my godfather standing in the doorway," she said, "and he signed
to me that there was no hope."

The day after the operation Desire died,--carried off by the fever and
the shock to the system that succeed operations of this nature. Madame
Minoret, whose heart had no other tender feeling than maternity, became
insane after the burial of her son, and was taken by her husband to the
establishment of Doctor Blanche, where she died in 1841.

Three months after these events, in January, 1837, Ursula married
Savinien with Madame de Portenduere's consent. Minoret took part in the
marriage contract and insisted on giving Mademoiselle Mirouet his estate
at Rouvre and an income of twenty-four thousand francs from the Funds;
keeping for himself only his uncle's house and ten thousand francs a
year. He has become the most charitable of men, and the most religious;
he is churchwarden of the parish, and has made himself the providence of
the unfortunate.

"The poor take the place of my son," he said.

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 Portendue