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       Honoré de Balzac

      Ursula

      Published by Good Press, 2019

       [email protected]

      EAN 4057664630407

       URSULA

       CHAPTER I. THE FRIGHTENED HEIRS

       CHAPTER II. THE RICH UNCLE

       CHAPTER III. THE DOCTOR’S FRIENDS

       CHAPTER IV. ZELIE

       CHAPTER V. URSULA

       CHAPTER VI. A TREATISE ON MESMERISM

       CHAPTER VII. A TWO-FOLD CONVERSION

       CHAPTER VIII. THE CONFERENCE

       CHAPTER IX. A FIRST CONFIDENCE

       CHAPTER X. THE FAMILY OF PORTENDUERE

       CHAPTER XI. SAVINIEN SAVED

       CHAPTER XII. OBSTACLES TO YOUNG LOVE

       CHAPTER XIII. BETROTHAL OF HEARTS

       CHAPTER XIV. URSULA AGAIN ORPHANED

       CHAPTER XV. THE DOCTOR’S WILL

       CHAPTER XVI. THE TWO ADVERSARIES

       CHAPTER XVII. THE MALIGNITY OF PROVINCIAL MINDS

       CHAPTER XVIII. A TWO-FOLD VENGEANCE

       CHAPTER XIX. APPARITIONS

       CHAPTER XX. REMORSE

       CHAPTER XXI. SHOWING HOW DIFFICULT IT IS TO STEAL THAT WHICH SEEMS VERY EASILY STOLEN

       ADDENDUM

       The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

      DEDICATION

       Table of Contents

      To Mademoiselle Sophie Surville,

       It is a true pleasure, my dear niece, to dedicate to you this

       book, the subject and details of which have won the

       approbation, so difficult to win, of a young girl to whom the

       world is still unknown, and who has compromised with none of

       the lofty principles of a saintly education. Young girls are

       indeed a formidable public, for they ought not to be allowed

       to read books less pure than the purity of their souls; they

       are forbidden certain reading, just as they are carefully

       prevented from seeing social life as it is. Must it not

       therefore be a source of pride to a writer to find that he has

       pleased you?

       God grant that your affection for me has not misled you. Who can tell?

      —the future; which you, I hope, will see, though not, perhaps.

       Your uncle,

       De Balzac.

       Table of Contents

       Table of Contents

      Entering Nemours by the road to Paris, we cross the canal du Loing, the steep banks of which serve the double purpose of ramparts to the fields and of picturesque promenades for the inhabitants of that pretty little town. Since 1830 several houses had unfortunately been built on the farther side of the bridge. If this sort of suburb increases, the place will lose its present aspect of graceful originality.

      In 1829, however, both sides of the road were clear, and the master of the post route, a tall, stout man about sixty years of age, sitting one fine autumn morning at the highest part of the bridge, could take in at a glance the whole of what is called in his business a “ruban de queue.” The month of September was displaying its treasures; the atmosphere glowed above the grass and the pebbles; no cloud dimmed the blue of the sky, the purity of which in all parts, even close to the horizon, showed the extreme rarefaction of the air. So Minoret-Levrault (for that was the post master’s name) was obliged to shade his eyes with one hand to keep them from being dazzled. With the air of a man who was tired of waiting, he looked first to the charming meadows which lay to the right of the road where the aftermath was springing up, then to the hill-slopes covered with copses which extend, on the left, from Nemours to Bouron. He could hear in the valley of the Loing, where the sounds on the road were echoed back from the hills, the trot of his own horses and the crack of his postilion’s whip.

      None but a post master could feel impatient within sight of such meadows, filled with cattle worthy of Paul Potter and glowing beneath a Raffaelle sky, and beside a canal shaded with trees after Hobbema. Whoever knows Nemours knows that nature is there as beautiful as art, whose mission is to spiritualize it; there, the landscape has ideas and creates thought. But, on catching sight of Minoret-Levrault an artist would very likely have left the view to sketch the man, so original was he in his native commonness. Unite in a human being all the conditions of

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