“He who loves you, and whose wife you will be.”
Curiously enough, at the very moment that the gentle victim of this plot was drooping like a cut flower, Mesdemoiselles Massin, Dionis, and Cremiere were envying her lot.
“She is a lucky girl,” they were saying; “people talk of her, and court her, and quarrel about her. The serenade was charming; there was a cornet-a-piston.”
“What’s a piston?”
“A new musical instrument, as big as this, see!” replied Angelique Cremiere to Pamela Massin.
Early that morning Savinien had gone to Fontainebleau to endeavor to find out who had engaged the musicians of the regiment then in garrison. But as there were two men to each instrument it was impossible to find out which of them had gone to Nemours. The colonel forbade them to play for any private person in future without his permission. Savinien had an interview with the procureur du roi, Ursula’s legal guardian, and explained to him the injury these scenes would do to a young girl naturally so delicate and sensitive, begging him to take some action to discover the author of such wrong.
Three nights later three violins, a flute, a guitar, and a hautboy began another serenade. This time the musicians fled towards Montargis, where there happened then to be a company of comic actors. A loud and ringing voice called out as they left: “To the daughter of the regimental bandsman Mirouet.” By this means all Nemours came to know the profession of Ursula’s father, a secret the old doctor had sedulously kept.
Savinien did not go to Montargis. He received in the course of the day an anonymous letter containing a prophecy:—
“You will never marry Ursula. If you wish her to live, give her up
at once to a man who loves her more than you love her. He has made
himself a musician and an artist to please her, and he would
rather see her dead than let her be your wife.”
The doctor came to Ursula three times in the course of that day, for she was really in danger of death from the horror of this mysterious persecution. Feeling that some infernal hand had plunged her into the mire, the poor girl lay like a martyr; she said nothing, but lifted her eyes to heaven, and wept no more; she seemed awaiting other blows, and prayed fervently.