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.