To show offence or to complain of Madame de Portenduere's manners was a rock on which a man of small mind might have struck, but Minoret was too accomplished in the ways of the world not to avoid it.

He began to talk to the viscount of the danger Charles X.was then running by confiding the affairs of the nation to the Prince de Polignac.

When sufficient time had been spent on the subject to avoid all appearance of revenging himself by so doing, he handed the old lady, in an easy, jesting way, a packet of legal papers and receipted bills, together with the account of his notary.
"Has my son verified them ?" she said, giving Savinien a look, to which he replied by bending his head.

"Well, then the rest is my notary's business," she added, pushing away the papers and treating the affair with the disdain she wished to show for money.
To abase wealth was, according to Madame de Portenduere's ideas, to elevate the nobility and rob the bourgeoisie of their importance.
A few moments later Goupil came from his employer, Dionis, to ask for the accounts of the transaction between the doctor and Savinien.
"Why do you want them ?" said the old lady.
"To put the matter in legal form; there have been no cash payments." Ursula and Savinien, who both for the first time exchanged a glance with offensive personage, were conscious of a sensation like that of touching a toad, aggravated by a dark presentiment of evil.

They both had the same indefinable and confused vision into the future, which has no name in any language, but which is capable of explanation as the action of the inward being of which the mysterious Swedenborgian had spoken to Doctor Minoret.