"Don't you see, my dear boy, that you are cut out for a sheriff, just as I was to be a post master?
People should keep to their vocation." "Very well, then," said Goupil, falling from the pinnacle of his hopes; "here's a stamped cheque; write me an order for twenty thousand francs; I want the money in hand at once." Minoret had eighteen thousand francs by him at that moment of which his wife knew nothing.

He thought the best way to get rid of Goupil was to sign the draft.

The clerk, seeing the flush of seigniorial fever on the face of the imbecile and colossal Machiavelli, threw him an "au revoir," by way of farewell, accompanied with a glance which would have made any one but an idiotic parvenu, lost in contemplation of the magnificent chateau built in the style in vogue under Louis XIII., tremble in his shoes.
"Are you not going to wait for me ?" he cried, observing that Goupil was going away on foot.
"You'll find me on our path, never fear, papa Minoret," replied Goupil, athirst for vengeance and resolved to know the meaning of the zigzags of Minoret's strange conduct.
Since the day when the last vile calumny had sullied her life Ursula, a prey to one of those inexplicable maladies the seat of which is in the soul, seemed to be rapidly nearing death.

She was deathly pale, speaking only at rare intervals and then in slow and feeble words; everything about her, her glance of gentle indifference, even the expression of her forehead, all revealed the presence of some consuming thought.

She was thinking how the ideal wreath of chastity, with which throughout all ages the Peoples crowned their virgins, had fallen from her brow.
She heard in the void and in the silence the dishonoring words, the malicious comments, the laughter of the little town.