"What do you think of that?" said the collector to the post master and
the women, who seemed stupefied by the angry address of Bongrand.
"Call _him_ a magistrate!" cried the post master.
Ursula meanwhile was sitting on her little sofa in a half-fainting
condition, her head thrown back, her braids unfastened, while every
now and then her sobs broke forth. Her eyes were dim and their lids
swollen; she was, in fact, in a state of moral and physical
prostration which might have softened the hardest hearts--except those
of the heirs.
"Ah! Monsieur Bongrand, after my happy birthday comes death and
mourning," she said, with the poetry natural to her. "You know, _you_,
what he was. In twenty years he never said an impatient word to me. I
believed he would live a hundred years. He has been my mother," she
cried, "my good, kind mother."
These simple thoughts brought torrents of tears from her eyes,
interrupted by sobs; then she fell back exhausted.
"My child," said the justice of peace, hearing the heirs on the
staircase. "You have a lifetime before you in which to weep, but you
have now only a moment to attend to your interests.
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