“If ever I have them in my power … I’ll bleed them white.”
The novel Ursule Mirouet is set in nineteenth century France and is the story of an illegitimate, penniless orphan. Ursule is the goddaughter of the kindly, elderly Dr. Minoret. While Dr. Minoret has no immediate family, he does have a number of distant relatives in the small town of Nemours. Dr. Minoret retires to Nemours taking Ursule with him. Here they live a frugal, quiet life, and the Dr. saves as much money as he can, hoping to give Ursule a generous dowry that will ensure a decent match into the privileged class.
Dr. Minoret’s relatives, however, have different plans. In the twenty years Minoret lives in Nemours, three separate groups of relations gather like “birds of prey” calculating their inheritance. The Postmaster Minoret-Levrault and his rapacious wife, Zelie desire the Doctor’s fortune for their ne’er do well son, Desire. Cousin Massin and his wife, and the Cremieres also believe they are entitled to a share. These three families loiter around Minoret speculating about his health, and even hold secret meetings to plot their strategy. Everything Dr. Minoret does is reported and analyzed by his relatives who greedily hover around waiting for him to die. The families obsess about the inheritance, and the more they think about it, the more self-righteous they become in declaring the fortune as rightfully theirs.
Dr. Minoret leaves a secret will. This exposes Ursule to the greed and cruelty of her relatives who waste no time in carving up the estate and throwing her out of her former home.
Balzac wrote Ursule Mirouet during his later period, and this means it is not considered his best work. The first rambling chapters distract from the story, and Ursule makes a poor heroine. She’s angelic, kind and sweet, but also horribly uninteresting. Balzac is at his best dissecting the nastiness of human behaviour, and his examination of human greed is the element that thrusts this novel from the problematic to the sublime. The relatives–all ‘respectable’ citizens–are nothing more than brigands when it comes to securing Minoret’s fortune. Once Minoret-Levrault crosses the first moral boundary, and commits himself against Ursule, he becomes committed to her destruction, and “the first wound cries out for the death blow.” The notary office clerk, Goupil “with his instinct for evil” is a malevolent character hovering between the families looking for an opportunity for personal advantage. Goupil “enjoyed doing harm,” and he stirs the greed of the relatives while controlling it and expecting to benefit. Balzac lovers will sink into Ursule Mirouet with delight–noting that the novel is a fine example of Balzac’s fascination with the supernatural. If you’re new to Balzac, however, I recommend reading Cousin Bette, or Black Sheep first.
