Honoré de Balzac

Name: Ursule Mirouët — Part I, Section 4
Author: Honoré de Balzac

Ursule Mirouët — Part I, Section 4 (1842)

Summary

“Ursule Mirouët — Part I, Section 4”, published in 1842, is a work by Honoré de Balzac. It explores elements such as Joseph Mirouët, Ursule and doctor.

Quotes from Ursule Mirouët — Part I, Section 4 (Honoré de Balzac)

Honoré de Balzac, Ursule Mirouët — Part I, Section 4 (1842)

“ When she tried to speak, or when she fixed her beautiful soft blue eyes on all objects, with that reflective look which seems to be the dawning of thought and which she ended in a laugh, he would remain beside her for hours together, seeking, with Jordy, the reasons, which so many other people call caprices, hidden under the slightest phenomena of this delicious phase of life when the child is at once blossom and fruit, a confused intelligence, a perpetual movement, and a passionate longing. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Honoré de Balzac, Ursule Mirouët — Part I, Section 4 (1842)

“ Ursule’s beauty and gentleness endeared her so much to the doctor, that he would have liked to change all the laws of Nature for her; he sometimes told old Jordy that his teeth ached when Ursule was cutting hers. When old men love children, they place no bounds upon their passion, but adore them. For the sake of these little beings, they suppress their hobbies, and for them call to mind their own past. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Honoré de Balzac, Ursule Mirouët — Part I, Section 4 (1842)

“ In short, with them as with children, life is reduced to simplicity; and if sentiment makes a slave of the mother, the detachment of all passion and the absence of all self-interest permits an old man to give himself up entirely. It is also no uncommon thing to see children on good terms with old people. The old soldier, the old curé and the old doctor, happy in Ursule’s caresses and coquetries, never tired of answering her or playing with her. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Honoré de Balzac, Ursule Mirouët — Part I, Section 4 (1842)

“ After having seen all his children perish successively through miscarriages, in painful confinements or during their first year, the doctor had awaited the result of the last experience. When a sickly, nervous, delicate woman begins with a miscarriage, it is no uncommon thing to see her behaving during pregnancy and in her confinements as Ursule Minoret did, in spite of her husband’s care, attentions and science. The poor man often reproached himself for their mutual persistence in wishing for children. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Honoré de Balzac, Ursule Mirouët — Part I, Section 4 (1842)

“ Their experience, indulgence and patience, all the acquisitions of life, so painfully hoarded a treasure, they give up to the young life through which they grow young again, and so supply the place of maternity by intelligence. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Honoré de Balzac, Ursule Mirouët — Part I, Section 4 (1842)

“ These principles, more than any others made for mankind, become a woman, the genius and conscience of the family, the secret refinement of domestic life, in fact, almost a queen in the bosom of the household. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Honoré de Balzac, Ursule Mirouët — Part I, Section 4 (1842)

“ Their ever-watchful wisdom is as good as the mother’s intuition; they recollect the niceties which with her are divination, and they show them in the exercise of a compassion whose strength doubtless develops in proportion to this great tenderness. The slowness of their movements supplies the place of the maternal gentleness. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Honoré de Balzac, Ursule Mirouët — Part I, Section 4 (1842)

“ He then settled at Hamburg, where he married the daughter of a worthy bourgeois, mad about music, who fell in love with the artist, whose success was always in perspective and to which she wished to devote herself. But, after fifteen years of destitution, Joseph Mirouët could not withstand the intoxication of wealth ”

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Source: Wikisource

Honoré de Balzac, Ursule Mirouët — Part I, Section 4 (1842)

“ In the following year the old captain died, leaving his work to be continued by the doctor and the curé, after having accomplished the most difficult part. Flowers ought to grow of themselves in so well prepared a soil. For nine years the old gentleman had saved up a thousand francs a year, in order to leave ten thousand francs to his little Ursule so that she might keep some souvenir of him all through her life. ”

Honoré de Balzac

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Quotes from Ursule Mirouët — Part I, Section 4 (Honoré de Balzac)

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