“Where do you see that?”
“I see it in her. She will know how to bear suffering; she has inherited that power, for her father and mother suffered much.”
The last words overset the doctor, who was surprised rather than shaken. It is desirable to note that ten or fifteen minutes passed between each of the woman’s statements; during these her attention became more and more self-centered. He could see that she saw! Her brow showed peculiar changes; internal effort was to be seen there; it cleared or was knit by a power whose effects Minoret had never seen but in dying people at the moment when the prophetic spirit is upon them. She not unfrequently made gestures reminding him of Ursule.
“Oh, question her,” said the mysterious master to Minoret. “She will tell you secrets that none but yourself can know.”
“Does Ursule love me?” said Minoret.
“Almost as she loves God,” replied the sleeper, with a smile. “And she is very unhappy about your infidelity. You do not believe in God, as if you could hinder His being! His voice fills the world! And so you are the cause of the poor child’s only distress.—There! she is playing her scales; she wishes to be a better musician than she is, and is vexed with herself. What she thinks is: ‘If I only could sing well, if I had a fine voice, when he was at his mother’s it would be sure to reach his ears!’ ”
Doctor Minoret took out a notebook and wrote out the exact hour.
“Can you tell me what seeds she has sown?”
“Mignonette, sweet peas, balsams—”
“And lastly?”
“Larkspur.”
“Where is my money?”
“At your lawyer’s; but you invest as it comes in without losing a day’s interest.”
“Yes; but where is the money I keep at home for the half-yearly housekeeping?”
“You keep it in a large book bound in red, called The Pandects of Justinian, vol. II, between the two last pages; the book is above the sideboard with glass doors, in the division for folios. There is a whole row of them. The money is in the last volume at the end next the drawing-room.—By the way, vol. iii is placed before vol. ii. But it is not money—it is in—”
“Thousand franc notes?” asked the doctor.
“I cannot see clearly; they are folded up.—No, there are two notes for five hundred francs each.”
“You can see them?”
“Yes.”
“What are they like?”
“One is old, and very yellow; the other is white, and almost new.”
This last part of the interview left Doctor Minoret thunderstruck. He looked at Bouvard in blank amazement; but Bouvard and the Swedenborgian, who were accustomed to the astonishment of sceptics, were conversing in an undertone, without showing any surprise or amazement.
Minoret begged them to allow him to return after dinner. The anti-Mesmerist wanted to think it over, to shake off his extreme terror, so as to test once more this immense power, to submit it to some decisive experiment, and ask some questions which, if answered, could leave no shadow of a doubt.
“Be here by nine o’clock,” said the Unknown. “I shall be at your service.”
Minoret was so violently agitated that he went away without taking leave, followed by Bouvard, who called after him:
“Well? Well?”
“I believe I am mad,” replied Minoret, as they reached the outer door. “If that woman has told the truth about Ursule, as there is no one on earth but Ursule who can know what the sorceress has revealed—you are right. I only wish I had wings to fly to Nemours and verify her statements. But I will hire a post-chaise and start at ten this evening. Oh! I am going crazy!
“What would you think, then, if you had known a man incurable for years made perfectly well in five seconds; if you could see that great magnetizer make a leper sweat profusely; or make a crippled woman walk?”
“Let us dine together, Bouvard, and stay with me till nine o’clock. I want to devise some decisive and irrefutable test.”
“Certainly, old friend,” replied the Mesmerian doctor.
The reconciled enemies went to dine at the Palais Royal. After an eager conversation, which helped Minoret to escape from the turmoil of ideas that racked his brain, Bouvard said to him:
“If you discern in this woman a real power to annihilate space, if you can but convince yourself that she, here, from the Church of the Assumption, can see and hear what is going on at Nemours, you must then admit all other effects of magnetism; they are to a sceptic quite as impossible as these. Ask her, therefore, one single proof that may satisfy you, for you may imagine that we have procured all this information. But we cannot possibly know, for instance, what will happen this evening at nine o’clock in your house, in your ward’s bedroom. Remember or write down exactly what the clairvoyant may tell you, and hasten home. Little Ursule, whom I never saw, is not our accomplice; and if she shall have done or said what you will have written down, bow thy head, proud Infidel!”
The two friends returned to the Swedenborgian’s rooms, and there found the woman, who did not recognize Doctor Minoret. Her eyes gently closed under the hand which the master stretched out to her from afar, and she sank into the attitude in which Minoret had seen her before dinner. When his hand and hers were placed in connection he desired her to tell him all that was happening in his house at Nemours at that moment.
“What is Ursule doing?” he asked.
“She is in her dressing-gown; she has finished putting in her curl-papers; she is kneeling on her prie-Dieu in front of an ivory crucifix fastened on to a panel of red velvet.”
“What is she saying?”
“Her evening prayers; she commends
