“No one can hear us?” asked the priest.
“No one,” said Minoret.
“Monsieur, my character is known to you,” said the worthy priest, looking Minoret mildly but steadfastly in the face. “I must speak to you of some serious, extraordinary matters, which concern you alone, and which you may rely on me to keep a profound secret; but it is impossible that I should not reveal them to you.—When your uncle was alive, there stood just there—” said the Abbé, pointing to the spot, “a little chiffonier of Boule with a marble top” (Minoret turned pale), “and under the marble slab your uncle placed a letter for his ward—”
The curé went on to tell Minoret the whole story of Minoret’s conduct, without omitting the smallest detail. The retired postmaster, when he heard of the circumstance of the two matches which went out before burning up, felt his hair creep on his thickset scalp.
“Who has invented such a cock-and-bull story?” he said in a husky voice, when the tale was finished.
“The dead man himself!”
This reply made Minoret shiver slightly, for he too saw the doctor in his dreams.
“God is most good to work miracles for me, Monsieur le Curé,” said Minoret, inspired by his peril to utter the only jest he ever perpetrated in his life.
“All that God does is natural,” replied the priest.
“Your phantasmagoria does not frighten me,” said the colossus, recovering his presence of mind a little.
“I have not come to frighten you, my dear sir, for I shall never speak of this to any living creature,” said the curé. “You alone know the truth. It is a matter between you and God.”
“Come, now, Monsieur le Curé, do you believe me capable of such a breach of faith?”
“I believe in no crimes but those which are confessed to me, and of which the sinner repents,” said the priest in apostolic tones.
“A crime?” exclaimed Minoret.
“A crime, terrible in its results.”
“In what way?”
“In the fact that it evades human justice. The crimes which are not expiated here will be expiated in the other world. God Himself avenges the innocent.”
“You think that God troubles Himself about such trifles?”
“If He could not see all the worlds and every detail at a glance, as you hold a landscape in your eye, He would not be God.”
“Monsieur le Curé, do you give me your word of honor that you have heard all this story from no one but my uncle?”
“Your uncle has appeared three times to Ursule, to reiterate it. Worn out by these dreams, she confided these revelations to me, under the seal of secrecy; she herself regards them as so entirely irrational that she will never allude to them. So on that point you may be quite easy.”
“But I am quite easy on all points, Monsieur Chaperon.”
“I can but hope so,” said the old priest. “Even if I should regard such warnings given in dreams as utterly absurd, I should still think it necessary to communicate them to you on account of the singularity of the details. You are a respectable man; and you have earned your fine fortune too legitimately to wish to add to it by robbery. You are, too, a very simple man; remorse would torture you too cruelly. We have in ourselves an instinct of justice, in the civilized man as in the savage, which does not allow of our enjoying in peace anything we have acquired dishonestly according to the laws of the society we live in; for well-organized communities are modeled on the plan given to the universe by God Himself. In so far, society has a divine origin. Man does not evolve ideas, does not invent forms; he imitates the eternal relations he finds in all that surrounds him. Consequently, this is what happens: no criminal going to the scaffold with the full power of carrying out of the world the secret of his crimes, allows himself to be executed without making the confession to which he is urged by a mysterious impulse.—So, my dear Monsieur Minoret, if you are easy I may go away happy.”
Minoret was so dazed that he left the curé to let himself out. As soon as he was alone he flew into the rage of a full-blooded nature; he broke out in the wildest blasphemies, and called Ursule by every odious name.
“Why, what has she done to you?” asked his wife, who had come in on tiptoe after seeing the curé depart.
For the first and only time in his life, Minoret, drunk with fury and driven to extremities by his wife’s persistent questioning, beat her so soundly that when she fell helpless he was obliged to lift her in his arms, and, very much ashamed of himself, to put her to bed.
He himself had a short fit of illness; the doctor was obliged to bleed him twice. When he was about again, everyone, within a short time, noticed that he was altered. Minoret would take walks alone, and often wander about the streets like a man uneasy in his mind. He seemed absentminded when spoken to—he, who had never had two ideas in his head. At last, one day, he addressed the Justice, in the High Street, as he was going, no doubt, to fetch Ursule to take her to Madame de Portenduère’s, where the whist parties had begun again.
“Monsieur Bongrand, I have something rather important to say to my cousin Ursule,” said he, taking the Justice by the arm, “and I am glad that you should be present; you may give her some advice.”
They found Ursule at the piano; she rose with an air of cold dignity when she saw Minoret.
“Monsieur Minoret wishes to speak with you on business, my dear,” said the Justice. “By the way, do not forget to give me your dividend warrants. I am going to Paris, and I will
