“The proverb, ‘Money is all-powerful,’ is very false!” said the huge, burly Minoret, looking at the Justice, whose observant eyes disturbed him greatly.
He rose and went away; but he found the air outside as oppressive as that in the little sitting-room.
“I must somehow put an end to this!” said he to himself as he got home.
“Now, your dividend warrant, my child,” said the Justice, a good deal surprised at Ursule’s calmness after so strange a scene.
When she returned with her own warrant and La Bougival’s, Ursule found the Justice walking up and down the room.
“You have no idea what could have led to that huge lout’s offer?” he asked her.
“None that I can tell you,” she replied.
Monsieur Bongrand looked at her in surprise.
“Then we both have the same notion,” he said. “Here, make a note of the numbers of the two warrants, in case I should lose them; that is always a necessary precaution.”
Bongrand himself noted on a card the numbers of the warrants.
“Goodbye, my child; I shall be away two days, but I shall be back on the third for my sitting.”
That night Ursule had a vision of a very strange character. It seemed to her that her bed was in the graveyard of Nemours, and that her uncle’s grave was at the foot of the bed. The white stone on which she read the epitaph dazzled her eyes, and opened endways like the front cover of an album. She shrieked loudly, but the figure of the doctor slowly sat up. She saw first his yellow head and white hair, that shone as if surrounded by a halo. Under his bald forehead his eyes glittered like beams of light, and he rose as if drawn up by some superior force. Ursule trembled horribly in her bodily frame; her flesh felt like a burning garment; and, as she subsequently described it, there seemed to be another self moving within it.
“Mercy!” she cried, “godfather!”
“Mercy?—It is too late,” he answered in the voice of the dead, to use the poor girl’s inexplicable expression when she related this fresh dream to the Abbé Chaperon. “He has been warned. He has paid no heed to the warning. His son’s days are numbered. If he does not, ere long, confess all and make full restitution, he will mourn his son, who is to perish by a horrible and violent death. Tell him this!” The spectre pointed to a row of figures, which flashed on the wall as if they had been written with fire, and said: “That is his sentence!”
When her uncle had lain down in the grave again, Ursule heard the noise of the stone falling into place, and then, far away, a strange noise of horses, and men shouting.
Next day Ursule was prostrate. She could not get up, this dream had so overwrought her. She begged her old nurse to go at once to the Abbé Chaperon and bring him back with her. The good man came as soon as he had performed mass; but he was not at all astonished by Ursule’s dream. He was convinced of the fact of the robbery, and no longer sought any explanation of the abnormal state of his “little dreamer.” He left Ursule, and went straight to Minoret.
“Dear me, Monsieur le Curé,” said Zélie, “my husband’s temper is so spoilt, I don’t know what is the matter with him. Until lately, he was a perfect child; but these two months past I hardly know him. That he should have got into such a rage as to strike me—me, when I am so gentle! The man must be completely and utterly altered. You will find him among the rocks; he spends his life there. What does he do there?”
In spite of the heat—it was September 1836—the priest crossed the canal, and turned up a pathway, where he saw Minoret sitting under a boulder.
“You are in some great trouble, Monsieur Minoret,” said the priest, appearing before the guilty man. “You belong to me, you know, for you are unhappy. Unfortunately, I have come to add, perhaps, to your apprehensions. Ursule has just had a terrible dream. Your uncle lifted up his gravestone to prophesy misfortune to your family. I have not come to frighten you, believe me, but you ought to be told what he said—”
“Really, Monsieur le Curé, I cannot be left in peace anywhere, not even in this wilderness. I want to know nothing of what goes on in the next world.”
“I will leave you, monsieur. I have not taken this walk in the heat for my own pleasure,” said the priest, wiping his brow.
“Well, then, what was it the old fellow said?” asked Minoret.
“You are threatened with the loss of your son. If your uncle could tell things which you alone knew, you must tremble at the things which we none of us know. Restitution, my dear sir, restitution! Do not lose your soul for a little gold.”
“Restitution of what?”
“Of the fortune the doctor intended for Ursule. You stole the three certificates; I now know it. You began by persecuting the poor girl, and you now end by offering her a dowry; you have fallen so low as lying; you are entangled in its mazes, and make a false step at every turn. You are yourself clumsy, and you have been badly served by your accomplice Goupil, who only laughs at you. Make haste, for you are being watched by clever and clear-sighted persons, Ursule’s friends. Restitution! And even if you do not save your son, who may not be in any danger, you will save your
