"By what means can these singular apparitions take place?" asked Ursula. "What did my godfather think?"
"Your godfather, my dear child, argued my hypothesis. He recognized the possibility of a spiritual world, a world of ideas. If ideas are of man's creation, if they subsist in a life of their own, they must have forms which our external senses cannot grasp, but which are perceptible to our inward senses when brought under certain conditions. Thus your godfather's ideas might so enfold you that you would clothe them with his bodily presence. Then, if Minoret really committed those actions, they too resolve themselves into ideas; for all action is the result of many ideas. Now, if ideas live and move in a spiritual world, your spirit must be able to perceive them if it penetrates that world. These phenomena are not more extraordinary than those of memory; and those of memory are quite as amazing and inexplicable as those of the perfume of plants--which are perhaps the ideas of the plants."
"How you enlarge and magnify the world!" exclaimed Ursula. "But to hear the dead speak, to see them walk, act--do you think it possible?"
"In Sweden," replied the abbe, "Swedenborg has proved by evidence that he communicated with the dead. But come with me into the library and you shall read in the life of the famous Duc de Montmorency, beheaded at Toulouse, and who certainly was not a man to invent foolish tales, an adventure very like yours, which happened a hundred years earlier at Cardan."
Ursula and the abbe went upstairs, and the good man hunted up a little edition in 12mo, printed in Paris in 1666, of the "History of Henri de Montmorency," written by a priest of that period who had known the prince.
"Read it," said the abbe, giving Ursula the volume, which he had opened at the 175th page. "Your godfather often re-read that passage, --and see! here's a little of his snuff in it."
"And he not here!" said Ursula, taking the volume to read the passage.
"The siege of Privat was remarkable for the loss of a great number of officers. Two brigadier-generals died there--namely, the Marquis d'Uxelles, of a wound received at the outposts, and the Marquis de Portes, from a musket-shot through the head. The day the latter was killed he was to have been made a marshal of France. About the moment when the marquis expired the Duc de Montmorency, who was sleeping in his tent, was awakened by a voice like that of the marquis bidding him farewell. The affection he felt for a friend so near made him attribute the illusion of this dream to the force of his own imagination; and owing to the fatigues of the night, which he had spent, according to his custom, in the trenches, he fell asleep once more without any sense of dread. But the same voice disturbed him again, and the phantom obliged him to wake up and listen to the same words it had said as it first passed. The duke then recollected that he had heard the philosopher Pitrat discourse on the possibility of the separation of the soul from the body, and that he and the marquis had agreed that the first who died should bid adieu to the other.
On which, not being able to restrain his fears as to the truth of this warning, he sent a servant to the marquis's quarters, which were distant from him. But before the man could get back, the king sent to inform the duke, by persons fitted to console him, of the great loss he had sustained.
"I leave learned men to discuss the cause of this event, which I have frequently heard the Duc de Montmorency relate: I think that the truth and singularity of the fact itself ought to be recorded and preserved."
"If all this is so," said Ursula, "what ought I do do?"
"My child," said the abbe, "it concerns matters so important, and which may prove so profitable to you, that you ought to keep absolutely silent about it. Now that you have confided to me the secret of these apparitions perhaps they may not return. Besides, you are now strong enough to come to church; well, then, come to-morrow and thank God and pray to him for the repose of your godfather's soul.
Feel quite sure that you have entrusted your secret to prudent hands."
"If you knew how afraid I am to go to sleep,--what glances my godfather gives me! The last time he caught hold of my dress--I awoke with my face all covered with tears."
"Be at peace; he will not come again," said the priest.
Without losing a moment the Abbe Chaperon went straight to Minoret and asked for a few moments interview in the Chinese pagoda, requesting that they might be entirely alone.
"Can any one hear us?" he asked.
"No one," replied Minoret.
"Monsieur, my character must be known to you," said the abbe, fastening a gentle but attentive look on Minoret's face. "I have to speak to you of serious and extraordinary matters, which concern you, and about which you may be sure that I shall keep the profoundest secrecy; but it is impossible for me to do otherwise than give you this information. While your uncle lived, there stood there," said the priest, pointing to a certain spot in the room, "a small buffet made by Boule, with a marble top" (Minoret turned livid), "and beneath the marble your uncle placed a letter for Ursula--" The abbe then went on to relate, without omitting the smallest circumstance, Minoret's conduct to Minoret himself. When the last post master heard the detail of the two matches refusing to light he felt his hair begin to writhe on his skull.
"Who invented such nonsense?" he said, in a strangled voice, when the tale ended.
"The dead man himself."
This answer made Minoret tremble, for he himself had dreamed of the doctor.
"God is very good, Monsieur l'abbe, to do miracles for me," he said, danger inspiring him to make the sole jest of his life.
"All that God does is natural," replied the priest.
"Your phantoms don't frighten me," said the colossus, recovering his coolness.
"I did not come to frighten you, for I shall never speak of this to any one in the world," said the abbe. "You alone know the truth. The matter is between you and God."
