The walls of Nemours were cleared of the inscription;
but the quarrel between Minoret and his wife went
on; and Savinien maintained a threatening silence.
Ten days after these events the marriage of Mademoiselle
Massin, the elder, to the future notary was bruited
about the town. Mademoiselle Massin had a dowry
of eighty thousand francs and her own peculiar ugliness;
Goupil had his deformities and his practice; the union
therefore seemed suitable and probable. One evening,
towards midnight, two unknown men seized Goupil in
the street as he was leaving Massin’s house,
gave him a sound beating, and disappeared. The
notary kept the matter a profound secret, and even
contradicted an old woman who saw the scene from her
window and thought that she recognized him.
These great little events were carefully studied by
Bongrand, who became convinced that Goupil held some
mysterious power over Minoret, and he determined to
find out its cause.
APPARITIONS
Though the public opinion of the little town recognized
Ursula’s perfect innocence, she recovered slowly.
While in a state of bodily exhaustion, which left
her mind and spirit free, she became the medium of
phenomena the effects of which were astounding, and
of a nature to challenge science, if science had been
brought into contact with them.
Ten days after Madame de Portenduere’s visit
Ursula had a dream, with all the characteristics of
a supernatural vision, as much in its moral aspects
as in the, so to speak, physical circumstances.
Her godfather appeared to her and made a sign that
she should come with him. She dressed herself
and followed him through the darkness to their former
house in the Rue des Bourgeois, where she found everything
precisely as it was on the day of her godfather’s
death. The old man wore the clothes that were
on him the evening before his death. His face
was pale, his movements caused no sound; nevertheless,
Ursula heard his voice distinctly, though it was feeble
and as if repeated by a distant echo. The doctor
conducted his child as far as the Chinese pagoda,
where he made her lift the marble top of the little
Boule cabinet just as she had raised it on the day
of his death; but instead of finding nothing there
she saw the letter her godfather had told her to fetch.
She opened it and read both the letter addressed to
herself and the will in favor of Savinien. The
writing, as she afterwards told the abbe, shone as
if traced by sunbeams—“it burned my
eyes,” she said. When she looked at her
uncle to thank him she saw the old benevolent smile
upon his discolored lips. Then, in a feeble voice,
but still clearly, he told her to look at Minoret,
who was listening in the corridor to what he said
to her; and next, slipping the lock of the library
door with his knife, and taking the papers from the
study. With his right hand the old man seized
his goddaughter and obliged her to walk at the pace
of death and follow Minoret to his own house.
Ursula crossed the town, entered the post house and
went into Zelie’s old room, where the spectre
showed her Minoret unfolding the letters, reading
them and burning them.
