Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/129

 after dinner. The anti-Mesmerist wanted to collect himself, to recover his profound terror, to test afresh this immense power, to submit it to decisive experiments, to put it questions whose solution should remove every kind of doubt.

“Be here at nine o’clock to-night,” said the stranger; “I will come back for you.”

Doctor Minoret was in such a violent state, that he left without bowing, followed by Bouvard, who cried out to him at intervals:

“Well? Well?”

“I think I am mad, Bouvard,” replied Minoret on the step of the gateway. “If the woman has told the truth about Ursule, and as Ursule is the only person in the world who knows what this sorceress has revealed to me, you will be right. I wish I had wings to go to Nemours to verify her assertions. But I shall hire a carriage and leave to-night at ten o’clock. Ah! I am losing my head.”

“What would happen to you if, having known an invalid incurable for many years, you saw him cured in five seconds; if you saw this great magnetizer make perspiration pour profusely from a person who had ringworm; if you saw him make a crippled woman walk?”

“Let us dine together, Bouvard, and do not leave me until nine o’clock. I want to try a decisive unimpeachable experiment.”

“Very well, my old friend,” replied the mesmerist doctor.

The two enemies, reconciled, went to dine at the