Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/130

 Palais-Royal. After an animated conversation which helped Minoret to divert the fever of ideas that was ravaging his brain, Bouvard said to him:

“If you acknowledge that this woman has the faculty of reducing or of traversing space, if you admit the certainty that, from the Assumption, she hears and sees all that is being said and done at Nemours, then you must admit all the other magnetic effects, which to an unbeliever are as incredible as these are. So ask her for one proof only that shall satisfy you, for you may think that we procured all this information; but we could not know, for instance, what will take place at nine o’clock, in your house, in your ward’s room; remember or write down what the somnambulist will see or hear, and then hurry home. This little Ursule, whom I do not know at all, is not our accomplice; and, if she has said or done what you have written, then bow your head, proud Sicambrus!”

The two friends returned to the room, and there found the somnambulist, who did not recognize Doctor Minoret. This woman’s eyes gently closed under the hand which the Swedenborgian stretched over her at intervals, and she resumed the attitude in which Minoret had seen her before dinner. When the woman’s hand and the doctor’s had been placed in communication, he begged her to tell him all that was passing at his house in Nemours at that moment.

“What is Ursule doing?” he said.

“She is undressed, she has finished putting on