Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/134

 “Well then, repeat me your last prayer.”

The young girl hoped that her voice might communicate her faith to the unbeliever; she left her place, knelt down, joined her hands fervently, a radiant light illumined her face, she looked at the old man and said:

“What I asked of God yesterday, I asked this morning, and I will ask for it until it is granted me.”

Then she repeated her prayer with renewed and more powerful expression; but, to her great astonishment, her godfather interrupted her by finishing the prayer.

“All right, Ursule,” said the doctor, taking his godchild on his knee again. “When you went to sleep with your head on the pillow, did you not say to yourself, ‘That dear godfather! who will play backgammon with him in Paris?’”

Ursule sprang up as if the trump of the Judgment Day had sounded in her ears; she gave a cry of terror; her dilated eyes gazed at the old man with horrible fixity.

“Who are you, godfather? From whom do you get such a power?” she asked, supposing that, not to believe in God, he must have made a compact with the angel of darkness.

“What did you sow in your garden yesterday?”

“Mignonette, sweet peas and balsam.”

“And lastly some larkspur?”

She fell on her knees.

“Do not frighten me, godfather; but you were here, were you not?”