Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/335



*
Although public opinion in the little town had acknowledged Ursule’s perfect innocence, she was recovering but slowly. In a state of bodily prostration which left both soul and spirit free, she became the seat of phenomena, the effects of which were moreover terrible, and of such a nature as to engross science, had science been admitted into any such confidence. Ten days after Madame de Portenduère’s visit, Ursule had a dream which presented the characteristics of a supernatural vision, as much in the moral facts as in the physical circumstances, so to speak. The late Minoret, her godfather, appeared to her and made signs to her to go with him; she dressed herself, followed him out into the night as far as the house in the Rue des Bourgeois, where she found the most trifling things as they had been on the day of her godfather’s death. The old man wore the clothes he had on the day before his death, his face was pale, and his movements made no sound at all; nevertheless, Ursule heard his voice perfectly, although it was feeble and like the repetition of a distant echo. The doctor led his ward into the study in the Chinese pavilion, where he made her raise the marble top of the little piece of Boule furniture, just as she had raised it on the day of his death; but, instead of