Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/340

 “Dear me! how you enlarge the world! But to hear a corpse speak, to see it walking and acting, is that possible?”

“In Sweden,” replied the Abbé Chaperon, “Swedenborg has clearly proved that he communicated with the dead. However, come into the library and you will read in the life of the famous Duc de Montmorency, who was beheaded at Toulouse, and certainly was not the man to invent idle tales, an adventure that is almost similar to yours and which had happened a hundred years before, at Cardan.”

Ursule and the curé went up to the first story, and the old man picked her out a small edition in 12mo, printed in Paris in 1666, of L’Histoire de Henri de Montmorency, written by a contemporary ecclesiastic who had known the prince.

“Read it,” said the curé, giving her the volume at pages 175 and 176. “Your godfather often read this passage, and look, here still is some of his snuff.”

“And he himself is no more!” said Ursule, taking the book and reading this passage:

“The siege of Privas was remarkable on account of the loss of several persons in command; two major-generals died there, to wit, the Marquis d’Uxelles, from a wound he received in the outworks, and the Marquis de Porte, from a musketshot in the head. The day he was killed he was to have been made Marshal of France. About the time the marquis died, the Duc de Montmorency, who was asleep in his tent, was awakened by a voice resembling that of the marquis, which