Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/354

 The spirit pointed to a row of figures sparkling on the wall as if they had been written in fire, and said:

“There is his sentence!”

When her uncle had again lain down in his tomb, Ursule heard the sound of the falling stone, then in the distance a strange noise of horses and a man’s cries.

The next day, Ursule found herself exhausted. She could not get up, so much was she oppressed by this dream. She begged her nurse to go at once to the Abbé Chaperon’s and bring him back with her. The old man came after having said mass; but he was not at all astonished at Ursule’s story; he believed the robbery to be true and no longer sought any explanation of the anomalous life of his dear little dreamer. He left Ursule at once, and hurried to Minoret’s.

“Mon Dieu! Monsieur le Curé,” said Zélie to the priest, “my husband’s temper is soured, I don’t know what is the matter with him. Hitherto he has been like a child; but, for the last two months, he is no longer the same. To have flown into such a passion as to strike me, I, who am so gentle! the man must be entirely changed. You will find him among the rocks, he spends all his days there! What does he do?”

In spite of the heat—it was then September 1836—the priest crossed the canal and struck into a pathway, seeing Minoret at the foot of one of the rocks.

“You are very much worried, Monsieur Minoret,”