“The siege of Privat was remarkable for the loss of a great number of officers.  Two brigadier-generals died there—­namely, the Marquis d’Uxelles, of a wound received at the outposts, and the Marquis de Portes, from a musket-shot through the head.  The day the latter was killed he was to have been made a marshal of France.  About the moment when the marquis expired the Duc de Montmorency, who was sleeping in his tent, was awakened by a voice like that of the marquis bidding him farewell.  The affection he felt for a friend so near made him attribute the illusion of this dream to the force of his own imagination; and owing to the fatigues of the night, which he had spent, according to his custom, in the trenches, he fell asleep once more without any sense of dread.  But the same voice disturbed him again, and the phantom obliged him to wake up and listen to the same words it had said as it first passed.  The duke then recollected that he had heard the philosopher Pitrat discourse on the possibility of the separation of the soul from the body, and that he and the marquis had agreed that the first who died should bid adieu to the other.  On which, not being able to restrain his fears as to the truth of this warning, he sent a servant to the marquis’s quarters, which were distant from him.  But before the man could get back, the king sent to inform the duke, by persons fitted to console him, of the great loss he had sustained.

“I leave learned men to discuss the cause of this event, which I have frequently heard the Duc de Montmorency relate:  I think that the truth and singularity of the fact itself ought to be recorded and preserved.”

“If all this is so,” said Ursula, “what ought I do do?”

“My child,” said the abbe, “it concerns matters so important, and which may prove so profitable to you, that you ought to keep absolutely silent about it.  Now that you have confided to me the secret of these apparitions perhaps they may not return.  Besides, you are now strong enough to come to church; well, then, come to-morrow and thank God and pray to him for the repose of your godfather’s soul.  Feel quite sure that you have entrusted your secret to prudent hands.”

“If you knew how afraid I am to go to sleep,—­what glances my godfather gives me!  The last time he caught hold of my dress—­I awoke with my face all covered with tears.”

“Be at peace; he will not come again,” said the priest.

Without losing a moment the Abbe Chaperon went straight to Minoret and asked for a few moments interview in the Chinese pagoda, requesting that they might be entirely alone.

“Can any one hear us?” he asked.

“No one,” replied Minoret.