“Monsieur, my character must be known to you,” said the abbe, fastening a gentle but attentive look on Minoret’s face.  “I have to speak to you of serious and extraordinary matters, which concern you, and about which you may be sure that I shall keep the profoundest secrecy; but it is impossible for me to do otherwise than give you this information.  While your uncle lived, there stood there,” said the priest, pointing to a certain spot in the room, “a small buffet made by Boule, with a marble top” (Minoret turned livid), “and beneath the marble your uncle placed a letter for Ursula—­” The abbe then went on to relate, without omitting the smallest circumstance, Minoret’s conduct to Minoret himself.  When the last post master heard the detail of the two matches refusing to light he felt his hair begin to writhe on his skull.

“Who invented such nonsense?” he said, in a strangled voice, when the tale ended.

“The dead man himself.”

This answer made Minoret tremble, for he himself had dreamed of the doctor.

“God is very good, Monsieur l’abbe, to do miracles for me,” he said, danger inspiring him to make the sole jest of his life.

“All that God does is natural,” replied the priest.

“Your phantoms don’t frighten me,” said the colossus, recovering his coolness.

“I did not come to frighten you, for I shall never speak of this to any one in the world,” said the abbe.  “You alone know the truth.  The matter is between you and God.”

“Come now, Monsieur l’abbe, do you really think me capable of such a horrible abuse of confidence?”

“I believe only in crimes which are confessed to me, and of which the sinner repents,” said the priest, in an apostolic tone.

“Crime?” cried Minoret.

“A crime frightful in its consequences.”

“What consequences?”

“In the fact that it escapes human justice.  The crimes which are not expiated here below will be punished in another world.  God himself avenges innocence.”

“Do you think God concerns himself with such trifles?”

“If he did not see the worlds in all their details at a glance, as you take a landscape into your eye, he would not be God.”

“Monsieur l’abbe, will you give me your word of honor that you have had these facts from my uncle?”

“Your uncle has appeared three times to Ursula and has told them and repeated them to her.  Exhausted by such visions she revealed them to me privately; she considers them so devoid of reason that she will never speak of them.  You may make yourself easy on that point.”

“I am easy on all points, Monsieur Chaperon.”