“Genevieve, what troubles you?” asked the doctor.

Genevieve shook her head with a motion of despair, raised her arm to heaven, looked at the carriage, uttering a long-drawn moan with every sign of the utmost terror; then she returned to her room silently.

“That is a good omen!” cried the colonel.  “She feels she is to lose her companion.  Perhaps she Sees that Stephanie will recover her reason.”

“God grant it!” said Monsieur Fanjat, who himself was affected by the incident.

Ever since he had made a close study of insanity, the good man had met with many examples of the prophetic faculty and the gift of second sight, proofs of which are frequently given by alienated minds, and which may also be found, so travellers say, among certain tribes of savages.

As the colonel had calculated, Stephanie crossed the fictitious plain of the Beresina at nine o’clock in the morning, when she was awakened by a cannon shot not a hundred yards from the spot where the experiment was to be tried.  This was a signal.  Hundreds of peasants made a frightful clamor like that on the shore of the river that memorable night, when twenty thousand stragglers were doomed to death or slavery by their own folly.

At the cry, at the shot, the countess sprang from the carriage, and ran, with delirious emotion, over the snow to the banks of the river; she saw the burned bivouacs and the charred remains of the bridge, and the fatal raft, which the men were launching into the icy waters of the Beresina.  The major, Philippe, was there, striking back the crowd with his sabre.  Madame de Vandieres gave a cry, which went to all hearts, and threw herself before the colonel, whose heart beat wildly.  She seemed to gather herself together, and, at first, looked vaguely at the singular scene.  For an instant, as rapid as the lightning’s flash, her eyes had that lucidity, devoid of mind, which we admire in the eye of birds; then passing her hand across her brow with the keen expression of one who meditates, she contemplated the living memory of a past scene spread before her, and, turning quickly to Philippe, she saw him.  An awful silence reigned in the crowd.  The colonel gasped, but dared not speak; the doctor wept.  Stephanie’s sweet face colored faintly; then, from tint to tint, it returned to the brightness of youth, till it glowed with a beautiful crimson.  Life and happiness, lighted by intelligence, came nearer and nearer like a conflagration.  Convulsive trembling rose from her feet to her heart.  Then these phenomena seemed to blend in one as Stephanie’s eyes cast forth a celestial ray, the flame of a living soul.  She lived, she thought!  She shuddered, with fear perhaps, for God himself unloosed that silent tongue, and cast anew His fires into that long-extinguished soul.  Human will came with its full electric torrent, and vivified the body from which it had been driven.

“Stephanie!” cried the colonel.