"Are these what you found in the envelope?" she exclaimed, when she had read the contents. "Now I am certain that he will return to me."
"Oh, father," she cried, putting her arms round him and kissing him, "this is the best medicine in the world for me, it will soon make me well. See, I feel better already," and she clapped her hands for joy.
"Quick, doctor, run and fetch Céleste that I may be the first to give her the good news."
Presently Céleste came in, and Renée told her what she had just heard.
"Oh, Renée, this is almost too good to be true. Won't it be just delightful to have him back again. I don't think we half know the value of anything until we are deprived of it."
"You are perfectly correct," said Riche, "really I think the philosophic mantle of the professor must have descended on you."
"Now I begin to understand what Professor Delapine meant when he said the other day 'We shall be separated for a long time, but take courage, it will all come right.' It was a riddle to me at the time, but now it is quite clear what he meant. Don't you think, papa, that the professor must have some wonderful power of seeing into the future? How else could he possibly guess what was going to happen to him?"
"I can understand in a sort of vague way," said Payot, "that very clever people might be able to discover what had happened in the past, but how anyone can tell what is going to happen in the future is a mystery to me. Can you explain it to me, doctor?"
"I confess the whole thing is inconceivable to me," said Villebois, "and yet I know that it is not impossible, because on more than one occasion Delapine has predicted the most minute details of facts and events which have occurred since precisely as he said they would happen, and I have never once known him wrong."