“Never left this place!” exclaimed Wilfrid. “Then she must have read immensely.”
“Not a page, not one iota! I am the only person who possesses any books in Jarvis. The works of Swedenborg—the only books that were in the chateau—you see before you. She has never looked into a single one of them.”
“Have you tried to talk with her?”
“What good would that do?”
“Does no one live with her in that house?”
“She has no friends but you and Minna, nor any servant except old David.”
“It cannot be that she knows nothing of science nor of art.”
“Who should teach her?” said the pastor.
“But if she can discuss such matters pertinently, as she has often done with me, what do you make of it?”
“The girl may have acquired through years of silence the faculties enjoyed by Apollonius of Tyana and other pretended sorcerers burned by the Inquisition, which did not choose to admit the fact of second-sight.”