“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.
“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.