rsula's artless
consternation made him smile, but when he saw her depressed and sad he
felt how deep an affection her sadness revealed. Absolute devotion has
a horror of every sort of disagreement, even in ideas which it does
not share. Sometimes the doctor accepted his darling's reasonings as he
would her kisses, said as they were in the sweetest of voices with
the purest and most fervent feeling. Believers and unbelievers speak
different languages and cannot understand each other. The young girl
pleading God's cause was unreasonable with the old man, as a spoilt
child sometimes maltreats its mother. The abbe rebuked her gently,
telling her that God had power to humiliate proud spirits. Ursula
replied that David had overcome Goliath.

This religious difference, these complaints of the child who wished to
drag her godfather to God, were the only troubles of this happy life, so
peaceful, yet so full, and wholly withdrawn from the inquisitive eyes
of the little town. Ursula grew and developed, and became in time the
modest and religiously trained young woman whom Desire admired as she
left the church. The cultivation of flowers in the garden, her music,
the pleasures of her godfather, and all the little cares she was able to
give him (for she had eased La Bougival's labors by doing everything for
him),--these things filled the hours, the days, the months of her calm
life. Nevertheless, for about a year the doctor had felt uneasy about
his Ursula, and watched her health with the utmost care. Sagacious and
profoundly practical observer that he was, he thought he perceived some
commotion in her moral being. He watched her like a mother, but seeing
no one about her who was worthy of inspiring love, his uneasiness on the
subject at length passed away.

At this conjuncture, one month before the day when this drama begins,
the doctor's intellectual life was invaded by one of those events which
plough to the very depths of a man's convictions and turn them over. But
this event needs a succinct narrative of certain circumstances in his
medical career, which will give, perhaps, fresh interest to the story.

CHAPTER VI. A TREATISE ON MESMERISM

Towards the end of the eighteenth century science was sundered as widely
by the apparition of Mesmer as art had been by that of Gluck. After
re-discovering magnetism Mesmer came to France, where, from time
immemorial, inventors have flocked to obtain recognition for their
discoverie