ittle town recognized Ursula's perfect
innocence, she recovered slowly. While in a state of bodily exhaustion,
which left her mind and spirit free, she became the medium of phenomena
the effects of which were astounding, and of a nature to challenge
science, if science had been brought into contact with them.

Ten days after Madame de Portenduere's visit Ursula had a dream, with
all the characteristics of a supernatural vision, as much in its moral
aspects as in the, so to speak, physical circumstances. Her godfather
appeared to her and made a sign that she should come with him. She
dressed herself and followed him through the darkness to their former
house in the Rue des Bourgeois, where she found everything precisely as
it was on the day of her godfather's death. The old man wore the clothes
that were on him the evening before his death. His face was pale,
his movements caused no sound; nevertheless, Ursula heard his voice
distinctly, though it was feeble and as if repeated by a distant echo.
The doctor conducted his child as far as the Chinese pagoda, where he
made her lift the marble top of the little Boule cabinet just as she had
raised it on the day of his death; but instead of finding nothing there
she saw the letter her godfather had told her to fetch. She opened it
and read both the letter addressed to herself and the will in favor
of Savinien. The writing, as she afterwards told the abbe, shone as if
traced by sunbeams--"it burned my eyes," she said. When she looked
at her uncle to thank him she saw the old benevolent smile upon his
discolored lips. Then, in a feeble voice, but still clearly, he told her
to look at Minoret, who was listening in the corridor to what he said to
her; and next, slipping the lock of the library door with his knife, and
taking the papers from the study. With his right hand the old man seized
his goddaughter and obliged her to walk at the pace of death and follow
Minoret to his own house. Ursula crossed the town, entered the post
house and went into Zelie's old room, where the spectre showed her
Minoret unfolding the letters, reading them and burning them.

"He could not," said Ursula, telling her dream to the abbe, "light the
first two matches, but the third took fire; he burned the papers and
buried their remains in the ashes. Then my godfather brought me back to
our house, and I saw Minoret-Levrault slipping into the library, where
he took from the third volume of Pandects three c