"Be here at nine o'clock this evening," said the stranger. "I will
return to meet you."
Doctor Minoret was in so convulsed a state that he left the room
without bowing, followed by Bouvard, who called to him from behind.
"Well, what do you say? what do you say?"
"I think I am mad, Bouvard," answered Minoret from the steps of the
porte-cochere. "If that woman tells the truth about Ursula,--and none
but Ursula can know the things that sorceress has told me,--I shall
say that _you are right_. I wish I had wings to fly to Nemours this
minute and verify her words. But I shall hire a carriage and start at
ten o'clock to-night. Ah! am I losing my senses?"
"What would you say if you knew of a life-long incurable disease
healed in a moment; if you saw that great magnetizer bring sweat in
torrents from an herpetic patient, or make a paralyzed woman walk?"
"Come and dine, Bouvard; stay with me till nine o'clock. I must find
some decisive, undeniable test!"
"So be it, old comrade," answered the other.
The reconciled enemies dined in the Palais-Royal. After a lively
conversation, which helped Minoret to evade the fever of the ideas
which were ravaging his brain, Bouvard said to him:--
"If you admit in that woman the faculty of annihilating or of
traversing space, if you obtain a certainty that here, in Paris, she
sees and hears what is said and done in Nemours, you must admit all
other magnetic facts; they are not more incredible than these.
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