"
Ursula and the abbe went up to the library and took down the third
volume of the Pandects. When the old man opened it he noticed, not
without surprise, a mark left by some enclosure upon the pages, which
still kept the outline of the certificate. In the other volume he
found a sort of hollow made by the long-continued presence of a
package, which had left its traces on the two pages next to it.
"Yes, go up, Monsieur Bongrand," La Bougival was heard to say, and the
justice of the peace came into the library just as the abbe was
putting on his spectacles to read three numbers in Doctor Minoret's
hand-writing on the fly-leaf of colored paper with which the binder
had lined the cover of the volume,--figures which Ursula had just
discovered.
"What's the meaning of those figures?" said the abbe; "our dear doctor
was too much of a bibliophile to spoil the fly-leaf of a valuable
volume. Here are three numbers written between a first number preceded
by the letter M and a last number preceded by a U."
"What are you talking of?" said Bongrand. "Let me see that. Good God!"
he cried, after a moment's examination; "it would open the eyes of an
atheist as an actual demonstration of Providence! Human justice is, I
believe, the development of the divine thought which hovers over the
worlds.
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