ever."

Nanteuil looked at him, disappointed.

"I thought he had come when he was dead. But since he was in prison you
certainly could not have seen him in your house. You only thought you
saw him."

The physician, understanding what was in Felicie's mind, quickly replied:

"My dear little Nanteuil, believe what I tell you. The phantoms of the
dead have no more reality than the phantoms of the living."

Without attending to what he was saying, she asked him if it was really
because he suffered from his liver that he had a vision. He replied that
he believed that the bad state of his digestive organs, general fatigue,
and a tendency to congestion, had all predisposed him to behold an
apparition.

"There was; I believe," he added, "a more immediate cause. Stretched
out on my divan, my head was very low. I raised it to light a cigarette,
and let it fall back immediately. This attitude is particularly
favourable to hallucinations. It is sometimes enough to lie down with
one's head thrown back to see and to hear imaginary shapes and sounds.
That is why I advise you, my child, to sleep with a bolster and a fat
pillow."

She began to laugh.

"As mamma does--majestically!"

Then, flitting off to another idea:

"Tell me; Socrates, how comes it that you saw this sordid individual
rather than another? You had hired a donkey from him, and you were no
longer thinking of him. And yet he came. Say what you like, it's queer."

"You ask me why it was he rather than another? It would be very hard for
me to tell you. Our visions, bound up with our innermost thoughts,
often present their images to us; sometimes there is no connection
between them, and they show us an unexpected figure."

He once more exhorted her not to allow herself to be frightened by
phantoms.

"The dead do not return. When one of them appears to you, rest assured
that what you see is a thing imagined by your brain."

"Can you," she inquired; "guarantee that there is nothing after death?"

"My child, there is nothing after death that could frighten you."

She rose, picked up her little bag and her part, and held out her hand
to the doctor, saying:

"As for you, you don't believe in anything, do you, old Socrates?"

He detained her for a moment in the waiting-room, warned her to take
good care of herself, to lead a quiet, restful life, and to take
sufficient rest.

"Do you suppose that is easy in our profession? To-morrow I have a
rehearsal in th