deas of physiology,
nature, and metaphysics in ruins about him, and slept till nine o'clock,
so wearied was he with the events of his journey.

CHAPTER VII. A TWO-FOLD CONVERSION

On rising, the doctor, sure that no one had crossed the threshold of
his house since he re-entered it, proceeded (but not without extreme
trepidation) to verify his facts. He was himself ignorant of any
difference in the bank-notes and also of the misplacement of the Pandect
volumes. The somnambulist was right. The doctor rang for La Bougival.

"Tell Ursula to come and speak to me," he said, seating himself in the
center of his library.

The girl came; she ran up to him and kissed him. The doctor took her on
his knee, where she sat contentedly, mingling her soft fair curls with
the white hair of her old friend.

"Do you want something, godfather?"

"Yes; but promise me, on your salvation, to answer frankly, without
evasion, the questions that I shall put to you."

Ursula colored to the temples.

"Oh! I'll ask nothing that you cannot speak of," he said, noticing how
the bashfulness of young love clouded the hitherto childlike purity of
the girl's blue eyes.

"Ask me, godfather."

"What thought was in your mind when you ended your prayers last evening,
and what time was it when you said them."

"It was a quarter-past or half-past nine."

"Well, repeat your last prayer."

The girl fancied that her voice might convey her faith to the sceptic;
she slid from his knee and knelt down, clasping her hands fervently; a
brilliant light illumined her face as she turned it on the old man and
said:--

"What I asked of God last night I asked again this morning, and I shall
ask it till he vouchsafes to grant it."

Then she repeated her prayer with new and still more powerful
expression. To her great astonishment her godfather took the last words
from her mouth and finished the prayer.

"Good, Ursula," said the doctor, taking her again on his knee. "When
you laid your head on the pillow and went to sleep did you think to
yourself, 'That dear godfather; I wonder who is playing backgammon with
him in Paris'?"

Ursula sprang up as if the last trumpet had sounded in her ears. She
gave a cry of terror; her eyes, wide open, gazed at the old man with
awful fixity.

"Who are you, godfather? From whom do you get such power?" she asked,
imagining that in his desire to deny God he had made some compact with
the devil.

"What seeds did you