g accompanied his brother. As nearly a
month passed by without my being able to do what Desfontaines had told
me in regard to his brother, he appeared to me again twice before
dinner at a country house whither I had gone to dine a league from
hence. I was very faint. I told them not to mind me, that it was
nothing, and that I should soon recover myself; and I went to a
corner of the garden. Desfontaines having appeared to me, reproached
me for not having yet spoken to his brother, and again conversed with
me for a quarter of an hour without answering any of my questions.

"As I was going in the morning to Notre-Dame de la Victoire, he
appeared to me again, but for a shorter time, and pressed me always to
speak to his brother, and left me, saying still, _Jusques_, _Jusques_,
and without choosing to reply to my questions.

"It is a remarkable thing that I always felt a pain in that part of my
arm which he had held me by the first time, until I had spoken to his
brother. I was three days without being able to sleep, from the
astonishment and agitation I felt. At the end of the first
conversation, I told M. de Varonville, my neighbor and schoolfellow,
that Desfontaines had been drowned; that he himself had just appeared
to me and told me so. He went away and ran to the parents' house to
know if it was true; they had just received the news, but by a mistake
he understood that it was the eldest. He assured me that he had read
the letter of Desfontaines, and he believed it; but I maintained
always that it could not be, and that Desfontaines himself had
appeared to me. He returned, came back, and told me in tears that it
was but too true.

"Nothing has occurred to me since, and there is my adventure just as
it happened. It has been related in various ways; but I have recounted
it only as I have just told it to you. The Chevalier de Gotol told me
that Desfontaines had appeared also to M. de Menil-Jean; but I am not
acquainted with him; he lives twenty leagues from hence near Argentan,
and I can say no more about it."

This is a very singular and circumstantial narrative, related by M.
l'Abbe de St. Pierre, who is by no means credulous, and sets his whole
mind and all his philosophy to explain the most extraordinary events
by physical reasonings, by the concurrence of atoms, corpuscles,
insensible evaporation of spirit, and perspiration. But all that is so
far-fetched, and does such palpable violence to the subjects and the