Honoré de Balzac

“ When she looked at her uncle to thank him, she saw a kindly smile upon his colorless lips. And then, in its weak but clear voice, the spectre showed her Minoret in the passage listening to the secret, going to unscrew the lock and taking the packet of papers. Then, with his right hand, he seized his ward and forced her to walk with the step of the dead in order to follow Minoret to the post-house. Ursule went through the town, entered the post-house and Zélie’s old room, where the spectre made her look at the despoiler unsealing the letters, reading them and burning them. ”

“ In a state of bodily prostration which left both soul and spirit free, she became the seat of phenomena, the effects of which were moreover terrible, and of such a nature as to engross science, had science been admitted into any such confidence. Ten days after Madame de Portenduère’s visit, Ursule had a dream which presented the characteristics of a supernatural vision, as much in the moral facts as in the physical circumstances, so to speak. The late Minoret, her godfather, appeared to her and made signs to her to go with him ”

“ These phenomena are not more extraordinary than those of memory, and those of memory are as surprising and unaccountable as those of the perfume of plants, which may be the ideas of the plant.”
“Dear me! how you enlarge the world! But to hear a corpse speak, to see it walking and acting, is that possible?” ”

“ When she brought her own and La Bougival’s bonds, Ursule found the justice striding up and down.
“Have you any idea of the object of that great booby’s proceedings?” he said.
“None that I can tell,” she replied.
Monsieur Bongrand looked at her in surprise.
“Then we have the same idea,” he answered. “Here, keep the numbers of these two bonds in case I should lose them; one should always take that precaution.”
Bongrand then himself wrote down the number of Ursule’s and of her nurse’s bond on a card. ”

“ Man does not discover ideas, he does not invent forms, he imitates the eternal relations that surround him on all sides. And so, see what happens: no criminal going to the scaffold with the power of taking the secret of his crimes with him, allows his head to be cut off before he has made the confession to which he is impelled by some mysterious power. ”

“ Everyone knows that my father is lord paramount of forty-eight thousand francs a year in property lying round his Château du Rouvre, and all the world knows that I have forty-eight thousand permanent and financial reasons for not loving the ward of the court If I were to marry an insignificant girl, these ladies would take me for an idiot. ”

“ We have within us a feeling of right, in the most civilized as well as in the most uncivilized man, which will not permit us to peacefully enjoy any good that is wrongfully acquired according to the laws of the society in which we live, for well constituted societies are modeled upon the rules imposed upon mankind by God Himself. ”

“ Even though I might call these dream warnings absurd, I should still deem it necessary to inform you of them, on account of the singularity of the details. You are an honest man, and have gained your handsome fortune too lawfully to want to add to it by theft Besides, you are an almost primitive man, and would be too much tortured by remorse. ”

“ Ursule and the curé went up to the first story, and the old man picked her out a small edition in 12mo, printed in Paris in 1666, of L’Histoire de Henri de Montmorency, written by a contemporary ecclesiastic who had known the prince.
“Read it,” said the curé, giving her the volume at pages 175 and 176. “Your godfather often read this passage, and look, here still is some of his snuff.”
“And he himself is no more!” said Ursule, taking the book and reading this passage:
“The siege of Privas was remarkable on account of the loss of several persons in command ”