The Thousand and One Ghosts by Alexandre Dumas

Author:Alexandre Dumas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Alma Books
Published: 2019-01-17T16:56:32+00:00

10

L’Artifaille

Either because he was convinced or, as is more probable, because it seemed to him difficult to refute a man as convinced as the Chevalier Lenoir, the doctor said nothing.

The doctor’s silence left the field free for other commentators; Father Moulle eagerly entered the fray.

“All of that confirms me in my system of thinking,” he said.

“And what is your system of thinking?” asked the doctor, delighted to be able to resume his polemic against less hardy jousters than Monsieur Ledru and the Chevalier Lenoir.

“We live between two invisible worlds, one of them inhabited by the spirits of hell, the other by the spirits of heaven; at the time of our birth, two genii – one good, the other evil – come and take up their places at our sides, accompany us all our lives long, the one inspiring us to do good and the other evil; at the hour of our death the winner has us in his power. Thus our bodies become either the prey of a demon or the dwelling of an angel; in the case of poor Solange, the good genius had triumphed, and it was he who was bidding you farewell, Ledru, through the mute lips of the young martyr; in the case of the brigand sentenced by the Scottish judge, it was the demon who had been victorious in the field, and it was he who came successively to the judge in the shape of a cat, the uniform of a bailiff and the appearance of a skeleton; finally, in the last case, it was the angel of the monarchy who took vengeance on the sacrilegious man for the terrible profanation of the tombs and who, like Christ manifesting himself to the humble, showed the future restoration of the monarchy to a poor watchman of the tombs with as much pomp as if the fantastical ceremony had been performed before the eyes of all the future dignitaries of the court of Louis XVIII.”

“But in the end, Father Moulle,” said the doctor, “all systems are based on a certain conviction.”

“Of course.”

“But this conviction needs to rest on facts if it is to be real.”

“And mine does rest on facts.”

“On facts that were related to you by someone in whom you have full confidence?”

“On facts that happened to me myself.”

“Ah, Father Moulle – let’s hear those facts.”

“Gladly…”

I was born in that part of the inheritance of the ancient kings that is today called the département of the Aisne, and that used to be called the Île-de-France; my father and my mother lived in a small village situated in the middle of the Forest of Villers-Cotterêts called Fleury. Before my birth, my parents had already had five children, three boys and two girls, who had all died. As a result, when my mother found herself pregnant with me, she vowed that I would wear white until the age of seven, and my father promised a pilgrimage to Notre-Dame-de-Liesse.*

These two vows are not rare in the provinces, and they

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