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Book, page 42 / 45 truth. "I can guess your purpose," cried Monsieur Fanjat, when he saw the colonel getting out of the carriage. "If you want to succeed, do not let my niece see you in that equipage. To-night I will give her opium. During her sleep, we will dress her as she was at Studzianka, and place her in the carriage. I will follow you in another vehicle." About two in the morning, the sleeping countess was placed in the carriage and wrapped in heavy coverings. A few peasants with torches lighted up this strange abduction. Suddenly, a piercing cry broke the silence of the night. Philippe and the doctor turned, and saw Genevieve coming half-naked from the ground-floor room in which she slept. "Adieu, adieu! all is over, adieu!" she cried, weeping hot tears. "Genevieve, what troubles you?" asked the doctor. Genevieve shook her head with a motion of despair, raised her arm to heaven, looked at the carriage, uttering a long-drawn moan with every sign of the utmost terror; then she returned to her room silently. "That is a good omen!" cried the colonel. "She feels she is to lose her companion. Perhaps she SEES that Stephanie will recover her reason." "God grant it!" said Monsieur Fanjat, who himself was affected by the incident. Ever since he had made a close study of insanity, the good man had met with many examples of the prophetic faculty and the gift of second sight, proofs of which are frequently given by alienated minds, and which may also be found, so travellers say, among certain tribes of savages. As the colonel had calculated, Stephanie crossed the fictitious plain of the Beresina at nine o'clock in the morning, when she was awakened by a cannon shot not a hundred yards from the spot where the experiment was to be tried. This was a signal. Hundreds of peasants
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