‘My father saw this act as a miracle. He believed that our benefactor was someone who had come back from the dead. Oh, Monsieur, it was a touching superstition and, while I did not believe it myself, I certainly had no wish to destroy the belief in his noble heart! How many times did he mutter the name of a dear, dear friend, a friend whom he had lost; and when he was on the point of death and the prospect of eternity might have given his mind some illumination from beyond the grave, this idea, which until then had been no more than a suspicion, became a certainty, and the last words that he
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