The spirits come to her
directly sometimes, when she is awake, and they torment her. Bosio has
been coming to her often, and has made her suffer, until she wrote to
you. The spirits themselves suffer when they wish to communicate with
the living, and cannot."
"What are you?" inquired Matilda.
"I am Giuditta's familiar. The spirits generally speak, through me, to
her, when she is in the trance."
"And she knows nothing of what you say?"
"Nothing, after she is awake."
"Is Bosio suffering now?" asked Matilde, gravely but eagerly, after a
moment's pause.
"I will ask him." And another brief pause followed. "Yes," continued the
voice. "He is suffering because he has left you. He suffers remorse. He
cannot be happy unless he can communicate with you."
"Can you see him? Can you see his face?"
"Yes," replied the voice, without hesitation. "He is very pale. His hair
is soft, brown, and silky, with a few grey streaks in it. His eyes are
gentle and tender, and his beard is like his hair, soft and like silk.
He is as you last saw him alive, when you kissed him by the fireplace in
the room that is yellow, just before he died. He loves you, as he did
then."
Such evidence of unnatural knowledge might have convinced a more
sceptical mind than Matilde's of the fact that the somnambulist could at
least read her thoughts and memories from her mind as from a book. It
was impossible that any one but herself could know how, and in what
room, she had kissed him for the last time, a few minutes before his
end.
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