Or do not come and it will hang there for many winters and shrivel as plums do, and at last one bite and it will be gone.

And then, my godson, then, my dear Godfrey--well, perhaps I will tell you the rest another time.

You poor silly boy, who will not understand that the more you get the more you will always have.
"Your Godmamma, "Who love you still although you treat her so badly, "The Countess of Riennes.
"(Ah! you did not know I had that title, did you, but in the speerit world I have others which are much higher.)" Godfrey thrust this precious epistle back into his pocket with a feeling of physical and mental sickness.

How did this horrible woman know so much about him and his affairs, and why did she prophesy such dreadful things?
Further, if her knowledge was so accurate, although veiled in her foreign metaphor, why should not her prophecies be accurate also?
And if they were, why should he be called upon to suffer so many things?
He could find no answer to these questions, but afterwards he sent her letter to the Pasteur, who in due course returned it with some upright and manly comments both upon the epistle itself and the story of his troubles, which Godfrey had detailed to him.

Amongst much else he wrote in French: "You suffer and cannot understand why, my dear boy.