Chap­ter III of “The Crime of Sylvestre Bon­nard” unfolds with Sylvestre recall­ing an odd dream where fairy-like fig­ures accost him, before shift­ing back to his real­i­ty as a schol­ar. Ignor­ing his house­keep­er’s poten­tial fret­ting, Bon­nard choos­es to share his intrigu­ing vision with Madame de Gabry, who delight­ful­ly acknowl­edges the dream’s charm, sug­gest­ing a hid­den genius with­in him, espe­cial­ly dur­ing his sleep. This inter­ac­tion reveals a warm, gen­tle cama­raderie between Bon­nard and Madame de Gabry, accen­tu­at­ed by his grat­i­tude towards her encour­ag­ing words.

As days progress, Bon­nard immers­es him­self in cat­a­loging the Lusance library man­u­scripts. Learn­ing of the finan­cial woes shad­ow­ing Mon­sieur Hon­ore de Gabry’s estate prompts him to seek a pub­lish­er’s coun­sel for auc­tion­ing the library—evidence of Bon­nard’s naiveté in busi­ness mat­ters. His interlude—visiting church­es, engag­ing with local cler­gy, and enjoy­ing the sim­ple life—suggests a peace­ful, reflec­tive peri­od in his research jour­ney.

Upon return­ing to Lusance, Bon­nard is struck by an aston­ish­ing sight: a stat­uette that strik­ing­ly resem­bles the fairy from his dream, sit­ting on a pier-table. The sight con­fus­es him until Madame de Gabry intro­duces him to Jeanne, a young orphaned girl with evi­dent tal­ent in wax mod­el­ing who craft­ed the stat­ue based on Bonnard’s dream nar­ra­tive. Jeanne’s shy, yet evi­dent­ly deep, con­nec­tion to Bonnard’s sto­ry and Madame de Gabry’s sub­se­quent query about the poten­tial of Jeanne’s craft to sup­port her finan­cial­ly, high­lights themes of cre­ativ­i­ty, men­tor­ship, and the search for one’s place in the world. The chap­ter ten­der­ly touch­es on human con­nec­tions and the impact of nur­tur­ing tal­ent with­in the younger gen­er­a­tion, amid Bon­nard’s con­tin­u­ing schol­ar­ly pur­suits and per­son­al reflec­tions.