Chapter III: Part 3

And yet by degrees, perhaps without noticing it himself, the young philosopher was gradually taking up again by shattered fragments his interrupted studies; analyzing subjects now with a deep feeling of optimism which he had never known before, in spite of his natural kindliness; excluding cruel conclusions because they seemed to him to be due to an insufficient knowledge of causes, looking at the panoramas of Nature and of humanity in a new light. She too had taken up, at least partially, the studies which she had begun in common with him; but a new feeling filled her soul, and her mind had not the same freedom for intellectual work. Absorbed in this constant affection for a being whom she had wholly won, she saw only through him, acted only by him. In quiet evening hours, when she went to the piano and played a sonata by Chopin, which she was astonished to find she had not understood until she was in love, or to accompany her pure rich voice while singing the Norwegian _lieder_ by Grieg or Bull, or our own Gounod's melodies, it seemed to her, unconsciously perhaps, that her lover was the only listener capable of appreciating these inspirations of the heart. What delicious hours he spent, stretched on a divan in that spacious library in the house at Passy, sometimes idly following the capricious rings of smoke from a Turkish cigarette, while she gave herself up to fanciful memories, singing the sweet _Saetergientens Sondag_ of her native land, the serenade from "Don Juan," Lamartine's "Lake," or else when running her skilful fingers over the keys she sent the melodious dream of Boccherini's minuet floating into the air.

Spring had come. May had brought the opening fêtes at the Universal Exhibition of which we spoke at the beginning of this story, and the great trees in the garden at Passy shaded the Eden of the loving couple. Icléa's father, who had suddenly been called to Tunis, returned with a collection of Arabian arms for his museum at Christiania. He intended to go back to Norway very soon, and it had been agreed between the young Norwegian girl and her lover that the marriage should take place in her native land on the anniversary of the mysterious apparition.

Their love was, from its very nature, very far removed from all those common-place unions founded, some on gross sensual pleasure, others on motives of interest more or less disguised, which represent the greater part of human love. Their cultivated minds kept them isolated in the loftier regions of thought; their delicacy of feeling kept them in an ideal atmosphere where all material burdens were forgotten; the extreme impressibility of their nerves, the exquisite refinement of all their sensations, brought them delights whose enjoyment seemed to have no end. If there is love in other worlds, it can be no deeper or more exquisite feeling. To a physiologist they would have been the living witnesses of the fact that, contrary to ordinary opinion, all enjoyment comes from the brain, the intensity of sensation corresponding to the psychic sensibility of the being.

Paris was for them, not a city, not a world, but the theatre of human history. They lived the past centuries over again. The old quarters which had not yet been ruined by modern changes,--the Cité, with Notre Dame, Saint-Julien le Pauvre, whose walls still recall Chilpéric and Frédégonde; the old houses where Albert le Grand, Petrarch, Dante, Abelard, had lived; the old University, anterior to the Sorbonne, and belonging to the same vanished centuries; the cloister of Saint-Merry with its sombre little paths, the abbey of Saint-Martin, Clovis' tower on the mountain, Saint-Geneviève, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, a relic of the Merovingians, Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, whose bell sounded the tocsin, the Sainte-Chapelle at Louis IX.'s palace, all memorials of French history, were the object of their pilgrimages. They were alone in crowds, looking into the past and seeing what very few people know how to see.

And so the immense city spoke its language of other days,--either when, lost amid the monsters, griffins, pillars, and capitals, the arabesques of the tower and galleries of Notre Dame, they saw the human hive go to sleep at their feet in the evening dusk, or, when rising higher still, they tried from the top of the Panthéon to restore the old outlines of Paris and its gradual development from the Roman emperors who lived in the Baths, to Philip Augustus and his successors.

The spring sunshine, the blooming lilacs, the joyous May mornings, full of bird-songs and nervous exhilaration, often drew them at random away from Paris into the meadows and woods. The hours flew by like a breath of wind, the day had passed like a thought, and the night prolonged the divine dream of love. In the swiftly revolving world of Jupiter, where the days and nights are twice as rapid as they are here, and do not even last ten hours, lovers do not find the time fade away any more quickly. The measure of time is in ourselves.

They were sitting one evening on the roof of the old tower at the Château de Chevreuse; there was no railing, and they were close together in the centre, from whence one can look down over the unobstructed surrounding landscape. The warm air from the valley, impregnated with wild perfumes from the neighboring woods, rose to where they sat; the warbler was still singing, and the nightingale in the growing shadows was trying over his melodious hymn to the stars. The sun had just set in a blaze of crimson and gold, and the west alone was still illuminated by a glowing radiance. Everything seemed to be asleep on Nature's broad bosom.

Icléa was a little pale; but in the glow of the western sky her skin was so clear, so delicate, so ideal that the light seemed to penetrate it and illuminate it from within. Her eyes were misty with soft languor, and her little, childlike mouth was lightly parted; she seemed lost in contemplation of the sunset light. Leaning on Spero's breast, her arms twined about his neck, she was sinking into a revery when a shooting-star crossed the sky just over the tower. She started with a little feeling of superstition.

The most brilliant stars were already sparkling in the heavenly depths. Arcturus, a brilliant golden yellow, was very high, almost at the zenith; Vega, a pure white light, had already risen towards the west; in the north, Capella; in the west, Castor, Pollux, and Procyon. The seven stars of the Great Bear, Regulus, Spica Virginis, were also discernible. Noiselessly, one by one, the stars came out to punctuate the heavens. The north star showed the only motionless spot in the celestial sphere.

The moon was rising, its reddish disk somewhat diminished from being on the wane. Mars was shining between Pollux and Regulus in the southwest, Saturn in the southeast. Twilight was slowly yielding its place to the mysterious reign of night.

"Does it not seem to you," she asked, "that all these stars are like eyes looking down at us?"

"Celestial eyes, like yours. What can they see on earth more beautiful than you--and our love?"

"And yet--" she added.

"Yes, 'and yet,'--the world, family, society, custom, moral laws, and all that. I understand your thought. We have forgotten all these things to obey attraction alone,--like the sun, like all those stars, like the warbling nightingale, like all Nature. Very soon we shall give those social customs the part which belongs to them, and can openly proclaim our love. Shall we be any happier for that? Is it possible to be any happier than we are at this very moment?"

"I am yours," she replied, "I do not exist for myself. I am swallowed up in your light, your love, in your happiness, and I care for nothing, nothing more. No. I was thinking of those stars, of those eyes looking down at us, and wondering where all the human eyes are which have watched them for millions of years as we do to-night. Where are all the hearts that have beaten as our heart beats now? Where are all the souls who have lost themselves in endless kisses in the mysterious vanished nights?"

"They all exist, nothing can be destroyed. We associate heaven and earth, and we are right. In all the ages, with all peoples, among all beliefs, mankind has always asked the secret of its destiny of the starry heavens. That was one kind of divination. The Earth is a star of heaven, like Mars and Saturn, which we see yonder, earths of the sky, lighted by the same sun as we are, and like all these stars, which are distant suns. Thought translates what man has believed ever since it existed. All eyes have sought the answer to the great enigma in the skies, and Urania has replied to them since the early days of mythology."

The night was coming on. The moon, slowly rising in the eastern sky, was shedding her radiance through the atmosphere, insensibly displacing the twilight; and in the city at their feet, below the thickets and ruins, a few lights were already beginning to appear here and there. The two had risen, and were standing in the centre of the tower roof, closely clasped together. She was beautiful, framed in the aureole of her hair, whose curls floated over her shoulders; little puffs of spring-like air, fragrant with perfume of violets, gillyflowers, lilacs, and May roses were rising from the neighboring gardens. Solitude and silence were about them. Their lips united in a long kiss,--the hundredth at least of that beautiful day of spring. She was still dreaming. A fugitive smile suddenly lighted up her face, then faded away like a passing cloud.

"Of what are you thinking?" he asked.

"Oh, nothing! A worldly, foolish thought; a little silly--nothing."

"But what was it?" he asked, taking her again in his arms.

"Oh! I was only wondering if people had mouths in those other worlds; because, you know--a kiss--lips--"

And so the hours passed away,--days, weeks, months, in a perfect union of all their thoughts, all their feelings and impressions. The June sun was already shining at its solstice, and the time to leave for Icléa's home had come. At the appointed time she left with her father for Christiania, and Spero followed them a few days later. It was the young savant's intention to stay in Norway until autumn, and continue the studies on the aurora borealis he had begun the year before,--observations which were especially interesting to him, and which he had had scarcely time to begin.

This visit to Norway was the prolongation of a happy dream. The fair Northern girl cast an aureole of perpetual winsomeness about him which would perhaps have made him still forget the attractions of science if she herself had not had, as we have seen, an insatiable taste for study. The experiments which the indefatigable seeker had undertaken on atmospheric electricity interested her as much as they did him. She too wanted to know about those mysterious flames in the aurora borealis which palpitate at night in high atmospheres; and as his series of investigations led him to desire a balloon ascension, in order to reach and surprise the phenomenon at its source, she also experienced the same wish. He tried to dissuade her from it, those aeronautic expeditions not being free from danger. But the very idea of sharing a peril with him would have been enough to make her deaf to her loved one's entreaties. After long hesitation Spero decided to take her with him, and prepared for an ascension from the University of Christiania on the first night of the aurora borealis.

V.

THE AURORA BOREALIS.

The disturbances of the magnetic needle had announced the aurora's presence even before the sun went down, and the inflation of the balloon with pure hydrogen gas was begun while the sky showed in the magnetic North that coloring of golden green which is always the sure indication of an aurora borealis. The preparations were ended in a couple of hours. The atmosphere, entirely free from all clouds, was perfectly limpid, the stars twinkled in the bosom of a sky profoundly dark and without a moon; but towards the North a soft light shone in an arc above a black segment, throwing into the upper atmosphere slight flushes of a pale greenish rose color, symbolizing the palpitations of an unknown life. Icléa's father, who was watching the inflation of the balloon, had no suspicion that his daughter was going; but at the last moment she stepped into the car as if to inspect it. Spero gave the signal, and the balloon rose slowly, majestically, over the city of Christiania, which, lighted by thousands of lamps, appeared under the eyes of the travellers rising through the air, to diminish in size as it disappeared in the darkness.

Soon the balloon, taking an oblique ascent, hovered over the darkened landscape, and the paling lights also disappeared. The noises of the city died away at the same time into profound silence: it was the silence of the upper heights which enveloped the air-ship now. Icléa was impressed by this extraordinary stillness, perhaps, above all, by the novelty of the situation, and clung to her rash lover's side. They mounted rapidly. The aurora borealis appeared to descend, and spread itself out under the stars, like an undulating drapery of fleecy gold and purple, overrun with electric flashes. Spero watched his instruments, and by the help of a little crystal globe filled with glow-worms, wrote down the indications corresponding to the heights attained. The balloon went up steadily. What a delight to the investigator! In a few moments he would soar to the crest of the aurora borealis; he would find an answer to the question about the aurora's height which had been asked in vain by so many philosophers, and especially by his beloved masters, the two great "psychologists and philosophers," Oersted and Ampère!

Icléa's emotion had calmed itself. "Were you afraid?" asked her lover. "The balloon is safe; you need fear no accident,--everything has been provided for. We will go down in an hour; there is not a breath of wind stirring on the earth."

"No," she said, while the celestial light threw over her a roseate and transparent illumination; "but it is so strange, so beautiful, so divine. It is grand for little me! I shuddered for a moment. It seems to me that I love you more than ever!" and throwing her arms about his neck, she kissed him in a long, passionate, clinging embrace.

The solitary balloon was moving silently through the aerial heights, a spheroid of transparent gas enclosed in its silken envelope, whose vertical gores, joining each other at the valve on the top, could be seen from the car; the lower part of the balloon being open for the dilation of the gas.

The dusky brightness that falls from the stars, of which Corneille speaks, would have been sufficient without the gleams from the aurora borealis to enable them to distinguish the whole of the aerial skiff. The car was hung to the net which enveloped the silken vessel by strong ropes tied to the basket-work and interlaced under the feet of the aeronauts. The silence was impressively solemn; the beating of their hearts could have been heard. They were sailing at a height of five thousand metres, with an unaccustomed gravity; the upper wind was carrying them along without the faintest breath being felt in the car, for the balloon floated in the moving air like a simple bubble,--motionless, except as the current carried it along. Our travellers--sole inhabitants of these lofty regions, in full enjoyment of the exquisite elation which aeronauts know when once they have breathed that rare and sublimated atmosphere--looked down upon the realms below, forgetful of all earthly cares and associations, in the silence of their vast isolation. But they appreciated and enjoyed their unique situation more than any of those who had preceded them, for they added to the pleasures of an aerial voyage the rapture of their own happiness. They spoke in low tones, as if afraid of being overheard by the angels, and of seeing the magic charm dissolved which held them so near to heaven.... Sometimes sudden flashes came to them,--gleams from the aurora borealis; then darkness, deeper and more unfathomable than before, reigned again.

They were floating thus in their starry dream when a quick, shrill noise, like that of a new whistle, sounded in their ears. They listened, leaned far out over the car, and listened again. The noise did not come from the earth. Was it an electrical blast from the aurora borealis? Was it the hiss of some magnetic storm in the upper air? Lightning coming from the depths of space flashed about them and disappeared. They listened breathlessly again. The sound was quite close to them.... It was the gas escaping from the balloon!

Either the valve had partly opened of itself, or they had pressed upon the connecting rope while incautiously moving about in the car; at all events, the gas was escaping.

Spero at once detected the cause of the disquieting noise, and it terrified him, for it was impossible to close the valve again. He examined the barometer, which had begun slowly to rise, while the balloon was beginning to descend. The fall, slow at first, but inevitable, would increase in mathematical proportion. Trying to fathom the abyss below them, he saw the flames of the aurora borealis reflected in the water of an immense lake. The balloon was now descending with great rapidity, and was not more than three thousand metres from the ground. Outwardly calm, but fully conscious of the certain and impending peril, the unfortunate aeronaut threw out one after the other the two sacks left for ballast, then the maps, the instruments, the anchor, and emptied the car; but this lightening of the weight was not enough, and served only to slacken momentarily their accelerated speed. The balloon was now descending, or rather falling, at a tremendous rate, and was but a few hundred metres above the lake. Strong wind-currents blew up and down and whistled in their ears.

The balloon twisted about itself, as if whirled by a waterspout. George Spero felt a sudden and passionate embrace, followed by a long kiss upon his lips. "My master, my god, my all! I love you," she cried; and thrusting aside two of the ropes, she leaped into the empty air. The unballasted balloon shot up again like an arrow. Spero was saved.

Icléa's body made a dull, strange, and frightful sound in the midnight stillness as it fell into the deep waters of the lake. Wild with grief and despair, Spero felt his hair bristling with horror. He opened his eyes wide, but saw nothing. Carried up by the balloon to a height of more than a thousand metres, he clung to the valve-rope, hoping to fall again towards the scene of Icléa's catastrophe; but the rope would not work. He fumbled and hunted, but without avail. In the midst of all he felt under his hand his loved one's veil, where it had caught on one of the ropes,--a thin little veil, still fresh with perfume, and filled with the memories of his lovely companion. He stared at the ropes, thinking he could find the imprint of her little clinging hands, and putting his own where Icléa's had been an instant before, he threw himself out of the car. His foot caught in a rope for a second, but he had strength enough to disengage it, and fell whirling into space.

The crew of a fishing-boat that had witnessed the closing scenes of the drama crowded all sail towards the spot in the lake into which the young girl had fallen, and succeeded in finding and rescuing her. She was not dead; but all the care lavished upon her could not prevent a fever from setting in and making her its prey.

In the morning the fishermen reached a little harbor on the borders of the lake, and carried her to their humble cot; but she did not regain consciousness. "George!" she cried, opening her eyes, "George!" and that was all. The next day she heard the village bell tolling a funeral knell. "George!" she repeated, "George!" His body was found in a terribly mangled condition a short distance from the shore. His fall was more than a thousand metres. It had begun over the lake; but the body, retaining the horizontal impetus given by the moving balloon, had not fallen vertically, it had descended obliquely, as if slipping down a rope following the course of the balloon; and like a mass thrown from the sky, had fallen into a meadow near the shore of the lake, making a deep indentation in the soil, and rebounding more than a metre from the place where it fell. His very bones were crushed into powder, and the brain protruded through the forehead. His grave had hardly been closed before they were obliged to dig another beside it for Icléa, who died murmuring in a feeble voice, "George! George!"

A single stone covers both graves, and the same willow-tree shades their sleep. To this day the dwellers on the shores of beautiful Lake Tyrifiorden remember the melancholy episode, which has become almost legendary; and when the gravestone of the lovers is shown to the tourist, their memory is always associated with a happy, happy dream that has vanished.

VI.

ETERNAL PROGRESS.

Days, weeks, months, seasons, years, pass quickly on this planet,--and doubtless also on the others. The Earth has already run its yearly course around the Sun twenty times since destiny so tragically closed the book that my young friends had been reading for less than a year. Their happiness was short-lived; their morning faded away like the dawn.

I had forgotten,[1] or at least lost sight of them, when quite recently, at a hypnotic séance in Nancy, where I had stopped for a few days on my way to the Vosges, I was induced to question a "subject" by whose assistance the experimental savants of the Académie Stanislas had obtained some of those really startling results with which the scientific Press has surprised us for a few years past. I do not remember how, but it happened that my conversation with him turned on the planet Mars. After describing to me a country situated on the shores of a sea known to astronomers under the name of Kepler's Ocean, and a solitary island lying in the bosom of this sea; after telling me about the picturesque landscapes and reddish vegetation which adorned the shores, the wave-washed cliffs, and the sandy beaches where the billows break and die away,--the subject, who was very sensitive, suddenly grew pale, and raised his hand to his head; his eyes closed, his eyebrows contracted; he seemed desirous of grasping some fugitive idea which obstinately eluded him. "_See!_" said Dr. B., standing before him with irresistible command; "see! I wish it."

"You have friends there," he said to me.

"I am not surprised at that," I said, laughing; "I have done enough to deserve them."

"Two friends," he went on, "who are talking about you now, this very minute."

"Ah, ha! Persons who know me?"

"Yes."

"How is that?"

"They have known you here."

"Here?"

"Here,--on the earth!"

"How long ago was it?"

"I do not know."

"Have they lived on Mars long?"

"I do not know."

"Are they young?"

"Yes; they are lovers, who adore each other."

Then the loved image of my lamented friends rose distinctly in my mind; but I had no sooner seen them than the subject exclaimed,--

"Yes! it is they!"

"How do you know?"

"I see,--they are the same souls, same colors."

"What do you mean by the 'same colors'?"

"Yes, the souls are suffused with light."

A few instants afterwards he added, "And yet there is a difference."

Then he was silent, his forehead frowning in his effort to find out. But his face regained all its calmness and serenity as he added,--

"He has become she, the woman; she is now the man,--and they love each other more than ever."

As if he did not quite understand what he had said himself, he seemed to be seeking for some explanation,--made painful efforts, judging from the contraction of the muscles in his face, and fell into a sort of cataleptic fit, from which Dr. B. speedily relieved him; but the lucid interval had fled, not to return.

In ending, I leave this last fact with the reader just as it happened, without comment. Had the subject, according to the hypothesis now admitted by many hypnotists, been under the influence of my own thought when the professor ordered him to answer me? Or, being independent, had he really "freed" himself, and had he _seen_ beyond our sphere? I cannot undertake to decide. Perhaps it will appear in the course of this story.

And yet I will acknowledge in all sincerity that the resurrection of my friend and his adored companion on the world of Mars,--a neighboring abode to ours, and so remarkably like this one we inhabit, only older, doubtless more advanced on the road of progress,--may appear to a thinker's eyes the logical and natural continuation of their earthly existence, so quickly broken off.

Doubtless Spero was right in declaring that matter is not what it seems to be, and that appearances are deceitful; that the real is the invisible; that animate force is indestructible; that in the absolute, the infinitely great is identical with the infinitely small; that celestial space is not impassable; and that souls are the seeds of planetary humanities. Who knows but that the philosophy of dynamism may one day reveal the religion of the future to the apostles of astronomy? Does not Urania bear the torch without which every problem is insoluble, without which all Nature would remain to us in impenetrable obscurity? Heaven must explain the earth, the infinite must explain the soul and its immaterial faculties.

The unknown of to-day is the truth of to-morrow.

The following pages will perhaps enable us to form something of an idea of the mysterious link which binds the transitory to the eternal, the visible to the invisible, earth to heaven.

Part Third.

HEAVEN AND EARTH.

I.

TELEPATHY.

The magnetic séance at Nancy had left a strong impression on my mind. I often thought of my departed friend and his investigations in the unexplored domains of nature and life, of his sincere and original analytical researches on the mysterious problem of immortality; but I could not think of him now without associating him with the idea of a possible reincarnation in the planet Mars.

This idea seemed to me to be bold, rash, purely imaginary if you like, but not absurd. The distance from here to Mars is equal to zero for the transmission of attraction; it is almost insignificant for that of light, since a few minutes are enough for a luminous undulation to travel millions of leagues. I thought of the telegraph, the telephone, and the phonograph; of the influence a hypnotizer's will has on his subject many kilometres distant; and I wondered if some marvellous advance in science might not suddenly throw a celestial bridge between our world and others of its kind in infinity.

For several evenings I could not observe Mars through the telescope without my attention being diverted by many strange fancies. Still, the planet was very beautiful, as it was during all the spring of 1888. Extensive inundations had taken place upon one of its continents, upon Libye, as astronomers had observed before in 1882, and under various circumstances. It was discovered that its meteorology and climatology are not the same as ours, and that the waters which cover about half of the planet's surface are subject to strange displacements and periodical variations, of which terrestrial geography can give no idea. The snow at the boreal pole had greatly diminished,--which proves that the summer on that hemisphere had been quite hot, although less elevated than that of the southern hemisphere. Besides, there had been very few clouds over Mars during the whole series of our observations. But it will be hardly credible that it was not these astronomical facts, however important they might be, and the base of all our conjectures, which most interested me,--it was what the hypnotized man had told me of George and Icléa; the fantastic ideas flitting through my brain prevented me from making a truly scientific observation. I persistently wondered if communication could not exist between two beings very far removed from each other, and even between the living and the dead; and each time I told myself that such a question was of itself unscientific, and showed a positive spirit.

Yet, after all, what is what we call "science"? What is not "scientific" in Nature? Where are the limits of positive study? Is the carcase of a bird really a more scientific thing than its lustrous, colored plumage and its song with its subtle tones? Is the skeleton of a pretty woman more worthy of admiration than her structure of flesh and her living form? Is not the analysis of the mind's emotions "scientific"? Is it not scientific to try to find out whether the mind can see to a distance, and in what manner? And then, how much reason is there in this strange vanity, that we imagine that science has told us all; that we know all there is to know; that our five senses are sufficient to appreciate the nature of the universe? From what we can make out among the forces acting about us,--attraction, heat, light, electricity,--does it follow that there may not be other forces which escape us, because we have no senses to perceive them? It is not this hypothesis which is absurd, it is the simplicity of pedants. We smile at the ideas of the astronomers, philosophers, physicians, and theologians of three centuries ago; three centuries hence, will not our successors laugh in their turn at the affirmations of those who pretend to know everything now?

The physicians to whom fifteen years ago I communicated some magnetic phenomena observed by myself during some experiments, all confidently denied the reality of the facts. I met one of them recently at the Institute. "Oh!" said he, not without a certain wit, "then it was magnetism; now it is hypnotism, and we are studying it."

Moral. Do not deny anything as a foregone conclusion. Let us study and discover; the explanation will come later.

I was in this frame of mind, pacing up and down my library, when my eyes chanced to fall on a pretty copy of Cicero which I had not noticed for some time. I took up a volume of it, opened it mechanically at the first page I came to, and read the following:--

"Two friends arrive at Megara and take separate lodgings; one of
them has hardly fallen asleep before he sees his travelling
companion beside him, telling him sorrowfully that his host has
formed a plan to assassinate him, and begging him to come to
his assistance as quickly as possible. The other awakes; but
satisfied that he has had a bad dream, loses no time in going to
sleep again. His friend appears to him again, and conjures him
to hasten, because the murderers are coming to his room. More
puzzled, he is astonished at the persistency of this dream, and
is on the point of going to his friend; but reason and fatigue
triumph, and he goes to bed again. Then his friend comes to him
for the third time, pale, bleeding, disfigured. 'Wretch,' said
he to him, 'you did not come when I implored you; it is all over
now. Avenge me. At sunrise you will meet a cart loaded with
manure at the city gate: stop it, and order it to be unloaded;
you will find my body hidden in the middle. Give me an honest
burial, and pursue my murderers.' So great a tenacity, such
minute details, admitted of no further delay or hesitation; the
friend rises, hurries to the gate mentioned, finds the wagon
there, stops the driver, who is frightened; and soon after the
search begins, the body of his friend is found."

This story seemed to come expressly to strengthen my opinion in regard to the unknown quantities in the scientific problem. Doubtless hypotheses are not lacking in reply to the point in question. It may be said that perhaps the circumstance never happened as Cicero tells it, that it has been amplified and exaggerated; that two friends coming to a strange city may fear an accident, that fearing for a friend's life after the fatigue of a journey, in the middle of the quiet night, one might chance to dream that he is the victim of an assassin. As to the episode of the cart, the travellers may have seen one standing in their host's court-yard, and the principle of the association of ideas comes in to bring it into the dream. Yes, these explanatory hypotheses may be made; but they are only hypotheses. To admit that there had really been any communication between the dead man and the living one is also an hypothesis.

Are facts of this kind very rare? It seems not. I remember, among others, a story told me by an old friend of my boyish days, Jean Best, who, with my eminent friend Édouard Charton, founded the _Magasin Pittoresque_ in 1883, and died a few years ago. He was a grave, cold, methodical man, a skilful typographical engraver, and a careful business man. Every one who knew him knows how little nervous he was by temperament, and how foreign to his mind were things of the imagination. Well, the following incident happened to him when he was a child between five and six years old.

It was at Toul, his native place. He was lying in his little bed one beautiful evening, but was not asleep, when he saw his mother come into his chamber, cross it, and go into the adjoining drawing-room, whose door was open, and where his father was playing cards with a friend. Now, his mother was ill at Pau at that time. He at once rose from his bed and ran to the drawing-room after his mother, where he looked for her in vain. His father scolded him somewhat impatiently, and sent him back to bed again, assuring him that he had been dreaming.

Then the child, thinking that he must have been dreaming, tried to go to sleep again. But some time afterwards, lying with his eyes open, he distinctly saw his mother pass him for the second time; only now he hurried to her and kissed her, and she at once disappeared. He did not want to go to bed afterwards, and remained in the drawing-room, where his father continued to play cards. His mother died at Pau the same day at that very hour.

I have this circumstance from M. Best himself, who remembered it clearly. How explain it? It may be said that, knowing his mother was ill, the child often thought of her, and had an hallucination which happened to coincide with his mother's death. That is possible. But it may be thought, too, that there was some sympathetic link between the mother and child, and at that solemn moment the mother's soul may really have been in communication with her child. How? one may ask. We know nothing about it. But what we do not know, is to what we know in the proportion of the ocean to a drop of water.

_Hallucinations!_ That is easily said. How many medical works have been written upon this subject! Everybody knows that of Brierre de Boismont. Among the numberless incidents which it relates, let us cite the two following:

"Observation 84. When King James came to England at the time of
the London plague, being at Sir Robert Cotton's house in the
country with old Camden, he saw, in a dream, his oldest son, who
was still a child living in London, with a bleeding cross on his
forehead, as if he had been wounded by a sword. Frightened at
this apparition, the king began to pray; in the morning he went
to Camden's chamber and told him the events of the night; the
latter reassured the monarch, telling him he had nothing to
torment himself about. That very day the king received a letter
from his wife announcing the death of his son, who had died from
the plague. When the child appeared to his father, he had the
height and proportions of a grown man.

"Observation 87. Mlle. R., a person of excellent judgment,
religious, but not a bigot, lived before her marriage at her
uncle's house, D., the celebrated physician and a member of the
Institute. She was away from her mother, who was attacked by
violent illness in the country. One night this young person
dreamed that she saw her, pale, disfigured, very near death, and
showing deep grief at not having her children with her, one of
whom, the curate of a parish in Paris, had emigrated to Spain,
the other being in Paris. Soon she heard herself called by her
christian name several times; in her dream she saw the persons
who were with her mother, thinking she called her little
granddaughter, who had the same name, go into the next room for
her, when a sign from the sick woman told them it was not she,
but her daughter who lived in Paris, whom she wanted to see. Her
face showed the grief she felt at the daughter's absence;
suddenly her features changed, the paleness of death spread over
her face, and she fell back lifeless on her bed.

"The next morning Mlle. R. seemed very sad to D., who begged to
know the cause of her grief. She told him all the particulars of
the dream which had so greatly distressed her. D., finding her
in that frame of mind, pressed her to his heart, acknowledging
that the news was only too true, that her mother had just died;
he did not enter into further particulars.

"A few months afterwards Mlle. R., profiting by her uncle's
absence to put in order his papers, which, like many other
savants, he disliked to have touched, found a letter to her
uncle relating the circumstances of her mother's death. What was
her surprise to read all the particulars of her dream!"

Hallucination! Fortuitous coincidence. Is that a satisfactory explanation? At all events, it is an explanation which explains nothing at all.

A host of ignorant persons, of all ages and trades, clerks, merchants or deputies, sceptics by temperament or habit, simply declare that they do not believe these stories, that there is nothing true about them. That also is not a very good solution of them. Minds accustomed to study cannot content themselves with so trifling a denial. A fact is a fact; we cannot refuse to admit it, even when we cannot in the present state of our knowledge explain it.

Of course medical annals acknowledge that there is really more than one kind of hallucination, and that certain nervous organizations are their dupes. But there is a wide gulf between that and concluding that all psycho-biological phenomena are hallucinations.

The scientific spirit of our century rightly seeks to free all these facts from the deceptive fogs of supernaturalism, inasmuch as nothing is supernatural, and Nature, whose kingdom is infinite, embraces everything. During the last few years a special scientific society has been organized in England for the study of these phenomena,--the Society for Psychical Research. It has at its head some of the most illustrious savants on the other side of the Channel, and has already sent out important publications. These phenomena of sight at a distance are classed under the general title of Telepathy (τήλε, _far_, πάθος, _sensation_). Rigorous inquiries are made to verify their testimony. Its variety is very great. Let us look through one of these collections[2] together for a moment, and take out a few of the documents which are duly and scientifically established.

In the following recently observed case, the observer was as wide awake as you and I are at this moment. It is about a certain Mr. Robert Bee, who lives at Wigan, England. Here is the curious revelation, written by the observer himself.

"On the 18th of December, 1873, my wife and I went to visit my
wife's family at Southport, leaving my parents to all appearance
in perfect health. The next afternoon we were strolling on the
beach, when I became so depressed that it was impossible for me
to interest myself in anything whatever, so that we soon
returned to the house.

"All at once my wife showed signs of great uneasiness, and said
she was going to her mother's room for a few moments. A minute
afterwards I rose from my armchair and went into the
drawing-room.

"A lady in walking costume came towards me from an adjacent
sleeping-room. I did not notice her features, because her face
was turned away from me; still, I spoke to her, and greeted her
at once, but I do not remember now what I said.

"At the same time, while she was passing before me, my wife was
coming from her mother's chamber, and walked right over the
place where I saw the lady, without seeming to notice her. I
said at once, in great surprise, 'Who is that lady whom you just
met?' 'I met no one,' replied my wife, still more astonished
than I was. 'What!' I replied, 'do you mean to tell me that you
did not see a lady this very minute who passed by just where you
are now? She probably came from your mother's room, and must be
now in the vestibule.'

"'It is impossible,' she said; 'there is positively no one in
the house at this moment but my mother and ourselves.'

"Sure enough. No strange lady had been there, and the search
which we immediately began was without result.

"It was then ten minutes to eight o'clock. The next morning a
telegram informed us of my mother's sudden death from
heart-disease at exactly that hour. She was then in the street,
and dressed precisely like the unknown lady who had passed in
front of me."

Such is the observer's story. The inquiries made by the Society for Psychical Research have proved its absolute authenticity and the agreement of the witnesses. It is as positive a fact as a meteorological, astronomical, philosophical, or chemical observation. How can it be explained? Coincidence, you will say. Can a strict scientific criticism be satisfied with this word?

Still another case.

Mr. Frederick Wingfield, living at Belle-Isle en Terre (Côtes-du-Nord), writes that on the 25th of March, 1880, having gone to bed rather late, after reading a part of the evening, he dreamed that his brother, living in the county of Essex, in England, was with him; but instead of answering a question asked him, merely shook his head, rose from his chair, and went away. The impression was so strong that the narrator sprang from his bed half asleep, awaking as his foot touched the floor, and called his brother. Three days later he received news that his brother had been killed by a fall from his horse the same day, March 25th, 1880, in the evening, about half-past eight o'clock, a few hours before the dream just reported.

An inquiry proved that the date of this death was exact, and that the author of this narrative had written his dream in a diary at the very date of the event, and not afterwards.

Still another case.

"Mr. S. and Mr. L., both employed in a Government office, had
been intimate friends for eight years. Monday, 19th March, 1883,
L. had an attack of indigestion at his office. He went to a
druggist's, where he was given some medicine, and was told that
his liver was affected. The following Thursday he was no better;
Saturday of that same week he was still absent from the office.

"On Saturday evening, March 24th, S. was at home with a
headache; he told his wife that he was too warm, which he had
not been before for two months; then, after making this remark,
he went to bed, and shortly after he saw his friend L. standing
before him, dressed as usual. S. noticed even this particular
about L.'s clothes, that he had a black band on his hat, and
that his coat was unbuttoned; he also had a cane in his hand. L.
looked directly at S. and passed on. S. then remembered the
sentence in the book of Job, 'A spirit passed before my face;
the hair of my flesh stood up.'

"At that moment he felt a chill run all over his body, and felt
the hair rise on his head. Then he asked his wife,'What time is
it?' She replied,'Ten minutes of nine.' 'I asked you,' he said,
'because L. is dead; I have just seen him.' She tried to
persuade him that it was a pure illusion; but he insisted, in
the most solemn manner, that nothing could induce him to change
his opinion."

This is the story as told by Mr. S. He did not learn of his friend's death until three o'clock on Sunday. L. had died on Saturday evening at about ten minutes of nine.

Agrippa d'Aubigné's historical account of an occurrence at the time of the Cardinal of Lorraine's death is somewhat like this story:--

"The king being at Avignon on December 23d, 1574, Charles,
Cardinal of Lorraine, died there. The queen (Catherine de
Médicis) had retired to bed earlier than usual, having at her
_coucher_, among other persons of note, the king of Navarre,
the archbishop of Lyons, the ladies de Retz, de Lignerolles, and
de Saunes, two of whom have confirmed this report. As she was
hurrying to finish her good-nights, she threw herself back on
her bed with a start, put her hands over her face with a loud
cry, calling to those about her for help, pointing to the
cardinal at the foot of the bed, who, she said, was holding out
his hand to her. She cried out several times, 'M. le Cardinal, I
have nothing to do with you.' At the same time the king of
Navarre sent one of his gentlemen to the cardinal's house, who
reported that he had died at that very minute."

In his book on "Posthumous Humanity," published in 1882, Adolphe d'Assier guarantees the authenticity of the following statement, which was reported by a lady of St. Gaudens as having happened to herself:--

"It was before my marriage," she said, "and I slept with my
elder sister. One night we had just put out the light and gone
to bed. The fire was still burning enough to dimly light the
room. Glancing at the fireplace, to my great surprise I saw a
priest seated before the fire warming himself. He was a stout
man, and had the form and features of an uncle of ours, a priest
who lived in the suburbs. I at once spoke to my sister. The
latter looked at the fireplace and saw the same apparition. She
also recognized our uncle the priest. An indescribable fright
took possession of us, and we both cried 'help' as loud as we
could. My father, who was sleeping in an adjoining room,
aroused by our cries, rose in great haste, and soon came in with
a lighted candle in his hand. The phantom had disappeared; we no
longer saw any one in the chamber. The next day we learned by
letter that our uncle the priest had died the previous evening."

Another fact is reported by the same disciple of Auguste Comte, and sent by him while living in Rio de Janeiro.

It was in 1858. In the French colony of that city, people were still talking about a singular apparition which had taken place there a few years before. An Alsatian family, consisting of a husband, wife, and little girl, still almost a baby, sailed for Rio de Janeiro, where they were to join some compatriots living in that city. The passage was very long, the wife was taken ill, and lacking proper care and nourishment, did not live to reach there. The day she died she fell into a swoon, remained in that state for some time, and when she recovered her senses, said to her husband, who was watching by her side, "I die happy, for now I am easy about the fate of our child. I have just come from Rio de Janeiro. I found our friend Fritz the carpenter's house and street; he was standing at the door. I showed him our little girl; I feel sure that on your arrival he will recognize and take care of her." That very day, at the same hour, Fritz the Alsatian carpenter, of whom I have just spoken, was standing at the door of the house where he lived in Rio de Janeiro, when he thought he saw one of his compatriots going along the street with a little girl in her arms. She looked at him entreatingly, and seemed to show him the child she was carrying. Her face, notwithstanding its emaciation, reminded him of Latta, the wife of his friend and fellow-countryman Schmidt. Her expression, the singularity of her step, which seemed more like a vision than reality, struck Fritz; and wanting to be sure that he was not the victim of an illusion, he called one of his men who was working in the shop, and who was also an Alsatian from the same locality.

"Look," said he; "do you not see a woman going down the street, holding a child in her arms, and should you not say that it is Latta, our friend Schmidt's wife?"

"I cannot say; I do not see her very distinctly," replied the workman.

Fritz said no more; but the different circumstances of this real or imaginary apparition fixed themselves firmly in his mind, especially the day and hour. Some time after that, Schmidt, his compatriot, arrived, carrying a little girl in his arms. Latta's visit then came into Fritz's mind; and before Schmidt had spoken a word he said to him,--

"I know all, my poor friend: your wife died during the passage. Before she died, she came and showed me her little girl, that I might take care of her. Here is the date and hour."

It was really the day and hour noted by Schmidt on board the boat.

In his work on the Phenomena of Magic, published in 1864, Gougenot des Mousseaux reports the following incident, which he certifies as absolutely authentic:-

Sir Robert Bruce, belonging to the illustrious Scotch family of that name, was mate of a vessel. One day, when sailing near Newfoundland, and while busy with his calculations, he thought he saw the captain seated at his desk, but looked at him attentively, and noticed that it was a stranger, whose cold, fixed look surprised him. He went on deck; the captain noticed his surprise, and asked him what it meant.

"Who is at your desk?" asked Bruce.

"No one."

"Yes, there is some one there. Is it a stranger; and how did he come there?"

"You are either dreaming or joking."

"Not at all. Come down and see for yourself."

They go down to the cabin, but there is no one at the desk. The ship is thoroughly searched, but no stranger is found.

"And yet the man I saw was writing on your slate; the writing must be there still," said he to the captain.

They looked at the slate; it bore these words: "Steer to the northwest."

"This must be your writing, or some one's else on board the ship."

"No; I did not write it."

Every one was told to write the same sentence, and no handwriting resembled that on the slate. "Very well," said the captain; "we will obey these instructions and steer the ship to the northwest; the wind is right, and will admit of our trying the experiment."

Three hours later, the watch perceived an iceberg, and near it a vessel from Quebec, headed for Liverpool, dismantled and covered with people. They were brought off by boats of Bruce's vessel.

As one of the men was climbing up the side of the rescuing vessel, Bruce started, and drew back in great agitation. He recognized the stranger whom he had seen tracing the words on the slate. He reported the strange incident to the captain.

"Will you write 'Steer to the northwest' on this slate?" asked the captain, turning to the new-comer, and offering the side which bore no writing.

The stranger complied with his request, and wrote the desired words.

"Will you acknowledge that to be your ordinary handwriting?" asked the captain, struck with the similarity of the two sentences.

"Of course; how can you doubt it? You saw me write it yourself."

As a reply, the captain turned the slate over, and the stranger was amazed to see his own writing on both sides.

"Did you dream of writing on that slate?" said the Quebec captain to the man who had just been writing.

"No,--at least I have no remembrance of doing so."