SOME MAGICAL PROSECUTIONS
The Greek author of the allegorical Tablet of Cebes gives expression to
this admirable conclusion: “There is one only real good to be desired,
and this is wisdom; there is but one evil to fear, and it is madness.”
Moral evil, wickedness and crime are indeed and literally mania. Father
Hilarion Tissot has therefore our heartfelt sympathy when he proclaims
without ceasing in his extravagantly daring pamphlets that in place
of punishing criminals we must take them under our charge and cure
them. But, sympathy notwithstanding reason rises in protest against
excessively charitable interpretations of crime, the consequence
of which would be to destroy the sanction of morality by disarming
law. We liken mania to intoxication, and seeing that the latter is
nearly always voluntary, we applaud the wisdom of judges who punish
the misdemeanours and crimes committed in the state of drunkenness,
not regarding the voluntary loss of reason as an excuse. There may
come even a day when the self-induced condition will be counted as an
aggravating circumstance and when the intelligent being who by his
own act sets himself outside reason will find that he is also outside
the pale of law. Is not law the reason of humanity? Woe to him who
gets drunk, whether with wine, pride, hatred, or even love. He becomes
blind, unjust, the sport of circumstance; he is a walking scourge and
living fatality; he may slay or violate; he is an unchained fool, and
let him be denounced as such. Society has the right of self-defence; it
is more than a right, it is duty, for society has children.
These reflections are prompted by the magical prosecutions of which
we have to give some account. The Church and Society have been too
often charged with the judicial murder of fools. We admit that the
sorcerers were fools, but theirs was the folly of perversity. If some
innocent but diseased persons have perished among them, these things
are misfortunes for which neither Society nor the Church can be held
responsible. Every man who is condemned according to the laws of his
country and the judicial forms of his time is condemned justly, his
possible innocence being henceforth in the hands of God: before men he
is and must remain guilty.
In a remarkable romance, called _The Sorceresses’ Sabbath_,[276] Ludwig
Tieck depicts a holy woman, a poor old creature outworn by macerations,
mentally enfeebled by fasts and prayers, who, being full of horror
at sorcerers, yet disposed by excess of humility to accuse herself
of all crimes, ends in believing that she is a witch, confesses it,
is convicted by error and prejudgment, and finally is burnt alive.
What would such a history prove, supposing that it were true? Neither
more nor less than the possibility of a judicial blunder. But if such
mistakes are possible in fact they cannot be so in equity, or what
would become of human justice? Socrates condemned to death might have
had recourse to flight and his own judges would have furnished the
means, but he respected the laws and resolved therefore to die.
The severity of certain sentences must be blamed to the laws and not
the tribunals of the middle ages. Was Gilles de Laval, whose crimes and
their punishment have been narrated, condemned unjustly, and must he be
absolved as a fool? Were those horrible imbeciles innocent who composed
philtres from the fat of little children? Moreover, Black Magic was the
general mania of this unfortunate epoch. By their incessant application
to questions of sorcery, the very judges occasionally ended by
thinking that they also had committed the same crimes. The plague
became epidemic in many localities and executions seemed to multiply
the guilty.
Demonographers like Delancre, Delrio, Sprenger, Bodin, and Torreblanca
give reports of many prosecutions, the details of which are equally
tedious and revolting. The condemned creatures were mostly hallucinated
and idiotic, but they were wicked in their idiocy and dangerous in
their hallucination. Erotic passion, greed and hatred were the chief
causes which brought about disorder in their reason: they were indeed
capable of anything. Sprenger says that sorceresses were in league
with midwives to secure dead bodies of new-born children. The midwives
killed these innocents at the very moment of their birth, driving long
needles into the brain. The babe was said to have been still-born and
was buried as such; on the night following, the stryges dug up the
ground and removed the corpse, which they stewed in a pan with narcotic
and poisonous herbs, afterwards distilling this human gelatine. The
liquor did duty as an elixir of long life, and the solid part—pounded
and incorporated with soot and the grease of a black cat—was used for
magical rubbing. The stomach turns with loathing at such abominable
revelations, and pity is silenced by anger; but when one refers to
the trials themselves, sees the credulity and cruelty of judges, the
lying promises of mercy employed to extract admissions, the atrocious
tortures, obscene examinations, shameful and ridiculous precautions,
and finally the public execution, with the derisive ministrations of
a priesthood which surrendered to the secular arm and asked mercy on
those whom it had just condemned to death, amidst all this chaos one
is forced to conclude that religion alone rests holy, but that human
beings are all and equally either idiots or scoundrels.
In the year 1598 a priest of Limousin, named Pierre Aupetit, was
burned alive for ridiculous confessions extracted from him by
torture.[277] In 1599 a woman named Antide Collas was burned at Dôle
because there was something abnormal in her sexual conformation, and it
was regarded as explicable only by a shameful intercourse with Satan.
Repeatedly put to the torture, stripped, scrutinised by doctors and
judges, overwhelmed with shame and suffering, the unfortunate being
confessed everything that she might somehow end it all.[278] Henri
Boguet, judge of Saint-Claude, relates how he caused a woman to be
tortured as a sorceress because there was a piece missing from the
cross of her rosary, and it was a certain sign of witchcraft in the
view of this ferocious maniac. A child of twelve years, brought up by
the inquisitors, accused his own father of taking him to the Sabbath.
The father died in prison as the result of his sufferings, and it
was proposed to burn the boy, which was opposed by Boguet—who made a
virtue of the clemency. Rollande de Vernois, thirty-five years old,
was imprisoned in such a freezing dungeon that she promised to admit
herself guilty of Magic if she might be allowed to go near a fire.
As soon as she felt its warmth she fell into frightful convulsions,
accompanied by fever and delirium. In this condition she was put to
the torture, made every required statement, and was dragged in a dying
condition to the stake. A storm broke out, extinguished the fire, and
thereupon Boguet gloated over the sentence which he had pronounced,
since she who in appearance was thus protected by heaven must really
and incontestably be aided by the devil. This same judge burnt Pierre
Gaudillon and Pierre le Gros for travelling by night, the one in the
form of a hare and the other in that of a wolf.
But the prosecution which caused the greatest stir at the beginning of
the seventeenth century was that of Messire Louis Gaufridi, curé of the
parish of Accoules, at Marseilles. The scandal of this affair created a
fatal precedent, which was only followed too faithfully. It was a case
of priests accusing a priest, of a minister dragged before a tribunal
of his associates in the ministry. Constantine had said that if he
found a priest dishonouring his calling by some shameful sin he would
cover him with his own purple, which was a beautiful and royal saying,
for the priesthood ought to be stainless, even as justice is infallible
in the presence of public morality.[279]
In December 1610 a young woman of Marseilles went on a pilgrimage to
Sainte-Baume in Provence, and there fell into ecstasy and convulsions.
She was named Magdelaine de la Palud. Louise Capeau, another devotee,
was similarly seized some short time after.[280] The Dominicans
and Capuchins believed that it was possession by the devil and had
recourse to exorcisms. The result was that Magdelaine de la Palud and
her fellow-victim presented that spectacle which was renewed so often
a century later during the epidemic of convulsions. They screamed,
writhed, begged to be beaten and trampled under foot. One day six men
walked successively over the breast of Magdelaine without the slightest
suffering on her part. While in this state she made confession of the
most extraordinary licentiousness, saying that she had given herself,
body and soul, to the devil, to whom she had been affianced by a priest
named Gaufridi.[281] So far from incarcerating the distracted girl,
she obtained a hearing, and the exorcising monks despatched three
Capuchins to Marseilles for the purpose of secretly acquainting the
ecclesiastical superiors with the state of affairs at Sainte-Baume,
the object, if possible, being to bring the curé Gaufridi thither and
confront him with the supposed demons.[282]
Furthermore, the monks put on record the infernal inspirations of the
two hysterics, which were discourses full of ignorant and fanatical
devotion, presenting religion as this was understood by the exorcists
themselves. In a word, the possessed women seemed to be relating the
dreams of those who exorcised them: it was precisely the phenomena of
table-rapping and mediums in our own days. The devils assumed names not
less incongruous than those of the spirits in America; they declaimed
against printing and books, delivering sermons worthy of the most
fervent and illiterate Capuchins. In the presence of demons made in
their own image and their own likeness, the fathers were confirmed in
the fact of the possession and in the veracity of the infernal spirits.
The phantoms of their diseased imaginations assumed bodily shape and
living manifestation in the two women, whose obscene admissions at once
stimulated their curiosity and their indignation, full of secret lust.
Such were their dispositions when the unhappy Louis Gaufridi was at
length brought before them.
Gaufridi was an all too worldly priest, of agreeable countenance,
weak character and more than dubious morality.[283] He had been the
confessor of Magdelaine de la Palud and had inspired her with an
insatiable passion, which, being changed by jealousy into hatred,
became a fatality and drew the unfortunate priest into its whirlpool of
madness, by which he was carried ultimately to the stake. Whatsoever
was said by the accused in his own defence was turned against him. He
called on God and Christ Jesus, on the Blessed Mother of Christ and the
precursor St. John Baptist; but they answered: You are excellent at
reciting the Litanies of the Sabbath. By God, you understand Lucifer;
by Jesus Christ, Beelzebub; by the Holy Virgin, the apostate mother of
Antichrist; by St. John Baptist, the false prophet and precursor of Gog
and Magog.
Gaufridi was put to the torture and promised mercy if he would sign
the declarations of Magdelaine de la Palud. Distracted, circumvented,
broken, the poor priest signed whatever was required; it was sufficient
for his burning, and this was the object in view.[284] This also was
the frightful spectacle which the Provençal Capuchins gave to the
people as a lesson in violating the privileges of the sanctuary. They
shewed how priests are killed, and the people remembered later on. A
rabbi who witnessed the prodigies which went before the destruction of
Jerusalem by Titus exclaimed: “O Holy Temple, what is it that possesses
thee, and why frighten thyself in this manner? “Neither Chair of
Peter nor bishops protested against the murder of Gaufridi, but the
eighteenth century was to come, bringing the Revolution in its wake.
One of the possessed women[285] who had destroyed the curé of Accoules
testified that the demon was leaving her to prepare the murder of
another priest, whom she named prophetically in advance and in the
absence of all personal knowledge: this was Urbain Grandier. It was
then the reign of that terrible Cardinal de Richelieu, for whom
absolute authority alone could guarantee the salvation of states;
unfortunately his tendencies were political and subtle rather than
truly Christian. One limitation which characterised this great man
was a certain narrowness of heart, which made him sensible to personal
offence and also implacable in revenge. And further, that which he was
least ready to pardon in talent was independence; while he preferred
men of parts for auxiliaries rather than flatterers, he took a certain
pleasure in destroying whatsoever desired to shine apart from him. His
ambition was to dominate all; Father Joseph was his right hand and
Laubardemont his left.
There was then in the provinces, at Loudun, an ecclesiastic of
remarkable genius and exalted character, possessed also of learning and
talent but lacking in circumspection. Made to please multitudes and
attract the sympathies of the great, he might on occasion have become
a dangerous partisan; protestantism was at that period bestirring in
France, and the curé of St. Peter’s at Loudun, predisposed to the new
ideas by his dislike of ecclesiastical celibacy, might prove at the
head of such a party a preacher more brilliant than Calvin and not less
daring than Luther. He was named Urbain Grandier. Serious differences
with his bishop had already given instances of his ability and his
inflexible character, but by mischance it was maladroit ability, since
from enemies who were powerful he had appealed to the King and not,
unhappily, to the Cardinal. The King held that he was right, but it
remained for the Cardinal to teach him how far he was wrong. Grandier
meanwhile had gone back in triumph to Loudun, and had indulged in the
unclerical display of entering the town bearing a branch of laurel.
From that time he was lost.[286]
The Lady-Superior of the Ursuline nuns at Loudun was named Mother
Jeanne des Anges in religion, otherwise, Jeanne de Belfiel,
grand-daughter of the Baron de Cose. She could not be termed fervent
in piety, and her convent was not to be ranked among the strictest in
the country; in particular, nocturnal scenes took place which were
attributed to spirits.[287] Relatives withdrew boarders, and the house
was on the point of being denuded of all resources. Grandier was
responsible for certain intrigues and was a little careless regarding
them, while he was much too public a character for the idleness of a
small town not to make a noise over his shortcomings. The pupils of the
Ursulines heard them discussed mysteriously by their parents; the nuns
spoke of them, deploring the scandal and dwelling over much upon him
through whom it arose; of that which they talked by day they dreamed by
night; and so it came about that at night they saw him appear in their
dormitories under circumstances which were conformable with his alleged
morals; they uttered cries, believed themselves obsessed, and in this
manner the devil was let loose among them.
The directors of the nuns, who were mortal enemies of Grandier, did
not fail to perceive the advantage they could draw from the affair in
the interests of their rancour and in those of the convent.[288] They
began to perform exorcisms—at first privately and afterwards in public.
The friends of Grandier felt that there was a plot hatching, and
were anxious that he should exchange his benefice, in order to leave
Loudun, believing that everything would quiet down when he was gone.
But Grandier was brave and could not tolerate yielding to calumny;
he remained therefore and was arrested one morning as he entered his
church, clothed in sacerdotal vestments. He was treated forthwith as
a State prisoner; his papers were seized, seals were placed on his
effects, and he was conducted, under a strong guard, to the fortress at
Angers. Meanwhile a dungeon was prepared for him at Loudun which seemed
intended for a wild beast rather than a man. Richelieu, informed of
everything, had despatched Laubardemont to make an end of Grandier and
forbade the parliament to take cognisance of the affair.
If the conduct of the Curé of Saint-Pierre had been that of a
worldling, the demeanour of Grandier, a prisoner on a charge of Magic,
was that of a hero and a martyr: so does adversity reveal great souls,
and it is much easier to withstand suffering than prosperity. He wrote
to his mother: “I bear my affliction with patience and pity yours more
than my own. I am very unwell, having no bed; try to have mine brought
me; for if the body does not rest the mind gives way. Send me also my
breviary, a bible, and St. Thomas for my consolation. For the rest, do
not grieve; I hope that God will vindicate my innocence.”[289]
There is no question that God does sooner or later take the part of
persecuted innocence, but He does not invariably deliver it from
enemies on earth, save indeed by death. This lesson was about to be
learned by Grandier. On our own part, do not let us represent men worse
than they are in fact; his enemies did not believe in his innocence;
they pursued him with fury, but he whom they pursued was for them a
great criminal.
The phenomena of hysteria were little understood at the time, and
somnambulism was quite unknown; the convulsions of nuns; their
bodily motions exceeding all normal human power; their astonishing
evidences of second sight were things of a nature to convince the
least credulous. A well known atheist of the day, being the Sieur de
Kériolet, counsellor in the parliament of Brittany, came to witness
the exorcisms and to deride them. The nuns, who had never seen him,
addressed him by name and published sins which he supposed to be
unknown to anyone. He was so overwhelmed that he passed from one
extreme to another, like all hot-headed natures; he shed tears, made
his confession and dedicated his remaining days to the strictest
asceticism.
The sophistry of the exorcists of Loudun was that absurd unreason which
M. de Mirville has the courage to sustain at the present day: the devil
is the author of all phenomena which cannot be explained by known laws
of Nature. To this illogical maxim they joined another which was, so to
speak, an article of faith: the devil who has been duly exorcised is
compelled to speak the truth and can therefore be admitted as a witness
in the cause of justice.
The unfortunate Grandier was not therefore delivered into the hands
of malefactors but rather of raving maniacs, who, strong in their
rectitude of conscience, gave the fullest publicity to this incredible
prosecution. Such a scandal had never afflicted the church—howling,
writhing nuns, making the most obscene gestures, blaspheming, striving
to cast themselves on Grandier like the Bacchantes on Orpheus; the most
sacred things of religion mixed up with this hideous spectacle and
drawn in the filth thereof; amidst all Grandier alone calm, shrugging
his shoulders and defending himself with dignity and mildness; in fine,
pallid, distraught judges, sweating profusely, and Laubardemont in his
red robe, hovering over the conflict, like a vulture awaiting a corpse:
such was the prosecution of Urbain Grandier.
Let us say for the honour of humanity that one is compelled to assume
good faith in exorcists and judges alike, for such a conspiracy as
would be involved in the legal murder of the accused is happily
impossible. Monsters are as uncommon as heroes; the mass is composed of
mediocrities, equally incapable of great virtues and great crimes. The
holiest persons of the day believed in the possession at Loudun; even
St. Vincent de Paul was not unacquainted with its history and was asked
to give his opinion about it. Richelieu himself, though he might in any
case have found some way of getting rid of Grandier, ended by believing
him guilty. His death was the crime arising from the ignorance and
prejudice of the period; it was a catastrophe rather than a murder.
We spare our readers the details of his tortures: he remained firm,
resigned, patient, although confessing nothing; he did not even affect
to despise his judges but prayed mildly for the exorcists to spare
him: “And you, my fathers,” he said to them, “abate the rigour of my
torments, and reduce not my soul to despair.” Through this moan of
complaining nature, one discerns all the meekness of the Christian
who forgives. To hide their emotion, the exorcists replied with
invectives, and the executioners wept.[290] Three nuns, in one of
their lucid moments, cast themselves before the tribunal, crying that
Grandier was innocent, but it was believed that the devil was speaking
by their mouth,[291] and their declaration only hastened the end.
Urbain Grandier was burnt alive on August 18, 1634. He was patient
and resigned to the end. When he was taken from the cart, his legs
being broken, he fell heavily face down on the earth without uttering
a single cry or groan. A Franciscan, named Father Grillau, squeezed
through the crowd and raised up the sufferer, whom he embraced weeping:
“I bring you,” said he, “the blessing of your mother: she and I pray
God for you.” “Thank you, my father,” answered Grandier; “you alone
pity me; console my poor mother and be a son unto her.” The provost’s
lieutenant, deeply affected, then said to him: “Sir, forgive me the
part I am compelled to take in your anguish.” And Grandier answered:
“You have not offended me and are obliged to fulfil the duties
committed to your charge.” They had promised to strangle him before the
burning, but when the executioner sought to tighten the rope it proved
to be knotted, and the unfortunate Curé de St. Pierre fell alive into
the flames.
The chief exorcists, Fathers Tranquille and Lactance, died soon after
in the delirium of violent frenzy; Father Surin, who succeeded them,
became imbecile; Manoury, the surgeon who assisted at the torturing of
Grandier, died haunted by the phantom of his victim. Laubardemont lost
his son in a tragical manner and fell into disgrace with his master;
the nuns remained idiots. So is it true that the question was one of a
terrible and contagious malady, the mental disease of false zeal and
false devotion. Providence punishes people by their own faults and
instructs them by the sad consequences of their errors.
Ten years after the death of Grandier, the Loudun scandals were renewed
in Normandy, where the nuns of Louviers accused two priests of having
bewitched them. Of these priests, one was already dead, but they
violated the sanctity of the tomb to disinter his corpse. The details
of the possession were identical with those of Loudun and Sainte-Baume.
The hysterical women translated into foul language the nightmares of
their directors. Both priests were condemned to the flames, and—to
increase the horror—a living man and a corpse were bound to the same
stake. The punishment of Mezentius, that fiction of a pagan poet, came
so to be realised by Christians; a Christian people assisted coldly at
the sacrilegious execution, and the ministers did not realise that in
thus profaning at once the priestly office and the dead, they gave
a frightful precedent to impiety. When the call came, the eighteenth
century arrived to extinguish the fires with the blood of priests, and,
as it happens almost invariably, the good paid for the wicked. At the
beginning of that century the burning of human beings still proceeded;
though faith was dead, hypocrisy abandoned the youthful Labarre to the
most horrible tortures because he refused to uncover when a procession
went by. Voltaire was then in evidence and conscious in his heart of
a vocation like that of Attila. While human passions were profaning
religion, God sent this new destroyer to remove religion from a world
which was no longer worthy of it.
In 1731, a young woman of Toulon, named Catherine Cadière, accused
her confessor, the Jesuit Girard, of seduction and Magic. She was a
stigmatised ecstatic who had long passed as a saint. Her history is one
of lascivious swoons, secret flagellations and lewd sensations. Where
is the sink of infamy with mysteries comparable to those of celibate
imagination disordered by dangerous mysticism? The woman was not
believed on her mere word and Father Girard escaped condemnation; the
scandal for this reason was not less great, but the noise which it made
was echoed by a burst of laughter: we have said that Voltaire was among
us.
Superstitious people till then had explained extraordinary phenomena by
the intervention of the devil and of spirits; equally absurd on its own
part, the school of Voltaire, in the face of all evidence, denied the
phenomena themselves. It was said by the one side that whatsoever we
cannot explain comes from the devil; the answer on the other side was,
that the things which we cannot explain do not exist. By reproducing
under analogous circumstances the same series of eccentric and
wonderful facts, Nature protested in the one case against presumptuous
ignorance and in the other against deficient science.
Physical disturbances have, in all times, accompanied certain nervous
maladies; fools, epileptics, cataleptics, victims of hysteria have
exceptional faculties, are subject to infectious hallucinations
and produce occasionally, in the atmosphere or in surrounding
objects, certain commotions and derangements. He who is hallucinated
exteriorises his dreams and is tormented by his own shadow; the body
is surrounded with its own reflections, distorted by the sufferings
of the brain; the subject beholds his own image in the Astral Light;
the powerful currents of that light, acting like a magnet, displace
and overturn furniture; noises are then heard and voices sound as in
dreams. These phenomena, so often repeated at this day that they have
become vulgar, were attributed by our fathers to phantoms and demons.
Voltairian philosophy found it more easy to deny them, treating the
ocular witnesses of the most incontestable facts as so many imbeciles
and idiots.
What, for example, is better accredited than the extraordinary
convulsions at the grave of Paris the deacon, or at the meetings
of Saint-Médard ecstatics? What is the explanation of the strange
buffetings demanded by the convulsionaries? Blows rained by thousands
on the head, compressions which would have crushed a hippopotamus,
torsions of breasts with iron pincers, even crucifixion with nails
driven into hands and feet? And then the superhuman contortions and
levitations? The followers of Voltaire refused to see anything but
sport and frolic therein; the Jansenists cried miracle; the true
Catholics sighed; science which should have intervened, and that only,
to explain the fantastic disease, held aloof. It is to her nevertheless
that there now belong the Ursulines of Loudun, the nuns of Louviers,
the convulsionaries and the American mediums. The phenomena of
magnetism have placed science on the path of new discoveries, and the
coming chemical synthesis will lead our physicians to a knowledge of
the Astral Light. When this universal force is once known, what will
prevent them from determining the strength, number and direction of its
magnets? A revolution will follow in science and there will be a return
to the Transcendental Magic of Chaldea.
Much has been talked about the presbytery of Cideville; De Mirville,
Gougenot Desmousseaux and other uncritical believers have seen in the
strange occurrences which took place therein a contemporary revelation
of the devil; but the same things happened at Saint-Maur in 1706,
and thither all Paris flocked. There were great rappings on walls,
beds rocked without being touched, other furniture was displaced. The
manifestations finished in a climax during which the master of the
house, a young man of twenty-four or twenty-five years old, and a
person of weak constitution, fell into a deep swoon and believed that
he heard spirits speaking to him at great length, though he could never
repeat subsequently a single word that they said.
One history of an apparition at the beginning of the eighteenth century
may here follow; the simplicity of the account proves its authenticity;
there are certain characteristics of truth which cannot be simulated by
inventors.
A pious priest of Valognes, named Bézuel, was invited to dinner on
January 7, 1708 by a lady related to the Abbé de Saint-Pierre, the Abbé
being also of the company, and the priest recounted, at their request,
the appearance of one of his deceased comrades in open day, some twelve
years previously. In 1695, he told them that he was a young scholar,
about fifteen years old and that he was acquainted with two lads, sons
of Abaquène, a solicitor, who were scholars like himself. “The elder
was my own age and the other, who was some eighteen months younger,
was named Desfontaines; we walked together and shared our amusements;
and whether or not Desfontaines had greater friendship for me, or was
more lively, more affable, more intelligent than his brother, I know
that I cared for him more. We were wandering in the cloister of the
Capucins, in 1696, when he told me that he had been reading a story of
two friends who had promised one another that whichever of them died
first should bring news of his condition to him who survived; that one
of them who did pass away redeemed his pledge and told the survivor
astonishing things. Desfontaines then said that he had a favour to
ask me, which was to make a similar promise, he doing likewise on his
own part. I was, however, unwilling and indeed declined the proposal;
several months passed away, during which he recurred frequently to the
idea, I always resisting. About August, 1696, when he was on the point
of leaving to continue his studies at Caen, he pressed me so much,
and with tears in his eyes, that at length I consented. He produced
thereupon two little slips of paper on which he had written beforehand,
one signed with his blood and in which he promised me, in the event of
his death, to give me news of his state, the other in which I entered
into a similar bond. I pricked my finger, and with the blood which
issued therefrom I signed my own name. He was delighted to receive the
promise and embraced me with a thousand thanks. Some time after he
left, accompanied by his brother; the separation was grievous to both
of us; we wrote from time to time, and then there was a silence for
the space of six weeks, after which the event happened that I am about
to relate. On July 31, 1697, being a Thursday and a day which I shall
always remember, the late M. de Sortoville, with whom I lodged and
who was always exceedingly good to me, begged me to go into a meadow
adjoining the Franciscan monastery and help his people in haymaking.
I had not been there for more than a quarter of an hour when, about
half past two, I suddenly felt giddy and overcome with weakness. It
was to no purpose that I tried to lean on my hay-fork; I felt obliged
to lie down on the hay and so remained for about half an hour, trying
to recover my strength. The feeling passed away but, having never had
such an experience previously, it caused me some surprise, and I feared
that it was the beginning of an illness. I have no special recollection
regarding the remainder of the day, but on the following night I slept
less than usual.
“At the same hour next day, as I was walking in the meadow with M. de
Saint-Simon, grandson of M. de Sortoville, then about ten years old,
I was overcome in exactly the same way and sat down in the shade on
a stone. It passed again and we continued our walk; nothing further
occurred on that day and the next night I slept scarcely at all.
Finally, on the morrow, being the second day of August, I was in the
loft where they stacked the hay at precisely the same hour, when I was
again seized with a similar giddiness and weakness, but more serious
than before. I swooned and lost all consciousness. One of the servants
saw me and asked what was the matter, to which it is said that I
replied, stating that I had seen what I should have never believed.
I do not however recollect either the question or answer. The memory
which does remain with me is that I had seen someone in a state of
nakedness to the waist, but it was not anyone whom I recognised. I
was helped down the ladder; I held tight to the rungs; but when I saw
Desfontaines, my comrade, at the foot of the ladder, the weakness
returned, my head fell between two of the rungs and again I lost
consciousness. I was laid upon a wide beam which served for a bench on
the Grande Place des Capucins; I saw nothing of M. de Sortoville nor of
his servants, though they were present, but I observed Desfontaines,
still by the foot of the ladder, signalling for me to come to him,
and I drew back on my seat as if to make room for him. Those who were
by me and whom I did not see, though my eyes were open, observed this
movement. He did not respond and I rose to go towards him; he then
came forward and taking my left arm in his own right arm, he led me
some paces forward into a quiet street, with arms still interlocked.
The servants thinking that my giddiness had passed and that I was
going about some business of my own, went back to their work, with the
exception of one youth, who told M. de Sortoville that I was talking to
myself. He came up to me and heard me questioning and answering, as he
has since told me. I was there for nearly three quarters of an hour,
talking to Desfontaines, who said: I promised that if I died before
you I would come and tell you. I was drowned the day before yesterday
in the river at Caen. It was just about this time, and I was walking
with some friends; it was exceedingly warm, we decided to bathe, a
weakness came over me and I sank to the bottom. My companion, the Abbé
de Menil-Jean, dived to bring me up. I caught hold of his leg and as
I clung very tight he may have thought that it was a salmon or he may
have had to come up quickly, but he struck out so roughly with his leg
that I received a blow upon the chest, throwing me again to the bottom,
where the depth is considerable at that point!
“Desfontaines subsequently told me all that had happened in their walk
and the subjects discussed between them. I was anxious to learn whether
he was saved, whether he was damned, whether he was in purgatory,
whether I was myself in a state of grace and whether I should follow
him speedily; but he continued speaking as if he had not heard, or
refused to listen. I tried to embrace him several times, but I seemed
to embrace nothing; yet I felt him still holding me tight by the arm,
and when I attempted to turn away my head, so as not to see him because
of the grief which it caused me, he tightened his grasp as if to compel
me to look as well as to listen. He seemed taller than when I had last
seen him and taller even than he was at the time of death, though he
had grown a good deal during the eighteen months since we met. I
saw him as far as his waist only and he was naked, his head bare and
a white paper twisted in his beautiful fair hair over the forehead;
the paper had writing on it, but I could read only the word: IN, &c.
His voice was the same voice; he seemed neither gay nor sad, but in a
calm and tranquil state. He begged me on his brother’s return to give
him certain messages for his father and mother; he begged me also to
say the seven penitential psalms, which had been imposed on him as a
penance the previous Sunday and which he had not yet recited. Finally,
he again advised me to speak to his brother and then bade me farewell,
saying as he went: ‘Till I see you again,’ which was our usual formula
when we parted at the end of a walk. He told me also that at the time
he was drowned his brother, who was making a translation, regretted
having let him go apart from him, in case of an accident. He described
so well where he was drowned and the tree in the Avenue de Louvigny
on which he had cut some words that two years afterwards, when in the
company of the late Chevalier de Gotot, one who was with him at the
time, I pointed out the very spot and counting the trees on one side,
as Desfontaines had specified, I went straight to the tree, there to
find the inscription. I learned also that it was true about the seven
psalms which had been given him as a penance at confession. His brother
also told me that he was writing his translation and reproached himself
for not being with him.
“As a month went by before I was able to do as Desfontaines asked me
in regard to his brother, he appeared to me on two other occasions
before dinner in a country house a few miles away, to which I had
been invited. Feeling unwell, I made an excuse of being tired, saying
that it was nothing and that I should return. I went into a corner
of the garden and Desfontaines reproached me for not having spoken
to his brother; he talked to me for a quarter of an hour, but would
not answer questions on my own part. The second appearance was in
the morning, as I was going to Notre Dame de la Victoire, but the
apparition was for a shorter time; he impressed on me about speaking
to his brother and left me repeating: ‘Till I see you again’—still
without answering my questions. One remarkable fact is that I always
had a pain in the arm where he had taken a hold of me the first time,
and it remained till I had spoken to his brother. For three days I had
no sleep owing to the astonishment in which I was. After the first
conversation I told M. de Varonville, my schoolfellow and neighbour,
that Desfontaines had been drowned, that he had appeared to me and told
me so. He hurried to his relations, asking whether this was true; they
had just had news on the subject but, owing to a misunderstanding,
believed that it was the elder boy. He assured me that he had seen
the letter of Desfontaines and he thought that this was correct; I
maintained that it must be wrong, for Desfontaines himself had appeared
to me. He went again to his relatives and returned in tears saying: ‘It
is only too true.’
“Nothing has happened to me since, and such was my experience simply.
It has been told in many ways, but I have never related it otherwise
than as I do now. The late Chevalier de Gotot stated that Desfontaines
also appeared to M. de Menil-Jean, but I do not know him. He is fifty
miles from here, near Argentan, and I can tell you no more.”
We should notice the characteristics of dream which prevail
throughout in this vision of a man who is awake, but in a state of
semi-asphyxiation produced by the emanations of the hay. The astral
intoxication following congestion of the brain will be recognised.
The somnambulistic condition which followed showed M. Bézuel the last
living reflection left by his friend in the Astral Light. He was naked
and was visible down to the waist only, because the rest of his body
was immersed in the water of the river. The supposed paper in his hair
was probably a handkerchief used to confine his hair when bathing.
Bézuel had further a somnambulistic intuition of all that took place,
and it seemed to him that he was learning it from the lips of his
friend. The friend appeared neither sad nor gay, an indication of the
impression made upon him by an image which was lifeless and consisting
only of reminiscence and reflection. On the occasion of the first
vision, M. Bézuel, intoxicated by the scent of the hay, fell off the
ladder and injured his arm; it seemed, with the logic of dreams that
his friend was grasping the arm, and when he came to himself, he still
felt the pain, which is explained quite naturally by the hurt that he
had received. For the rest, the conversation of the deceased person was
simply retrospective; there was nothing about death or the other life,
proving once more how impossible is the barrier which separates this
world from the next.
In the prophecy of Ezekiel life is represented by wheels which turn
within one another; the elementary forms are symbolised by four
beasts, which ascend and descend with the wheel and pursue one another
without ever overtaking, like the signs of the Zodiac. The wheels of
perpetual movement never return on themselves; forms never go back to
the stations which they have quitted; to return whence one has come,
the entire circle must have been traversed in a progress always the
same and yet always new. The conclusion is that whatsoever manifests
to us in this life is a phenomenon which belongs to this life and it
is not given here below to our thought, to our imagination, or even to
our hallucinations and our dreams, to overstep even for an instant the
formidable barriers of death.