formed by the valleys of the Ocre and the Voise, two of those narrow
and sinuous ravines, clothed with trembling alders and poplars, which
traverse the immense plateau of La Beauce. The houses rise, stage
above stage, on the side of the hill; then, at the summit of the slope,
commences the endless plain, the ocean of harvests, dotted with the
whirling iron arms of water-pumping windmills, where the towers of the
cathedral of Chartres are dimly seen above the horizon. Gallardon was
formerly a strong defensive position, and the ruin of its old donjon,
"the shoulder of Gallardon," still sketches curious outlines against the
sky. Gallardon possesses a remarkable church, whose choir is a marvel
of elegance, and whose nave is covered with a beautiful vault of painted
wood. It also boasts of a beautiful Renaissance house.... Finally, it is
noted for the richness of its fields and above all for the excellence of
its beans.
But, today, neglecting the picturesque, archaeological and horticultural
merits of Gallardon, I wish to tell the story of a singular personage
who was born in this tiny village of La Beauce, Thomas Ignatius Martin,
a visionary laborer, known under the name of Martin of Gallardon. [14]
*****
In 1816, the White Terror reigned in La Beauce as in other places.
Gallardon had not escaped the fever which torments the least village
of France on the morrow of every revolution. Conquered and furious, the
Liberals met in the hall of an inn to exchange their regrets and their
rancors; with airs of bravado they evoked the memories of the Revolution
and the glories of the Empire. Opposite them, and in opposition to them,
the Royalist Committee celebrated the victory of its party and exploited
it. It annoyed and threatened its adversaries, bombarded the Chamber
with petitions, and the ministers with denunciations. It was the
appointed hour for all reprisals, all enthusiasms and all credulities.
Thomas Ignatius Martin was born at Gallardon of a family of small
farmers who had been known there from time immemorial. He was
thirty-three years old and the father of four children. He was a robust,
simple, upright, easy-going and open-hearted citizen. In the midst
of aroused passions he had never mixed in political affairs. On the
testimony of the mayor of Gallardon, "the Revolution always seemed to
displease him, especially on account of the disorders which it caused,
in which he never took part. He remained tranquil in all these events,
even on the 20th of March, when Bonaparte returned; he seemed, however,
to be angry at the banishment of the King; but he also took tranquilly
the return of the King in the month of July, rejoicing at it, but
without ostentation." In short, he was a wise man. He fulfilled his
religious duties exactly, but without fervor, went to mass, kept Lent,
read nothing but his prayer book and when, passing by his fields, the
curate asked of him: "How goes the work?" he replied: "Much obliged, M.
Curé, it goes well." He was never seen at the tavern.
Now, on February 15, 1816, about half-past two in the afternoon, Thomas
was in his fields busy in spreading manure on his land, when he suddenly
saw an unknown man appear before him. This man, who appeared to be about
five feet two inches high, was slim of figure, with a tapering, delicate
and very white face; he was enveloped to his feet in a long frock coat
of blonde color, was shod with boots tied with strings, and wore a high
silk hat. He said to Martin in a very gentle voice:
"It is necessary that you should go to see the King; that you should say
to him that his life is in danger, as well as that of the princes; that
evil men are still attempting to overturn the government; that several
writings or letters are already in circulation in some provinces of his
States on this subject; that it is necessary that he shall have an exact
and general watch kept in all his States, and especially in the capital;
that it is also necessary that he should exalt the day of the Lord, that
it may be kept holy; that this holy day is misused by a great portion
of his people; that it is necessary that he shall cause public works to
stop on that day; that he shall cause public prayers to be ordered for
the conversion of the people; that he shall exhort them to penitence;
that he shall abolish and annihilate all the disorders which are
committed on all the days which precede the holy forty days of Lent:
that if he does not do all these things, France will fall into new
evils. It is necessary that the King should behave towards his people as
a father to his child who deserves to be punished; that he shall punish
a small number of the most culpable among them to intimidate the others.
If the King does not do what is said, there will be made so great a hole
in his crown that this will bring him entirely to ruin."
To this discourse Martin replied very judiciously: "But you can
certainly go away and find others than me to undertake such a commission
as that."
"No," replied the unknown, "it is you who shall go." Martin replied
still more judiciously: "But since you know it so well, you can indeed
go yourself to find the King and say all that to him; why do you
address yourself to a poor man like me, who does not know how to explain
himself?" The unknown showed himself inflexible: "It is not I," said he,
"who shall go, it will be you; pay attention to what I say to you, for
you shall do all that I command you." Then his feet appeared to lift
from the earth, his head to sink, his body to shrink, and the apparition
disappeared. A mysterious force prevented Martin from quitting his field
and made him finish his work much more rapidly than was usual.
When he returned to Gallardon, Martin went to his priest to relate the
adventure to him. The curate, who was called M. Laperruque, advised him
to eat, drink and sleep well, without worrying about this chimera. But,
on the following day, the unknown presented himself on several occasions
before the more and more frightened peasant, and repeated to him the
order to go and find the King.
Martin, on the advice of the curate, visited the Bishop of Versailles,
who questioned him and sent him back to Gallardon. A new apparition: the
unknown declares that he will not tell his name, that he is sent from
heaven, and that if Martin is chosen above all to speak to Louis XVIII,
"it is to lower pride." From this day he does not cease to lecture
Martin: "It is not necessary to believe that it is by the will of men
that the usurper came last year, it is to punish France.... France is in
a state of delirium: it shall be delivered to all sorts of evils...." At
the same time he warned him "that he would be led before the King, that
he would discover to him the secret things of the period of his exile,
but that the knowledge of them would only be given to him at the moment
when he would be introduced into the King's presence." Whether he
cultivates his fields, or whether he remains in the barn to thresh his
wheat, the unfortunate farmer always finds himself in the presence of
the haunting apparition.
Meanwhile, the curate Laperruque corresponds with the Bishop of
Versailles, who corresponds with the Minister of Police. The latter
requests the prefect of Eure-et-Loir to verify "if these apparitions,
said to be miraculous, were not rather a flight of the imagination of
Martin, a veritable illusion of his exalted spirit; or if possibly
the pretended apparition, or perhaps Martin himself, ought not to be
severely questioned by the police and then turned over to the courts."
[Illustration: 0215]
Warned by the unknown that he is soon going to appear "before the first
magistrate of his arrondissement," Martin repairs to Chartres with his
curate, and goes to see the prefect; he relates to him his visions,
announces himself as ready to repeat the story of them to the Minister
of Police and to the King himself, and on March 7, at five o'clock in
the morning, departs from Chartres by the diligence, in the company
of M. André, lieutenant of gendarmes. They both arrive at Paris at
half-past five and take rooms at the Hôtel de Calais, Rue Montmartre.
On the next morning, the lieutenant of gendarmes takes his man to the
General Police Headquarters. In the courtyard, the unknown appears again
to Martin: "You are going," says he, "to be questioned in several ways;
have neither fear nor inquietude, but tell the things as they are."
It is nine o'clock; the minister, M. Decazes, has not yet arisen. A
secretary makes Martin undergo a preliminary interrogatory. The latter
allows himself to be neither intimidated nor disconcerted. Then he is
introduced into the private room of the minister, to whom he relates
again the series of apparitions, and describes the countenance and the
clothing of the unknown. "Well," the minister then says to him, "you
will see him no more, for I am going to have you arrested and taken
to prison." This news leaves Martin very incredulous.... And, having
returned to the Hôtel de Calais, he again hears the unknown assure him
that the police have no power over him, and that it is high time to warn
the King.
The minister begins to be embarrassed. It is evident that the words of
the unknown are not unlike--even to style--the discourses uttered by M.
de Marcellus, M. de Chateaubriand, the ultras who meet every evening in
the Rue Thérèse, in the salon of M. Piet, in short, all the enemies
of M. Decazes. On the other hand, the simplicity of Martin, his air of
frankness, the concordance of his stories, all preclude the idea of an
imposture. Could this peasant, then, be playing a part in some
political machination? But it is impossible to discover who could be the
instigators of the mystification. M. Decazes, to get to the bottom of
the affair, then orders Pinel, physician in chief of the Salpêtrière,
to repair to the Hôtel de Calais and examine the individual in question.
After a long conversation, Pinel decides that Martin is afflicted
with an "intermittent alienation"; then he reflects and writes to the
minister that the wisest course is to take the subject to Charenton
for a few days, in order that it may be possible to observe him and
pronounce upon his case.
Meanwhile, the unknown continues to appear to Martin and to announce to
him the worst catastrophes. Suddenly, on March 10, he decides to reveal
his name: "I had told you that my name would remain unknown; but, since
incredulity is so great, it is necessary that I discover my name to you;
I am the Archangel Raphael, an angel very celebrated at the throne
of God; I have received the power to strike France with all sorts of
plagues." And he adds that peace will not return to France before the
year 1840. These words terrify Martin.
Three days later, the lieutenant of gendarmes causes him to enter a
hired carriage and, under pretext of a drive, conducts him to Charenton.
Martin, however, displays no astonishment at this: the supernatural
voice has warned him of it.
Martin remained about three weeks at Charenton, observed and studied
very closely by Doctor Royer-Collard, chief physician of the hospital.
He set down his observations and his conclusions in a long report, which
he signed with Pinel. It is from this document that I have just related
the first visions of Martin.
This report gives us a high idea of the prudence, the method and the
scruples of the physicians who prepared it. As we read these clear and
judicious pages, we are obliged to recognize that if the science of
mental maladies has made little progress since 1816, the specialists
resort to boldness of diagnosis and obscurities of language which Pinel
and Royer-Collard knew nothing of. These two doctors knew that their
work would pass under the King's eyes, and they doubtless put particular
care into it. Nevertheless, not one of our most famous alienists would
consent today to sign such an avowal of uncertainty, nor, above all,
to express his doubts and reserves in a fashion as limpid and as
intelligible, without once dissimulating by a barbarous jargon the
fragility of his knowledge.
The doctors begin by an exposition of the facts, the apparitions of the
archangel, the confidences of Martin to his curate, his trip to Paris
and his arrival at Charenton. They report that after having submitted
him to a detailed examination, they had found in him no sign of malady
nor any symptom of derangement of mind: he is sound of body, reasons
well, manifests neither overexcitement nor violence; he accepts his
internment with resignation and asks only that he be permitted to
accomplish his mission, for he continues to receive the visits and the
admonitions of the archangel. We shall see that he finally obtained
entry to the presence of the King. But let us see first, according
to expert medical testimony, whether Martin was an impostor or an
illuminate.
"If Martin is an impostor," say the doctors, "he can have become so only
in one of two ways: either by imagining his rôle alone and executing
it without any outside assistance, or by obeying the influence of other
persons more enlightened than himself and by receiving their counsel and
their instruction."
The physicians discard the first hypothesis; what they themselves have
observed of the character of Martin and what they have learned through
information brought from Gallardon, prevents their believing in
trickery. "Martin was the last man in the world whom one would suspect
of forming a project such as this and of cleverly bringing together
all the parties to it; he did not have the religious and political
acquaintances which this requires, and he would never have been able
to compose by himself alone the discourses which he assures us were
addressed to him; but even supposing, contrary to all probability, that
he might have been capable of conceiving such a plan, his skill would
have come to an end at the first difficulty of execution. Let us imagine
him in this contingency face to face with the different persons who have
questioned him; let one oppose his inexperience to their penetration,
his ignorance to the artifice of their questions, his timidity to the
impression of respect which the exercise of authority always calls
forth, and let one ask one's self if he would not have been disconcerted
a score of times and fallen into the traps which were laid for him in
all directions. Let us add that, if he had only been an adroit rogue, he
would have infallibly sought to turn this roguery to his own profit by
making it a means of fortune or of credit. Now, he has not dreamed for
a single instant of taking advantage of the extraordinary things which
happened to him; he has not even been willing to accept a small sum of
money which was offered him for his traveling expenses; he has never
worked to acquire partisans, and finally, he has returned to his village
as simple and with as little pretension as before. Has one ever seen
rogues so disinterested?"
Must we believe that Martin is not the sole author of the imposture and
that he was guided by outside advice? The physicians combat equally this
hypothesis which would have made policemen smile in the beginning.
Here is their reasoning, and it is very strong: "To admit this second
hypothesis, it is necessary to admit also that a certain number of
men, attached to some political or religious faction and knowing Martin
directly or indirectly, should have entered into close relations with
him at some time before January 15, and have continued these relations
from January 15 up to the time of Martin's removal to Paris, and also
in Paris itself, during the sojourn which he made there, and even at
Charenton during the three weeks which he passed there...." Without these
precautions, Martin, abandoned to himself and now obedient only to vague
and insufficient guidance, would not have been able to escape the perils
which surrounded him.... Previous to January 15, Martin associated only
with his family or the people of his village; he has never been known to
have had any acquaintance or association with persons of a higher class;
consequently he has not had them; for in a village nothing remains
secret; every one knows what his neighbor is doing. From January 15 up
to the time of his removal to Paris, the most authentic reports certify
that he has seen only his curate, the Bishop of Versailles and the
prefect of Eure-et-Loir, and we know exactly what passed between them
and Martin. In the journey from Gallardon to Paris, and during the stay
which he made in that city, Martin was accompanied by an officer of
gendarmes who left him neither by day nor by night, and who affirms
that, with the exception of M. Pinel, no one at all has had an interview
with him. As to Charenton, we certify that he there met only three
strangers: one was the commandant and the two others [M. Sosthène de La
Rochefoucauld and the Abbé Dulondel, sent by the Archbishop of Rheims,
to whom the King had entrusted the care and the solution of the Martin
affair.], discreet persons, incapable of becoming the instruments of
trickery; that all three have had communication with Martin only in the
presence of the director, and that they were rigorously restricted
to addressing a few questions to him without making any kind of
insinuation.... Martin talked of his visions neither to the patients,
nor to the attendants, nor to the gardeners. Besides, no letter, no
advice, had reached him from outside... Then Martin is neither an
impostor nor an accomplice in an imposture. He thus actually experienced
the sensations which he reports.
Having established the sincerity of Martin, the physicians asked
themselves how his intellectual condition should be characterized.
Martin is the puppet of hallucinations. Therefore his affection
approaches insanity in certain characteristics. "It is for this reason,"
adds Royer-Collard, "that M. Pinel and myself did not hesitate at first
sight to regard this affection as a particular kind of insanity, and it
is probable that any other physician would have thought as we do on
this point. But if Martin's affection approaches insanity in some
particulars, it also differs from it in important and basic respects..."
What were they? "In the case of ordinary mental patients, the
hallucination of the senses is almost always led up to and brought on
by causes which have acted strongly upon their imagination, or disturbed
more or less the exercise of their intellectual faculties; it never
manifests itself without a special concentration of efforts of the
attention or the imagination upon a single idea or upon a particular
series of ideas, at least in the period which immediately precedes
the vision." Now, in Martin's case, there is nothing like this. He has
religious visions, although he had a mind little inclined to the
mystic and was even a rather lukewarm Christian. His visions relate to
politics, yet he was a stranger to the passions of his fellow citizens
and did not read the newspapers. Among ordinary insane, visions are
always accompanied by a certain ecstatic exaltation which gives the seer
the attitude of the inspired, of the prophet, and never permit him to
relate his visions with calmness and tranquillity. Now Martin remains
constantly the same. He confides his visions only to his superiors,
he appears more annoyed than glorified by them, he relates them
with simplicity; he is not turned for one instant from his habitual
occupations. Singular coincidences justified certain of the prophecies
of Martin: "If it is necessary to make use of the testimony of the
officer of gendarmes who accompanied him, Martin announced to him in the
morning the visit which M. Pinel was to make in the afternoon, without
there being any way in which he could learn of this.... We are equally
assured that he had actually written to his brother under date of March
12, to warn him that the authorities were going to have information
collected in his neighborhood, in regard to the persons with whom he
habitually associated there, while the letter by which these inquiries
were ordered was not written until the sixteenth of the same month...."
Pinel and Royer-Collard willingly admit that there exist "incontestable
occurrences of previsions and presentiments which were later realized by
the event." But what appears not less certain "is that these occurrences
are met with only in the case of persons who enjoy all their faculties
and never among the mentally afflicted. This is a side of our nature
which remains inexplicable to us even to this day and which will
probably long escape our researches." Finally, Martin is distinguished
by his excellent health from other hallucinate insane, who are always
the victims of physical troubles.
What can then be the nature of this condition, so individual and so
different from insanity as it is usually observed?
I have had to abridge this long scientific discussion, but I will copy
the conclusions of the report verbatim:
"We here find ourselves arrested by important considerations. On the
one hand, it very often happens that true insanity shows itself at first
only by indefinite symptoms and takes its real form and its complete
development only at a period more or less remote from its first
appearance; on the other hand, the methods of classification applied
even to this day in medicine are still very imperfect, and lack much of
that degree of precision which seems to belong especially to the other
physical sciences.... The external and tangible properties of objects
are the only ones which receive the attention of the doctor: it is
by the examination of these that he regulates his ministry, and
intellectual facts are almost always surrounded with so many obscurities
that it is extremely difficult to assert rigorously exact analogies or
differences.
"If these reflections are true, in general, they are especially so with
respect to the facts observed in Martin's case, and the mere statement
of these facts furnishes a sufficient proof of this. We consequently
think that Martin's condition may change. It would be rash to pronounce
upon this condition before the lapse of a year, and until then we think
it is proper that we should abstain from judging him. We also think
that this condition, as we have observed it, cannot, taking
into consideration the present imperfection of our knowledge, be
characterized in a precise manner, and that even if we suppose that it
would always remain the same, it would still be necessary to wait, in
order to determine its nature, until facts of the same kind, observed
and recorded with care, should have been discovered in sufficient
quantity to spread new light upon this still obscure portion of our
knowledge."
Consequently, Pinel and Royer-Collard declare that they have found it
necessary to refrain from giving any treatment, they decide that the
minister has done "an act of justice and humanity" in returning Martin
to his family, and request that, during a period of considerable
duration, he should be the subject of "enlightened observation."
When Louis XVIII decided to summon Martin to the Tuileries, he had not
yet read this report, which was not drawn up until several days later.
But M. Decazes had communicated to him the observations of the
physicians, and the Archbishop of Rheims in like manner the impressions
of his emissary, Abbé Dulondel. To what sentiment did he respond in
summoning Martin? Probably to simple curiosity. "Infected with his
century, it is to be feared that religion was for the Very Christian
king' only an elixir suitable for the amalgamation of the drugs of which
royalty is composed." (This admirable formula is by Chateaubriand.)
On April 2, Martin was conducted from Charen-ton to police headquarters.
The minister announced to him that he was about to be taken to see
the King, then went into a neighboring room. Then Martin beheld the
archangel, and heard these words: "You are going to speak to the King
and you will be alone with him; have no fear in appearing before the
King because of what you have to say to him." A carriage was ready.
But the peasant preferred to go to the Tuileries on foot, and the first
gentleman in waiting introduced him into the King's apartment.
*****