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.
[Illustration]
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!"
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
Part Third.
HEAVEN AND EARTH.
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
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."
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
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.