After three months of very severe winter weather, the first signs of
spring begin to be visible. One's frozen senses begin to thaw, and the
seeds sown under the snow begin to germinate. So much has happened,
and instead of rejecting undeniable facts as fortuitous coincidences,
I observe and collect them, and draw my inferences. At first I laugh
at my own superstition, but later on I cease to smile, and do not know
what to believe. Miracles happen, and that every day, but they do not
happen to order.
One day before noon I cross the market place, which is empty for the
moment. As I have long suffered from "agoraphobia," I dread empty
spaces, and cross it with scarcely concealed anxiety. Just now,
when I am tired by work, and extremely nervous, the aspect of the
deserted market place makes a very painful impression on me, so that I
experience a desire to make myself invisible in order to escape curious
eyes. I lower my head, fasten my eyes on the pavement, and feel as
though I had compressed myself within myself, closed my senses, cut off
communication with the outer world, and ceased to feel the influence of
my surroundings. Almost unconsciously I have crossed over the market
place. The next moment in the street two well-known voices call after
me. I remain standing.
"Which way did you come?"
"Over the market place."
"No! How could you? We stood waiting here to meet you and to have
dinner together."
"I assure you----"
"Oh; then you made yourself invisible?"
"Nothing is impossible."
"For you, at any rate. They tell the most incredible stories about you."
"I suspected something of the kind, as I have been seen near the
Danube, when I was in Paris."
This was really the case, but at this time I believed there were
visions without any substratum of reality, and I let drop the remark,
merely as a happy idea.
The same day I take my evening meal alone, in the smaller dining-room
of the inn. A man, whom I do not know, comes in, apparently to look for
some one. He does not seem to notice me although he looks at all the
tables, and, believing himself alone in the room, he begins to swear
and talk aloud with himself. In order to apprise him of the presence
of some one I knock with my fork against a glass. The stranger starts
and seems surprised to see some one; he becomes suddenly silent, and
hastens away.
From that time I begin to ponder the subject of dematerialisation
which the occultists believe in. And proofs follow rapidly. A week
later, my attention was aroused by another strange occurrence. It was
a Wednesday, when the dining-room of the inn is generally full because
of the weekly market. In order to avoid the crowd and the discomfort,
my usual table companion has ordered a special room, and, as he has
come earlier than myself, he waits for me in the hall, and bids me go
upstairs. But in order to save time, we agree to engage the tea-table
in the dining-room. Unwillingly I march in behind my friend, because I
abominate the drunken farmers and their bad language. Meanwhile we come
through the crowd to the tea-table, where there was only one very quiet
individual. After we had taken something without exchanging a single
word, we retired to our private room, I following him. When we reached
the door, my friend seemed astonished to see me.
"Hullo! Where did you come from?"
"From the tea-table, of course."
"I never saw you; I thought you had remained up here."
"Never saw me! Why, our hands crossed over the dishes. Can I then make
myself invisible?"
"Well, it is funny anyhow."
When I delve in my memory, I bring now forgotten incidents to light,
which were hitherto valueless to a sceptic whose mind had been
sterilised by the study of the exact sciences. Thus I remember the
morning of my first wedding day. It was a winter Sunday, peculiarly
quiet and unnaturally solemn for me who was preparing to quit an
impure bachelor life and to settle down by the domestic hearth with
the woman I loved. I felt I should like to take my breakfast, the last
in my bachelor life, quite alone, and with this object I went down to
an underground café in a low street. It was a basement-room lit with
gas. After ordering breakfast, I noticed that I was being watched by a
number of men who were sitting, obviously in a state of intoxication,
round their bottles, since the previous evening. They looked spectrally
pale, uncouth, shabby; they were hoarse-voiced and disgusting, after a
night spent in debauchery. Among the company I recognised two friends
of my youth, who had so come down in the world that they had neither
house nor home nor occupation, notorious good-for-nothings, not far
from committing some crime. It was not pride which made me shrink
from renewing the acquaintanceship; it was the fear of a relapse in
the mire, the dislike of finding myself placed back in my past,--for
I had gone through a similar stage. At last, when the comparatively
soberest of them, chosen as an envoy, stood up in order to approach my
table, I was seized with terror. Firmly resolved to deny my identity if
necessary, I fix my eyes on my assailant, and without my knowing how it
happened he remained standing for a moment before my table, and then
with a silly expression, which I can never forget, he makes an apology
and returns to his place. He had been prepared to swear that it was I,
and yet he did not recognise me.
Then they began to discuss my alibi.
"It is he certainly."
"Yes, the Devil take me, it is!" I quit the place filled with shame at
myself and pity for the poor fellows, but in the depth of my heart glad
at having escaped such a hateful existence.
Escaped!
Apart from the moral aspect of the question the strange fact remains,
that one can so alter one's physiognomy as to be irrecognisable by an
old acquaintance whom one meets and I salutes all through the year in
the street.
* * * * *
In earlier times I used to go hunting alone, without a dog and often
without a rifle. I wandered about at haphazard (it was in Denmark),
and once as I was standing in a glade a fox jumped up suddenly beside
me. He looked me in the face, in full sunlight, at a distance of about
twenty steps. I stood motionless, and the fox continued to search the
ground hunting for mice. I stooped to pick up a stone. Then it was his
turn to make himself invisible, for he vanished in an instant without
my seeing how he did so. When I searched the ground, I found there no
trace of a fox-hole, and not even a bush behind which he might have
hidden. He had vanished without the help of his legs.
Here and there in the marshy meadows on the banks of the Danube herons
often build their nests, and they are extremely shy birds.
In spite of that, I could often surprise them without hiding myself. As
long as I kept motionless, I could stand and watch them. Sometimes they
even flew close over my head. No one would believe me when I related
this, least of all sportsmen, and I concluded therefore that the matter
was something above the ordinary.
When I told this to my friend the theosophist in Lund, he remembered an
occurrence to which he could never find the key. A workman whom he knew
visited him, saying that he had found an antique work of art for sale,
and asked him for an advance of five crowns. After the man had received
the commission to buy it he had disappeared, and could be found nowhere
for three whole months. One Sunday evening the theosophist and his wife
were going down a back street, when he saw the man a little before
him on the same pavement. "Now I have the fellow!" he exclaimed. He
let go of his wife's arm, and hastened his steps, when suddenly the
other disappeared, as if he had evaporated. As usual in such cases,
the theosophist believed he was the victim of a delusion. At the same
time there was no one else in the street, so that the possibility of a
mistaken identity was excluded.
Such is the bare fact. To explain the inexplicable is a contradiction
in terms. There was there no open door nor window nor cellar hole into
which the man might have slipped and hidden himself. When it is said
that some human beings have the power to divert the visible light-rays
from their proper direction, that is to say, to alter the quantity of
refraction,--does this heap of words explain the problem, the stress of
which lies in the Why and the Wherefore?
The only supposition left is, that it was a miracle! Let it pass for
such till we obtain further information, and, while we wait, let us
collect data, and not attempt to refute them.
V