Few towns would have offered me a wider or more fruitful field of
experiment than Paris. I therefore made my investigations there. I began
by selecting a moment at which a certain project, whose realization
(which did not depend upon myself alone) was to be of great importance
to me, was hanging in suspense. I will not enter into the details of the
business, which has very little interest in itself. It is enough to know
that around this project were a crowd of intrigues and many powerful and
hostile wills, fighting against my own. The forces were evenly balanced,
and it was impossible, according to human logic, to foresee which would
win the day. I therefore had very precise questions to put to the
Future: a necessary condition; for, if many people complain that it
tells them nothing, this is often because they consult it at a moment
when nothing is preparing on the horizon of their existence.
I went successively to see the astrologers, the palmists, the fallen and
familiar sibyls who flatter themselves that they can read the Future in
the cards, in coffee-grounds, in the inflorescence of white of egg
dissolved in a glass of water, and so on (for nothing must be neglected,
and, though the apparatus be sometimes singular, it may happen that a
particle of truth lies concealed under the absurdest practices). I went,
above all, to see the most famous of the prophetesses who, under the
names of clairvoyants, seers, mediums, and the rest, are able to
substitute for their own consciousness the consciousness and even a
portion of the unconsciousness of their interrogators and who are, in
the main, the most direct heiresses of the pythonesses of old. In this
ill-balanced world, I met with much knavery, simulation and gross lying.
But I had also the occasion to study certain incontestable phenomena
close at hand. These are not enough to decide whether it be given to man
to rend the tissue of illusions that hides the Future from him; but they
throw a somewhat strange light upon that which passes in the place which
to us seems the most inviolable, I mean the holy of holies of the
"Buried Temple," in which our most intimate thoughts and the forces that
lie beneath them and are unknown to us go in and out without our
knowledge and grope in search of the mysterious road that leads to
future events.
V
It would be wearisome to relate what happened to me with those prophets
and seers. I will content myself with briefly telling one of the most
curious experiences, which, moreover, sums up most of the others: the
psychology of them all is very nearly identical.
The seer in question is one of the most famous in Paris. She claims to
incarnate, in her hypnotic state, the spirit of an unknown little girl
called Julia. Having made me sit down at a table that stood between us,
she begged me to _tutoyer_ Julia and to speak to her gently, as one
speaks to a child of seven or eight years. Thereupon, her features, her
eyes, her hands, her whole body were for some seconds unpleasantly
convulsed; her hair came untied; and the expression of her face changed
completely and became artless, puerile. The voice, shrill and clear, of
a small child next came from that great, ripe woman's body and asked
with a little lisp:
"What do you want? Are you troubled? Is it for yourself or for some one
else that you have come to see me?"
"For myself."
"Very well; will you help me a little? Lead me in thought to the place
where your troubles are."
I concentrated my attention on the project in which I was engrossed and
on the different actors in the, as yet, hidden little drama. Then,
gradually, after some preliminary gropings, and without my helping her
with a word or gesture, she really penetrated into my thoughts, read
them, so to speak, as a slightly veiled book, placed the situation of
the scene most accurately, recognized the principal characters and
described them summarily, with hopping and childish, but quaintly
correct and precise little touches.
"That's very good, Julia," I then said, "but I know all that; what you
ought to tell me is what is going to happen later."
"What is going to happen, what is going to happen ... you want to know
all that is going to happen, but it's very difficult...."
"But still? How will the business end? Shall I win?"
"Yes, yes, I see; don't be afraid, I'll help you; you will be
pleased...."
"But the enemy of whom you told me; the one who is resisting me and who
wishes me ill...."
"No, no, he wishes you no ill, it's because of some one else.... I can't
see why.... He hates him.... Oh, he hates him, he hates him! And it is
because you like the other one so much that he does not want you to do
for him what you wish to do."
What she said was true.
"But tell me," I insisted, "will he go on to the end, will he not
yield?"
"Oh, do not fear him.... I see, he is ill; he will not live long."
"You are mistaken, Julia; I saw him two days ago; he is quite well."
"No, no, he is ill.... It doesn't show, but he is very ill ... he must
die soon...."
"But how, in that case, and why?"
"There is blood upon him, around him, everywhere...."
"Blood? Is it a duel?" (I had thought, for a moment, that I might be
called upon to fight my adversary.) "An accident, a murder, a revenge?"
(He was an unjust and unscrupulous man, who had done much harm to many
people.)
"No, no, ask me no more, I am very tired.... Let me go...."
"Not before I know...."
"No, I can tell you nothing more.... I am too tired.... Let me go.... Be
good, I will help you...."
The same attack as at first then convulsed the body, in which the little
voice had ceased; and the mask of forty years again covered the face of
the woman, who seemed to be waking from a long sleep.
Is it necessary to add that we had never seen each other before this
meeting and that we knew as little of each other as though we had been
born on different planets?