Similar in the main, with less characteristic and less convincing
details, were the results of most of the experiments in which the
clairvoyants were unfeignedly asleep. In order to make a sort of
counter-test, I sent two persons of whose intelligence and good faith I
was assured, to see the woman whom Julia had chosen as her interpreter.
Like myself, they had to put to the Future a precise and important
question, which chance or destiny alone could solve. To one of them, who
consulted her on a friend's illness, Julia foretold the near death of
that friend, and the event verified her prediction, although, at the
moment when she made it, a cure seemed infinitely more probable than
death. To the other, who asked her how a law-suit would end, she replied
somewhat evasively on that point; by way of compensation she
spontaneously revealed the spot where lay a certain object which had
been very precious to the person consulting her, but which had been so
long lost and so often looked for in vain that this person was persuaded
that he had ceased to think about it.
In so far as I am concerned, Julia's prophecy was realized in part, that
is to say, although I did not triumph in respect of the main point, the
affair was nevertheless arranged in a satisfactory manner. As for the
death of my adversary, it has not yet occurred; and gladly do I dispense
the Future from keeping the promise which it made me by the innocent
mouth of the child of an unknown world.