Memories of a husbandBy Mr. Fernand Duplessis
The traces of Spiritism that one finds everywhere are like the inscriptions and the ancient medals that attest, through the centuries, the movement of the human spirit. Popular beliefs undoubtedly contain the traces, or better the seeds, of Spiritist ideas in all times and among all peoples, but mixed with superstitious legends, as the gold of mines is mixed with gangue.
It isn’t only there that we must seek them, but also in the expression of intimate feelings, because it is there that we often find them in a state of purity. If one could fathom all the archives of thought, one would be surprised to see how ingrained they are in the human heart, from vague intuition to clearly formulated principles. Now, who then gave birth to them there before the appearance of Spiritism? Will some say that it is a coterie influence? They are born there spontaneously, because they are in nature; but they have been often stifled or distorted by ignorance and fanaticism. Today Spiritism, passed to the state of philosophy, comes to uproot these parasitic plants, and constitute a body of doctrine of what was only a vague aspiration.
One of our correspondents from Joinville-sur-Marne, Mr. Petit-Jean, to whom we already owe many documents on this subject, sends us one of the most interesting, that we gladly add to those we have already published.
“Joinville, July 16th, 1868
Here you have more Spiritist thoughts! These are even more important since they are not, like many others, the product of imagination, or an idea exploited by novelists; it is the account of a belief shared by the family of a conventional, and expressed in the most serious circumstance of life, in which one does not dream of playing with words.
I took them from a literary work entitled: “Memories of a husband,” that is nothing other than a detailed account of the life of Mr. Fernand Duplessis. These memoirs were edited in 1849, by Eugène Sue, to whom Mr. Fernand Duplessis handed them with the mission of delivering them to publicity, as atonement for him and teaching for others, according to his own expressions. I leave to you the analysis of the passages that are more related to our belief."
“Mrs. Raymond, as well as her son, political prisoners, receive a visit from their friend, Mr. Fernand Duplessis. The visit gave rise to a conversation, after which Mrs. Raymond spoke in the following terms with her son (page 121):
"Come, my child," resumed Mrs. Raymond in a tone of affectionate reproach, "was it yesterday that we took our first steps in this career where we must thank God for a day without anguish? Do we pursue, do we reach the goal to which we strive without pain, without perils, and often without martyrdom? Haven’t we told ourselves, a hundred times, that our life is not ours, but of the holy cause of freedom for which your father died at the noose? Since you already got to the age of reason, haven't we got used to the thought that one day I might have to close your eyelids as you could close mine? Is there anything to be sad about in advance? Do you ever see me gloomy, weeping, because I still live with the dear and sacred memory of your father, whose bloody forehead I kissed, and whom I buried with my own hands? Don’t we have faith, like our Gallic parents, in the indefinite rebirth of our bodies and souls, that will in turn populate the immensity of the worlds? What is death for us? The beginning of another life, nothing else. We are on this side of the curtain, we move on the other, where immense perspectives await our gaze. As for myself, I do not know if it is because I am the daughter of Eve,” added Madame Raymond with a half-smile, “but the phenomenon of death has only excited in me an excessive curiosity.”
Page 208. - “The thought of death excited, especially in Jean, a very lively curiosity. Spiritualist in essence, he shared with his mother, his uncle and Charpentier, the strong belief of our Gallic parents. According to the remarkable Druidic dogma, man being immortal, soul and body, Spirit, and matter, he thus went, soul and body, incessantly reborn and live from world to world rising, with each new migration, towards an infinite perfection like that of the Creator.”
This valiant belief alone explained, in my view, the superb detachment with which Jean and his mother faced these terrible problems that cause so much trouble and terror in weak souls, accustomed to seeing the void in death or the end of physical life, while death is only the hour of a complete rebirth, that another life awaits with its mysterious news.
But unfortunately, it was not given to me to share that belief; I painfully saw approaching the fateful day when Jean would be tried by the Court of Peers. When that day came, Mrs. Raymond begged me to accompany her to that terrible session; in vain I wanted to divert her from such design, given my fear of a death sentence against Jean; I dared not express my apprehensions to her, but she guessed my thoughts. “My dear Mr. Duplessis,” she told me, “My son's father died on the scaffold for liberty; I piously buried him with my hands… if my son must also die for the same cause, I will be able to accomplish my duty with a firm hand… Do you believe that Jean can be condemned to death? He can only be condemned to immortality. (literally) Give me your arm, Mr. Duplessis… Calm your emotion, and let's go to the House of Peers.”
Jean was condemned to death and was to be executed two days later. I went to see him in his prison, and I hoped to at least have the strength to resist that last and gloomy interview. When I came in, he was doing his morning toilet, under the supervision of an officer, with an as meticulous care as if he had been at home. He came to me reaching out with his hands; then, looking me in the face, he said with anxiety: “- My God! my good Fernand, how pale you are! ... What is the matter?”
- What is the matter! I cried, bursting into tears, and throwing myself at his neck!
“- Poor Fernand!” He replied, moved by my emotion, “calm down ... have courage!”
- And it is you, you who are encouraging me at this supreme moment, I said. But are you then, like your mother, endowed with superhuman strength?
“- Superhuman! … No; you do us too much honor,” he resumed, smiling; “but my mother and I know what death is… and it does not frighten us… Our soul changes body, like our bodies change clothes; we are going to relive elsewhere and wait for or join those we have loved… Thanks to this belief, my friend, and to the curiosity to see new, mysterious worlds; finally, thanks to the awareness of the imminent advent of our ideas and the certainty of leaving behind the memory of an honest man, you must admit, leaving this world offers nothing frightening at all, on the contrary."
Jean Raymond was not executed; his sentence was commuted to life in prison, and he was transferred to the citadel of Doullens."
