Semi-Spiritist Profession of FaithIn support of the reflections contained in the previous article, we are pleased to reproduce the following letter, published by La Petite Presse, on September 20th, 1868.
“Les Charmettes, September 1868.
My dear Barlatier,
You know the romance: when you are Basque and a good Christian ...
Without being Basque, I am a good Christian, and the priest of my village who ate my kale soup yesterday, allows me to tell you about our conversation.
- Are you going, he said to me, to take King Henry back? – With pleasure, I replied, for I lived during that time. My worthy priest jumped on his feet.
I then told him of my conviction that we had already lived and that we would still live. Another exclamation from the brave man. But in the end, he agreed that Christian beliefs do not exclude such opinion, and he let me go my way.
Now, my dear friend, believe that I did not want to amuse myself with the candor of my priest, and that this conviction of which I speak is strongly rooted in me. I lived at the time of the League, under Henri III and Henri IV. When I was a child, my grandmothers spoke to me about Henri IV, and told me about a good man whom I did not recognize at all, a grizzled monarch, buried in a draped cowl, devout to the excess and having never heard about Belle Gabrielle. It was Father Péréfixe’s. The Henri IV that I knew, hard worker, kind, quick, a little forgetful, it is the true one; it is the one that I have already told you, the one that I will tell you again. Do not laugh. When I came to Paris for the first time, I recognized myself everywhere in the old quarters, and I have a vague memory of having been in the rue de la Ferronnerie, the day when the people lost their good king, the one who had wished every Frenchman had a chicken in the pan on Sundays. What was I at that time? Not much, probably a young cadet from Provence or Gascony; but I would not be surprised if I were in the guard of my hero.
Then, soon my first feuilleton of King Henry's second youth, and believe me
All yours,Ponson du Terrail” When Mr. Ponson du Terrail ridiculed Spiritism, he did not suspect, and perhaps he still does not suspect today, that one of the fundamental bases of this doctrine is precisely the belief of which he makes such an explicit profession of faith. The idea of the plurality of existences and of reincarnation is evidently more and more present in literature, and we would not be surprised if Méry, who remembered so well what he had been, had not woken up retrospective memories in more than one of his comrades, being the first initiator of Spiritism among them, because they read him, while they do not read the Spiritist books. They find in it a rational, fruitful idea, and they accept it.
La Petite-Presse is currently publishing a book with the title Mr. Médard, a novel whose story is entirely Spiritist; it is the revelation of a crime by the apparition of the victim, in very natural conditions.
