Funeral of Mr. Marc Michel The Temps, on March 27th, 1868, reads:
“Yesterday, at the funeral of Mr. Marc Michel, Mr. Jules Adenis said goodbye, in the name of the Society of Dramatic Authors, to the writer whom the joyous and light comedy has just lost.
I find this sentence in his speech:
It was Ferdinand Langlé who recently preceded the one we mourn today in the grave… And who knows? Who can tell? … just as we are following this mortal remains here, perhaps Langlé's soul came to receive Marc Michel's soul on the threshold of eternity.
It is certainly my fault, of my too lighthearted Spirit, but I confess that it is difficult for me to imagine, with the proper seriousness, the soul of the author of the Deaf, of the Bedfellow, of A leech, of the Gatekeepers' Strike, coming to receive, on the threshold of eternity, the soul of the author of Maman Sabouleux, of Mesdames de Montenfriche, of a Bengal Tiger and of the Champbaudet Station.
X. Feyrnet.”
The thought expressed by Mr. Jules Adenis is of the purest Spiritism. Let us suppose that the author of the article, Mr. Feyrnet, who has difficulty maintaining a suitable solemnity on hearing that the soul of Mr. Lauglé is perhaps present, and coming to receive the soul of Marc Michel, had spoken in turn, and expressed himself as follows: "Gentlemen, you have just heard that the soul of our friend Langlé is here, that it sees us and hears us!" He would just add that it can talk to us. Don't believe a word of it; Langlé's soul no longer exists; or it has melted into the immensity, that amounts to the same thing. Nothing is left of Marc Michel; it will be the same with you, when you die, as well as with your parents and with your friends. Hoping that they are waiting for you, that they will come to receive you when you leave life, that is madness, superstition, illuminism. The positive thing is this: When you're dead, it's all over. Which of the two speakers would have found the most sympathy among those present? Which would have dried the most tears, given the most courage and resignation to the afflicted? Wouldn't the unfortunate man, who no longer waits for relief in this world, be justified in saying to him: "If this is so, let's end life as soon as possible?” We must feel sorry for Mr. Feyrnet not be able to keep his seriousness at the idea that his father and his mother, if he has lost them, are still living, that they are watching at his bedside, and that he will see them again.
