Example 10 - COUNTESS PAULA.

— Beautiful, young, rich, and of illustrious lineage, she was also a perfect model of intellectual and moral qualities. She died at 36 years of age, in 1851.

Her obituary is one of those that can be summed up in these words, repeated by a thousand mouths: — “Why does God take such people from the Earth so soon?” Happy are those who thus make their memory blessed.

She was good, gentle, and indulgent, always ready to excuse or attenuate evil, rather than to increase it. Never had slander defiled her lips.

Without arrogance or austerity, it was, on the contrary, with benevolence and delicate familiarity that she treated her servants, free, moreover, of any appearance of superiority or of humiliating protection.

Understanding that people who live by their labor are not landlords and that, consequently, they have need of what is owed to them, both by their condition and in order to support themselves, she never withheld the payment of a wage. The mere idea that someone might suffer a privation on her account would have been a remorse of conscience to her.

She did not belong to the number of those who always find money to satisfy their whims, without paying their own debts; she could not understand how there could be pleasure for the rich in having debts, and she would have considered herself humiliated had she been told that her suppliers were constrained to make advances to her.

So too, on the occasion of her death there was only sorrow, not a single complaint.

Her beneficence was inexhaustible, but not that ostentatious beneficence carried out in broad daylight; and thus she practiced charity from the heart, and not for love of vainglory.

God alone knows the tears she wiped away, the despairs she calmed, for such virtues had as witnesses only the unfortunate ones she assisted.

She prided herself, moreover, on discovering the most poignant misfortunes, the secret ones, succoring them with that delicacy which raises one's morale rather than lowering it.

From her lineage and her husband's high functions there fell to her onerous domestic charges, from which she could not exempt herself; fully satisfying the demands of her position, without avarice, she nevertheless did so with such method, avoiding waste and superfluities, that half sufficed her of what another would have needed for the same.

And in this way she allowed herself to grant a share of her fortune to the needy. Destining the income of a larger part of that fortune exclusively to such an end, she considered it sacred and as so much less to spend on the service of her household. And thus she found the means to reconcile her duties toward society and toward the unfortunate. n

One of her relatives, initiated into Spiritism, evoked her twelve years after her death, and obtained, in answer to various questions, the following communication. n [Communication of Countess Paula].

— You are right, friend, in thinking that I am happy. So it is, indeed, and even more so than language can express, though far from its ultimate degree.

But I was among the happy on Earth, for I do not remember having experienced there a single real sorrow. Youth, honors, health, fortune, all that among you constitutes happiness I possessed! What is, however, that happiness compared to the one I enjoy here?

Splendid earthly festivities in which the richest adornments are displayed, what are they compared to these assemblies of Spirits resplendent with a brilliance that your sight could not bear, a brilliance that is the prerogative of their purity?

Your palaces of gilded halls, what are they compared to these aerial dwellings, vast regions of Space tinted with colors that would put the rainbow to shame?

Your walks, taking measured steps in the parks, to what are they reduced, compared to the journeys across immensity, swifter than lightning?

Hazy and limited horizons, what are they, compared to the spectacle of worlds moving in the infinite Universe at the impulse of the Most High?

And how monotonous are your most harmonious concerts in relation to the gentle melody that makes the fluids of the ether and all the fibers of the soul vibrate!

And how sad and insipid are your greatest joys compared to the ineffable sensation of happiness that saturates our whole being like a beneficial effluvium, without any mixture of disquiet, of apprehension, of suffering?!

Here, everything exudes love, confidence, sincerity: everywhere loving hearts, friends everywhere!

Neither the envious nor the jealous! This is the world in which I find myself, my friend, and to which you will infallibly come, if you follow the straight path of life.

“Uniform happiness would nevertheless grow wearisome, and so do not believe that ours is free of vicissitudes: neither a perpetual concert, nor an endless festivity, nor beatific contemplation throughout all eternity, but rather movement, activity, life.

Our occupations, though free of fatigue, are clothed with variable and incessant perspectives and emotions, through the thousand incidents attached to them.

Each has his mission to fulfill, his charges to watch over, earthly friends to visit, mechanisms in Nature to direct, suffering souls to console; and it is a coming and going, not from one street to another, but from one world to another; reuniting, separating to join together again; 14 and, gathered at a certain point, we communicate to one another the work accomplished, congratulating ourselves on the successes obtained; we coordinate, we mutually assist one another in difficult cases. In short, I assure you that no one has time to grow bored, even for a second.

“At present, the Earth is the great subject of our deliberations. What movement among the Spirits! What numerous phalanxes flock there, in order to aid its progress and its evolution!

One would say a cloud of workers clearing a forest, under the orders of experienced leaders; some fell the centuries-old trunks, tear out their deep roots, others clear the ground; these till the earth, sowing; those build the new city upon the worm-eaten ruins of an old world. Meanwhile the leaders gather in conference and transmit their orders by messengers, in all directions.

The Earth must regenerate itself, in due time — for it is important that the designs of Providence be fulfilled, and thus each has his role.

Do not consider me a mere spectator of this great enterprise, which would shame me, since all work in it. An important mission is assigned to me, and I strive greatly to fulfill it, as well as possible.

It was not without struggle that I attained the position I now occupy in the spiritual life; and rest assured that my last existence, however meritorious it may perhaps appear to you, was not by itself sufficient for so much.

In several existences I passed through trials of labor and misery that I had voluntarily chosen in order to strengthen and purify my Spirit; over those trials I had the joy of triumphing, yet one was still lacking, perhaps the most dangerous of all: that of fortune and material well-being, a well-being without a shadow of distress. In that lay the danger.

And before attempting it, I wished to feel myself strong enough not to succumb. God, having regard to my good intentions, granted me the grace of His help.

There are many Spirits who, seduced by appearances, eagerly choose that trial, but, too weak to confront its dangers, allow the seductions of the world to triumph over their inexperience.

“Workers! I am in your ranks: I, the noble lady, earned, as you do, my bread by the sweat of my brow; I steeped myself in privations, I suffered reverses, and it was this that retempered the strength of my soul; otherwise I would have failed in the last trial, which would have left me behind in my course.

Like me, you too will have your trial of riches, but do not hasten to ask for it too soon.

And you others, the rich, always keep in mind that the true fortune, the imperishable fortune, does not exist on Earth; seek rather to learn the price at which you can attain the benefits of the Almighty.”

Paula, on Earth Countess of ***.

[1] It may be said that this lady was the living incarnation of the charitable woman conceived in The Gospel According to Spiritism, chapter XIII.

[2] From this communication, whose original is in German, we have extracted the topics that concern the subject with which we are occupied, suppressing those of an exclusively domestic nature.