Example 1 - VERGER.

— On January 3, 1857, Monsignor Sibour, Archbishop of Paris, on leaving the Church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, was mortally wounded by a young priest named Verger. The criminal was condemned to death and executed on January 30. Until the last instant he showed no feeling of sorrow, of repentance, or of sensibility.

Evoked on the same day as the execution, he gave the following answers:

Evocation. — A. I am still bound to the body.

Then is your soul not entirely freed? — A. No… I am afraid… I do not know… Wait until I come to myself. I am not dead, am I?

Do you repent of what you did? — A. I did wrong to kill, but I was led to it by my character, which could not tolerate humiliations… You will evoke me another time.

Why do you withdraw? — A. If I were to see him, I would be much frightened, for fear that he might do the same to me.

But you have nothing to fear, since your soul is separated from the body. Renounce any uneasiness, which is not reasonable now. — A. What would you have? Are you by chance master of your own impressions? As for me, I do not know where I am… I am mad.

Strive to be calm. — A. I cannot, because I am insane… Wait, for I am going to call up all my lucidity.

If you were to pray, perhaps you might be able to concentrate your thoughts… — A. I am intimidated… I do not dare to pray.

Pray, for great is the mercy of God! We will pray with you. — A. Yes; I have always believed in the infinite mercy of God.

Do you understand your situation better now? — A. It is so extraordinary that I still cannot apprehend it.

Do you see your victim? — A. It seems to me that I hear a voice resembling his, saying to me: “I no longer want you…” Perhaps it is an effect of imagination!…

I am mad, I assure you, for I see my body on one side and the head on the other… 3 yet it appears to me that I live in Space, between the Earth and what you call heaven…

I feel as if the cold of a knife were about to sever my neck, but that is perhaps the terror of death…

It also seems to me that I see a multitude of Spirits surrounding me, looking at me with compassion… And they speak to me, but I do not understand them.

Yet among those Spirits there is perhaps one whose presence humiliates you because of your crime. — A. I will tell you that there is only one who terrifies me: the one whom I killed.

Do you remember your former existences? — A. No; I am uncertain, believing myself to be dreaming… Once again, I need to come to myself.

(Three days later.) Do you recognize yourself better now? — A. I now know that I no longer belong to that world, and I do not deplore it. What I did weighs on me, but my Spirit is freer;

I know furthermore that there is a series of incarnations that give us useful knowledge, in order to make us as perfect as is possible for the human creature.

Are you punished for the crime you committed? — A. Yes; I lament what I did and that makes me suffer.

What is your punishment? — A. I am punished because I am aware of my fault, and for it I beg pardon of God;

I am punished because I recognize my disbelief in that God, knowing now that we must not shorten the days of life of our brothers;

I am punished by the remorse of having delayed my progress, taking a wrong path, without heeding the cry of my own conscience which told me that it was not through murder that I would attain my desideratum;

I let myself be dominated by envy and pride; I erred and I repent, for man must always strive to master the evil passions — which, moreover, I did not do.

What is your sensation when we evoke you? — A. One of pleasure and of fear, for I am not evil.

In what does such pleasure and such fear consist? — A. Pleasure of conversing with men and being able in part to repair my faults by confessing them; and fear, which I cannot define — a kind of shame at having been a murderer.

Do you wish to reincarnate on Earth? — A. I even beg for it, and I wish to find myself constantly exposed to murder, experiencing the fear of it.

— Monsignor Sibour, evoked, said that he forgave the assassin and prayed that he might repent. He said further that, although he had been present at his evocation, he had not shown himself to him so as not to increase his sufferings, since the dread of seeing him was already a symptom of remorse, was already a punishment.

Q.

Does the man who kills [another man] know that, in choosing a new existence, he will become an assassin in it? — A. No; he knows that, choosing a life of struggle, he has probabilities of killing a fellow being, but is ignorant of whether he will do so, for he is almost always in struggle with himself.

— The situation of Verger, on dying, is that of nearly all who succumb violently. The separation not occurring abruptly, they remain as if stunned, not knowing whether they are dead or alive.

The vision of the archbishop was spared him as unnecessary to his remorse; but other Spirits, in identical circumstances, are constantly harried by the gaze of their victims.

To the enormity of the offense, Verger had added the aggravating circumstance of not yet having repented while alive, being therefore in the conditions required for eternal damnation.

But, as soon as he left the Earth, repentance invaded his soul and, repudiating the past, he sincerely desires to repair it.

He is impelled to this not by an excess of suffering, since he did not even have time to suffer, but by the alarm of that conscience scorned during life, and which now makes itself heard.

Why not consider this repentance valuable? Why admit it days before as a saving thing from hell, and afterward not? And why, finally, would the God who is merciful to the penitent, in life, cease to be so, over a question of hours, later on?

The rapid change sometimes worked in the ideas of a criminal, hardened and impenitent until death, would be cause for wonder, were the passing not also enough, at times, for him to recognize all the iniquity of his conduct.

Nevertheless, this result is far from being general — which would have as a consequence that there would be no evil Spirits. Repentance is many times belated, and hence the deferral of the punishment.

The obstinacy in evil, during life, comes at times from the pride of one who refuses to submit and confess his own errors, since man is subject to the influence of matter, which, casting a veil over his spiritual perceptions, fascinates and deludes him. Once that veil is torn, a sudden light enlightens him, and he finds himself master of his reason…

The immediate manifestation of better feelings is always a sign of a moral progress already accomplished, which only awaits a favorable circumstance to reveal itself, whereas the more or less long persistence in evil, after death, is incontestably the proof of the backwardness of the Spirit, in which the material instincts atrophy the germ of good, so that new trials are needed for it to correct itself.