The phantom of Mademoiselle Clairon.

This story caused a great stir in its time, owing to the heroine's standing and the large number of people who witnessed it. Notwithstanding its singularity, it would probably be forgotten had Mademoiselle Clairon [Claire-Josèphe Léris] not set it down in her memoirs, from which we draw the account we are about to give. The analogy it presents with certain facts that occur in our own days gives it a natural place in this collection.

As is known, Mademoiselle Clairon was as remarkable for her beauty as for her talent, whether as a singer or as a tragic actress. She had inspired in a young Breton, Monsieur de S…, one of those passions that sometimes decide a life, when one does not have enough strength of character to overcome it. Mademoiselle Clairon responded only with friendship; nevertheless, the assiduity of Monsieur de S… became so importunate that she resolved to break off all relations with him. The grief he felt caused him a long illness, of which he came to die. This happened in 1743. But let us allow Mademoiselle Clairon to speak.

“Two and a half years had passed between our acquaintance and his death. He begged me to grant him, in his final moments, the sweetness of seeing me once more; my circumstances, however, prevented me from making that visit. He died having near him none but the servants and an elderly lady, the only company he had had for a long time. He then lived by the rampart, near the Chaussée-d’Antin, which was beginning to be built; I, on the Rue de Bussy, near the Rue de Seine and the abbey of Saint-Germain. I was with my mother and several friends who had come to dine with me. I had just sung some beautiful pastoral songs that had charmed my friends when, as eleven o’clock struck, a very piercing cry was heard. Its somber modulation and its long duration startled everyone; I felt myself faint and remained almost a quarter of an hour unconscious…

“Everyone in my family, my friends, my neighbors, the police themselves, heard the same cry, always at the same hour, issuing invariably from beneath my windows, seeming to come vaguely out of the air… I rarely dined in town, but on the days when I did, nothing was heard; often, when I retired to my room, I would inquire of my mother and my servants about any news, and at once the cry would issue from amid us. Once the president of B…, with whom I had dined, wished to accompany me to assure himself that nothing would befall me on the way. When, at my door, he was bidding me good night, the cry issued from between us. Like all of Paris, he knew of this story: nevertheless, he was put into his carriage more dead than alive.

“Another time, I asked my comrade Rosely to accompany me to the Rue Saint-Honoré to choose fabrics. The sole subject of our conversation was my phantom (for that is what they called it). Full of wit and believing in nothing, this young man had, in spite of that, been impressed by my adventure; he insisted that I evoke the phantom, promising me that he would believe in it if it answered me. Whether from weakness or from audacity, I did as he asked: the cry was heard three times, terrible in its uproar and rapidity. On returning, the aid of everyone in the house was needed to take us out of the carriage, where we lay unconscious. After that scene, I went several months without hearing anything. I believed myself free forever, but I was mistaken.

“All the performances had been transferred to Versailles, for the wedding of the dauphin. They had arranged a room for me on the Avenue Saint-Cloud, which I occupied with Madame Grandval. At three o’clock in the morning I said to her: We are at the end of the world; it would be very difficult for the cry to come and surprise us here. I had scarcely finished speaking when the cry burst forth! Madame Grandval believed that all of hell was in the room; in her nightgown, she ran through the house from top to bottom, where, moreover, no one was able to close their eyes during the night. At least it was the last time we heard it.

“Seven or eight days after, while conversing with the members of my personal circle, the stroke of eleven o’clock was followed by a musket shot, fired at one of my windows. We all heard the shot and saw the flash, yet the window suffered no damage. We all concluded that they wanted my life, that they had missed the target, and that it would be necessary to take precautions for the future. Monsieur de Marville, then lieutenant of police, had the houses opposite mine searched; the street filled with every sort of spy possible; but, however many precautions were taken, for three whole months and always at the same hour the shot was seen and heard, at the same windowpane, without anyone ever being able to learn from where it came. This fact was recorded in the registers of the police.

“Accustomed to my phantom, in truth a poor devil who lent himself to playing tricks, I paid no attention to the hour. As it was warm, I opened the condemned window, and the intendant and I leaned upon the balcony. As eleven o’clock struck, the shot made itself heard, and we were both thrown into the middle of the room, where we fell as if dead. Coming back to ourselves, feeling that we had nothing wrong, examining ourselves and recognizing that we had each received, he on the left cheek and I on the right, the most terrible slap ever administered, we set to laughing like two madmen.

“Two days later, invited by Mademoiselle Dumesnil to an evening party at her house, at the Barrière Blanche, I took a hackney coach at eleven o’clock with my chambermaid. The moon was at its most splendid, and we were driven along boulevards that were beginning to fill with houses. My chambermaid asks: Was it not here that Monsieur de S… died? – According to the information I was given, yes, I answered her, pointing with my finger to one of the two houses before us. From one of them issued the same musket shot that pursued me: it passed through our hackney coach; the coachman doubled his pace, believing himself attacked by robbers. We arrived at the party, scarcely recovered from the fright and, for my part, seized by a terror that, I confess, I kept for a long time. But with firearms this feat was the last.

“The explosion was succeeded by a clapping of hands, with a certain rhythm and repetition. This noise, to which the indulgence of the public had accustomed me, was not perceived by me for some time, but my friends noticed it. We have been watching, they told me: it is at eleven o’clock, almost at your door, that it occurs; we hear it but see no one; it can only be the sequel to what you experienced before. As the noise had nothing terrible about it, I did not keep track of how long it lasted. I no longer paid attention to the melodious sounds that afterward made themselves heard; it seemed a celestial voice sketching out a noble and touching air, about to be sung; this voice began at the crossroads of Bussy and ended at my door; and, as had occurred with all the other preceding sounds, it was heard but nothing was seen. Finally, everything ceased in a little more than two and a half years.” Some time later, Mademoiselle Clairon obtained, through the elderly lady who had been the devoted friend of Monsieur de S…, the account of his last moments. “He counted every minute when, at half past ten, his footman came to tell him that the lady would decidedly not come. After a moment of silence, he took my hand, with an attitude of despair that terrified me. Heartless woman!… she will gain nothing by it; I will pursue her after my death, as much as I pursued her in life!… I tried to calm him, but he was dead.”

In the edition we have before us, this account is preceded by the following note, unsigned:

“Here is a most singular anecdote which has, no doubt, induced and will induce the most diverse opinions. One loves the marvelous, even without believing in it: Mademoiselle Clairon seems convinced of the reality of the facts she narrates. We shall content ourselves with observing that at the time when she was, or supposed herself to be, tormented by her phantom, she was from twenty-two and a half to twenty-five years of age; that this is the age of imagination, and that in her this faculty was continually exercised and exalted by the kind of life she led, in the theater and outside it. It must also be recalled that she said, at the beginning of her memoirs, that, in her childhood, she entertained herself with nothing but adventures of phantoms and sorcerers, which were told to her as true stories.”

Knowing the matter only through the account of Mademoiselle Clairon, we can only judge it by induction. Here is our reasoning: This fact, described in its smallest details by Mademoiselle Clairon herself, has more authenticity than if it had been narrated by third parties. Let us add that in writing the letter where the fact is related, she was about sixty years old, the age of credulity of which the author of the note speaks having already passed. This author does not call into doubt the good faith of Mademoiselle Clairon regarding her adventure, but admits that she was the victim of an illusion. That she was so once would have nothing extraordinary about it; but that she should have been so for two and a half years already appears to us much more difficult, just as it is still more difficult to suppose that this illusion was shared by so many people, eyewitnesses and earwitnesses of the facts, and by the police themselves. To us, who know what takes place in spirit manifestations, the adventure contains nothing surprising, and we hold it to be probable. On this hypothesis, we do not hesitate to think that the author of all these mischiefs is none other than the soul or the Spirit of Monsieur de S…, especially if we attend to the coincidence of his last words with the duration of the phenomena. He had said: I will pursue her after my death, as much as I pursued her in life. Now, his relations with Mademoiselle Clairon had lasted two and a half years, that is, as long as the manifestations that followed his death. A few more words on the nature of this Spirit. He was not evil, and it is with reason that Mademoiselle Clairon qualifies him as a poor devil; but neither can it be said that he was goodness itself. The violent passion, under which he succumbed as a man, proves that in him earthly ideas were dominant. The deep traces of this passion, which survived the destruction of the body, prove that, as a Spirit, he was still under the influence of matter. However harmless his vengeance was, it denotes sentiments of little elevation. If, then, we wish to refer to our table of the classification of Spirits, it will not be difficult to assign him his class; the absence of real malice naturally removes him from the last class, that of impure Spirits; but, evidently, he remained attached to other classes of the same order; nothing in him could justify a higher position. A thing worthy of note is the succession of the different modes by which he manifested his presence. It was on the very day and at the exact moment of his death that he made himself heard for the first time, and this in the midst of a merry dinner. When alive, he saw Mademoiselle Clairon, in thought, surrounded by that halo which the imagination lends to the object of an ardent passion; but, once the soul was freed of its material veil, the illusion gave way to reality. There he is, at her side, and sees her surrounded by friends, everything exciting his jealousy; by her joviality and charm, she seems to insult his despair, which is expressed by a cry of rage repeated every day at the same hour, as if reproaching her for having refused to console him in his final moments. The cries are succeeded by shots, harmless, it is true, but which at the very least denote an impotent rage and the intention of disturbing her repose. Later, his despair takes on a more serene character; he returns, no doubt, to healthier ideas, seeming to have regained mastery of himself; there remained to him the memory of the applause of which she was the object, and he repeats it. Finally, he bids her farewell by means of sounds that recalled the echo of that melodious voice which in life had so fascinated him. [1] Born in 1723, Mademoiselle Clairon died in 1803. She made her debut in an Italian company at the age of 13 and at the Comédie-Française in 1743. She withdrew from the theater in 1765, at the age of 42.