Questions of legal Spiritism.

— We take the following fact from the Courrier du Palais, which Mr. Frédéric Thomas, an attorney at the Imperial Court, published in the Presse of August 2, 1858. We quote it textually so as not to discolor the narration of the witty writer. Our readers will easily perceive the light manner in which, so agreeably, he knows how to treat the most serious matters. After relating several of them, he adds:

“We have a far stranger lawsuit than that one to offer you in the near prospect: we already see it appearing on the horizon, on the southern horizon; but where does it intend to arrive? They write to us that the irons are already in the fire, but that assurance is not sufficient. Here is what it is about:

“A Parisian read in a newspaper that an old castle was for sale in the Pyrenees: he bought it, and from the first days of spring he went there to settle in with his friends. They dined merrily, then went to bed, merrier still. It remained to spend the night: a night in an old castle lost in the mountains. The next day all the guests rose with wild eyes and startled faces; they went to find their host, and all asked him the same question, with a mysterious and lugubrious air: Did you see nothing this night?

“The proprietor did not answer, so terrified did he find himself as well, limiting himself to making an affirmative sign with his head.

“Then they confided to one another the impressions of the night: one had heard plaintive voices; another the noise of chains; this one saw the tapestry move; that one a chest that saluted him; several felt giant bats alight on their chests: It was a castle of the White Lady. The servants declared that, as with the tenant farmer Dickson, the phantoms had pulled their feet. What more still? The beds went strolling about, the bells rang by themselves, and flashing words furrowed across old fireplaces.

“Decidedly this castle was not habitable: the most frightened fled immediately, while the most courageous defied the ordeal of a second night.

“Until midnight all went well; but when the clock of the North tower cast its twelve sobs into space, the apparitions and the noises soon began again; from every corner there arose phantoms, monsters with eyes of fire, crocodile teeth, and shaggy wings: all of this shouted, leaped, gnashed, and made an infernal uproar.

“Impossible to resist this second experience. This time everyone left the castle, and today the proprietor wishes to bring an action for damages.

“What a strange lawsuit, this one! And what a triumph for Mr. Home, great evoker of Spirits! Will he be appointed an expert in these matters? Be that as it may, since there is nothing new under the sun of justice, this lawsuit, which they will perhaps judge a novelty, will be nothing but an old relic: there is another one pending which, though it be two hundred and sixty-three years old, is no less curious.

— “Thus, in the year of grace 1595, before the seneschal of Guienne, a tenant named Jean Latapy filed suit against his proprietor, Robert de Vigne. The former alleged that the old house which de Vigne had rented to him, situated on an ancient street in Bordeaux, was not habitable, he having been obliged to leave it and then taking legal action so that the court might pronounce upon the rescission of the contract.

“For what reasons? Latapy sets them forth very ingenuously in his pleadings.

“Because he had found the house infested with Spirits, which now presented themselves in the form of children, now in other terrible and frightful forms, and which oppressed and disturbed the people, rummaged about the furniture, provoked noises and uproars on every side, and, with force and violence, threw from their beds those who were resting in them.

“De Vigne energetically opposed the rescission of the contract. You unjustly depreciate my house, he said to Latapy; you probably have nothing but what you deserve, and far from reproaching me, you ought, on the contrary, to thank me, inasmuch as I make you win paradise.

“Here is how the proprietor's lawyer established this singular proposition: If the Spirits come to torment Latapy and to afflict him with the permission of God, he must endure the just penalty and, like Saint Jerome, say: Quidquid patimur nostris peccatis meremur [Whatever we suffer, we deserve by our sins], and not turn against the proprietor, who is wholly innocent; on the contrary: he ought to be grateful to him who thus furnished him the elements to save himself in this world from the punishments that, by his demerit, awaited him in the other.

“To be consistent, the lawyer ought to have asked Latapy to pay a certain indemnity to de Vigne for the service rendered. Is not a place in paradise worth its weight in gold? But, generous, the proprietor contented himself with the dismissal of the action, since, before bringing it, Latapy ought to have begun by combating and expelling the Spirits by the means that God and Nature have granted us.

“Why had he not used the laurel? exclaimed the proprietor's lawyer; why had he not made use of rue or of salt crackling in the flames and burning coals, of hoopoe feathers and of the composition of the herb called aerolus vetulus, which contains rhubarb, white wine, salt suspended at the entrance door, leather from the forehead of a hyena, and dog's gall, which are said to be of a marvelous virtue for expelling demons? Why had he not used the herb Moly, which Mercury had given to Ulysses, who made use of it as an antidote against the enchantments of Circe?…

“It is evident that the tenant Latapy had failed in all his duties, by not casting crackling salt into the flames and by not making use of dog's gall and of some hoopoe feathers. But, as he would have been obliged also to obtain leather from the forehead of a hyena, the seneschal of Bordeaux found that this ingredient was not so common that Latapy should not be excused for having left the hyenas in peace, ordering, in consequence, the rescission of the lease contract.

“In all of this, you see that neither the proprietor, nor the tenant, nor the judges put in doubt the existence and the uproars of the Spirits. It would seem, then, that for more than two centuries men were already almost as credulous as today; we, however, surpass them in credulity: it is the order of the day. It is absolutely necessary that civilization and progress show themselves somewhere.”

— From the legal point of view, and setting aside the accessories with which the narrator adorned it, this question does not fail to have its embarrassing side, for the law did not foresee the case in which noisy Spirits would render a house uninhabitable. Is it a redhibitory defect? In our opinion there are pros and cons: it will depend on the circumstances. First it is a matter of examining whether the noise was serious or whether it was not simulated for some interest, a preliminary question of good faith that prejudges all the others. Admitting the facts as real, it is necessary to know whether they were of a nature to disturb the repose. If, for example, things were to occur such as those which happened at Bergzabern, n it is evident that the position would not be tenable. Father Senger endured all of that because the facts occurred in his own house and he could not act otherwise; but in no way would a stranger resign himself to living in a house where one constantly heard deafening noises, where the furniture was turned over and knocked down, the doors and windows opened and closed without any motive, the objects were hurled at people's heads by invisible hands, etc. It seems incontestable that, in such a circumstance, there would be grounds for complaint, and that, in good law, such a contract would not have validity if the facts had been concealed. Thus, as a general thesis, the lawsuit of 1595 seems to have been well judged; there is, however, an important subsidiary question to clarify, and only spiritist science could raise it and resolve it. We know that the spontaneous manifestations of the Spirits may occur without a determined end, and without being directed against this or that individual; that there are, indeed, places haunted by rapping Spirits which, it seems, would have chosen them to fix their domicile, and against which all the conjurations employed have failed. Let us say, in parentheses, that there are effective means of ridding ourselves of them; however, these means do not consist in the intervention of persons known to produce such phenomena at will, because the Spirits that are at their orders are exactly of the same nature as those we wish to expel. Far from driving them away, their presence could only attract others. But we also know that in a number of cases these manifestations are directed against certain persons, as at Bergzabern, for example. The facts proved that the family, principally the young Philippine, was their direct object, in such a way that we are convinced that if this family were to abandon their residence, the new inhabitants would have nothing to fear; the family would carry their tribulations with them to the new domicile. The point to examine in a legal question would be, then, this: were the manifestations occurring before or only after the entry of the new proprietor? In the latter case, it becomes evident that it is he who would have brought the disturbing Spirits, the entire responsibility falling upon him; if, on the contrary, the disturbances already occurred previously and in a persistent manner, then they were attached to the place itself, and thus the responsibility would be the seller's. The proprietor's lawyer reasoned upon the first hypothesis, his argumentation not failing to be logical. It remains to be known whether the tenant had brought these importunate guests with him, but the lawsuit does not clarify this. As for the lawsuit currently pending, we believe that the best means of rendering good justice would be to proceed to the verifications of which we have just spoken. If they lead to the proof of the anteriority of the manifestations, and if this fact was concealed by the seller, it is one more case in which the buyer was deceived as to the quality of the thing sold. Now, to maintain the contract under such a condition would perhaps be to prejudice the acquirer through the depreciation of the property; it is, at the least, to cause him a notable harm, constraining him to keep a thing of which he can no longer make use. It is as if he had acquired a blind horse, which they passed off as healthy. Be that as it may, the judgment in question must have grave consequences; whether the contract be rescinded, or maintained for lack of sufficient proofs, it is equally to recognize the existence of the fact of the manifestations. To repel the acquirer's proposal, under the argument that it is based on a ridiculous idea, is to expose oneself to receiving, sooner or later, a contradiction from experience, as has already happened with the most enlightened men, for having hastened to deny the things they did not understand. If we can reproach our ancestors for excessive credulity, our descendants will doubtless reproach us for having sinned by the contrary excess.

— While we wait, here is what has just taken place before our eyes, the reality of which we have even come to verify. Let us see the chronicle of the Patrie, of September 4, 1858:

“The Rue du Bac is in great confusion. Some deviltries are still occurring there!

“The house, which bears the number 65, is composed of two buildings; the one that faces the street has two staircases that confront each other.

“For a week now, at any hour of the day or night, and on the two floors of this house, the bells stir and jingle violently; when they go to open the door there is no one at the entrance.

“At first they believed it to be a joke in bad taste, and each one set about observing in order to discover the author. One of the tenants took the precaution of frosting a pane of glass in his kitchen in order to spy. While he watched with the greatest attention, his bell was shaken; he put his eye to the peephole: no one! He ran to the staircase: no one!

“He returned home and removed the cord of the bell. An hour later, when he thought he had triumphed, the bell set itself to ringing in a manner finer still. He stared at it, remaining mute and dismayed.

“At other doors, the bell cords were twisted and tied like wounded serpents; They sought an explanation and called the police. What mystery was this? They still do not know it.

[1] See the May, June, and July issues of the Spiritist Review.