Chaudruc-Duclos and Diogenes.

DUCLOS.

Evocation.

Answer. – I am here.

The seeing medium, Mr. Adrien, who had never seen him in life, drew the following portrait of him, considered very accurate by the persons present who had known him: Long face; hollow cheeks; arched and wrinkled forehead. A somewhat large nose, slightly curved; gray eyes, a little protruding from their orbits; small and mocking mouth; somewhat pale complexion; grizzled hair and a long beard. Above-average stature. A jacket of blue fabric, all worn out and full of holes; black trousers, threadbare and in tatters; a light-colored waistcoat; a handkerchief of indistinct color, tied like a necktie.

Do you remember your last terrestrial existence?

Answer. – Perfectly.

What reason led you to take up the kind of life you adopted?

Answer. – I was weary of life and felt pity for men and for the motives of their actions.

They say it was out of revenge and to humiliate a wealthy relative; is that true?

Answer. – Not only for that; in humiliating that man, I humiliated many others.

If it was a revenge, it cost you dearly, for during long years you deprived yourself of all social pleasures in order to satisfy it. Was that not very burdensome to you? Answer. – I enjoyed them in another way.

Was there, alongside this, a philosophical thought that caused you to be compared to Diogenes?

Answer. – There was some relation to the less sound part of that man's philosophy.

What do you think of Diogenes?

Answer. – Little; somewhat what I think of myself. Over us Diogenes had the advantage of having done, some thousands of years earlier, what I now do, and amid men less civilized than those among whom I lived.

Between you and Diogenes there is, however, a difference: in him conduct was the consequence of his philosophical system, whereas yours originated in a revenge! Answer. – In me revenge led to a philosophy.

Did you suffer from seeing yourself thus isolated and being an object of contempt and repugnance, considering that your education set you apart from the society of beggars and vagabonds and that you were repelled by educated people? Answer. – I knew that we have no friends on Earth; I had proven it, unfortunately.

What are your personal occupations and where do you spend your time?

Answer. – I traverse better worlds and instruct myself… There exist there so many good souls who reveal to us the celestial science of the Spirits!

Did you come a few times to the Palais-Royal after your death?

Answer. – What do I care about the Palais-Royal!

Among the persons who are here, do you recognize any whom you knew in your wanderings at the Palais-Royal?

Answer. – How could I not recognize them?

Is it with pleasure that you see them again?

Answer. – With even greater pleasure: they were good to me.

Have you seen your friend Charles Nodier again?

Answer. – Yes, especially after his death.

Is he wandering or reincarnated?

Answer. – Wandering like me.

Why did you choose the Palais-Royal, then the most frequented place in Paris, for your strolls? Would this not be at odds with your misanthropic tastes? Answer. – There I saw everyone, every afternoon.

Was there not, perhaps, on your part a feeling of pride?

Answer. – Yes, unfortunately; pride had a large part in my life.

Are you happier now?

Answer. – Oh! Yes.

Yet your kind of life ought to have contributed to your improvement?

Answer. – That earthly existence! Much more than you might think; I spent no gloomy moments when I entered the house alone and desolate. There I had time to ripen my ideas.

If you had to choose another existence, how would you do it?

Answer. – Not on Earth; today I can hope for better.

Do you remember your next-to-last existence?

Answer. – Yes, and others as well.

Where did you live those existences?

Answer. – On Earth and in other worlds.

And the next-to-last one?

Answer. – On Earth.

Can you make it known?

Answer. – I cannot; it was an obscure and hidden existence.

Without revealing that existence to us, could you say what relation it had to the one we know, since one must be the consequence of the other? Answer. – Not exactly a consequence, but a complement; I had an unhappy life, through vices and defects that were considerably modified before I came to animate the body you knew.

Could we do something that would be useful and agreeable to you?

Answer. – Ah! Little; today I am far above the Earth.

DIOGENES. n

Evocation.

Answer. – Ah! How far I come from!

Could you appear to Mr. Adrien, our seeing medium, just as you were in the existence in which we knew you?

Answer. – Yes; and even, if you wish, come with my lantern.

Portrait. — Broad forehead, with very pronounced lateral protrusions; thin and aquiline nose, large and serious mouth; black and sunken eyes; penetrating and mocking gaze. Somewhat elongated face, lean and full of wrinkles; pale complexion; unkempt mustache and beard; gray and sparse hair. White and very dirty clothes; bare arms, as well as the legs; lean and bony body. Sandals in poor condition, tied to the legs by straps.

You said you came from afar; from what world did you come?

Answer. – You do not know it.

Would you be so kind as to answer a few questions?

Answer. – With pleasure.

Was the existence in which we know you under the name of Diogenes the Cynic profitable to your future happiness?

Answer. – Quite. You labor in error by holding it up to ridicule, as my contemporaries did. I am even surprised that History has shed so little light on my existence and that posterity has been, one may say, unjust toward me.

What good were you able to do, considering that your existence was very personal?

Answer. – I worked for myself, but much could have been learned from me.

What qualities would you have liked to find in the man you sought with your lantern?

Answer. – Firmness.

Had you encountered on your path the man we have just summoned, Chaudruc-Duclos, would you have found in him the man you sought? He too voluntarily deprived himself of all that was superfluous? Answer. – No.

What do you think of him?

Answer. – His soul was lost on Earth; how many are like him without knowing it; at least he knew it.

Did you believe you possessed the qualities you sought in man?

Answer. – No doubt; that was my criterion.

Of the philosophers of your time, which one earns your preference?

Answer. – Socrates.

Which one do you prefer now?

Answer. – Socrates.

What do you say of Plato?

Answer. – Very hard; his philosophy is rather severe. I admitted the poets; he did not.

Is what is told regarding your interview with Alexander true?

Answer. – Very real; history has even truncated it.

In what did history truncate it?

Answer. – I hear talk of the other conversations we had together; do you believe he would have come to see me only to say a single word?

Are the words attributed to him, that if he were not Alexander he would like to be Diogenes, true?

Answer. – Perhaps he said them, but not in front of me. Alexander was a mad young man, vain and proud; in his eyes I was a beggar. How would the tyrant dare to show himself instructed by the wretch?

After your existence in Athens, did you reincarnate on Earth?

Answer. – No, but in other worlds. At present I belong to an orb where we are not slaves, that is to say: if you were evoked in a waking state you could not answer the call, as I do this night.

Could you sketch for us the picture of the qualities you sought in man, such as you conceived them then and such as you conceive them now? Answer. – BEFORE: Courage, boldness, self-assurance, and power over men through reason. NOW: Self-denial, gentleness, and power over men through the heart. [1]

[v. Diogenes of Sinope.]