The wandering soul

In the volume entitled Les Six Nouvelles — Google Books, written by Maxime Ducamp, n there is found a moving story, which we recommend to our readers.

It is that of a wandering soul who recounts its own adventures.

We do not have the honor of knowing Mr. Maxime Ducamp, whom we have never seen. Consequently, we do not know whether he gathered his teachings from his own imagination or from Spiritist studies. But, be that as it may, he could not have been inspired with greater felicity. We may judge of it by the following fragment. We will not speak of the fantastic framework in which the novella is set; it is an accessory of no importance and purely formal.

“I am a wandering soul, a suffering soul; I roam through the spaces, awaiting a body. I travel on the wings of the wind, in the blue of the sky, in the song of the birds, in the pale gleams of the moon. I am a wandering soul…

“From the instant when God separated us from Him, we have lived on the Earth many times, ascending from generation to generation, abandoning without regret the bodies that are entrusted to us and continuing the work of our own perfecting, through the existences that we undergo.

“When we leave this troublesome host that serves us so ill; when it goes to fertilize and renew the earth from which it came; when, in liberty, we finally open our wings, God makes known to us our objective. We see our preceding existences and we evaluate the progress accomplished over centuries; we understand the punishments and rewards that befell us, through the joys and the sorrows of our life; we see our intelligence grow from birth to birth, and we aspire to the supreme state, by which we shall leave this inferior homeland to win the radiant planets, where the passions are more elevated, love less ambitious, happiness more constant, the organs more developed, the senses more numerous, whose abode is reserved for the inhabitants of worlds that, by their virtues, have drawn nearer to beatitude than we have. “When God sends us anew to bodies that are to live a miserable life for us, we lose all consciousness of that which preceded these new births. The self, which had awakened, sleeps once more; it no longer persists and, of our past existences there remain only vague reminiscences, which cause in us sympathies, antipathies and, at times, innate ideas.

“I will not speak of all the creatures that lived in my breath; but my last existence suffered a misfortune so great that it is only of this one that I wish to tell the story.”

It would be difficult to define better the principle and the purpose of reincarnation, the progression of beings, the plurality of worlds, and the future that awaits us. Here now, in a few words, is the story of that soul: A young man loved a young woman and was loved in return, but there were obstacles opposing their union. He then asked God to permit his soul, during sleep, to detach itself from the body, in order to visit his beloved. This favor was granted to him. Thus, every night his soul takes flight and leaves the body in a state of complete inertia, from which it does not emerge except when the soul returns and reintegrates itself into the body. During that time, it goes to visit her whom he loves. He sees her, without her suspecting it; he wishes to speak to her, but she does not hear him; he observes her slightest movements, surprises her thought. He is happy with her joys, sad with her sorrows. Nothing more graceful and more delicate than the picture of this scene between the girl and the invisible soul. But, oh! weakness of the incarnate being! One day, or rather, one night, he forgets himself; three days pass without his thinking of his body, which cannot live without the soul. Suddenly, he thinks of his mother, who awaits him, and who must be anxious on account of so prolonged a sleep. Then he hastens; but it is too late: his body had ceased to live. He attends the funeral, then consoles his mother. In despair, his betrothed will not hear of any other union. Conquered, however, by the solicitations of her own mother, she ends by yielding, after a long resistance. The wandering soul forgives her an infidelity that is not in her thought; but, in order to receive her caresses and no longer to leave her, he asks to incarnate in the child who is to be born. If the author is not convinced of the Spiritist ideas, it must be admitted that he plays his role very well.

[1] Librairie Nouvelle, Boulevard des Italiens.