Eugène Scribe.

— During the discussion that was established among several Spirits regarding Buffon’s aphorism: Style is the man, reported in our previous issue, the name of Mr. Scribe was cited, which doubtless gave him a motive to come, although he had not been called. Without participating in the debate, he spontaneously dictated the following dissertation, occasioning the conversation that accompanies it: “It would be desirable that the theater, where the great and the small go to draw instruction, should preoccupy itself a little less with flattering the taste for easy morals and with exalting the venial aspects of an ardent youth, but that social progress should be pursued through elevated and moral plays, where fine anecdote would replace the coarse kitchen salt that the authors of light comedies employ today. But no; according to the theater, according to the public, human passions are flattered. Here, they advocate the apron, to the detriment of the dress coat, transformed into a scapegoat of all social iniquities; there, it is the apron that is defamed and besmirched, because, as they say, it always conceals a knave or a murderer. A lie on both sides. “Some authors are even beginning to seize the bull by the horns and, like Émile Augier, to nail the speculators to the pillory of public opinion. Ah! what does it matter! The public none the less continues to drag itself to the theaters, where a brazen and shameless plasticity makes up the whole expense of the spectacle. Ah! it is high time that the Spiritist ideas be propagated in all social strata, because, then, the theater will be moralized of itself and, to the feminine exhibitions, will succeed conscientious plays, conscientiously performed by artists of talent. All will gain by this. Let us hope that soon there will arise a dramatic author capable of expelling from the theater and from the enthusiasm of the public all those swindlers, immoral procurers of the ladies of the camellias of every sort. Labor, then, to spread Spiritism, which must produce so laudable a result.” E. Scribe.

— Question. In a communication that you dictated a short time ago to Miss J…, and read at the Society, you said that what made your reputation on Earth did not make it in Heaven and that you could have employed better the goods that you received from God. Would you have the kindness to develop this thought and say in what your works are reprehensible? It seems to us that they have a moral side and, in a certain manner, opened the way to progress.

Answer. – Everything is relative. In the elevated world where I find myself today I no longer see with earthly eyes, and I think that, with the gifts I had received from the Almighty, I ought to have done something better for Humanity. It was for this that I said I had not worked for Heaven. But I cannot express in a few words what I wished to tell you above, because, as you well know, I was somewhat verbose.

– You said further that you would like to compose a more useful and more serious work, but that such a joy was refused to you. Is it as a Spirit that you would wish to make that work and, in that case, how would you have done so that men might profit from it?

Answer. – My God! in the most simple manner employed by the Spirits, by inspiring the writers who, very often, imagine that they draw from their own depths, ah! at times so empty.

– May one know what subject you would offer to treat?

Answer. – I had no determined object, but, as you know, one rather likes to do what one has never done. I should like to occupy myself with philosophy and with spiritualism, since I occupied myself more than I ought with realism. Do not take the word realism as it is understood today; I only meant to say that I occupied myself more especially with that which amused the eyes and the ear of the frivolous spirits of the Earth, and not with that which might satisfy the serious and philosophical spirits.

– You said to Miss J… that you were not happy. You may not have the lot of the blessed, but a short while ago, in the committee, they recounted a number of good actions that you practiced and that, surely, must have been taken into consideration.

Answer. – No; I am not happy because, unfortunately, I still have ambition and, having been an academician on Earth, I wished to be a part, also, of the assembly of the elect.

– It seems to us that, in default of the work that you cannot yet do, you might attain the same object, for yourself and for others, if you came here to give a series of dissertations.

Answer. – I should ask for nothing better; I shall come with pleasure, if they permit me, which I do not know, for I do not yet have a well-defined position in the spiritual world. Everything is so new to me — I who passed my life marrying subaltern officers to rich heiresses — that I have not yet had time to know and to admire this ethereal world, which I had forgotten during the incarnation. I shall return, then, if the Great Spirits permit it.

– In the world where you are, have you already seen again Madame de Girardin who, in life, occupied herself much with Spirits and evocations?

Answer. – She had the kindness to come to await me at the threshold of the true life, with the Spirits of the pleiad to which we belong.

– Is she happier than you?

Answer. – Her Spirit is happier than I, because she contributed to the works of education of childhood, composed by Sophie Gay, her mother.

Observation by Erastus.

– No; it was because she struggled, whereas Scribe let himself be carried along in the torrent of the easy life.

– Do you sometimes go to attend the performance of your works, as does Madame de Girardin or Casimir Delavigne?

Answer. – How could you wish that we should not go to see those dear children, whom we left on Earth? It is still one of our purest pleasures.

Observation. – Death, then, does not separate those who knew one another on Earth; they meet again, reunite, and take interest in what was the object of their preoccupations. They will say, doubtless, that if they remember what gave them joy, they must also remember that which caused them pain, and that this must alter their happiness. Such a memory produces an entirely contrary effect, because the satisfaction of being delivered from the earthly evils is a pleasure all the sweeter, the greater the contrast. We appreciate better the benefits of health after an illness, calm after the tempest. On returning home, the warrior does not refrain from recounting the perils he ran, the fatigues he experienced. In the same way, for the Spirits the memory of the earthly struggles is a satisfaction, when they emerged from them victorious. But that memory is lost in the course of time or, at least, diminishes in importance in their eyes, in proportion as they free themselves from the material fluids of the inferior worlds and approach perfection. For them, such memories are distant dreams, as in the grown man are the recollections of early childhood. [1]

[see Eugène Scribe.]