Mrs. Bertrand.

Deceased on February 7, 1861. Evoked at the Spiritist Society of Paris on the 15th of the same month.

(Summary)

A Spiritist, deceased on February 7, 1861. Evoked at the Society on the 15th of the same month. Principal questions:

In life you had formed an idea of the spirit world through the study of the doctrine. Can you tell us whether you found things just as you had imagined them? Thus, the picture that is made for us of the spirit life has nothing exaggerated, nothing illusory!

In preparing the questions we are to address to a Spirit, we generally have an anticipated evocation. Can you tell whether, in this case, you were forewarned of our intention, and whether you were near me yesterday, while I was preparing the questions?

Letter from Mrs. Bertrand's daughter sent to Mr. Allan Kardec.

Obs. of Allan Kardec: Differences between the prospect of nothingness offered by materialism, of the eternal flames offered by retrograde beliefs, and the consoling revelations afforded by Spiritism.

Note – Mrs. Bertrand had made a serious study of Spiritism, whose doctrine she professed, understanding all its philosophical scope.

Evocation.

Answer. – Here I am.

Your correspondence having led us to appreciate you, and knowing your sympathy for the Society, we thought it would not be disagreeable to you to be called so soon.

Answer. – You see that I am here.

Another motive impels me personally to do so. I intend to write to your daughter, with regard to the event that has just struck her, and I am certain she will feel happy to learn the result of our conversation.

Answer. – Certainly; she expects it, for I had promised her I would reveal myself as soon as I was evoked.

Enlightened as you were about Spiritism, and imbued with the principles of this doctrine, your answers will be doubly instructive to us. First, will you tell us whether you took long to recognize yourself and whether you have already recovered the fullness of your faculties?

Answer. – The fullness of my old faculties, yes; the fullness of my new faculties, no.

It is customary to ask the living how they fare. But of the Spirits we ask whether they are happy. It is with a profound sentiment of sympathy that we put this last question to you.

Answer. – Thank you, my friends. I am not yet happy, in the spiritualist sense of the term. But I am happy at the renewal of my being, dazzled and in ecstasy; at the sight of the things that are revealed to us, but which we still understand imperfectly, however good a medium or Spiritist we may be.

In life you had formed an idea of the spirit world through the study of the doctrine. Can you tell us whether you found things just as you had imagined them?

Answer. – More or less, as we see objects in the uncertainty of semi-darkness. But how different they are when the brilliant light reveals them!

Thus, the picture that is made for us of the spirit life has nothing exaggerated, nothing illusory!

Answer. – It is diminished by your Spirit, which can understand divine things only softened and veiled. We act with you as you do with children, to whom you show only a part of the things disposed for their understanding.

Did you witness the instant of the death of your body?

Answer. – Exhausted by long sufferings, my body did not have to undergo a great struggle; my soul detached itself from it like the ripe fruit that falls from the tree. The complete annihilation of my being prevented me from feeling the last anguish of the agony.

Could you describe your sensations at the moment of awakening?

Answer. – There is no awakening, or, rather, it seemed to me that there was continuity; as when we return home after a short absence, it seemed to me that only a few minutes separated me from what I had just left. Wandering around my bed, I saw myself stretched out, transfigured, and could not move away, held back as I was, or at least so it seemed to me, by a last tie to that corporeal envelope, which had made me suffer so much.

Did you immediately see other Spirits surround you?

Answer. – They soon came to receive me. Then I turned my thought away from my earthly self and, transported, my spiritual self plunged into the delicious pleasure of the new and known things that it found again.

Were you among the members of the family during the funeral ceremony?

Answer. – I saw my body being carried away, but I soon withdrew. Spiritism dematerializes in advance and makes the passage from the earthly world to the spiritual world more sudden. I had taken from my migration on Earth neither vain regrets nor puerile curiosity.

Have you anything particular to say to your daughter, who shared your beliefs, and several times wrote to me in your name?

Answer. – I recommend that she give her studies a more serious character; that she transform sterile grief into pious and fruitful remembrance; that she not forget that life continues, without interruption, and that the frivolous interests of the world pale before the great word: Eternity! Besides, my personal remembrance, tender and intimate, will soon be transmitted to her.

In January I sent you a portrait-card. As you have never seen me, can you tell whether you recognize me?

Answer. – But I do not recognize you; I see you.

— Did you not receive that card?

Ans. – I do not remember.

I would have several important questions to put to you about the extraordinary facts that took place in your house and that you communicated to us. I think you could give us, in this regard, interesting explanations; but the late hour and the fatigue of the medium oblige me to postpone them. I limit myself to a few questions to conclude. — Although your death is recent, have you already left the Earth? Have you traversed the spaces and visited other worlds? Answer. – The term to visit does not correspond to the movement as rapid as the word is, which makes us, as quickly as thought, discover new places. Distance is but a word, just as time is for us only one and the same hour.

In preparing the questions we are to address to a Spirit, we generally have an anticipated evocation. Can you tell whether, in this case, you were forewarned of our intention, and whether you were near me yesterday, while I was preparing the questions?

Answer. – Yes; I already knew all that you would say to me today and I will answer aptly the questions you reserved.

In your lifetime we would have been very happy to have you among us; but since that was not possible, we are equally happy to have you in Spirit and we thank you for your solicitude in answering our appeal.

Answer. – My friends, I followed your studies with interest. Now, however, that I can dwell among you as a Spirit, I advise you to attach yourselves more to the Spirit than to the letter.

Farewell.

— The following letter was addressed to us with regard to this evocation:

“Sir, It is with a sentiment of profound gratitude that I come to thank you, in my name and in my father's name, for having anticipated our desire to receive, through your intermediary, news of her whom we mourn.

The numerous moral and physical trials that my dear and good mother had to suffer during her existence, her patience in bearing them, her devotion, her complete abnegation made me hope that she was happy. But the certainty you have just given us, sir, is a great consolation for us who loved her so much and who desire her happiness before our own. My mother was the soul of the house, sir. I need not say the void her absence has left; we suffer from no longer seeing her, more than I could express and, nevertheless, we experience a certain quietude at no longer seeing her in the atrocious pains she endured. My poor mother was a martyr. She must have a fine reward for the patience and gentleness with which she bore all her anguish. Her life was but a long torture of mind and body. Her elevated sentiments, her faith in another existence sustained her; she had as it were a presentiment and a veiled remembrance of the world of the Spirits. Often I would surprise her looking with pity at the things of our planet; then she would say to me: Nothing here below can suffice me; I have the nostalgia of another world. In the answers my dear and adored mother gave you, sir, we perfectly recognize her manner of thinking and of expressing herself; she liked to make use of images. I am only surprised that she did not remember your portrait-card, which had afforded her such great and lively pleasure. I should have thanked you on her behalf; but my numerous occupations during the last days of my venerated mother's illness did not permit me to do so. I believe that later she will remember better. At the moment she is inebriated in the splendors of her new life. The existence she has just concluded seems to her but like a painful dream, already far from her. We hope, then, my father and I, that she will come to say a few words of affection to us, of which we have great need. Would it be indiscreet, sir, to ask you to communicate to us when my good mother speaks to you of us? You did so much good in coming to speak of her, in coming to say on her behalf that she suffers no more! Ah! thank you again, sir! I pray to God, with soul and heart, that He may reward you. In leaving me, my dear mother deprives me of the best of mothers, of the most tender of friends. I need the certainty of knowing her happy and my belief in Spiritism to give me a little strength. God has sustained me; my courage was greater than I had hoped. Accept, etc.”

Observation. – Let the incredulous laugh at Spiritism as much as they please; let its more or less interested adversaries expose it to ridicule; let them even anathematize it, and one will not take from it that consoling force that makes the joy of the unfortunate, and that makes it triumph over the ill will of the indifferent, in spite of their efforts to cast it down. Men thirst for happiness; when they do not find it on Earth, is it not a great relief to have the certainty of finding it in the other life, if one has done what is necessary to merit it? Who, then, more softens for them the evils of the Earth? Will it be materialism, with the horrible expectation of nothingness? the prospect of the eternal flames, from which not one in millions escapes? Do not deceive yourselves: this prospect is still more horrible than that of nothingness; that is why those whose reason refuses to admit it are led to materialism. When the future is presented to men in a rational manner, there will be no more materialists. Let them not be astonished to see Spiritist ideas welcomed with such solicitude by the masses, because these ideas increase courage, instead of casting it down. The example of happiness is contagious. When all men see around them people happy because of Spiritism, they will throw themselves into its arms as upon a plank of salvation, because they will always prefer a doctrine that smiles and speaks to reason to those that terrify. The example we have just cited is not the only one of its kind; they offer themselves to us by the thousands, and the greatest joy that God has reserved for us here on Earth is that of witnessing the benefits and the progress of a belief that our efforts tend to spread. The persons of good will, those who come to drink consolation in it, are so numerous that we could not steal our time from them by occupying ourselves with the indifferent, who have not the least desire to be convinced. Those who come to us are enough to absorb it; therefore we do not go before anyone.—That is why we also do not lose it in searching about in a sterile field. The turn of the others will come when it shall please God to lift the veil that blinds them, a time that will come sooner than they think, to the glory of some and the humiliation of others.