Mrs. de Girardin

Note. – Some critical observations having been made about the communication dictated in the previous session, given by Mrs. de Girardin, she responds to them spontaneously. She alludes to the circumstances that accompanied that communication.

“I come to thank the associate who saw fit to present my defense and my moral rehabilitation before you. Indeed, in life I loved and respected the laws of good taste, which are those of delicacy – I would say more – of the heart, for the sex to which I belonged; after my death, God permitted me to be elevated enough to practice easily and simply the duties of charity, which bind us all, Spirits and men. This explanation given, I shall not insist upon the communication signed with my name, since criticism and censure suit neither my medium nor me. Thus, believe that I shall come when I am evoked, but I shall never meddle in futile incidents. I spoke to you of children. Let me take up this subject again, which was the painful wound of my life. Woman needs the double crown of love and motherhood to fulfill the mandate of self-denial that God entrusted to her when casting her upon the Earth. Unfortunately, I never knew that sweet and gentle concern that those frail deposits imprint upon the soul. How many times I followed, with eyes brimming with bitter tears, the children who, playing, came to brush against my dress; and I felt the anguish and humiliation of my decay. I trembled, I hoped, I listened, and my life, full of the world’s successes, fruits laden with ashes, left me nothing but a bitter and disappointing taste.” Delphine de Girardin. n Observation. – There is in this passage a lesson that should not pass unnoticed. Mrs. de Girardin, alluding to certain passages of her previous communication [The referenced publication was not found in the Review, since the one prior to this deals with reincarnation and not with children], which had raised some objections, said that in life she loved and respected the laws of good taste, which are those of delicacy, and that she preserved this sentiment after death. Consequently, she repudiates everything that, in the communications bearing her name, departs from good taste. After death, the soul reflects the qualities and defects it had during corporeal life, except for the progress it may have made in goodness, because it may have improved itself, but it never shows itself inferior to what it was. Thus, in the appraisal of a Spirit’s communications there are often nuances of extreme delicacy to observe, in order to distinguish what is truly his, or what might be a substitution. Truly elevated Spirits never contradict themselves, and we may courageously reject everything that belies their character. Often this appraisal is all the more difficult in that a perfectly authentic communication may be mingled with a reflection, whether of the medium’s own spirit, who does not express the thought exactly, or of a foreign Spirit who interposes himself, insinuating his own thought into that of the medium. One must therefore consider as apocryphal those communications that, on every point and in the very substance of the ideas, belie the character of the Spirit whose name they bear. But it would be unjust to condemn the whole of them on account of a few partial blemishes, which may have the cause we have just pointed out. [1]

[v.

Delphine de Girardin.]