Henri Mondeux

— The newspapers announced, last February, the sudden death of the shepherd Henri Mondeux, the famous calculator, who succumbed in the first days of February 1861 to an attack of apoplexy in the stagecoach at Condom (Gers), at about 34 years of age. He had been born in the Touraine and from the age of ten distinguished himself by the prodigious ease with which he solved, in his head, the most intricate questions of arithmetic, although completely illiterate and having undertaken no special study. He soon drew attention, and many people went to see him while he tended his flocks. The visitors amused themselves by proposing problems to him, which brought him a small profit. They recalled, too, the Neapolitan shepherd Vito Mangiamele, who, a few years earlier, had presented a similar phenomenon. A professor of mathematics at the college of Tours thought that so remarkable a natural gift ought to yield surprising results if it were assisted. Consequently, he committed himself to the task of educating him; but he was not long in perceiving that he was dealing with one of the most refractory natures. Indeed, at sixteen years of age, he could barely read and write fluently, and, an extraordinary thing, the professor never managed to make him retain the names of the elementary figures of geometry, so that his faculty was entirely confined to numerical combinations. He was, then, a calculator, but not a mathematician. Another singularity is that he could never bend himself to our formulas of calculation; he did not even understand them; he had his own manner, of which he was never able to give a clear account, being incapable of explaining it either to others or to himself, and which was tied to a prodigious memory of numbers. We say of numbers and not of figures, because the sight of the latter hindered him more than it helped; he preferred the problems to be posed verbally, and not in writing. Such is, in summary, the result of the observations that we ourselves made on the young Mondeux, and which, at the time, furnished us with the subject for a Memoir, read at the Phrenological Society of Paris.

A faculty so exclusive, however carried to its extreme limit, could open no career to him, because he could not even be a bookkeeper in a commercial house, and at this his professor was terrified, and with reason; the latter almost reproached himself for having taken him from his cows, asking himself what would become of him when the years had deprived him of the interest attached to him, above all by reason of his age. We lost sight of him eighteen years ago; it appears that he found some means of subsistence by giving sessions from town to town.

— [Evocation of Henri Mondeux, the calculator.]

Evocation.

Answer. – 4 and 3 are seven, both in the other worlds and here.

We wished to evoke you shortly after your death, but we were told that you were not in a condition to answer. It seems that you are now?

A. – I was awaiting you.

It is likely that you do not remember me, although I had occasion to know you very particularly in Prussia, and even to attend your sessions. As for me, I still seem to see you, as well as the professor of mathematics who accompanied you, and who gave me precious information about you and your faculty. A. – All this is so that I shall say that I remember you, but only today, when my ideas are lucid.

From where did the strange faculty with which you were endowed come?

A. – Ah! here is the question I knew you would direct at me. One begins by saying: I knew you, I had seen you, you were remarkable, and, at last, you arrive at what you really want. Well then! I had the faculty of being able to read in my spirit the immediate calculations of a problem; say that a Spirit set the solution out before me: I had only to read; I was a seeing and calculating medium and, I must not deny it, a little multiplication table.

As far as I can remember, when alive you did not have this jesting, caustic spirit. Were you not even a little grave?

A. – See! because the faculty was always employed in this, nothing else remained.

How is it that this faculty, so developed for calculation, was so incomplete for the other, more elementary parts of mathematics?

A. – Surely I was a fool, was I not? Say the word, I shall accept it. But here, you understand, I no longer have to develop my faculty for figures, and it develops rapidly for other things.

You no longer have to develop it for numbers… (The Spirit writes without waiting for the end of the question).

A. – That is to say that God gave us all a mission: You, he said to me, go and astonish the learned mathematicians; I will make you appear without intelligence so that they will be more impressed; defeat all their calculations and make them say to themselves: But what does he have above us? What does he have that is stronger than study? Did God wish to lead them to seek beyond the body? What could be more material than a figure?

What were you in other existences?

A. – I was sent to show other things.

Were they always relative to mathematics?

A. – Yes, no doubt, since it is my specialty.

I had formulated some problems to know whether you always had the same faculty. But, according to what you say, I judge it is no longer necessary.

A. – But I have no more solutions to give; I can no longer. The instrument is bad, for it is not a mathematician.

Could you not overcome the difficulty?

A. – Ah! nothing is invincible; Sebastopol itself was taken. But what a difference!

With what are you occupied now?

A. – You wish to know what I give myself to? I stroll about and wait a little before recommencing my career as a medium, which must continue.

In what genre do you think of exercising this mediumistic faculty?

A. – Always the same, but more developed, more surprising.

(A member makes the following reflection): From the Spirit's answers it is inferred that he acted as a medium on Earth, leading one to believe that he would have been assisted by another Spirit, which would explain why today he no longer enjoys that faculty.

A. – It is that my spirit was made on purpose to see the numbers that other Spirits passed to me; it captured them better than you would; it had the gift of calculation, for it was in that genre that I exercised myself. Every means of convincing is sought; all are good, small or great, and the Spirits make themselves master of them all.

Did you make a fortune with your faculty, traveling the world to give sessions?

A. – Oh! to ask whether a medium makes a fortune! You are mistaken in your path. Of course not.

But did you not consider yourself a medium? Did you not even know what it was about?

A. – No. I also wondered that it served me so little pecuniarily. This helped me morally, and I prefer my assets, written in the great book of God, to the income I would have obtained from the State.

We thank you for having deigned to answer our call.

A. – You have changed your opinion regarding my person.

I have not changed; I always held you in great esteem.

A. – Fortunately I solved the questions, without which you would not have looked at me.

Observation. – As is known, the identity of Spirits is difficult to ascertain. It generally reveals itself through unforeseen circumstances and details, through delicate nuances that only attentive observation can capture; this is more significant than material signs, always easy for deceiving Spirits to imitate, who, nevertheless, cannot simulate the intellectual capacity or the moral qualities they lack. One could, then, doubt the identity, in this circumstance, were it not for the very logical explanation that the Spirit gives of the difference existing between his present character and that which he showed in life; for the numerical answer he gives at the evocation cannot be regarded as authentic proof. Whatever opinion one may form regarding the above evocation, we must agree that, alongside facetious thoughts, it contains profound ones; above all the answers to questions 7 and 16 are notable in this respect. From them it likewise stands out, as from the answers given by other Spirits, that the Spirit Mondeux has a predisposition for mathematics; that it is probable he exercised that faculty in other existences, but that he did not belong to the list of any of the celebrities of Science. One would hardly conceive that a true scholar should be reduced to making efforts of calculation to amuse the public, without scientific scope and without utility. There would be much more reason to doubt his identity if he had passed himself off as Newton or Laplace. [1]

[v. Henri Mondeux – 1826-1862.]

[2] [v.

Vito Mangiamele – 1826-1859.]