A passion from beyond the grave.

— One reads in the Siècle of the 13th of January, 1862:

“Maximilian V.., a lad of twelve years, lived with his parents on the Rue des Cordiers and was employed as an apprentice in a tapestry shop. This child had the habit of reading serial novels. Every moment that he could slip away from work he devoted to reading, which overexcited his imagination and inspired in him ideas above his age. Thus, he imagined himself to feel a passion for a creature whom he had occasion to see a few times, who was far from thinking that she had inspired such a sentiment. In despair at not seeing the realization of the dreams provoked by his readings, he resolved to kill himself. Yesterday, the doorkeeper of the house that employed him found him lifeless in a small room on the third floor, where he worked alone. He had hanged himself by a cord that he had fastened to a beam with an enormous nail.” The circumstances of this death, at so little advanced an age, gave reason to think that the evocation of this child might furnish a subject for useful teaching. It was carried out in a session of the Society, held on the 24th of January last. (Medium: Mr. E. Vézy)

In this fact there is a difficult problem of morals, almost impossible to resolve by the arguments of ordinary philosophy and, still less, of materialist philosophy. They think they have explained everything by saying that he was a precocious child. But this explains nothing; it is absolutely as if they said that it is day, because the Sun has risen. Whence comes such precocity? Why do certain children surpass the normal age for the development of the passions and of the intelligence? Here is one of the difficulties against which all philosophies come to collide, because their solutions always leave a question unresolved, and we can always inquire into the why of the why. Admit the pre-existence of the soul and the anterior development, and everything is explained in the most natural manner. With this principle you go back to the cause and the source of all.

— [Evocation of Maximilian.]

(To the spiritual guide of the medium.) Could you tell us whether we may evoke the Spirit of the child to whom we referred a moment ago?

Answer. – Yes; I shall lead him, for he is suffering. May his appearance in your midst serve as an example and be a lesson.

(To Maximilian.) Are you conscious of your situation?

Answer. – I cannot yet define well where I am; there is as it were a somber veil before me; I speak, but I do not know how I am heard and how I speak. Nevertheless, I already see that which until lately was obscure; I was suffering, but from now on I feel relieved.

Do you remember well the circumstances of your death?

Answer. – They seem very vague. I know that I killed myself without motive. Nevertheless, having been a poet in another incarnation, I had a sort of intuition of my past life; I created dreams, chimeras; in short, I loved.

How could you come to such an extreme?

Answer. – I have just answered.

It is singular that a child of twelve years should be led to suicide, above all by a motive such as the one that impelled you.

Answer. – You are extraordinary! Have I not already told you that, having been a poet in another incarnation, my faculties had remained more ample and more developed than in others? Oh! even in the night in which I find myself now I see passing that sylph of my dreams on the Earth, and this is the punishment that God inflicts upon me, to see her, beautiful and frivolous as ever, pass before me, and I, drunk with madness and with love, wish to throw myself… but, ah! it is as if I were bound to an iron ring… I call… but in vain; she does not even turn her head… Oh! how I suffer then!

Could you describe the sensation you experienced when you recognized yourself in the world of the Spirits?

Answer. – Oh! yes, now that I am in contact with you. My body lay there, inert and cold, and I hovered around it; I dissolved in tears. You are astonished at the tears of a soul. Ah! how intense and burning they are! Yes, I wept, because I had just recognized the enormity of my fault and the grandeur of God!… And yet, I was not certain of my death; I thought that my eyes were going to open… Elvira! I called… supposing that I saw her… Ah! it is that I have loved her for a long time; I shall love her always… What does it matter, if I must suffer for all eternity, if I can one day possess her in another incarnation!

What sensation do you experience at being here?

Answer. – It does me good and ill at the same time. Good, because I know that you share in my suffering; ill, because, in spite of all the will I have to please you, by accepting your prayers, I cannot, for then I should have to follow another path, different from that of my dreams.

What can we do that may be useful to you?

Answer. – Pray, since prayer is the divine dew that refreshes our heart, for us, poor souls in pain and in suffering. Pray. And yet, it seems that if you were to tear from my heart love itself and replace it with divine love, then!… I do not know… I believe!… See! at this instant I weep… well then!… well then!… pray for me!

(To the guide of the medium.) What is the degree of punishment for this Spirit for having killed himself? Taking his age into account, is his act as condemnable as that of other suicides?

Answer. – The punishment will be terrible, because he was more culpable than the others. He already possessed great faculties: the strength to love God in a powerful manner and to do good. Suicides suffer long punishments, and God punishes still more those who kill themselves with great ideas in their mind and in their heart.

You said that the punishment of Maximilian V… will be terrible. Could you say in what it will consist? It seems that it has already begun. Is there reserved for him more than he already experiences?

Answer. – Without doubt, for he suffers a fire that consumes and devours him, and which will cease only through the efforts of prayer and of repentance.

Remark. – He suffers a fire that consumes and devours him. Is there not here the image of the fire of hell, which is presented to us as a material fire?

Is there a possibility of his punishment being attenuated?

Answer. – Yes: by praying for him, principally if Maximilian unites himself to your prayers.

Does the object of his passion share his sentiments? Are these two beings destined to unite one day? What are the conditions of their union, and what are the obstacles that now prevent it?

Answer. – Do poets love the women of the Earth? They believe it for a day, an hour. What they love is the ideal, a chimera created by their ardent imagination; a love that can be satisfied by none but God. All poets have a fiction in their heart — the ideal beauty whom they believe they see passing on the Earth; and when they meet a beautiful girl, whom they shall never possess, then they say that reality has taken the place of the dream. But, if they touch reality, they fall from the ethereal regions into matter and, no longer recognizing the being they dreamed of, they create other chimeras.

(To Maximilian.) We wish to put still a few questions, which perhaps may contribute to your feeling more relieved. In what epoch did you live as a poet? Did you have a known name?

Answer. – In the reign of Louis XV. I was poor and unknown; I loved a woman, an angel whom I saw pass in a park, on a spring day. Afterward, I saw her again only in dreams, and my dreams promised that I would possess her one day.

The name Elvira seems to us very romantic, which leads us to think that it concerns an imaginary being.

Answer. – Yes; she was a woman. I know her name because a horseman who passed near her called her Elvira. Ah! she was indeed the woman whom my imagination had dreamed. I see her still, ever beautiful and charming. She is capable of making me forget God in order to see her and to follow her still.

You suffer and may suffer still for a long time. It depends upon you to shorten your torments.

Answer. – What does suffering matter to me! You cannot gauge what an unsatisfied desire is. Are my desires carnal? And yet, they burn me, and the pulsations of my heart, when I think of her, are stronger than they would be if I thought of God.

We pity you profoundly. To work for your progress it is necessary that you make yourself useful and think more of God than you have done. You must solicit a reincarnation with the sole object of repairing the errors and the uselessness of your last existences. It is not said that you must forget Elvira, but think a little less of her and a little more of God, who can shorten your torments if you do what is necessary. We shall second your efforts by our prayers. Answer. – Thank you! pray and try to tear Elvira from my heart. Perhaps one day I shall thank you for it.