Double suicide “for love and duty.”

— In the Opinion nationale of June 13, we read the following:

“Last Tuesday, two coffins entered together into the Church of Bonne-Nouvelle. They were accompanied by a man who seemed prey to a profound grief and by a considerable crowd, in which one noted recollection and sadness. Here is a brief account of the events in consequence of which that double funeral ceremony was taking place.

“Mrs. Palmyre, a milliner, lived with her parents. She was endowed with a charming appearance, to which was allied a most amiable character. For this reason, she was much sought after with proposals of marriage. Among the aspirants to her hand, she had preferred Mr. B…, who nourished a lively passion for her. Although she loved him much, but pressed by filial respect, she judged it her duty to yield to the will of her parents, to marry Mr. D…, whose social position seemed to them more advantageous than that of the rival. The marriage was celebrated four years ago. “Messrs. B… and D… were intimate friends. Although they had no common interest, they did not cease to see one another. The reciprocal love of Mr. B… and of Palmyre, become Mrs. D…, had not diminished and, as they strove to repress it, it increased, by reason of the very violence they did to it. To try to extinguish it, B… took the course of marrying. He wed a young woman of excellent qualities and did all that was possible to love her. But he was not slow to perceive that this heroic means was impotent to cure him. Nevertheless, during four years, neither B… nor Mrs. D… failed in their duties. It is impossible to describe what they suffered, since D…, who truly esteemed his friend, always drew him to his house and, when he wished to withdraw, insisted that he stay. “At last, a few days ago, brought together by a fortuitous circumstance, the two lovers could not resist the passion that drew them toward one another. No sooner was the fault committed than they felt the most painful remorse. The young lady threw herself at her husband’s feet as soon as he returned, and said to him amid sobs:

“Drive me away! Kill me! Now I am unworthy of you!

“And as he remained mute with astonishment and grief, she told him of her struggles, her sufferings, all the courage that had been required of her not to fail sooner. She made him understand that, dominated by an illegitimate love, she had never ceased to have for him the respect, the esteem, and the affection of which he was worthy.

“Instead of cursing her, the husband wept. B… arrived in the midst of this scene and made a similar confession. D… made them both rise and said to them:

“You are two good and loyal hearts. Only fatality made you guilty. I have read into the depths of your thoughts and in them I saw sincerity. Why should I punish you for an impulse that all your moral forces did not resist? The punishment is in the sorrow you feel. Promise me that you will cease to see one another and you will have lost neither my esteem nor my affection.

“These two unhappy lovers hastened to make the oath requested. The manner in which their confession had been received by Mr. D… increased their grief and remorse. Chance having afforded them a meeting they had not contemplated, they communicated to one another reciprocally the state of their souls and agreed that death would be the only remedy to the ills they were experiencing. They resolved to kill themselves together on the following day, when Mr. D… would be absent from home for a large part of the day. “After the last preparations were made, they wrote a long letter, in which, in sum, they said:

“Our love is stronger than all promises. We might still, against our will, falter and succumb. We will not preserve a culpable existence. For our expiation we will make it seen that the fault we committed must not be attributed to our will, but to the derangement of a passion whose violence was above our strength.”

“This moving letter ended with a request for pardon, and the two lovers implored as a grace to be buried in the same tomb.

“When Mr. D… entered the house he came upon a strange and painful spectacle. In the midst of the thick vapor emanating from a portable stove full of coal, the two lovers, lying down and well dressed upon the bed, were tightly embraced. They had ceased to live.

“Mr. D… respected the last will of the two. He wished that together they should partake of the prayers of the Church and that in the cemetery they should not be separated.”

The parish priest of Bonne-Nouvelle saw fit to deny, in an article inserted in several newspapers, the admission of the two bodies into his church, since the canonical rules opposed this. n This account having been read as a theme of moral study at the Spiritist Society of Paris, two Spirits made the following appreciation:

— “Behold there the work of your society and of your customs! But progress will be made. A little more time and facts such as this will no longer be repeated. Some individuals are like certain plants placed in a hothouse: they lack air; they suffocate and cannot diffuse their perfume. Your laws and your customs have fixed limits to the expansion of certain sentiments, which often leads two souls, endowed with the same faculties, the same sympathetic instincts, to find themselves in two different orders and, being unable to unite, to annihilate themselves in the tenacity of wishing to find one another. What have you made of love? You have reduced it to a heap of coins; you have thrown it onto a scale; instead of being king, it is a slave; of a sacred bond your customs have made a chain of iron, whose links crush and kill those who were not born to be chained. “Ah! if your societies marched along the roads of God, your hearts would not consume themselves in passing flames and your legislators would not have been forced to restrain your passions by laws. But time marches on and the great hour will sound, in which you may all live the true life, the life of the heart. When the beatings of the heart are no longer compressed by the cold calculations of material interests, you will no longer see those horrible suicides, which from time to time come to cast a denial upon your social prejudices.” Saint Augustine. n (Medium: Mr. Vézy.)

— “The two lovers who killed themselves cannot yet answer you. I see them. They are plunged into perturbation and frightened by the breath of eternity. The moral consequences of their fault will chastise them during successive migrations, in which their separated souls will seek one another incessantly and will suffer the double torment of presentiment and of desire. Once the expiation is accomplished, they will be forever reunited in the bosom of eternal love.” Georges.

(Medium: Mrs. Costel.)

— Eight days later, having consulted the spiritual guide of the medium on the possibility of evoking these two Spirits, the answer was given: “I told you last time that at your next session you might evoke them; they will come at the call of my medium, but they will not see one another; a profound night conceals one from the other for a long time.”

Saint Augustine.

(Medium: Mr. Vézy)

[Evocation of Mrs. Palmyre eight days after the suicide.]

Evocation of the woman.

Answer. – Yes; I will communicate, but with the aid of the Spirit here present, who helps me and imposes himself upon me.

Do you see your beloved, with whom you killed yourself?

Answer. – I see nothing; not even the Spirits who wander with me in the place where I am. What a night! What a night! And what a thick veil over my face!

What sensation did you experience after the awakening from death?

Answer. – A strange one. I was cold and burning; ice ran in my veins and fire was upon my face! Strange thing! Unheard-of mixture! Ice and fire seeming to compress me! I thought I was going to succumb a second time.

Do you experience physical pain?

Answer. – All my suffering is here and there.

What do you mean by here and there?

Answer. – Here, in my brain; there, in my heart.

Observation. – If we could see the Spirit, we would probably see it raise its hand to its brow and to its heart.

Do you believe you will always remain in this situation?

Answer. – Oh! always, always! At times I hear infernal laughter, frightful voices that cry to me these words: Always thus!

Well then! We can tell you, with all certainty, that it will not be always thus. By repenting, you will obtain pardon.

Answer. – What did you say? I do not understand.

I repeat that your sufferings will have a term, which you can hasten by your repentance, and we will help you by prayer.

Answer. – I understood only one word and vague sounds. That word is grace! Was it of grace that you wished to speak? Oh! adultery and suicide are two very odious crimes! You spoke of grace: no doubt to the soul that passes beside me, poor child who weeps and hopes.

Observation. – A lady of the society said that she had just addressed a prayer to God for that unfortunate one and that, no doubt, this was what touched her; that, in fact, she had implored for her mentally the grace of God.

You said that you are in darkness. Do you not see us?

Answer. – I am permitted to hear a few words that you pronounce, although I see nothing but a black crepe upon which, at certain hours, a weeping head is traced.

If you do not see your beloved, do you not feel his presence near you, since he is here?

Answer. – Ah! do not speak to me of him; for now I must forget him, if I wish that from the crepe should fade the image I see sketched there.

What image is this?

Answer. – That of a man who suffers, whose moral existence on Earth I killed for a long time.

— Observation. – As the observation of facts demonstrates, frequently darkness accompanies the chastisement of criminal Spirits. It follows immediately upon death and its duration, very variable according to circumstances, may range from a few months to a few centuries. One easily understands the horror of such a situation, in which the guilty one perceives nothing but what can remind him of the fault and increase, through silence, solitude, and the uncertainty in which he is plunged, his anxieties and remorse. Upon reading this narrative we are, in principle, predisposed to find extenuating circumstances for the suicide, even to regard it as a heroic act, seeing that it was provoked by the sentiment of duty. Nevertheless, we see that it was judged differently, and that the penalty of the guilty ones will be long and terrible, because they took refuge voluntarily in death, in order to flee the struggle. The intention not to fail in duty was noble, no doubt, and will be taken into account for them later; but the true merit would have consisted in conquering the impulse, whereas they did as the deserter does, who slips away at the moment of danger. As one sees, the penalty of the two guilty ones will consist in seeking one another for a long time without finding one another, whether in the world of the Spirits or in other terrestrial incarnations; it is momentarily aggravated by the idea that their present state must last forever. Such a thought being part of the chastisement, they were not permitted to hear the words of hope we addressed to them. To those who might find this penalty very terrible and very long, especially if it is not to cease until after several incarnations, we would say that its duration is not absolute, and that it will depend on the manner in which they bear the future trials, in which we can help them by means of prayers. Like all guilty Spirits, they will be the arbiters of their own destiny. Is this not better than the eternal damnation, without hope, to which they are irremediably condemned, according to the doctrine of the Church, which considers them so bound to hell that it refused them the last prayers, no doubt because they would have no use? Certain Catholics reproach Spiritism because it does not admit hell. In reality it does not admit the existence of a localized hell, with its flames, its tridents, and the corporeal tortures taken from the Tartarus of the pagans; but the position in which it shows us the unhappy Spirits is not much better. There is, however, a radical difference: the nature of the penalties has nothing irrational about it and their duration, instead of being irremissible, is subordinate to repentance, to expiation, and to reparation, which is, at the same time, more logical and more in conformity with the doctrine of the justice and the goodness of God. In the case in question, would Spiritism have been an efficacious remedy to prevent the suicide? No doubt. It would have given these two beings a confidence in the future that would have completely changed their manner of regarding terrestrial life and, consequently, would have given them the moral strength that they lacked. Supposing that they had had faith in the future, which we do not know, and that their objective, in killing themselves, was to reunite themselves more quickly, they would have known, from innumerable analogous examples, that they would arrive at diametrically opposite results and would find themselves separated for much longer than if they had remained on Earth, for God would not permit a reward for the infraction of His laws. Thus, certain of not being able to realize their desires, but, on the contrary, of finding themselves in a position a hundred times worse, their own interest would lead them to have more patience. We recommend them to the prayers of all Spiritists, in order to give them the strength and the resignation that will sustain them in their new trials and also to hasten the term of their chastisement.

[1] Translator’s note: The Catholic Church denies suicides the posthumous ceremonies and prayers.

[2] [see Saint Augustine.]