A premature death

Here I am once more on the theater of the world, I who believed myself forever shrouded in my veil of innocence and of youth. The fire of Earth saved me from the fire of hell: thus I thought in my Catholic faith, and, if I did not dare to glimpse the splendors of paradise, my wavering soul took refuge in the expiation of purgatory, and I prayed, suffered, wept. But who gave to my weakness the strength to bear the anguish? who, in the long nights of insomnia and of painful fever, leaned over my bed of martyrdom? who refreshed my parched lips? It was you, my guardian angel, whose white halo surrounded me; it was also you, dear Spirit friends, who came to murmur in my ear words of hope and of love. The flame that consumed my feeble body stripped me of attachment to what passes; thus I died already living the true life. I did not know the disturbance, and I entered serene and recollected into the radiant day that envelops those who, after much suffering, have waited a little. My mother, my dear mother, was the last earthly vibration that resounded in my soul. How I would like her to become a Spiritist!

I detached myself from the earthly tree like a fruit ripening before its time. I had barely come into contact with the demon of pride, which wounds the souls of the unfortunate ones swept along by brilliant success and by the intoxication of youth. I bless the flame; I bless the sufferings; I bless the trial, which was an expiation. Like those light white threads of autumn, I float, carried along in the luminous current; they are no longer the diamond stars that shine on my brow, but the golden stars of the good God. *** Note. – Our intention had been to evoke at that session this Spirit, to whom, we knew, many among us were sympathetic. Particular reasons had led us to postpone that evocation, of which we had spoken to no one. But the Spirit, certainly attracted by ours and by the thought of several members, came spontaneously, without being called, to dictate the charming communication above.