Louis-Henri, the ragpicker.

— One reads in the Siècle of October 12, 1864:

“In a horrible garret of the passage Saint-Pierre, in Clichy, there lived a man named Louis-Henri, sixty-four years of age, but seeming to be eighty. He had descended to the lowest rung of the social ladder. It was said that he had once been handsome and a spendthrift; that he had turned many a woman's head and led a fast-paced existence.

“Indeed, at times there escaped from him manners of speaking characteristic of refined society, and in his dwelling one saw two delightful miniatures, representing charming women. The frame of these medallions had long since been sold, and the painting had become too faded for any profit to be drawn from it. “Louis-Henri plied the trade of ragpicker. But he was so weak, so broken down, so trembling, that he gathered almost nothing. He lay upon filth, which served him as a bed, without even removing his rags. Other ragpickers, almost as poor as he, pooled their resources to give him a little food, such as crusts of bread and kitchen scraps, taken from their baskets. He was covered with sores and gnawed by vermin. Several times already, says the Opinion nationale, the soldiers of the Clichy brigade had taken up a collection among themselves, in order to pay for sulphur baths for that unfortunate man. He did not know the whereabouts of his family and had forgotten his own name. He recalled only the given names Louis-Henri. “For some days the leper, as he was called, had no longer been seen. A foul odor, escaping from his hovel, drew the attention of the tenants; they notified the police commissioner who, assisted by Dr. Massart, went to the place and had it opened by a locksmith. Among the filth, they found, gnawed by the rats, the decomposed remains of the ragpicker, who had expired amid his infirmities and ailments.”

Here is a sad reversal of fortune and a proof that divine justice does not always wait for the future life to act upon the guilty one. We say guilty by hypothesis, because such a degradation can only be the result of vice in its highest degree. The richest and most highly placed man may fall into the lowest category of the social scale; but he will preserve his dignity, if in him honor is not stifled in the deepest misery.

— Presuming that this man's life might offer a teaching, the Society of Paris judged it its duty to evoke him, in the expectation of, at the same time, being useful to him.

(Society of Paris, July 28, 1864. – Medium: Mr. Vézy.)

Question. – The details we have read of your life and your death interested us, first on your account, because all who suffer have a right to our sympathies; and, then, for our instruction. It would be useful, from the moral point of view, to recognize how and by what causes, from an existence that seems to have been brilliant, you fell into such abjection, and what your present situation is? We pray a good Spirit to assist you in the communication you shall give us.

I.

Answer – Have I not paid enough of my debt of sufferings on Earth, for a few hours of lucidity to be granted me beyond the tomb? Is it because my body is foul and gnawed by the vermin, in contest with the putrefaction that tears it apart, that my Spirit is troubled? Let me recollect myself a little.

To you, who know the divine laws of the immigration of souls, I need not explain the why of this abject state to which I have descended. Nevertheless, since I am thus ordered, I shall tell you my story… Besides, an anecdote in the midst of your learned discussions and your serious arguments will provide diversion. You have here a certain audience and this will entertain them more than your morality and your philosophy. So I begin.

Remark. – On that day the Society held a general session, that is to say, one of those in which a certain number of outside listeners are admitted. It is to this that the Spirit alludes.

Why should I conceal from you the name I bore and which, above all in my last years, I myself seemed to have forgotten completely? Have you not guessed that the filth which dragged me down was the sole cause of my silence in that regard? I pretended to forget. My name is… but no; I do not wish to throw mud upon the coats and gowns of silk and velvet of those who were my kinsmen and my friends, with whom I lived during my youth and who are still living. Neither do I wish that certain old ladies, who have changed their abode, passing from the dressing-room to the oratory, should see in the medallion which they still keep, hanging on the panels of their alcoves, beneath the garments of a gallant gentleman, the wretched abandoned man. To some, I died in America, during the wars that followed the awakening of their peoples; to others, I was among the last to die in the bloody skirmishes of the Vendée, crying: Long live the King! Let us not touch these laurels, upon which I rest in their hearts!… I died to all of them long ago!… I died to her too!… Ah! We do not jest here!… Yes, to you I am quite dead! dead for eternity! And yet, on Earth, how many hours of ecstasy and of rapture did we not pass! How many times did your gaze meet my gaze, my smiles your smile! You no longer live except to show me your wrinkles and your white hair. But when your turn comes, when you are touched by death, I shall see you no more!… No!… No!… Malediction! I hear voices that cry to me: Accursed!… No, no, I shall see her no more. For her, one day the light and the brilliance; for me, the night and the darkness! I tore the wings from the angel on Earth, but her tears will restore her purity, and God's pardon will grant her the white wings of a seraph. Ah! why does youth thus play with its heart? Why pluck every flower in its path, only to trample them afterward? And yet, when its heart speaks the language of the soul to another soul, it does not lie. Why must the breath of impure passions age it and cast its body into the dunghill?… Let me too shed some tears: they are sweet to those who suffer!

How I would like to return to my former life, to make better use of the hours of youth! Oh! how I would like to possess my heart of twenty years! I would give it entirely to a heart that was brother to mine; I would give my whole soul to a soul that was sister to mine and, in my aspirations, I would ask God to make us feel all the joys of heaven!… But it is done. Why my tears and my regrets? Degraded man, of what do you dream? All is lost for him who knew not how to make use of the time given him! All is lost for the wretch who drew no profit from the qualities he possessed!

O you who hear me; yes, this one who speaks to you was endowed with fine faculties. Of what use were they to him? To deceive with cunning and with full knowledge! to commit crimes! Later I stifled my remorse in orgy so as not to hear the cries of conscience. I was a gentleman; I wielded the word and the sword with audacity; the women called me refined, caressing my brow and my hair in their alcove, while the men called me invincible and brave! Pride!… Why these memories of other times? Misfortune!… damnation!… I see blood around me! Why did this sword, which I used to wound, not turn against my own breast?… Among these dead, do you see this corpse?… It is my son!… Irony!… Behold the consequence of the customs of a society in which everything is laughed at!… Was I the guilty one, and did I know it was my son? Did I know that the mistress abandoned twenty years before would cast in my path an adulterous fruit, whom I did not recognize and who would come to dispute a prey with the new Don Juan?… And you would have it that I had not forgotten my name after such crimes? Ah! for me the cup of shame and of infamy! I had to die as I died, in the filth. I feel the cold of the tomb! I feel the worms that gnaw me! But none of this makes me suffer so much as the sight of this enormous wound, made by my sword… My son, mercy! if your father did not give you his name, he struck his own from the world; if he gave you death, he too died in the mud. Ah! open your arms to me; teach your father the path to God through pardon. What a lugubrious story! On taking this hand to write, I thought I would find again my smiles of former times! Don Juan! So it is the milieu in which I find myself that penetrates and transforms me?… Why did you evoke me? Why did you draw me from the night to show me a little light and, thereafter, cast me into the darkness? In my turn I question you; answer me.

Q. – We called you to be useful to you, and because we are moved with pity at your sufferings. What can we do for you?

Answer. – Alas! what do I know? It is for you to instruct me. Do not cast me into the obscurity… You have awakened the dead; I see them in the night; I am afraid!

Q. – We will pray for you.

Answer. – Ah! pray. They say that prayer does so much good to those who suffer!

Q. – Will you sign your name?

Answer. – No, no! pray for me.

— Some days afterward another medium, Mr. Rul, of Passy, privately made the evocation of the same Spirit, obtaining from him the three following communications. We deem it superfluous to reproduce the counsels given by the medium to the Spirit; they are those of a sincere Spiritist, animated by true charity toward his suffering brothers.

II.

Yes, pray for me, for the prayers of your brothers have already done me good. If you knew what the suffering of a disincarnate one is! If you could read on my spiritual countenance the marks of the passions that have furrowed it, you would be seized with pity, and your fraternal hand, pressing mine, would feel the fever that agitates me. How I suffer, since I was evoked by your president! I recognize the divine justice. Alone, wandering among the dead, I thought myself the only one to know my sufferings, and behold, in the full light of publicity I am summoned to make confession of my errors! Oh! how many errors passion made me commit! I did not tell all to your brother; modesty, shame, held me back; I would have preferred not to have revealed the confessions I made and to erase those indelible characters, which set me in the pillory of your consciences. But they prayed for me and today I recognize the good your charitable hearts have done me; and to better merit your compassion, because you are Spiritists, which is to say indulgent and compassionate, I admit that I did not recoil before any perversity to satisfy my passions. I committed none of the crimes punished by the law of men; yet the vices which your society tolerates and excuses, above all when one has name and fortune, are subject to the divine jurisdiction, which never leaves them unpunished. I expiated them cruelly on Earth; I fell to the lowest degree of misery, of degradation and of contempt, I who once shone and made others envious and jealous, and the chastisement pursued me beyond the tomb. I did not kill like a vile assassin; I did not steal, because my pride as a gentleman would have revolted at the mere idea of being confounded with criminals; and yet, I killed, safeguarding honor, according to the world; I brought ruin, shame and despair to families, and they called me the lucky one, the man of fortune! How many victims clamor for vengeance around me! Oh! for how long shall I bear the burden of these crimes! Pray for me, for I suffer to the point of feeling my soul breaking apart! Thank you, thank you, dear brother. I wish to give you the name you give me; I thank you for your tears, for they have relieved me; I thank you for your prayer, for it has drawn near to me Spirits full of glory, who say to me: Hope, you who were so guilty; hope in the mercy of God, who pardons all his children who repent. Persevere in your good resolutions and you will be stronger to bear your sufferings.

Thank you, you who draw me from the fog that enveloped me. May I one day prove to you that your brother's gratitude is for eternity!

III.

Remorse pursues me; I suffer much, but I understand the necessity of suffering; I understand that impurity can only become pure after being transformed by contact with the fire.

The good Spirits tell me to hope, and I hope; to pray, and I have prayed; but I need a friend who will give me his hand to sustain me and keep me from succumbing beneath my burden, which is very heavy. Be for me that charitable brother, that devoted friend. I will listen to your counsels; I will pray with you; I will prostrate myself with you at the feet of the Eternal.

How many times did I see my sword stained with the blood of one of my brothers! I was implacable in my vengeances, and when the goad of the flesh, vanity and the desire to triumph over my rivals exalted me, I needed victory at any price. Sad victory! stained by the basest passions. I was cruel when my pride was excited; yes, I was a great culprit, but I wish to become a son of the Lord. This is why I have come to say to you: Be my brother to help me purify myself. Brothers, let us pray together.

IV.

Thank you, thank you, brother. I am under the impression of the words you have just pronounced. I am stronger; I see the goal and, without attempting to measure the distance that separates me from it, I say to myself: I shall arrive, because I will it, and I have confidence in the good Spirits, who tell me to hope. On Earth I never doubted success, when I did evil; how can I doubt, when today I wish to do good?

Thank you, brother, for your charity, for your good prayers, for your teachings, for from them I draw my strength and I feel my repentance growing. If repentance doubles the suffering, I know that this treatment will not last more than a time and that happiness awaits me after the purification. I wish, then, to suffer, to suffer much, in order to deserve to be happy more quickly with that happiness which the radiant Spirits enjoy, whom I see near you.

Until soon, brother, for I see that you have another suffering Spirit to console and strengthen in his repentance. Think of me; in your evening prayer I shall be near you.

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS.

It is evident that this Spirit is on the good path, there is in him a struggle of good augury, for he asks only to be enlightened.

Nevertheless, his ideas are affected by certain prejudices. Like many people who imagine they find in them an excuse, he holds society to blame. But what makes society bad, if not vicious persons? Doubtless society leaves much to be desired, as regards its institutions; but since honest creatures, fulfillers of their duties, are found in it, all could do the same, since it forces no one to do evil. Was it society that obliged Louis-Henri to abandon that woman and her son? If he did not recognize the latter, why did he lose sight of him, without concerning himself about his existence? Were it social prejudices that prevented him from giving his name to that woman? No, for he had as his motive only his passions. Was it instruction that he lacked? No, for he belonged to the upper class. Society is not guilty toward him; it refused him nothing, since it had favored him in everything. He, then, is the one who was guilty toward society, because he acted freely, voluntarily and with full knowledge. Who cast his son into the path of excesses? Chance? No: Providence, in order that the remorse he would later experience might serve his advancement. n The true scourge of society, the first cause of all disorders, is incredulity. The denial of the spiritual principle, the belief in nothingness after death, materialist ideas, in a word, highly extolled by influential men, infiltrate the youth, who suck them in, so to speak, with their milk. The man who believes only in the present wishes to enjoy at any price and is consistent with himself, for he hopes for nothing beyond the tomb; as he hopes for nothing, he fears nothing. If Louis-Henri had had faith in his soul and in the future, he would have understood that corporeal life is fleeting and precarious and would not have made it his sole objective; knowing that nothing of what is here acquired is lost, he would have been concerned with his future lot, whereas he acted like one who squanders his capital and plays his last card. How many disorders, how many miseries, how many crimes have their source in this manner of regarding life! Who are the first guilty ones? Those who set it up as a dogma, as a belief, mocking and treating as madmen those who believe that not all is in matter and in the visible world. Louis-Henri was not strong enough to resist this current of ideas; he succumbed, a victim of his passions, which found a justification in materialism, whereas a solid and reasoned faith would have placed upon him a more powerful curb than all the repressive laws, incapable of reaching all evil actions. Spiritism gives this faith, which is why it operates so numerous moral transformations.

The three last communications confirm the first, obtained by another medium; evidently, the core of the thought is the same. There one notes the progress operated in this Spirit, and from it we may gather more than one teaching.

In the first, while making the confession of his faults, there is as yet no serious repentance, nor any resolution taken; he almost protests at having been evoked.

In the second, he says: “How I suffer since I was evoked by your president!”. Would these words justify the saying of certain persons, who maintain that the dead are disturbed when they are evoked? No, certainly; first, because they come only when it suits them; secondly because, in their majority, they testify satisfaction at being called, when they are so by a sympathetic and benevolent sentiment. Certain guilty ones come only with repugnance and, in this case, they are not constrained by the evocation, but by superior Spirits, with a view to their advancement. Their repugnance is that of the criminal led to a tribunal. The evocation of guilty Spirits, having as its object and result their improvement, the momentary vexation it causes them is advantageous to them, inasmuch as, by exciting them to repentance, they shorten the sufferings they endure in the world of Spirits. Would it, then, be more charitable to let them rot in the abjection in which they find themselves, than to draw them out of it? The suffering that results from this is similar to that which the physician makes the patient undergo, in order to cure him. Draw a brutalized man out of the mud: he will protest. It is the same with Spirits. In the communications of this Spirit one finds a thought analogous to that which Latour expressed regarding the suffering caused by repentance. We explained the cause of this sentiment (number of November 1864); it is the same that led this one to say: “I suffer since I was evoked, and remorse pursues me; I suffer much.” It is, then, remorse that makes him suffer, but it is this remorse that is to save him, and it was the evocation that provoked it. But he adds these notable words: “I understand the necessity of suffering; I understand that impurity becomes pure only after being transformed by contact with the fire.” And further on: “If repentance doubles the suffering, I know that this suffering will last only a time, and that happiness awaits me after the purification.” This certainty makes him say: “I wish to suffer, to suffer much, in order to be happy more quickly.” After this, is it to be wondered at that a Spirit should choose terrible trials in a new existence? Is he not in the case of a sick man who resigns himself to a painful operation in order to be cured? or in that of a man who exposes himself to all dangers, who bears all miseries, all fatigues and all privations, with a view to acquiring fortune or glory? There is nothing, then, irrational in the principle of the free choice of life's trials. To profit by it, the condition is not to recoil. Now, it is recoiling not to bear them with courage and resignation. What will be the lot of Louis-Henri in a new existence? As he cruelly expiated his faults in his last existence, and as in the state of Spirit his repentance is sincere and his good resolutions serious, it is probable that he will be placed in conditions to repair his errors, doing good. But as he has paid his debt of corporeal sufferings, he will no longer have to pass through the same vicissitudes.

This is what we augur for him and, for this reason, we pray for him.

[1] Note. We cannot imagine Providence casting one of its children into the path of evil (excesses, transgressions, etc.), but we can believe that it was not by chance that that Spirit, who would reincarnate as his adulterine son, had identity of sentiments with the vicious parents, and was dragged into the evil passions. He had free will, he could yield or not to the evil influences; if he yielded, then indeed the consequence would be remorse and the desire to follow that path no longer. See questions 207; 845 and 872 of The Spirits' Book. — (Compiler's Note.)