Madame Widow Foulon.

– In its section of obituary articles, on February 13, 1865, the newspaper Siècle published the following note, also reproduced by the newspaper of Le Havre and by that of Antibes:

“An artist beloved and esteemed in Le Havre, the widow Foulon, a skilled miniaturist, passed away in Antibes on February 3, where she had gone to seek, in a milder climate, the restoration of her health, impaired by work and by age.”

Having known Madame Foulon personally and very intimately, we are happy to be able to complete the just but very brief notice above. In this we fulfill a duty of friendship and, at the same time, we render a deserved homage to unrecognized virtues and a wholesome example for everyone, and for Spiritists in particular, who will here gather precious teachings.

As an artist, Madame Foulon had a remarkable talent. Her works, justly appreciated in many exhibitions, earned her numerous honorary rewards. There is, no doubt, a merit in this, but one that has nothing exceptional about it. What above all made her loved and esteemed, what makes her memory dear to all who knew her, is the gentleness of her character; it is her private qualities, whose extent only those who knew her intimate life could appreciate. For, like all those in whom the sense of good is innate, she did not display them and did not even suspect them. If there is anyone over whom egoism had no dominion, it was she, no doubt; perhaps the feeling of personal self-denial was never carried further; always ready to sacrifice her rest, her health, and her interests for those to whom she could be useful, her life was a long series of devotions, just as it was, from her youth, but a long rosary of harsh and cruel trials, before which her courage, her resignation, and her perseverance never failed. Reverses of fortune left her with talent as her only resource; it was solely with her brushes, giving lessons or making portraits, that she raised a large family and secured an honorable position for all her children. One must have known her intimate life to know all the fatigues and privations she endured, all the difficulties against which she had to struggle to attain her goal. But, alas! her eyesight, wearied by the captivating work of miniature, was failing day by day; a little more time and the blindness, already far advanced, would have been complete. When Madame Foulon came to know of the Spiritist Doctrine, some years ago, it was for her like a trail of light. It seemed to her that a veil was being lifted over something that was not unknown to her, but of which she had only a vague intuition. She then studied it with ardor, but, at the same time, with that lucidity of mind, that justness of appreciation, which was peculiar to her lofty intelligence. One must know all the perplexities of her life, perplexities that always had as their motive, not herself, but the beings dear to her, in order to understand all the consolations she drew from this sublime revelation, which gave her an unshakable faith in the future and showed her the nothingness of earthly things. Were it not for the respect due to intimate matters, what grand teachings came forth from the last period of that life so fertile in emotions! For this reason, she did not lack the assistance of the good Spirits. The instructions and teachings that they had the pleasure of lavishing upon that elect soul form a collection of the most edifying kind, but wholly intimate, of which we had, more than once, the happiness of being the provoking agent. Thus, her death was worthy of her life. She saw its coming without any painful fear: for her it was the liberation from earthly ties that was to open to her that blessed spiritual life, with which she had identified herself through the study of Spiritism. She died calmly, because she was conscious of having fulfilled the mission she had accepted in coming to Earth, of having scrupulously fulfilled her duties as a wife and as a mother of a family. Because, too, she had, during her life, renounced all resentment against those of whom she could have complained and who had repaid her with ingratitude; because she had always repaid evil with good, forgiving them as she left this life, trusting in the goodness and the justice of God. In short, she died with the serenity that a pure conscience gives, and with the certainty of being less separated from her children than during corporeal life, since she will henceforth be able to be with them in Spirit, whatever point of the globe they may be in, to help them with her counsel and to cover them with her protection. Now, what is her lot in the world in which she finds herself? Spiritists already foresee it. But let us allow her to relate her own impressions. As has been seen, she died on February 3; we received the news on the 6th and our first wish was to converse with her, if it were possible. At the time we were stricken with a grave illness, which explains some of her words. It should be noted that the medium did not know her and was unaware of the particulars of her life, of which she speaks spontaneously. Here is her first communication, given on February 6:

(February 6, 1865. – Medium: Madame Cazemajour.) n I was certain that you would have the idea of evoking me soon after my death, and I was ready to answer you, for I did not experience the disturbance. Only those who are afraid are enveloped in its thick darkness.

Well, my friend, now I am happy. These poor eyes, which had grown weak and left me only the memory of the prisms that had colored my youth with their sparkling brilliance, have opened here and find again the splendid horizons that some of your great artists idealize in their vague reproductions, but whose majestic, severe, and yet enchanting reality is molded in the most complete reality.

I have been dead only three days, and I feel that I am an artist. My aspirations toward the ideal of beauty in art were nothing but the intuition of a faculty that I had studied and acquired in other existences and that developed in the last one. But what must I do to reproduce a masterpiece worthy of the scene that moves the spirit, when one arrives in the region of light? Brushes! brushes! I shall prove to the world that Spiritist art is the crowning of pagan art, of Christian art that is in decline, and that to Spiritism alone is reserved the glory of making it live again in all its brilliance in your disinherited world.

Enough for the artist. It is the friend's turn.

Why, good friend (Madame Allan Kardec), do you afflict yourself thus over my death? Above all you, who know the disappointments and the bitterness of my life, should, on the contrary, rejoice to see that now I no longer must drink the bitter cup of earthly sorrows, which I emptied to the very last drop. Believe me: the dead are happier than the living; to mourn them is to doubt the truthfulness of Spiritism. Be assured that you will see me again; I left first, because my task on Earth was finished; each one has his own to fulfill there, and when yours is done, you will come to rest a little beside me, only to begin again afterward, if necessary, bearing in mind that it is not in Nature to remain inactive. Each one has his tendencies and obeys them; it is a supreme law that proves the power of free will. Thus, good friend, indulgence and charity, for we all need them, reciprocally, whether in the visible world or in the invisible. With this motto, all goes well. You did not bid me stop. You know that I am conversing at length for the first time! But I leave you; it is the turn of my excellent friend, Monsieur Kardec. I wish to thank him for the affectionate words that he was so good as to address to the friend who preceded him to the tomb; for we nearly departed together for the world where I find myself, my friend! (We had both fallen ill on January 31.) What would the beloved companion of your days have said, if the good Spirits had not put good order to it? then she would have wept and moaned! I understand it. But, also, she must keep watch so that you do not expose yourself again to danger, before you have finished your work of spiritist initiation, without which you risk arriving too soon among us and, like Moses, seeing only from afar the Promised Land. Keep yourself on guard, for it is a friend who warns you. Now I am going. I return to my dear children; then I shall go to see, beyond the seas, whether my traveling lamb has at last reached port, or whether she is the plaything of the tempest. May the good Spirits protect her; I shall join them for this. I shall come back to converse with you, for, as you recall, I am a tireless chatterer. Farewell, then, good and dear friends. Until soon.

Widow Foulon.

Remark. – The traveling lamb is one of her daughters, who resides in America and who had just made a long and painful voyage.

Death is feared only because of the uncertainty of what happens at that supreme moment and of what will become of us in the beyond. A vague belief in the future life is not always sufficient to calm the dread of the unknown. All the communications that have as their aim to initiate us into the details and the impressions of the passage tend to dispel this fear, by familiarizing and identifying us with the transition that is wrought within us. From this point of view, those of Madame Foulon and those of Dr. Demeure, which follow, are eminently instructive. Since the situation of Spirits after death is essentially variable, according to the diversity of the aptitudes, the qualities, and the character of each one, it is only through the multiplicity of examples that one can come to know the real state of the invisible world.

(February 8, 1865.)

Spontaneous – Here I am among you, much sooner than I thought and most happy to see you again, above all now that you are better and that soon, so I hope, you will be completely restored. But I want you to address to me the questions that interest you; I shall answer better. Without this, I risk speaking with you without a logical sequence, and it is necessary that we speak of purely serious things. Is it not so, my good spiritist master?

– Q. Dear Madame Foulon, I am very pleased with the communication you gave the other day, and with the promise to continue our conversations. I recognized you perfectly in the communication; there you spoke of things unknown to the medium, and that could come only from you; then, your affectionate language toward us is indeed that of your loving soul. But there is in your language an assurance, a poise, a firmness that I did not know in your life. You know that in this regard I allowed myself more than one admonition in certain circumstances.

Answer. – It is true. But ever since I found myself gravely ill, I recovered the firmness of spirit, lost through the troubles and vicissitudes that at times had made me fearful when incarnate. I said to myself: You are a Spiritist; forget the Earth; prepare yourself for the transformation of your being and foresee, in thought, the luminous path that your soul must follow, on leaving the body, and that will lead it, happy and freed, to the celestial spheres where you will live henceforth.

You will tell me that it was somewhat presumptuous on my part to count on perfect happiness on leaving the Earth; but I had suffered so much that I must have expiated my faults of this existence and of the preceding ones. This intuition had not deceived me; it was this that gave me courage, calm, and firmness in the last moments. That firmness naturally increased when I saw, after death, the realization of my hopes.

– Q. Have the kindness now to describe your passage, the awakening, and the first impressions felt.

Answer. – I suffered, but my Spirit was stronger than the material suffering that the detachment made it experience. I found myself, after the supreme sigh, in a state of swoon, without the least consciousness of my situation, thinking of nothing, and in a vague drowsiness, which was neither the sleep of the body nor the awakening of the soul. I remained thus for quite some time; then, as if emerging from a long faint, I awoke little by little among brothers whom I did not know. They lavished cares and caresses upon me; they showed me a point in space that resembled a brilliant star and said to me: “It is there that you will come with us; you no longer belong to the Earth.” Then I recovered my memory; I leaned upon them and, like a graceful group that launches itself toward unknown spheres, but with the certainty of finding happiness there… we rose, we rose, and the star grew larger. It was a happy world, a superior world, where your good friend will, at last, find rest. I mean rest in relation to the corporeal fatigues that I endured and to the vicissitudes of earthly life, but not the indolence of the Spirit, because the activity of the Spirit is a pleasure.

– Q. Have you definitively left the Earth?

Answer. – I leave behind there too many beings dear to me to abandon it definitively. I shall therefore return to it, but as a Spirit, for I have a mission to fulfill near my grandchildren. Besides, you know perfectly well that no obstacle prevents the Spirits who dwell in the worlds superior to the Earth from coming to visit it.

– Q. It seems that the position in which you are may weaken your relations with those you left here.

Answer. – No, my friend; love brings souls together. Believe me, one can be on Earth nearer to those who have attained perfection than to those whom inferiority and egoism cause to whirl about the terrestrial sphere. Charity and love are two motors of powerful attraction. They are the bond that cements the union of souls linked one to another, persistent bonds, despite distance and places. There are distances only for material bodies; distance does not exist for Spirits.

– Q. According to what you said in the previous communication, about your artist's instincts and the development of Spiritist art, I thought that, in a new existence, you would be one of the foremost interpreters.

Answer. – No. It is as a guide and protecting Spirit that I am to give the world proof of the possibility of making masterpieces in Spiritist art. Children will be painter mediums and, at the age when one makes only formless sketches, they will paint, not the things of the Earth, but things of the worlds where art has attained all its perfection.

– Q. What idea do you now form of my works relating to Spiritism?

Answer. – I think that you have the charge of souls and that the burden is difficult to carry; but I see the goal and I know that you will reach it. I shall help you, if possible, with my counsel as a Spirit, so that you may overcome the difficulties that will be raised against you, prompting you to take certain measures suitable to advance, while you live, the renewing movement to which Spiritism leads. Your friend Demeure, united to the Spirit of Truth, will lend you an even more useful concourse; he is wiser and more serious than I; but, since I know that the assistance of the good Spirits strengthens and sustains you in your labor, believe that mine will be assured to you always and everywhere.

– Q. One might deduce from some of your words that you will not give me a very active cooperation in the work of Spiritism.

Answer. – You are mistaken. But I see so many other Spirits more capable than I of treating this important question, that an invincible feeling of timidity prevents me, now, from answering you according to your desire. Perhaps this will come about; I shall have more courage and boldness, but first I must know them better. I died only four days ago; I am still under the charm of the dazzlement that surrounds me. Do you not understand, my friend? I cannot express the new sensations that I experience. I had to do violence to myself in order to withdraw from the fascination that the marvels I admire exert upon my being. I can only bless and adore God in His works. But this will pass: the Spirits assure me that I shall soon be accustomed to all these magnificences, and that then I shall be able, with my lucidity of Spirit, to treat all the questions relating to the terrestrial renewal. Then consider, above all at this moment, that I have a family to console. Enthusiasm has invaded my soul, and I hope that it has passed a little, so as to entertain you with serious Spiritism, and not with poetic Spiritism, which is not good for men: they would not understand it. Farewell; until soon. From your good friend, who loves you and will always love you, for it is to you, master, that she owes the only durable and true consolation that she experienced on Earth.

Widow Foulon.

Remark. – Every serious and enlightened Spiritist will easily draw from these communications the teachings that stand out from them. We shall call attention only to two points. The first is that this example shows the possibility of no longer incarnating on Earth and of passing from here to a superior world, without being for this separated from the cherished beings whom we leave here. Those, then, who fear reincarnation, because of the miseries of life, can free themselves from it, by doing what is necessary, that is, by working for their improvement. Whoever does not wish to vegetate in the inferior classes must instruct himself and work to rise in degree. The second point is the confirmation of this truth: after death we are less separated from the beings dear to us than during life. Only a few days ago Madame Foulon, held back by age and by infirmity in a small town of the south, had at her side only a part of her family. As the majority of her children and friends were far away, material obstacles prevented her from seeing them as frequently as both they and she would have wished. The great distance even made correspondence rare and difficult for some. As soon as she was freed from her heavy envelope she goes to meet each one and, without wearying herself, crosses distances with the rapidity of electricity, sees them, attends their intimate gatherings, surrounds them with her protection, and can, through mediumship, converse with them at every instant, as when alive. And to think that, before this consoling thought, there are people who prefer an indefinite separation! Note. – We received too late to be able to reproduce the interesting and detailed obituary article published in the Journal du Havre of February 10. Unfortunately, our issue was already composed and complete, ready to be printed.

[1] Translator's note: February 5, according to the original. The correct date, however, is February 6, as appears above.