Aria and lyrics of King Henry III.

— The Grand Journal of June 4, 1865, reports the following fact:

“All the publishers and music lovers of Paris know Mr. N. G. Bach, pupil of Zimmermann, first piano prize of the Conservatory at the competition of 1819, one of our most esteemed and most honored piano teachers, great-grandson of the great Sebastian Bach, whose illustrious name he bears with dignity.

“Informed by our common friend Mr. Dollingen, administrator of the Grand Journal, that the apartment of Mr. N. G. Bach had been the theater of a true prodigy on the night of last May 5, I asked Dollingen to take me to Mr. Bach’s house, and I was received at No. 8 of Rue Castellane with refined courtesy. I believe it is useless to add that it was after having obtained express authorization from the hero of this marvelous story that I allow myself to recount it to my readers. “On last May 4, Mr. Léon Bach, who is a curious double of an artist, brought my father an admirably carved spinet. After long and minute investigations, Mr. Bach discovered, on an inner board, the inventory of the instrument; it dates from the month of April 1564 and was made in Rome.

“Mr. Bach spent part of the day in contemplation of his precious spinet. As he went to bed he was thinking of it, and when sleep came to close his eyelids, he was still thinking of the instrument.

“It is not, then, to be wondered at that he had the following dream:

“In the deepest of his sleep, Mr. Bach saw appear at the head of his bed a man with a long beard, shoes rounded at the tip and with large bows on top, very large breeches, a doublet with tight sleeves with openings at the top, a large collar, and a pointed, broad-brimmed hat.

“This personage bowed before Mr. Bach and related the following:

“The spinet you possess belonged to me. Many times it served me to entertain my master, King Henry III. When he was very young, he composed an aria with lyrics, which he liked to sing and which I often played for him. He composed the aria and the lyrics in remembrance of a woman he met on a hunt and with whom he fell in love. They took her away from him; it is said she was poisoned, and the king suffered great grief. Every time he was sad he would hum this ballad. Then, to entertain him, I would play on my spinet a saraband of my own composition, which he greatly appreciated. Thus I always associated these two pieces and never failed to play one after the other. I am going to make you hear them: “Then the man of the dream approached the spinet, struck a few chords, and sang the aria with such expression that Mr. Bach awoke in tears. He lit a candle, looked at the time, found that it was two in the morning, and was not long in falling asleep again.

“It is here that the extraordinary part begins.

“In the morning, on waking, Mr. Bach was very surprised to find on the bed a page of music, filled with very fine writing and microscopic notes. It was with difficulty that Mr. Bach, aided by his opera glasses, since he is quite nearsighted, managed to find his way among these scribbles.

“An instant later, the grandson of Sebastian sat down at the piano and deciphered the piece. The ballad, the lyrics, and the saraband were exactly in conformity with those the man of the dream had made him hear during his sleep!

“Now, Mr. Bach is not a somnambulist; he has never written a single line of verse in his life, and the rules of versification are completely foreign to him.

“Here are the refrain and the three quatrains just as we copied them from the manuscript. We preserve their spelling, which, be it said in passing, is in no way familiar to Mr. Bach.

I have lost the one For whom I felt such love;

She is so fair, Each day she had for me A new favor Longed for to have.

Without her, oh! grief, I wish to die!

On a hunt far off, still early morning, I caught sight of her for the very first time, I thought I saw an angel in the meadow, Then I felt myself the happiest of kings.

I would give, yes, my kingdom to see her again Even were it but for a brief instant;

In a humble cabin beside her To feel my heart beating.

Cloistered and sad, oh! my fair one, Her last days far from me.

She no longer feels that the suffering is ended;

And as for me, alas, alas! suffering so.

In this mournful song, as in the joyful saraband that follows it, the musical spelling is no less archaic than the literary spelling. The clefs are made in a manner different from those of our days. The bass is written in one key and the melody in another. Mr. Bach had the kindness to make me hear the two pieces, which are of a simple, naive, and penetrating melody. Moreover, our readers will not be long in being able to judge them with knowledge of the matter. They are in the hands of the great engravers and will appear in the course of this week from the publisher Legouix, on Boulevard Poissonière, No.

“The journal de l’Estoile informs us that King Henry III had a great passion for Marie de Clèves, Marquise of Isles, who died in the flower of her age, in an abbey, on October 15, 1574. Might she not be ‘the poor, beautiful, and sad cloistered one’ to whom the verses allude? The same journal also tells us that an Italian musician named Baltazarini came to France at that time and was one of the king’s favorites. Might the spinet have belonged to Baltazarini? Was it his Spirit who wrote the ballad and the saraband? – A mystery we do not dare to fathom. Albéric Second.

— After the lyrics, the Grand Journal inserted the music, which we regret not being able to reproduce here; but since it is currently for sale, it will be easy for amateurs to acquire it. (See the bibliographical notes.)

Mr. Albéric Second ends his account with these words:

“A mystery we do not dare to fathom!” And why do you not dare it? Here is a fact whose authenticity is demonstrated to you, as you yourself acknowledge, and, because it concerns the mysterious life beyond the grave, you do not dare to investigate its cause! You tremble at looking it in the face! So, in spite of yourselves, do you fear ghosts, or are you afraid of acquiring proof that not everything ends with the life of the body? It is true that for a skeptic, who sees nothing and believes in nothing beyond the present, that cause is very difficult to find. Nevertheless, for this very reason, because the fact is more strange and seems to depart from known laws, it ought all the more to make one reflect, at least to awaken curiosity. One would really say that certain persons are afraid to see too clearly, because they would have to convince themselves that they were mistaken. Let us see, however, the deductions that any serious man can draw from this fact, abstraction made of any Spiritist idea. Mr. Bach receives an instrument whose antiquity he verifies, which causes him great satisfaction. Preoccupied with this idea, it is natural that it should provoke a dream in him; he sees a man in the costume of the period, playing that instrument and singing an aria of the period; strictly speaking, there is nothing here that cannot be attributed to the imagination overexcited by emotion and by the memory of the previous evening, especially in a musician. But here the phenomenon becomes complicated; the aria and the lyrics cannot be a reminiscence, for Mr. Bach did not know them. Who, then, revealed them to him, if the man who appeared to him is merely a fantastic being, without vitality? That the overexcited imagination should bring back to memory forgotten things is understandable; but would it have the power to give us new ideas? to teach us things we do not know? that we have never known? with which we have never occupied ourselves? Here would be a very grave fact, and one that would be worth examining, since it would be the proof that the Spirit acts, perceives, and conceives independently of matter. Let us pass over it, if one wishes. These considerations are of an order so elevated and so abstract that not everyone is able to scrutinize them, nor even to fix their thought upon them.

— Let us come to the more material fact, the most positive one, that of this music written with the lyrics. Could it be a product of the imagination? The thing is there, palpable, before our eyes. It is here that a scrupulous examination of the circumstances becomes indispensable. So as not to throw ourselves into the field of hypotheses, let us say, before going further, that Mr. Bach, whom we did not have the honor of knowing, took the trouble to come and see us and to submit the original of the piece in question. Thus, we were able to gather from his lips all the information necessary to enlighten our opinion, at the same time that he rectified the journal’s account on some points. Everything happened in the dream exactly as indicated; but it was not on the same night that the paper was brought. The next day Mr. Bach tried to recall the aria he had heard; he sat down at the spinet and managed to compose the music, though imperfectly. About three weeks later, the same individual appeared to him again; this time, he sang the music and the lyrics and said that he was going to give him a means to fix them in his memory. It was then that, on waking, he found the paper on the bed. Having risen, he deciphered the aria on his instrument and recognized that it was indeed the one he had heard, as well as the lyrics, of which only a confused memory had remained with him. He also recognized the paper, as belonging to him; it was a double sheet of ordinary music paper, on one side of which he had personally written several things. This paper, like many others, was in a closed writing desk, placed in another room of the house. Thus, someone must have taken it from there to place it on the bed while he was asleep. Now, in his house, no one of his acquaintance could have done it. Who could it have been? Here is the terrible mystery, which Mr. Albéric Second does not dare to fathom. It was on the blank side of the sheet that he found the aria, composed according to the method and the signs of the time. The words are written with extreme precision, each syllable placed exactly under the corresponding note. The whole is written in pencil. The writing is very fine, but very clear and very legible; the form of the letters is characteristic: it is the one seen in the manuscripts of the period.

Mr. Bach was neither a skeptic, nor a materialist, and still less an atheist; but, like many people, he belonged to the numerous class of the indifferent, very little concerned with philosophical questions. He knew Spiritism only by name. What he had just witnessed awakened his attention; far from not daring to fathom the mystery, he said to himself: let us fathom it. He read Spiritist works, began to perceive, and it was with the aim of having fuller information that he honored us with his visit. Today the fact has no more mysteries for him and seems to him very natural; moreover, he is very happy with the faith and the new knowledge that the circumstance allowed him to acquire. This is what he gained. He knows perfectly well that neither the music nor the lyrics could have come from him; he did not doubt that they had been dictated to him by the personage who had appeared to him; but he asked himself who could have written them, or whether it could not have been he himself in a somnambulistic state, although he had never been a somnambulist. The thing was possible, but, admitting it, it only better proved the independence of the soul, like all facts of this kind, so curious and so numerous, and with which, nevertheless, Science has never concerned itself. One particularity seems to destroy this opinion, namely that the writing bears no relation to that of Mr. Bach; it would be necessary, in the somnambulistic state, for him to change his habitual handwriting to take on that of the sixteenth century, which is not presumable. Could it be a prank by someone in his house? But, admitting such an intention, he is certain that no one had the knowledge necessary to carry it out. Now, if he, who had dreamed, had only an insufficient memory to transcribe the lyrics and the music, how would a stranger have remembered them better? The care with which the thing was written would, moreover, have required much time and demanded great practical skill. Another important point to clarify was the historical fact of this first passion of the king, of which no history makes mention, and which would have inspired him with that melancholy chant. The son of Mr. Bach having addressed himself to one of his friends attached to the imperial library, in order to know whether any document existed on the matter, he was answered that, if it existed, it could only be in the journal de l’Estoile, which was published at the time. Investigations made immediately led to the discovery of the passage related above. The mother of Henry III [Catherine de’ Medici], fearing the dominion that that woman, of a superior mind, might exercise over her son, had her cloistered and then killed. The king did not become reconciled to that loss, of which he kept a deep sorrow throughout his whole life. Is it not singular that this song relates precisely a fact unknown to all, and consequently to Mr. Bach, and that is later found confirmed by a document of the period, hidden in a library? This circumstance has a capital importance, for it proves in an irrefutable manner that the lyrics cannot be a composition of Mr. Bach, nor of any person of the house. Every supposition of fraud falls before this material fact. Only Spiritism could give the key to this fact, through the knowledge of the law that governs the relations of the corporeal world with the spiritual world. There is nothing marvelous nor supernatural in it. The whole mystery lies in the existence of the invisible world, composed of the souls that lived on Earth and that do not interrupt their relations with the survivors. Show someone ignorant of electricity that one can correspond over two hundred leagues in a few minutes, and this will seem miraculous to him; explain the law of electricity and he will find the thing very natural. The same happens with all the Spiritist phenomena.

— At a session of the Spiritist Society of Paris, which Mr. Bach attended, the Spirit who had appeared to him gave the following explanations on the fact we have just related.

(Spiritist Society of Paris, June 9, 1865 – Medium: Mr. Morin).

Question. – (To the spiritual guide of the medium). May we call the Spirit who manifested himself to Mr. Bach?

Answer. – My son, the grave question that led to that spontaneous manifestation is very natural. It must be resolved this evening, so as not to leave any doubt as to the manner in which the music was made. The Spirit is here and will answer very clearly the questions that are put to him.

Q. – (To the Spirit who manifested himself to Mr. Bach). Since you wished to come to us, anticipating our appeal, we will be grateful to you if you give us the explanation of the phenomenon that was produced through your intervention. We would also like to know why Mr. Bach was chosen by preference for this manifestation, and what part he took in the production of the phenomenon?

Answer. – I thank you for the benevolence with which you receive me among you. I understand the importance you attach to that fact, which, however, should not astonish you, since this kind of manifestation is today almost general and known to many people.

First, I answer your first question. Mr. Bach was chosen for two reasons: the first is the sympathy that binds me to him; the second is entirely in the interest of the Spiritist Doctrine. Situated as he is in the world, his age, his long career so honorably pursued, his relations with the press and the learned world, made him the best instrument to give publicity to facts that, until now, were printed only in Spiritist journals. You have been told many times that the day had come when Spiritism, winning immunity everywhere there is reasoning, logic, and good sense, would be accepted even in the journals that disparaged it. As for the second question: yes, you are right to seek to know, so as not to be victims of misunderstandings. The transport — for it is a transport — was made, and the Spirit, who is myself, takes part in it, and so does Mr. Bach, in pure dream and only in relation with the Spirits.

Note. – This last sentence has its explanation in the article farther on, about dreams.

I brought Mr. Bach the music paper, which I obtained in a room neighboring his bedroom, and then the music was written by the Spirit Bach himself, who made use of his body as a means of transmission. I wrote the lyrics, which I knew. The work thus done may be considered as a spiritual complement, seeing that Mr. Bach, in his dream, was almost completely dematerialized.

Q. – Would any person endowed with mediumship have served in this circumstance?

Answer. – No, certainly, because if Mr. Bach had not gathered all the required qualities, it is probable that neither he nor I would have been chosen for that propagation.

Q. – How did Mr. Bach make use of his body to write the music? Would he have done it in a state of somnambulism?

Answer. – I said that he had made use of his body as a means of transmission, because his Spirit is still incarnate and cannot act as a disincarnate Spirit. The incarnate Spirit can only make use of its limbs, and not of its perispirit, for it is the perispirit itself that keeps the Spirit bound to the body.

Q. – Can you say who composed the lyrics?

Answer. – If it had been I, my great dose of pride would keep the honor of it for me. But no; I explained myself clearly, saying: “I wrote the lyrics, which I knew.” Those lyrics, as well as the music, are, indeed, as you were told, the composition and inspiration proper of my then master, King Henry.

Q. – Would it be an indiscretion to ask you to enlighten us about your personality and to tell us what you were under Henry III?

Answer. – There is never indiscretion, so long as a moral teaching is at stake. I will answer that, having departed from my land, which was Florence, I came to France and was introduced at court by a princess who, having heard me sing, wished to please the dauphin, for he was still such, by having him hear the poor troubadour. The pleasure was so keen that they resolved to put me at his disposal, and I remained a long time near him in the capacity of musician, but, in reality, as a friend; for he loved me much and I did him good. Having died before him, I then acquired the certainty of his attachment to me, by the sorrow he felt at my loss. My name was pronounced here: I was Baltazarini.

— Mrs. Delanne, who attended the session, received by hearing answers identical to those given to Mr. Morin. The next day, at her home, she wrote the following communication, which confirms and completes that of Baltazarini.

“When the hour has come, God makes use of all means to make the divine science penetrate into all classes of society. Whatever opinion one professes regarding the new ideas, each one must serve the cause, even against his will, in the milieu where he is placed. The Spirit Bach having lived under Henry III, and having been bound to the person of the king as an intimate friend, passionately loved to hear those verses and, above all, the music. He preferred the spinet to other instruments; that is why the Spirit who appeared to him, and who is indeed that of Baltazarini, made use of that instrument, in order to bring the Spirit Bach back to the period in which he lived and to show him, as well as Science, that the doctrine of reincarnation is confirmed every day by new proofs. The fact of the music alone would have been insufficient to compel Mr. Bach to seek the light immediately. He needed a phenomenon of which he could not give account by himself, a participation completely unconscious. He was to advocate the doctrine, recounting the present fact, seeking to enlighten himself as to the manner in which it had been produced, asking all intelligences to seek the truth with him and in good faith. By his respectable age, his honorable position, his reputation in the world and in the literary press, he is one of the first markers planted in the rebellious world, because his good faith cannot be suspected, nor can he be treated as a madman, just as the authenticity of the manifestation cannot be denied. Moreover, be convinced that all this had its reason for being. You see that the press abstained from commentaries and, nevertheless, the article was produced by an unbeliever, a mocker of the Science that, it alone, can give a rational explanation of the mentioned fact. God has his designs; he casts the divine seed into the heart when he judges it fitting. This fact will have more repercussion than you suppose; work always in silence and wait with confidence. We have told you many times: do not be uneasy. God will know how to raise up, in time and place, men and facts that will come to remove the obstacles and confirm to you that the foundations of the doctrine have received their sanction from the Spirit of Truth. Spiritism grows and develops; the branches of the blessed and gigantic tree already extend over all parts of the globe. Daily Spiritism gains new adherents in all classes, and new phalanxes come to swell the ranks of the disincarnate. The more difficult your labors become, the greater will be the assistance of the good Spirits.” Saint Benedict.

Bibliographical notices.

[July 1865.]

— ARIA AND LYRICS composed by King Henry III, in 1574, and revealed in a dream in 1865 to Mr. N. C. Bach; Legouix, publisher, 27, boulevard Poissonnière, Paris. Marked price: 3 fr.

[Review of September 1865.]

An explanation regarding Mr. Bach’s revelation.

— Under the title of Letter from an unknown person, signed by Bertelius, the Grand Journal of June 18, 1865, brings the following explanation of the fact related in the Spiritist Review of last July, concerning the aria of King Henry III, revealed in a dream to Mr. Bach. The author relies exclusively on somnambulism, and seems to make complete abstraction of the intervention of the Spirits. Although, from that point of view, we differ from his manner of seeing, his explanation is nonetheless wisely rational; and if it is not, in our opinion, exact on all points, it contains ideas incontestably true and worthy of attention. Against certain magnetizers called fluidists, who see in all magnetic effects only the action of a material fluid, without taking the soul into account, Mr. Bertelius makes the latter play the chief role. He presents it in its state of emancipation and detachment from matter, enjoying faculties that it does not possess in the waking state. It is, then, an explanation from a point of view completely spiritualist, if not entirely Spiritist, which is already something for the affirmation of the possibility of the fact by other ways than that of pure materiality, and this in an important journal. It is to be noted that at this moment there is being produced, among the deniers of Spiritism, a sort of reaction, or rather, a third opinion is forming, which may be considered as a transition. Today many recognize the impossibility of explaining certain phenomena by the laws of matter alone, but they cannot yet decide to admit the intervention of the Spirits. They seek their cause in the exclusive action of the incarnate soul, acting independently of the material organs. Incontestably it is a step that ought to be considered as a first victory over materialism. From the independent and isolated action of the soul, during life, to that same action after death, the distance is not great; they will be led there by the evidence of facts, and by the impossibility of explaining everything with the aid of the incarnate Spirit alone.

— Here is the article published in the Grand Journal:

“Recounting, in the next-to-last number of the Grand Journal, the singular fact that occurred to Mr. G. Bach, you ask these questions: ‘Did the spinet belong to Baltazarini? – Was it the Spirit Baltazarini who wrote the ballad and the saraband? – A mystery we do not dare to fathom.’ “Please: why does a man, whom I esteem to be free of prejudices, recoil before the search for truth? A mystery! – you say. – No, sir; there is no mystery. There is a simple faculty, with which God has endowed certain men, as he has endowed others with a beautiful voice, with poetic genius, with the spirit of calculation, with a rare perspicacity, faculties that education can awaken, develop, improve. On the other hand, there exists an infinity of other faculties conferred on man, and which civilization, progress, and education annihilate, instead of favoring their development. “Is it not true, for example, that savage peoples have an auditory sensitivity that we do not possess? that, applying their ear to the ground, they distinguish the step of one man, or of several men, of one horse or of several horses, of a wild animal at a great distance?

“Is it not also true that they measure time with precision, without an hourglass, without a clock? that they direct their march with assurance through virgin forests, or their canoes on rivers and on the sea, by looking at the stars, without the aid of the compass and without any notion of Astronomy? — Finally, is it not true that they cure their illnesses without doctors? that they know how to treat the bites of the most venomous animals with simple herbs, which they distinguish among so many others, and find at their feet? Is it not known that they cure the most dangerous wounds with clayey earth? And cannot they, as a Red-Skin chief told me so judiciously, in the confines of the United States, that the Great Being always placed the remedy beside the ill? “These truths have become trivial from being so often repeated; but some make use of them to disguise their ignorance; others – the majority – to gather there material for contradictions. It is so easy to take on the airs of a strong mind by denying everything! and so difficult to explain the work of God, whose secret we seek in books, when we would find its solution in Nature! Here is the great book open to all intelligences; but not all are made to decipher these mysteries, because there some read through their prepossessions or their prejudices, and others through their insufficiency or their scholarly pride. “Make use of the simplest means to fathom the mysteries of Nature, and you will find the solution, up to the limits imposed on human intelligence by a superior intelligence.

“You said that Mr. Bach is not a somnambulist. What do you know of this, and what does he himself know? I affirm that Mr. Bach is a somnambulist, even without ever having had the honor of meeting him and without knowing him. In him somnambulism remained in a latent state; an exceptional occurrence was necessary, a very keen and very persistent sensation, an emotion that all who love curiosity and knowledge will understand, to reveal to himself a faculty of which he must have had some examples, which passed unnoticed in his life, but of which he will doubtless remember today, if he is willing to question his past and reflect. “According to what you informed us, Mr. Bach spent part of the day in contemplation of his precious spinet; he discovered the inventory of the instrument (April 1564). ‘As he went to bed he was thinking of it; and when sleep came to close his eyelids, he was still thinking of the instrument.’ “The somnambulist proceeds by degrees. — When you wish him to see what is happening in London, for example, you must mention that you put him in a carriage, that he takes a railroad, that he embarks and crosses the sea (then, often, he feels nauseous), that he disembarks, takes the railroad again, and finally arrives at the end of his journey.

“Mr. Bach followed the course habitual to somnambulists. He had turned, turned over, taken apart, and examined his spinet in detail; he was full of this idea and, mentally, without thinking of it, he must have said to himself: ‘To whom can this instrument have belonged?’ The magnetic current – strong minds will not deny such a current – was established between him and the instrument. He fell asleep and dropped into natural sleep and then passed naturally into the state of somnambulism. Then he searched, rummaged through the past, and put himself in more intimate communication with the spinet; he must have turned it, shaken it, placed his hand where the hand of the former owner of the instrument had rested, three centuries ago; and, questioning the past, which is infinitely easier than seeing the future, he found himself in contact with that being who no longer exists [This phenomenon is called psychometry]. He saw him in his habitual garments, performing the aria the instrument had so often played; he heard the lyrics so often accompanied, and, carried away by that magnetic force called electricity, Mr. Bach wrote them, with his own hand, as well as today one transmits to Lyon a telegram written by your hand, in your own handwriting. Mr. Bach wrote, in the state of somnambulism, I repeat it, that aria and those lyrics he had never heard; and, overexcited by a very keen emotion, he awoke bathed in tears. “You will cry out that it is impossible. — Well then! listen to this fact: — I myself sent a somnambulist to England; she made the journey, not in somnambulistic sleep, but in a condition that was neither the entirely natural state nor that of complete somnambulism. — I only ordered her to sleep every night for the necessary time, naturally, and to write what she should do to reach the result she was to attain on her journey. — She did not know a word of English. She knew no one. The matter that preoccupied her was grave… She made her journey, wrote every night consultations about what she should do, the people she should see, the addresses where she should find them. She followed textually and to the letter the indications she had given herself, went to the house of people she did not know and of whom she had never heard, and who were precisely those who could do everything… And she did it so well that at the end of eight days, a matter that would have required years without hope of reaching the end, was resolved to her complete satisfaction, and my somnambulist returned after having performed marvels. — In the natural state this extraordinary woman is merely an ordinary person. “Note this fact: her handwriting in sleep is completely different from the habitual writing. Words were written in English, a language she does not know. She converses with me in Italian and, awake, would not be capable of saying two words in that tongue.

“Thus, Mr. Bach himself wrote and noted down, with his own hand, the aria of Henry III, although he perhaps did not recognize his handwriting. And what is more surprising, is that he must doubt his magnetic faculties, like my somnambulist who, in this respect, is of an incredulity so radical that one cannot speak of magnetism in her presence without her hastening to declare that it is folly to believe in it.

“And perhaps too, although you do not say it, Mr. Bach had neither paper nor ink. In London my somnambulist found on the table the desired indications written in pencil; she had no pencil!… I am certain that she went rummaging in the hotel, found the pencil she needed, and brought it to her room, with that exactitude, those precautions, that vaporous, almost supernatural lightness, common in somnambulists.

“I could cite for you facts more surprising than that of Mr. Bach. But for today that is enough. I even hesitate to send you these notes, written at the whim of the pen.

“For twenty years I have been magnetizing, but I concealed, even from my best friends, the result of my discoveries. It is so easy to brand a man with madness! There are so many people interested in putting the light under the bushel! And, above all, it must be said, there are so many charlatans who have abused magnetism that a superhuman courage would be necessary to declare that one occupies oneself with it. It would be better to proclaim that one has murdered one’s father and mother than to confess that one believes in magnetism. “General rule, however: never, ever believe! in public experiments, in the false somnambulists who give consultations for money, and oracles like the ancient sibyls, who act and speak at the slightest order and at any hour, before a numerous public, like an ingeniously fabricated automaton. It is charlatanism! Nothing is more capricious, stubborn, fickle, peevish, and rancorous than a somnambulist. A trifle paralyzes his faculties of second sight; a trifle makes him lie out of malice; a nothing disturbs him and makes him change course, and this is understandable. Is there anything more susceptible than an electric current? “I distanced myself from a skillful scientist, Dr. E…, very well known in London, with whom I began my first magnetic experiments, precisely because I always considered the abuse of magnetism a grave fault. Carried away by the miraculous results we obtained, one day he wanted to graft the phrenological system onto magnetism. He claimed that, by touching certain protuberances of the head, the somnambulist presented the sensation of which that protuberance was the seat. By touching the presumed location of singing, the patient sang; that of gluttony, he chewed in the void, saying that such a food had this or that flavor. And so on. “I considered that it was carrying the experiment too far and, upon a real fact – somnambulism – establishing a problematic science: phrenology. I wished to broaden the domain of magnetic discoveries, but not to abuse them, as is generally done.

“I had the irreverence to declare to my professor that he was straying, and that I maintained it to be the duty of all who know the magnetic phenomena to rise up against all those experiments whose sole aim is to satisfy an ignorant curiosity, to exploit some human weaknesses, and not to reach a practical result for Humanity, and useful to all.

“But it is more difficult than one thinks to keep oneself within these honest limits, when one has reached marvelous results. The strongest magnetizers let themselves be carried away and, a phenomenon still more marvelous, when one reaches the point of always demanding public experiments from one’s patient, the latter seems to become disturbed, no longer has that unexpectedness, that lucidity, that clairvoyance that distinguished him; he becomes an automatic machine, which answers on a given theme and whose faculties become impoverished until they disappear. “Unfortunately, people who would not dare attempt a simple experiment of recreational physics, who confess themselves incapable of executing the least trick of sleight of hand, never hesitate, without preparation and without the least previous study, to perform magnetic experiments.

“Ah! if I did not fear plunging the readers of your Grand Journal into a sleep less interesting, but more noisy than that of my somnambulists, I would entertain you soon with eminently curious facts… But first one must know what reception you will give to this first letter; that is what I shall learn on Saturday, when I break the seal of my copy.

Bertellius.

[Review of February 1866.]

The spinet of Henry III.

— The following fact is the continuation of the interesting history of the Aria and lyrics of King Henry III, related in the Review of July 1865. Since then Mr. Bach has become a writing medium; but he practices little, because of the fatigue that results. He does so only when incited by an invisible force, which is translated by keen agitation and trembling of the hand, because, then, resistance is more painful than the exercise. He is mechanical in the most absolute sense of the word and has neither consciousness nor memory of what he writes. One day when he found himself in that disposition, he wrote this quatrain: King Henry gives this great spinet To Baldazzarini, a good musician then.

And if it is not good, elegant, complete, At least treat it well, out of just gratitude.

I, Henry the Third, hand over this spinet To Baltasarini, my happy musician, As for the sound, what matters here is my aim:

To give it to him as a keepsake and to have it as I wished.

Allan Kardec, O you, whose useful labors Instruct each day new good workers You never bring us any faulty principles;

May the good Spirits illuminate your paths.

It is necessary, then, to struggle, in short, against the ignorance Of those who believe themselves wise of the Earth out of boastfulness.

Do not be cast down, however; the task is one of pains;

But when was it ever easy for the good propagators?