Various spontaneous manifestations.

— A letter from one of our correspondents contains the following account:

…I begin with a recollection of my childhood, which I have never forgotten, although it goes back to an era already quite distant.

In 1819 or 1820, there was much talk in Saumur of an apparition to an officer of the city’s garrison. That officer, lodged in the house of a distinguished family, lay down in the morning to rest from a sleepless night. A few hours later, opening his eyes, he perceived a shadow in the room, dressed in white. Thinking it a prank by one of his comrades, he got up to go to the joker. The shadow retreated before him, glided toward the alcove and disappeared. The door, which he had shut so as not to be disturbed, was still closed, and a young girl of the house, ill for some time, had just died at that very instant.

— The fact, which borders on Spiritism, reminded one of his comrades, Mr. de R…, lieutenant of cavalry, of an extraordinary dream he had had a long time ago and which he then made known.

Being in the garrison of Versailles, Mr. R… dreamed that he saw a man cutting his throat and collecting the blood in a vessel. He got up at five o’clock in the morning, very preoccupied with the dream, and made his way to the cavalry barracks; he was on duty. Following a street still deserted, he perceived a group of people examining something with great attention. He drew near and learned that a man had just killed himself and, an extraordinary thing, they told him that he had made the blood run into a tub, cutting his neck. Mr. de R… recognized in the features of this man the very one he had seen during the night, in the dream.

I knew of these facts only by hearsay, and I did not know any of the officers. Here are others, which are almost personal to me:

— My mother was a woman of a true and enlightened piety, which most often manifested itself only through an ardent charity, as Spiritism ordains, but without any superstitious and impressionable character. She often told me this memory of her youth. When a young woman, she had a friend who was very ill, at whose side she spent part of the nights, to give her care. One night when she was dropping from fatigue, the sick woman’s father insisted that she go to rest, promising her that if the daughter worsened he would come to warn her. My mother yielded and lay down, after having locked the room well. About two o’clock in the morning she was awakened by the contact of two icy fingers on her shoulder. She was deeply impressed and could no longer sleep. She then dressed to go to her dear sick friend, and was already about to open her door when there was a knock at the door of the house. It was a servant who came to inform her of the death of her friend, who had just expired.

— One day in the year 1851 I was walking through the gallery of paintings and family portraits of the magnificent castle of C…, led by Dr. B…, who had been the family’s physician. I stopped for some time in front of the portrait of a man of forty-odd years, dressed, as well as I can remember, in a blue suit, a waistcoat striped with red and black, and gray trousers. Mr. B… approached me and said: “This is how I saw the Count of C…, fifteen days after his death.” I asked for an explanation and here is what was answered to me: “One evening, in the mist, about fifteen days after the death of Mr. de C…, I was leaving the room of the lady countess. To go out, I had to follow a long corridor, into which opened the door of Mr. de C…’s study. When I came in front of that door, it opened and Mr. de C… came out, advanced toward me and marched at my side as far as the exit door. Mr. de B… attributed the fact to a hallucination. But, in any case, it would have been very prolonged, for I think that at the end of the corridor there was another room to cross before the exit.

Finally, here is a fact that is entirely personal to me.

— In 1829, I believe, in Haguenau, in Alsace, I was charged with the direction of an infirmary for convalescents, sent to us by the numerous garrison of Strasbourg, then much afflicted by intermittent fevers. Among the number of the sick I had a young drummer who, every night, after midnight, felt someone slip into his bed, seize him and bite his chest at the height of the left breast. His roommates told me that for the last eight days they had been awakened by his cries; that on approaching him they found him agitated, terrified, and could only calm him after exploring with the point of the saber and ascertaining that there was no one, neither under the bed nor in the vicinity. I found the young soldier with his chest somewhat swollen and painful on the left side, and I then attributed his state to the action of this physical cause upon his imagination; but the effect occurred only for a few moments in each twenty-four hours. It occurred a few more times, then I heard no more talk of the case… Observation. – It is known how numerous facts of this kind are; Spiritism admits them, because it gives them the only rational explanation possible. Certainly there will be, among this number, some which, strictly speaking, could be attributed to what it has been agreed to call hallucination, or to a preoccupation of the Spirit; but this could no longer be so when they are followed by a material action. They are all the more important the more their authenticity is recognized, and they cannot, as we said in a preceding article, be charged to the account of tricks.