A Resurrected Man Contrariated.

The following episode is taken from the account published by the newspaper Liberté, of a voyage of Mr. Victor Hugo to Holland, in the province of Zeeland. The article is found in the issue of November 6, 1867.

“We had just entered the city. I had my eyes raised and was calling the attention of Stevens, my seat-neighbor in the carriage, to the picturesque jagged outline of a succession of Hispano-Flemish roofs, when, in his turn, he touched me on the shoulder and made me a sign to look at what was happening on the quay.

“A noisy multitude of men, women and children surrounded Victor Hugo. Descending from the carriage and escorted by the authorities of the city, he advanced, with an air simply of emotion, his head uncovered, with two bouquets in his hands and two little girls in white dresses at his side.

“It was the two little girls who had just offered him the two bouquets.

“What do you say, in this time of crowned visits and of artificial or official ovations, of this simply triumphal entry of a man universally popular, who arrives unexpectedly in a lost country, whose existence he did not even suspect, and who finds himself there quite naturally in his States? Who would have forewarned the poet that this unknown little city, whose silhouette he had considered from afar and with curiosity, was his good city of Zierikzee? “At dinner, Mr. Van Maenen said to Victor Hugo:

“ – Do you know who the two pretty little girls are who offered you bouquets?

“ – No.

“ – They are the daughters of a ghost.

“This required an explanation, and the captain told us the strange adventure. Here it is:

“About a month ago, at the hour of twilight, a carriage in which were a man and a boy was entering the city. It must be said that a little before, this man had lost his wife and one of his children, by which he became very sad. Although he still had two little girls and the boy, who was with him at that moment, he had not been consoled and lived in melancholy.

“That night his carriage was following one of those elevated and abrupt roads, which are, to the right and to the left, bordered by a ditch of stagnant and sometimes deep water. Suddenly the horse, without doubt poorly directed through the mist of the nightfall, abruptly lost its balance and rolled from the top of the escarpment into the ditch, dragging with it the carriage, the man and the child. “There was in that group of precipitated beings a moment of dreadful anguish, of which no one was witness, and an obscure and desperate effort for salvation. But they were engulfed in the confusion of the fall and everything disappeared in the ditch, which closed with the thick slowness of the mud.

“Only the boy, who as if by a miracle remained outside the ditch, cried and lamented, waving his little arms. Two peasants, who were crossing a field of madder, at some distance, heard the cries and ran. They drew out the child.

“The boy cried: “My papa! my papa! I want my papa!”

“ – And where is your papa?

“ – There, said the boy, pointing to the ditch.

“The two peasants understood and set to work. At the end of a quarter of an hour they drew out the broken carriage; after half an hour they pulled out the dead horse. The little one cried always and asked for his father.

“At last, after new efforts, from the same hole of the ditch as the carriage and the horse, they fished and brought out of the water something inert and fetid, which was entirely black and covered with mud: it was a corpse, that of the father.

“All this had taken about an hour. The despair of the boy redoubled; he did not want his father to be dead. Meanwhile the peasants judged him quite dead; but as the boy implored them and clung to them, and as they were good people, they tried, to calm the little one, what is always done in such cases in the region: they set to rolling the drowned man in the field of madder.

“They rolled him thus a good quarter of an hour. Nothing moved. They rolled him again. The same immobility. The little one followed everything and wept. They began a third time and were already going to give up when, at last, it seemed to them that the corpse moved an arm. They continued. The other arm stirred. They persisted. The whole body gave vague signs of life and the dead man began to resuscitate slowly. “This is extraordinary, is it not? Well then! here is what is even more unforeseen. The man sighed at length, returning to life, and cried out with despair. “Ah! my God! what have you done? I was so well where I was. I was with my wife, with my child. They had come to me and I to them. I saw them and I was in heaven, I was in the light. Ah! my God! what have you done? I am no longer dead!” “The man who spoke thus had just spent an hour in the mire. His arm was broken and he had grave contusions.

“They took him to the city, and he has just recovered, added Mr. Van Maenen, finishing telling us this story. He is Mr. D…, one of the highest intelligences, not only of Zeeland, but of Holland. He is one of the best lawyers. Here everyone esteems and honors him. When he learned, Mr. Victor Hugo, that you were going to pass through the city, he wished at all costs to leave the bed, which he had not yet left for a month, and today he made his first outing to go before you and present to you his two little daughters, to whom he had given bouquets of flowers for you. “There was but a single cry around the whole table.

“These are things that happen only in Zeeland! The travelers do not come here, but the inhabitants return.

“They ought to have invited him to dinner, ventured the feminine part of the table.

“Invite him! I exclaimed; but we were already twelve! It would not be exactly the moment to invite a ghost. Ladies, would you like to have a dead man as the thirteenth?

“There are, said Victor Hugo, who had remained silent, two enigmas in this story: the enigma of the body and that of the soul. I do not take it upon myself to explain the first, nor to say how a man can remain submerged for an hour in a cloaca without death coming upon him. We believe that asphyxia is still a poorly known phenomenon. But what I understand admirably is the lamentation of that soul. What! it had already gone out of earthly life, of this shadow, of this dirty body, of these black lips, of this dark ditch! It had begun the enchanting flight. Through the mud, it had reached the surface of the cloaca and there, bound still by a last feather of its wing to this horrible last sigh, strangled by the mire, it already breathed silently the ineffable freshness outside of life. It could already fly to its lost loves, reach the wife and rise up to the child. Suddenly, the half-escaped one shudders; it feels that the terrestrial bond, instead of breaking completely, knots itself again, and instead of rising into the light, descends abruptly into the night, being obliged to enter violently into the corpse. Then it utters a terrible cry. “What results from this for me, added Victor Hugo, is that the soul can remain a certain time above the body, as if floating, being no longer a prisoner, nor yet being freed. This floating state is the agony, the lethargy. The death rattle is the soul that hurls itself out of the open mouth and that falls back for instants; it is the soul that shakes itself, gasping, until the vaporous thread of the last breath breaks. It seems to me that I see it. It struggles, escapes a little from the lips, enters into them, escapes again, then beats its wings with force, and there it is flying off in one stroke, disappearing into the immense blue. It is free. But sometimes the dying man also returns to life: then the soul, in despair, returns to the agonizing one. Dreaming sometimes gives us the sensation of these strange comings and goings of the prisoner. Dreams are some daily steps of the soul outside of us. Until it has completed its time in the body, every night and while we sleep the soul makes its little escape.” Paul de La Miltière. n As one sees, the fact in itself is eminently Spiritist. But if there is something still more Spiritist, it is the explanation that Mr. Victor Hugo gives to it; one would say it was drawn textually from the doctrine. Besides, it is not the first time that he expresses himself in this sense. There is still in remembrance the charming discourse that he pronounced, about three years ago, at the tomb of the young Emily Putron (Spiritist Review of February 1865); assuredly the most convinced Spiritist would not speak otherwise. To such thoughts there is absolutely nothing lacking but the word; but what does the word matter when one believes in the ideas! By his authoritative name, Mr. Victor Hugo is one of its popularizers. And yet, the same ones who acclaim them with their mouths ridicule Spiritism, a new proof that they do not know in what it consists. If they knew it, they would not treat the same idea as madness in some, and as sublime truth in others. [1]

[Paul de La Miltière, pseudonym of Victor Hugo. Consult the article:

Victor Hugo and his family.]