Mireta.

— For Spiritism, the year 1867 was opened by the publication of a work which, in a certain way, inaugurates the new path opened to literature by the Spiritist Doctrine. Mireta [Mirette - Google Books,] is not one of those books in which the Spiritist idea is no more than an accessory, and as it were tossed in, for effect, at the whim of the imagination, without belief coming to animate and warm it. It is this very idea that forms its principal subject, less still through the action than through the general consequences arising from it.

In Spirite - Google books, by Théophile Gautier, the fantastic far surpasses the real and the possible, from the standpoint of the doctrine. It is less a Spiritist novel than the novel of Spiritism, and one which the latter cannot accept as a faithful picture of the manifestations; moreover, the philosophical and moral content there is somewhat null. That work was nonetheless very useful for the popularization of the idea, through the authority of the author's name, who knew how to give it the stamp of his incontestable talent, and through its publication in the official journal. Furthermore, it was the first work of real importance of this kind in which the idea was taken seriously.

That of Mr. Sauvage is conceived on an entirely different plan. It is a picture of real life, where nothing departs from the possible and from which Spiritism can accept everything. It is a simple, ingenuous story, of a continuous interest and all the more attractive in that everything in it is natural and plausible; one finds in it no romanesque situations, but touching scenes, elevated thoughts, characters drawn according to Nature; one also sees in it the noblest and purest sentiments, in struggle with egoism and the most sordid wickedness, faith struggling against incredulity. The style is clear, concise, without loquacity or useless accessories, without superfluous ornaments and without pretensions to effect. The author set out, above all, to make a moral book and drew its elements from Spiritist philosophy and its consequences, far more than from the fact of the manifestations, showing to what elevation of thought its beliefs lead. On this point, we sum up our opinion by saying that this book can be read with profit by the youth of both sexes, who will find in it fine models, good examples and useful instructions, without prejudice to the profit and the concordance that should be drawn from it at any age. We will add that to have written this book in the sense in which he did, one must be deeply penetrated with the principles of the doctrine. The author sets his action in 1831; he cannot, therefore, speak nominally of Spiritism, nor of the present-day Spiritist works. Thus, he had to trace his apparent point of departure back to Swedenborg; but everything in it conforms to the data of modern Spiritism, which he studied with care.

— Here, in two words, is the subject of the work:

The Count de Rouville, forced to leave France suddenly during the Revolution, had, on departing for exile, entrusted a considerable sum and his family titles to a man on whose loyalty he believed he could count. But this man, abusing his confidence, appropriates the sum, with which he grows rich. When the emigrant returns, the depositary declares that he does not know him and denies the deposit. Mr. de Rouville, deprived of all resources by this infidelity, dies of despair, leaving a little daughter of three years, named Mireta. The child is taken in by a former servant of the family, who raises her as his own daughter. She was only sixteen years old when her adoptive father, very poor, came to die. Lucian, a young law student, of a great and noble soul, who had assisted the old man in his last moments, became the protector of Mireta, left without support and without refuge; he has her admitted into the house of his mother, a rich baker, but of a hard and egoistic heart. Now, it is discovered that Lucian is the son of the despoiler; the latter, learning later that Mireta is the daughter of the man whom he caused to be ruined and to die, falls ill and dies, tortured by remorse, in the convulsions of a terrible agony. Hence complications, because the young people love each other and end by marrying. The principal characters are: Lucian and Mireta, two choice souls; Lucian's mother, a perfect type of egoism, of cupidity and of narrowness of ideas, in struggle with maternal love; Lucian's father, the exact personification of a troubled conscience; a bread deliverer, vile, wicked and jealous; an old physician, an excellent man, but incredulous and mocking; a medical student, his spiritualist pupil, a man of heart and a skillful magnetizer; a very lucid somnambulist, and a sister of charity, of generous and elevated ideas, a typical model.

— Concerning this work we have heard the following criticism made:

The action begins without preamble, by one of those facts of spontaneous manifestations, such as are seen so many of in our days, and which consist of rappings on the walls. These noises lead to the meeting of the two principal characters of the story, Lucian and Mireta, which then unfolds. They say that the author should have given an explanation of the phenomenon, for the use of persons unacquainted with Spiritism, who do not understand its point of departure. We do not share this opinion, because one would have to say as much of the scenes of ecstatic visions and of somnambulism. The author did not wish, and indeed could not, with regard to a novel, make a didactic treatise on Spiritism. Every day writers base their conceptions on scientific, historical or other facts, which they can only suppose to be known to the readers, on pain of transforming their works into encyclopedias; it falls to those who do not know them to seek them out or to ask for an explanation. Mr. Sauvage, situating his plot in 1831, could not develop theories that were only known twenty years later. Besides, the rapping Spirits, in our days, have quite enough repercussion, thanks even to the hostile press, for few persons not to have heard of them. These facts are more common today than many others cited daily. On the contrary, the author seems to us to have given prominence to Spiritism, admitting the fact as sufficiently known not to need explaining. Nor do we share the opinion of those who reproach him for the somewhat familiar and common picture, the slight complication of the plot's intrigue, in a word, for not having made a more masterly literary work, as he would certainly be capable of doing. In our opinion, the work is what it ought to be in order to attain the proposed objective; it is not a monument that the author wished to erect, but a simple and graceful little house, where the heart could rest. Such as it is, it addresses itself to everyone: great and small, rich and proletarian, but above all to a certain class of readers to whom it would have suited less, had it taken on a more academic form. We think that its reading can be very profitable to the laboring class and, on that account, we would like to see it have the popularity of certain writings whose reading is less salutary.

— The two following passages may give an idea of the spirit in which the work is conceived. The first is a scene between Lucian and Mireta, at the burial of the latter's adoptive father:

“My poor father, shall I then see you no more! said Mireta, sobbing.

“Mireta, replied Lucian, in a soft and grave voice, those who believe in God and in the immortality of the human soul must not grieve like wretches who have no hope. For true Christians death does not exist. Look around us: we are seated among tombs, in the terrible and funereal place that ignorance and fear call the field of the dead. Well then! the Sun of the month of May shines resplendent here as in the bosom of the most cheerful fields. The trees, the shrubs and the flowers flood the air with their sweetest perfumes; from the bird to the imperceptible insect, each being of Creation casts its note into this great symphony, which sings to God the sublime hymn of universal life. Is there not there, tell me, a remarkable protest against nothingness, against death? Death is a transformation for matter; for good and intelligent beings, it is a transfiguration. Your father accomplished the task that God had entrusted to him; God called him to Himself. Let our egoistic love not envy the palm to the martyr, the crown to the victor!… But do not believe that he forgets you. Love is the mysterious bond that links all the worlds. Does the father of a family, forced to make a great journey, not think of his dear children? Does he not watch over their happiness from afar? Yes, Mireta, may this thought console you; we are never orphans on Earth; first of all we have God, who has permitted us to call Him our father, and then the friends who have preceded us into eternal life. — He whom you mourn is here, I see him… he smiles upon you with an ineffable tenderness… he speaks to you… listen… “Suddenly Lucian's face took on an ecstatic expression; his gaze fixed, his finger raised in the air, was pointing to something in space; his attentive ear seemed to be listening to mysterious words.

“Daughter, says he, in a voice that was no longer his own, why fix your gaze, veiled with tears, upon this corner of earth where they have laid my mortal remains? Lift your eyes to heaven; it is there that the Spirit, purified by suffering, by love and by prayer, takes flight toward the object of its sublime aspirations! What do the remains of its coarse envelope matter to the butterfly, once it displays its radiant wings to the Sun? Dust returns to dust, the spark rises toward its divine focus. But the Spirit must pass through terrible trials before receiving its crown. The Earth on which the human anthill crawls is a place of expiation and of preparation for the blessed life. Great struggles await you, poor child, but have confidence: God and the good Spirits will not abandon you. Faith, hope, love, let this be your device. Farewell.”

The work ends with the following account of an ecstatic excursion of the two young people, then married:

“After a journey whose duration they could not gauge, the two aerial navigators reached an unknown and marvelous land, where everything was light, harmony and perfumes, where the vegetation was so beautiful that it differed from ours as much as the flora of the tropics differs from that of Greenland and the austral lands. The beings who inhabited this world lost in the midst of the worlds resembled rather closely the idea we form here of the angels. Their light and transparent bodies had nothing of our coarse terrestrial envelope, their faces radiated intelligence and love. Some rested in the shade of trees laden with fruits and flowers, others strolled like those blessed shades that Virgil shows us in his charming description of the Elysian Fields. The two persons whom Lucian had already seen several times in his preceding visions advanced with arms outstretched toward the two travelers. The smile with which they embraced them filled them with celestial joy. He who had been the adoptive father of Mireta said to her with an ineffable gentleness: “My dear children, your prayers and your good works have found grace before God. He has touched the soul of the guilty one and sends him back to terrestrial life to expiate his faults and to purify himself through new trials, for God does not punish eternally and His justice is always tempered with mercy.”

— Here now is the opinion of the Spirits concerning this work, given at the Society of Paris in the session in which its report was made.

(Society of Paris, January 4, 1867. — Medium: Mr. Desliens.)

Each day belief draws an irresolute spirit away from adverse ideas; each day new adepts, obscure or illustrious, come to shelter beneath its banner; the facts multiply and the multitude reflects. Then the fearful take courage with both hands and, thereupon, cry: Forward! with all the force of their lungs. Serious men work, and Science, moral or material, novels and tales, let themselves be penetrated by the new principles in eloquent pages. How many Spiritists without knowing it among the modern spiritualists! How many publications to which nothing is lacking but a word for them to be pointed out to public opinion as emanating from a Spiritist source!

The year 1866 presents the new philosophy under all its forms; but it is still the green stalk that encloses the ear of wheat and, in order to show it, waits for the warmth of spring to have ripened it and made it bloom. 1866 prepared, 1867 will ripen and will realize. The year opens under the auspices of Mireta and will not elapse without seeing new publications of the same kind appear, more serious still, in the sense that the novel will become philosophy and philosophy will become history.

Spiritism will no longer be made an ignored belief, accepted only by a few supposedly diseased brains; it will be a philosophy admitted to the banquet of intelligence, a new idea taking its place alongside the progressive ideas that mark the second half of the nineteenth century. Thus, we warmly congratulate the one who knew, as the first, to set aside all false human respect, in order to raise frankly and clearly his intimate belief. [See also: Exploration of Spiritist ideas with regard to the accounts of Mirette.]

Dr. Morel Lavallée.

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