Spiritist novels.

THE MURDER AT THE RED BRIDGE.

By Ch. Barbara.

— The novel may be a way of expressing Spiritist thoughts without compromising oneself, because the fearful author can always answer mocking criticism that he intended nothing more than to make a work of fancy, which is certainly true for the great number. Now, everything is permitted to fancy. But, fancy or not, it remains one of the forms by means of which the Spiritist idea may penetrate circles where it would not be accepted under a serious form.

Spiritism is still very little, or rather, very poorly known in literature for it to have furnished a subject for many works of this kind. The principal one, as is known, is the one Théophile Gautier published under the name of Spirite, n and the author may still be reproached for having departed, on several points, from the true idea.

Another work of which we likewise spoke, and which, without having been made especially with Spiritism in view, is connected to it in a certain way, is that of Mr. Elie Berthet, published as a serial in the Siècle, in September and October of 1865, under the title of The Second Sight. n Here the author gives proof of a deep knowledge of the phenomena of which he speaks, and his book combines with this merit that of style and of a continuous interest. It is, at the same time, moral and instructive.

Second Sight, n by X-B. Saintine, published as a serial in the great Moniteur, in February of 1864, is a series of novellas that have neither the impossible fantastic, nor the lugubrious character of the tales of Edgard Poe, but the gentle and graceful simplicity of intimate scenes between the inhabitants of this and of the other world, in which Mr. Saintine firmly believed. Although they are stories of fancy, in general they depart little from the phenomena that many people were able to witness. Moreover, we know that, in life, the author, whom we knew personally, was neither an unbeliever nor a materialist; the Spiritist ideas were congenial to him, and what he wrote was a reflection of his own thought. Séraphita, n by Balzac, is a philosophical novel, based on the doctrine of Swedenborg. In Consuelo n and in the Countess of Rudolstadt, n by Mrs. George Sand, the principle of reincarnation plays a capital role. The Drac, n by the same author, is a comedy performed, some years ago, at the Vaudeville, and whose plot is entirely Spiritist. It is founded on a belief popular among the sailors of Provence. Drac is a cunning Spirit, more malicious than evil, who amuses himself by playing tricks. He is seen under the figure of a young man, exercising his influence and compelling an individual to write against his own will. The press, ordinarily so benevolent toward this writer, showed itself severe with this piece, which would have deserved a better reception. France does not have the exclusive monopoly of this kind of production. The Progrès colonial, of the island of Mauritius, published in 1865, under the title of Stories from the Other World, told by the Spirits, a novel that occupied no fewer than twenty-eight serial installments, whose plot was entirely made by Spiritism, and in which the author, Mr. de Germonville, gives proof of perfect knowledge of the subject.

In some other novels, the Spiritist idea simply furnishes the theme of the episodes. Mr. Aurélien Scholl, in his New Mysteries of Paris, n published by the Petit Journal, brings in a magnetizer, who interrogates a table through typtology, then a young girl placed in somnambulism, whose revelations leave some of those present in an awkward position. The scene is well presented and perfectly plausible. (Petit Journal of October 23, 1866).

— Reincarnation is one of the most fertile ideas for novelists, and one that can furnish effects all the more surprising in that they in no way depart from the possibilities of material life. Mr. Charles Barbara, a young writer who died some months ago in a sanatorium, made of it one of the happiest applications in his novel entitled Murder at the Red Bridge, which the Événement lately reproduced as a serial.

The principal subject is a stockbroker who was fleeing abroad, carrying off the fortune of his clients. Lured by an individual to a wretched house, under the pretext of favoring his flight, he is there murdered, despoiled, and thrown into the Seine, with the help of a woman named Rosalie, who lived in this man's house. The assassin acted with such prudence and knew so well how to take his precautions, that every trace of the crime disappeared and all suspicion of murder was averted. He married his accomplice Rosalie shortly afterward, and both were able, from then on, to live in affluence, without fearing any persecution, except that of remorse, when a circumstance caused their anguish to reach the highest degree. Here is how he himself recounts it:

— “This quietude was disturbed from the very first days of our marriage. Unless one excludes the direct intervention of an occult power, one is forced to admit that chance here showed itself strangely intelligent. However marvelous the fact may appear, you will not think of putting it in doubt, because, also, in it you have the living proof in my son. Moreover, many people will not fail to see in it a purely physical and physiological fact and to explain it rationally. Be that as it may, I suddenly noticed traces of sadness on Rosalie's face. I asked the reason. She avoided answering.

“As on the following day and the others her melancholy did nothing but increase, I begged her to relieve me of my disquiet. She ended by confessing to me something that could not but move me to the highest degree. On the very first night of our nuptials, in my place, although we were in the dark, she had seen, but really seen, she assured me, the pale face of the stockbroker. In vain had she exhausted her strength in repelling what she took at first for a mere memory. The phantom did not leave her eyes until the first gleams of dawn. Besides, what really justified her terror is that the same vision had pursued her with an analogous tenacity during several successive nights. “I affected profound disdain and tried to convince her that she had been the victim of a mere hallucination. I understood, from the sadness that took hold of her and was imperceptibly transformed into that languor in which you saw her, that I had not succeeded in instilling in her my feeling. A painful, agitated pregnancy, equivalent to a long and painful illness, worsened this malaise of mind still more; and if a happy delivery, filling her with joy, had a salutary influence on her morale, it was of short duration. Furthermore, I found myself forced to deprive her of the happiness of having the child at her side, since, in relation to my official resources, a wet nurse living in the house would have appeared to me an expense beyond my means. “Moved by the sentiments of figuring worthily in a pastoral, we went to see our son every two weeks. Rosalie loved him to the point of passion, and I myself was not far from loving him with frenzy, because, singular thing! amid the ruins that piled up within me, only the instincts of paternity still remained standing. I abandoned myself to ineffable dreams; I promised myself to give a solid education to my son, to preserve him, if possible, from my vices, from my faults, from my tortures. He was my consolation, my hope.

“When I say I, I speak equally of poor Rosalie, who felt happy at the idea of seeing the son grow up at her side. Thus, what were not our disquiets, our anxiety, when, as the child developed, we perceived in his face the lines that recalled that of a person we would have wished to forget forever. At first it was only a doubt, about which we kept silent, even in the presence of one another. Then the physiognomy of the boy approached to such a point that of Thillard, that Rosalie spoke to me of it with astonishment, that I myself could conceal only in part my cruel apprehensions. Finally, the resemblance showed itself to us such, that it truly seemed that the stockbroker had been reborn in our son. “The phenomenon would have unhinged a brain less solid than mine. Still very firm to feel fear, I claimed to remain insensible to the blow struck at my paternal affection and to make Rosalie share my indifference. I maintained that in this there was only a chance; I added that there was nothing more changeable than the face of children and that, probably, the resemblance would disappear with age. Finally, in case the worst should happen, it would always be easy for us to keep the child away. I failed completely. She persisted in seeing in the identity of the two faces a providential fact, the germ of an atrocious punishment that, sooner or later, was to crush us, and, under the empire of this conviction, her repose was abolished forever. “On the other hand, without speaking of the child, what was our life? You yourselves could see the permanent disturbance, the agitations, the shocks, each day more violent. When every trace of my crime had disappeared, when I had absolutely nothing more to fear from men, when opinion regarding me had become unanimously favorable, instead of a security founded on reason, I felt my disquiets, my anguish, my terrors grow. I myself was troubled by the most absurd fables; in the gesture, in the voice, in the gaze of the first person who came along I saw an allusion to my crime.

“The allusions kept me incessantly on the executioner's scaffold. Recall that night when Mr. Durosoir told one of his instructions. Ten years of excruciating pains, which would never equal what I felt at the moment when, leaving Rosalie's room, I found myself face to face with the judge, who stared me in the face. I was of glass; he read in the depths of my breast. In an instant I glimpsed the scaffold. Recall the saying: “In the house of a hanged man one does not speak of rope,” and twenty other details of the kind. It was a torture of every day, of every hour, of every second. Whatever it was, a horrible devastation was wrought in my spirit. “Rosalie's state was even much more painful: she really lived in the flames. The presence of the child in the house ended by making the stay intolerable. Incessantly, day and night, we lived amid the cruelest scenes. The boy froze me with horror. Twenty times I almost smothered him. Besides, Rosalie, who felt herself dying, who believed in the future life, in the punishments, aspired to reconcile herself with God. I mocked her, insulted her, threatened to beat her. I flew into furies to murder her. She died in time to preserve me from a second crime. What agony! She will never leave my memory.

“Afterward I did not live. I prided myself on having no more conscience: these remorses grew at my side, in flesh and bone, under the form of my son. This child, whom I consent to be the guardian and the slave of, despite his imbecility does not fail to torture me by his air, his strange gaze, by the instinctive hatred he bears me. No matter where I go, he follows me step by step, walks or sits in my shadow. At night, after a day of fatigue, I feel him at my side and his mere contact suffices to take my sleep away or, at least, to trouble me with nightmares. I fear that suddenly reason may come to him, his tongue may loosen and that he may speak and accuse me. “The Inquisition, in its genius for tortures, Dante himself, in his suppliciomania, never imagined anything so frightful. This makes me a monomaniac. I surprise myself drawing in pen the room where I committed the crime; I write beneath it this legend: In this room I poisoned the stockbroker Thillard-Ducornet, and I sign. It is thus that, in my hours of fever, I have detailed in my journal more or less word for word everything I have told you.

“But that is not all. I managed to escape the torment with which men punish the assassin, and behold this torment renews itself for me almost every night.

“I feel a hand on my shoulder and hear a voice that murmurs in my ear: “Assassin!” I am brought before the red robes; a pale face rises before me and cries: “Here he is!” It is my son. I deny. My drawing and my own memoirs are presented to me with my signature. As you see, reality mingles with the dream and increases my terror. Finally, I attend all the vicissitudes of a criminal trial. I hear my condemnation: “Yes, he is guilty.” They lead me to a dark room, where the executioner and his assistants come to join me. I want to flee, bonds of iron hold me back and a voice cries to me: “There is no more mercy for you!” I even experience the sensation of the cold of the blades on my neck. A priest prays at my side and at times invites me to repentance. “I repel him with a thousand blasphemies. Half-dead, I suffer the jolts of a cart on the public way; I hear the murmurs of the crowd, comparable to those of the waves of the sea and, above, imprecations from a thousand voices. I come within sight of the scaffold. I climb the steps. Meanwhile, the dream is interrupted. I awake precisely at the moment when the blade slides between the grooves, when I was about to be dragged into the presence of Him whom I wanted to deny, of God Himself, to have there my eyes burned by the light, to plunge into the abyss of my iniquities and to be tortured by the feeling of my own infamy. I suffocate, sweat floods me, horror fills my soul. I no longer know how many times I have already suffered this torture.”

— The idea of making the victim live again in the very son of the assassin, and who there represents the living image of his crime, bound to his steps, is, at the same time, ingenious and very moral. The author wished to show that the criminal, if he knows how to escape the persecutions of men, will not be able to escape those of Providence. There is here more than remorse: it is the victim who rises ceaselessly before him, not under the appearance of a phantom or of an apparition, which could be considered as an effect of the wounded imagination, but under the features of his son; it is the thought that this child may be the victim himself, a thought corroborated by the instinctive aversion of the boy, although an idiot, for his father; it is the struggle of paternal tenderness against this thought that tortures him, a horrible struggle, which does not permit the guilty one to enjoy quietly the fruit of his crime, as he had boasted of doing. This picture has the merit of being true, or rather, perfectly plausible, that is, nothing departs from the natural laws that, as we know today, govern the relations of human beings among themselves. Here, nothing fantastic nor marvelous; everything is possible and justified by the numerous examples we have of individuals being reborn in the milieu where they have already lived, in contact with the same individuals, in order to repair their wrongs or to fulfill duties of gratitude.

Let us admire here the wisdom of Providence which, during life, casts a veil over the past, without which hatreds would be perpetuated, whereas they end by being appeased in this new contact and under the empire of reciprocal good conduct. It is thus that, little by little, the feeling of fraternity ends by replacing that of hostility. In the case at hand, if the assassin had had absolute certainty as to the identity of his son, he might have sought his safety in a new crime; doubt left him in struggle with the voice of Nature, which spoke in him through the voice of paternity. But doubt was a cruel torture, a perpetual anxiety, through the fear that this fatal resemblance might lead to the discovery of the crime. On the other hand, the stockbroker, himself guilty, had, if not as an incarnate being, but as a Spirit, the consciousness of his position. If he served as an instrument for the punishment of his assassin, his position was also a torture to him. Thus, these two individuals, both guilty, punished each other reciprocally, held in their mutual resentments by the duties that Nature imposed on them. This distributive justice, which punishes by natural means, by the very consequence of the fault, but which always leaves the door open to repentance and to rehabilitation, is it not more worthy of the goodness of God than irremissible condemnation to eternal flames? Because Spiritism repels the idea of hell, such as it is represented, can it be said that it removes all restraint from evil passions? This kind of punishment is understood; it is accepted, because it is logical; it impresses all the more in that it is felt to be equitable and possible. This belief is a restraint far more powerful than the prospect of a hell in which people no longer believe, and at which they laugh.

— Here is a real example of the influence of this doctrine, for a case that, although less grave, proves no less the power of its action:

A gentleman of our personal acquaintance, a fervent and enlightened Spiritist, lives with a very close relative, whom various indications, having a great character of probability, lead him to believe was his father. Now, this relative does not always act toward him as he ought. Without such a thought that gentleman, in many circumstances, for questions of interest, would have used a rigor that was within his right, and provoked a rupture. But the idea that he might be his father restrained him; he showed himself patient, moderate; he bore what he would not have tolerated on the part of a person he had considered a stranger. There was not, in the father's lifetime, a great sympathy between him and his son; but the conduct of the latter, in such a circumstance, was it not capable of bringing them closer spiritually and of destroying the prejudices that kept them apart from one another? If they recognized each other in a certain manner, their respective position would be very false and constraining; the doubt in which the son is suffices to prevent him from acting badly, although it leaves him all his free will. Whether the relative was or was not his father, the son has no less the merit of the feeling of filial piety; if he is nothing to him, it will always be credited to him as his good conduct, and the true Spirit of his father will be grateful to him. You who mock Spiritism, because you do not know it, if you knew what it contains of power for moralization, you would understand all that society will gain from its propagation and you would be the first to applaud it. You would see it transformed under the empire of beliefs that lead, by the very force of things and of the laws of Nature, to fraternity and to true equality; you would understand that it alone can triumph over prejudices, which are the stumbling block of social progress and, instead of ridiculing those who propagate it, you would encourage them, because you would feel that it is in your own interest, in your security. But, patience! this will come or, rather, this has already come. Each day the prejudices are appeased, the idea propagates itself, infiltrates without noise and one begins to see that there is in it something more serious than was thought. The time is not far off when the moralists, the apostles of progress will see in it the most powerful lever they have ever had in their hands.

— Reading the novel of Mr. Charles Barbara, one might believe that he was a fervent Spiritist and, nevertheless, he was not. As we said, he died in a sanatorium, throwing himself out of the window in a fit of burning fever. It was a suicide, but attenuated by the circumstances. Evoked a short time afterward at the Society of Paris, and questioned as to his ideas regarding Spiritism, here is the communication he gave on the subject:

(Paris, October 19, 1866. — Medium: Mr. Morin.)

Permit, gentlemen, a poor, unhappy and suffering Spirit, to ask your authorization to come and attend your sessions, all of instruction, of devotion, of fraternity and of charity.

I am the unfortunate one who bore the name of Barbara and, if I ask you this favor, it is that the Spirit has stripped off the old man, and no longer believes himself so superior in intelligence, as he judged himself in life.

I thank you for your summons and, as much as it is in my power, I will try to answer the question motivated by a page of one of my works. But I would ask you, beforehand, to take into account my present state, which feels strongly the effects of the disturbance, otherwise very natural, that one experiences in passing abruptly from one life to another.

I am disturbed by two principal causes: the first is due to my trial, which was to bear the physical pains that I experienced, or, rather, that my body experienced, when I committed suicide. — Yes, gentlemen, I do not fear to say it, I committed suicide, because if my Spirit was lost for moments, I recovered it before I dashed myself on the ground and… I said: so much the better!… What a fault and what a weakness!… The struggles of material life were over for me, my name was known, henceforth I had nothing to do but march the way that was open to me and so easy to follow!… I was afraid!… and, nevertheless, in the hours of uncertainty and of discouragement, I had struggled in spite of everything. Misery and its consequences had not disheartened me, and it was when everything was finished for me that I exclaimed: The step is taken; so much the better!… I will no longer have to suffer! Egoist and ignorant one!… The second is that, after having wandered in life, between the conviction of nothingness and the presentiment of a God who could be only a force, single, great, just, good and beautiful, we find ourselves in the presence of an innumerable multitude of beings or Spirits who knew us, who loved us; that we discover alive our affections, our tendernesses and loves; in a word, when we perceive that we have merely changed dwelling. Then you conceive, gentlemen, that it is very natural that a poor being who lived between good and evil, between belief and unbelief about another life, it is very natural, I repeat, that he be disturbed… with happiness, with joy, with emotion, a little with shame, seeing himself obliged to confess to himself that, in his writings, what he attributed to his imagination at work, was a profound reality, and that often the man of letters, who puffs himself up with pride, seeing read and hearing applauded pages that he judged to be his own work, is sometimes nothing more than an instrument that writes under the influence of those very occult powers, whose name he casts at random of the pen in a book. How many great authors of all times wrote, without knowing all the philosophical value, immortal pages, milestones of progress, placed by them and by order of a superior power, in order that, at a given time, the gathering of all these scattered materials may form a whole, all the more solid in that it is the product of several intelligences, because the collective work is better: it is, moreover, what God will assign to man, for the great law of solidarity is immutable.

No, gentlemen, no; I absolutely did not know Spiritism when I wrote that novel, and I confess that I myself noticed with surprise the profound manner of expression of some lines that you read, without understanding all the import that, today, I see clearly. After having written them, I learned to laugh at Spiritism, to do as my enlightened colleagues and not to wish to appear more advanced in ridicule than they themselves wished. I laughed!…, now I weep; but I also hope, because they taught me here: every sincere repentance is a progress, and every progress leads to the good.

Doubt not, gentlemen, that many writers are, at times, unconscious instruments for the propagation of the ideas that the invisible forces judge useful to the progress of Humanity. Do not be astonished, then, to see them write about Spiritism without believing in it; for them it is a subject like any other, that lends itself to effect, and they do not suspect that they are led to it without knowing it. All these Spiritist thoughts, which you see emitted by those very ones who, alongside this, make opposition, are suggested to them, but they nonetheless make their way. I was of this number.

Pray for me, gentlemen, because prayer is an ineffable balm. Prayer is the charity that one must do to the unfortunate of the other world, and I am one of them.

Barbara. n [1] [Spirite - Google Books.]

[2] [La double vue - Google Books.]

[3] [La seconde vie - Google Books.]

[4] [Séraphita - Google Books.]

[5] [Consuelo - Google Books.]

[6] [La Comtesse de Rudolstadt. vol. I - Google Books — La Comtesse de Rudolstadt. vol. II - Google Books.]

[7] [Le drac: drame fantastique en trois actes - Google Books.]

[8] [Les nouveaux mystères de Paris - Google Books.]

[9] [v.

Charles Barbara.]