The memoirs of a husband.

Found everywhere, the traces of Spiritism are like the ancient inscriptions and medals, which attest, across the centuries, to the movement of the human spirit. Popular beliefs, without contradiction, contain the traces, or rather the germs, of Spiritist ideas in all epochs and among all peoples, but mingled with superstitious legends, as the gold of the mines is mingled with the gangue. It is not only there that one must seek them, it is in the expression of intimate sentiments, because it is there that one often finds them in the state of purity. If one could sound all the archives of thought, one would be astonished to see to what point they are rooted in the human heart, from vague intuition to clearly formulated principles. Now, who, then, gave birth to them before the appearance of Spiritism? Will it be said that it is the influence of a clique? They were born there spontaneously, because they are in Nature; but they have often been stifled or denatured by ignorance and by fanaticism. Today Spiritism, having passed into the state of philosophy, comes to tear out those parasitic plants and to constitute a body of doctrine out of what was nothing but vague aspiration. One of our correspondents of Joinville-sur-Marne, Mr. Petit Jean, to whom we already owe numerous documents on this subject, sends us one of the most interesting, which we have the satisfaction of adding to those we have already published.

"Joinville, July 16, 1868.

"Here again are Spiritist thoughts! These have all the more importance in that they are not, like so many others, the product of the imagination, or an idea exploited by novelists. They are the exposition of a belief shared by the family of a member of the Convention and expressed in the gravest circumstance of life, in which one does not think of playing with words.

"I gleaned them from a literary work, having as its title: Memoirs of a Husband, which is nothing but the minutely detailed account of the life of Mr. Fernand Duplessis. These memoirs were dictated in 1849, to Eugène Sue, to whom Mr. Fernand Duplessis sent them, with the mission of delivering them to publicity, as, according to his own expressions, an expiation for himself and a teaching for others. I give you the analysis of the passages that have the most relation to our belief."

"Mrs. Raymond, as well as her son, political prisoners, receive the visit of Mr. Fernand Duplessis, their friend. This visit gave rise to a dialogue, after which Mrs. Raymond engaged in the following conversation with her son (page 121):

"Come now, my son — resumed Mrs. Raymond in a tone of affectionate reproach — was it yesterday that we took the first steps in this career where we must thank God for a single day without anguish? Does one continue, does one attain the objective toward which we tend, without pain, without dangers, and often without martyrdom? Have we not been told a hundred times that our life does not belong to us, but is of that holy cause of liberty, for which your father died on the scaffold? Since you have been of the age of reason, have we not accustomed ourselves to that thought, that one day I would have to close your eyelids, as you might close mine? Is there anything in this to grieve over beforehand? Do you ever see me somber, tearful, since I live always with the dear and sacred remembrance of your father, whose bloodied brow I kissed, and whom I buried with my own hands? Have we not faith, like our fathers the Gauls, in the indefinite rebirth of our bodies and of our souls, which go, successively, to people the immensity of the worlds? For us what is death? the beginning of another life, nothing more. We are on this side of the curtain, we pass to the other, where immense perspectives await our gaze. As for me, I do not know whether it is because I am a daughter of Eve, added Mrs. Raymond with a slight smile, but the phenomenon of death has never inspired in me anything but an excessive curiosity." Page 208 — "The thought of death excited, above all in Jean, a most lively curiosity. A spiritualist by essence, he shared with his mother, his uncle, and Charpentier the virile belief that was that of our fathers, the Gauls. According to the admirable Druidic dogma, man being immortal, soul and body, spirit and matter, he was thus, soul and body, to be reborn and to live incessantly, from world to world, raising himself with each new migration, toward a perfection infinite like that of the Creator.

"Only that bold belief explained, to my eyes, the superb detachment with which Jean and his mother regarded those terrible problems, which cast so much disturbance and so much perplexity into weak souls, accustomed to seeing in death nothingness or the end of physical life, whereas death is nothing but a complete rebirth, which another life awaits with its mysterious novelties.

"But, alas! it was not given to me to share in that belief. I saw, with painful dread, approaching the fatal day on which Jean would be judged by the Court of Peers. That day having arrived, Mrs. Raymond asked me to accompany her to that fearsome session; in vain I wished to dissuade her from that purpose, fearing that Jean would be condemned to death; yet I did not dare to express to her my apprehensions; she divined my thought. My dear Mr. Duplessis, she said to me, the father of my son died on the scaffold for liberty; I buried him piously with my own hands… if my son too must die for the same cause, I shall know how to fulfill my duty with a firm hand… Do you believe that they can condemn Jean to death?… I believe that they can condemn him only to immortality. (Verbatim). Give me your arm, Mr. Duplessis… Master your emotion and let us go to the Chamber of Peers. "Jean was condemned to death and was to be executed two days later. I went to see him in prison and only hoped to have the strength to withstand that last and funereal interview. When I entered he was making, watched by a guard, his morning toilet, with a care as minute as if he had been in his own home. He came to me, holding out his hands; then, looking me in the face, he said to me anxiously: — My God! my good Fernand, how pale you are!… What is the matter with you, then? — What is the matter with me! I exclaimed, dissolving into tears and throwing myself upon his neck, you ask me that! — Poor Fernand! he answered me, moved by my emotion, calm yourself… courage! — And it is you who encourage me at this supreme moment! I said to him; but then, are you endowed, like your mother, with a superhuman strength? "— Superhuman!… no; you honor us too much, he replied smiling; but my mother and I know what death is… and it does not terrify us… Our soul changes body, as our bodies change clothing; we are going to live again elsewhere and to wait for, or to reunite ourselves with, those whom we love.. Thanks to this belief, my friend, and to the curiosity of seeing new, mysterious worlds; in short, thanks to the consciousness of the near realization of our ideas and to the certainty of leaving behind one the memory of an honest man, you will confess it, the departure from this world offers nothing so frightful, on the contrary."

"Jean Raymond was not executed; his penalty was commuted to perpetual imprisonment and he was transferred to the citadel of Doullens."

[1] [Mémoires d’un mari - Google Books.]