A Semi-Spiritist Profession of Faith.

In support of the reflections contained in the preceding article, we reproduce with pleasure the following letter, published by the Petite-Presse of the 20th of September, 1868.

“Les Charmettes, September 1868.

“My dear Barlatier, “You know the song: When one is Basque and a good Christian…

“Without being Basque, I am a good Christian, and the curé of my village, who yesterday ate my cabbage soup, permits me to recount to you our conversation.

“— So you are going to take up King Henry again? — With all the more willingness, I replied, since I lived in that time. — My worthy curé gave a start.

“Then I communicated to him my conviction that we had already lived and that we would live still. A fresh exclamation from the good man. But, in the end, he recognized that the Christian beliefs do not exclude this opinion and let me go my way.

“Now, my dear friend, do believe that I did not wish to amuse myself with the candor of my curé, and that this conviction of which I speak is strongly rooted in me. I lived at the time of the League, under Henry III and Henry IV. When I was a child, my grandparents spoke to me of Henry IV, and of an individual whom I did not know at all, a grizzled monarch, stuffed into a pleated ruff, n devout to excess and never having heard tell of the Belle Gabrielle. That was the one of father Péréfixe. The Henry IV whom I knew, combative, amiable, shrewd, a little forgetful, is the true one. He is the one of whom I have already spoken and of whom I shall speak to you still. “Do not laugh. When I came to Paris for the first time, I recognized myself everywhere in the old quarters and I had a vague remembrance of having found myself in the rue de la Ferronnerie, on the day when the people lost their good king, the one who had wished that every Frenchman might have a hen in the pot on Sundays. What was I in that time? Little, no doubt a younger son from Provence or from Gascony. But if I had been in the guards of my hero, it would not surprise me. “Soon, then, my first feuilleton of the Second Youth of King Henry.

“And believe me wholly yours.”

Ponson du Terrail.

When Mr. Ponson du Terrail cast ridicule upon Spiritism, he did not imagine, and perhaps even today does not imagine, that one of the fundamental bases of this doctrine is precisely the belief of which he makes such an explicit profession of faith. The idea of the plurality of existences and of reincarnation is evidently winning over literature, and we would not be surprised that Méry, who remembered so well what he had been, had not awakened in more than one of his colleagues retrospective remembrances and were not, among them, the first initiator of Spiritism, because they read him, whereas they do not read the Spiritist books. They find there a rational, fruitful idea, and they accept it. The Petite-Presse is publishing, at this moment, under the title of Mr. Médard, a novel whose plot is entirely Spiritist. It is the revelation of a crime through the apparition of the victim under very natural conditions.

[1] Translator's Note: Our emphasis. Fraise in the original: A kind of pleated ruff or collar. It was part of the fashion of the period and was much worn by King Henry IV as the painters of the sixteenth century portray him. [See the king's attire in the]