"ALCOFRIBAZ n.a.z.iER."

("I am a jollie blade who will astonie you by my speech. I am not a vaine-babbling sperit. I will wear my graduate"s hood and saie: Drinke ye water of ye cellar [wine],--no more, no less. Be content.

"FRANCOIS RABELAIS.")[10]

A rather lively discussion arose upon the subject of this unexpected visit,--and of the language, which some erudite persons present thought not to be pure Rabelaisian. Whereupon the table rapped:

"Bons enfants estes de vous esgousiller a ceste besterie. Mieux vault que beuviez froid que parliez chaud."

"Rabelais."

("Ye"re regular babies to bawle yourselves hoa.r.s.e over this selynesse.

It is bettaire to drinke cauld than to speak warme.)

"Liesse et Noel! Monsieur Satan est defun, et de male mort. Bien marrys sont les moynes, moynillons, bigotz et cagotz, carmes chaulx et dechaulx, papelards et frocards, mitrez et encapuchonnez: les vecy sans couraige, les Esperictz les ont destrosnez. Plus ne serez roustiz et eschaubouillez ez marmites monachales et roustissoires diaboliques; foin de ces billevesees papales et clericquales. Dieu est bon, iuste et plein de miserichorde; it dict a ses pet.i.ts enfancts: aimez-vous les ungs les autres et it pardoint a la repentance. Le grand dyable d"enfer est mort; vive Dieu!"

("Hurrah for a merry life! Maister Satan is dead, dead as a door-nail.

The monks and the poor-devil friars are married,--bigots and fanatics, Carmelites shod and unshod, the hypocrites and the cowled fellows, the mitres and the hoods. There they stand trembling in their tracks; the Spirits have dethroned them. Gone are the roastings and soup-makings in the Devil"s Dutch ovens and in monastic kettles. A plague of these trashy tales of pope and priest! G.o.d is good, just, and full of pity. He says to his little children, "Love one another"; and he pardons the repentant. The great devil in h.e.l.l is dead. Hurrah for G.o.d!")

Here is still another series:

"Suov ruop eretsym nu sruojuot tnores emem srueisulp; erdnerpmoc ed simrep erocne sap tse suov en li uq snoitseuq sed ridnoforppa ruop tirpse"l sap retnemruot suov en. Liesnoc n.o.b nu zevius."

"Suov imrap enger en edrocsid ed tirpse"l siamaj euq."

"Arevele suov ueid te sererf sov imrap sreinred sel zeyos; evele ares essiaba"s iuq iulec essiaba ares evele"s iuq iulec."

These sentences must be read backwards, beginning at the end. Some one asked, "Why have you dictated thus?" The reply was:

"In order to give you new and unexpected proofs."

Read backwards, these Russian-like sentences are as follows:

"Celui qui s"eleve sera abaisse, celui qui s"abaisse sera eleve; soyez les derniers parmi vos freres et Dieu vous elevera."

"Que jamais l"esprit de discorde ne regne parmi vous."

"Suivez un bon conseil. Ne vous tourmenter pas l"esprit pour approfondir des questions qu"il ne vous est pas encore permis de comprendre; plusieurs meme seront toujours un mystere pour vous."

("Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted! Be the least among your brethren, and G.o.d will exalt you."

"Never let the spirit of discord reign among you."

"Follow good counsel. Do not torment your mind in attempting to fathom questions that it is not yet permitted you to comprehend: several of these will always be a mystery to you.")

Here is another of a different kind:

"Acmairsvnoouussevtoeussbaoinmsoentsfbiideenlteosuss."

"Sloeysepzruintissaeinndtieetuesnudrrvaosuessmaairlises."

I asked the meaning of this bizarre and portentous conglomeration of letters. The reply was:

"To conquer your doubts, read by skipping every other letter."

This arrangement using the skipped letters in their turn for the second and fourth lines gives the four following verses:

"Amis, nous vous aimons bien tous, Car vous etes bons et fideles.

Soyez unis en Dieu: sur vous L"Esprit-Saint etendra ses ailes."

("Friends, we love you all, For you are good and faithful.

Be united in G.o.d: over you The Holy Spirit will spread his wings.")

This is innocent enough, surely and without any great poetic pretensions.

But it must be admitted that this method of dictating is rather difficult.[11]

Some one spoke of human plans. The table dictated as follows:[12]

"When the shining sun scatters the stars, know ye, O mortal men, whether ye will see the evening of that day? And, when the sombre curtains of night are let fall from the sky, can you tell whether you will see the dawn of another morn?"

Another person asked, "What is faith?"

"Faith? "Tis a blessed field that breeds a superb harvest, and every laborer may therein reap and garner to his heart"s content, and carry home his sheaves."

Here are three prose dictations:

"Science is a forest where some are laying out roads, where many lose their way, and where all see the bounds of the forest recede as fast as they go forward."

"G.o.d does not illuminate the world with the lightning and the meteors.

He guides peacefully in their courses the stars of the night, which fill the sky with their light. So the divine revelations succeed one another in order, reason, and harmony."

"Religion and Friendship are twin companions, who aid us to traverse the painful path of life."

I cannot forego the pleasure of inserting here, at the close of this chapter, a fable, dictated like the others by table-rappings, and sent to me by M. Joubert, vice-president of the civil tribunal of Carca.s.sonne.[13]

The sentiment of it may be queried by some; but is not the central principle applicable to all epochs and to all governments: Do not the "_arrivistes_"[14] belong to all times?

THE KING AND THE PEASANT

A king who had profaned the public liberties, who for twenty years had slaked his thirst in the blood of heretics; awaiting the quiet peace of the hangman in his declining days; decrepit, surfeited with adulterous amours; this king, this haughty monster of whom they had made a great man,--Louis the Fourteenth, in short, if I must name him,--was one day airing under the leafy arches of his vast gardens his Scarron, his infamy and his troubles. The n.o.ble band of court flunkeys came along. Each one at once lost at least six inches of his height. Pages, counts, marquises, dukes, princes, marshals, ministers, bowed low before insulting rivals, the creatures of the king. Grave magistrates made their deep reverences, each humbler than a suitor asking for audience. "Twas pleasant to see how the ribbons, crosses and decorations on their embroidered coats went ever backwards. Always and always that ign.o.ble bowing and sc.r.a.ping and cringing. I should like to wake up some morning an emperor, that I might sting with my whip the backbone of a flatterer. But see! alone, confronting the despot, yet without abasing his head, forging along with slow steps on his own way, modest, clad in coa.r.s.e homespun garments, comes one who seems a peasant, perhaps a philosopher, and pa.s.ses by the groups of insolent courtiers. "Oh," cries the king, in great surprise, "why do you alone confront me without bending the knee?" "Sire," said the unknown, "must I be frank? It is because I alone here expect nothing from you."

If we stop to think how these sentences and phrases and different bits of literature were produced, letter by letter, rap by rap, following the alphabet as it was read out, we shall appreciate the difficulty of the thing. The rappings are made either in the interior of the wood of the table (the vibrations of which are perceptible) or in some other piece of furniture, or even in the air. The table, as I have already said, is alive, pregnant with a kind of momentary vitality. Melodies of well-known airs, sounds of sawing and of the workshop, and the report of fusillades can be drawn from it. Sometimes it becomes so light that it floats for a moment in the air, then so heavy that two men can scarcely lift it from the floor or budge it in any way. You must have a distinct picture in your mind of all these manifestations,--often puerile, no doubt, sometimes vulgar and grotesque, yet striking in their method of operation,--if you would accurately understand the phenomena, and realize that you are in the presence of an unknown element which jugglery and prestidigitation cannot explain.

Some folks can move their toes separately and crack the joints. If we should grant that the dictations, by combinations of letters (quoted above), were arranged in advance, learned by heart, and thus rapped, the matter would be simple enough. But this particular faculty is very rare, and it does not explain the noises in the table, the vibrations of which are felt by the hands. Again, one could fancy the medium tapping the table-legs with his foot, and thus constructing such sentences as he pleases. But it would require a wonderful memory in the medium to enable him to remember the precise arrangement of letters (for he has no memorandum before him), and, further, these curious dictations have been secured just the same in select companies where no one would cheat.

As to the theory that the spirits of eminent men are in communication with the experimenters the mere statement of the hypothesis shows its absurdity. Imagine a table-rapper calling up from the vasty deep the spirits of Paul or Saint Augustine, Archimedes or Newton, Pythagoras or Copernicus, Leonardo da Vinci or William Herschel, and receiving their dictations from the interior of a table!

We were speaking, a few pages back, of the seance drawings and descriptions of Jupiter made by Victorien Sardou. This is the proper place to insert a letter written by him to M. Jules Claretie, and published by the latter in _Le Temps_ at the date when that learned Academician was putting on the boards his drama _Spiritisme_. The letter is here appended:

... As to Spiritualism, I could better tell you verbally in three words what I think of it than I could write here in three pages. You are half right and half wrong. Pardon my freedom of speech. There are two things in Spiritualism,--(1) curious facts, inexplicable in the present state of our knowledge, and yet authenticated; and (2) the folks who explain them.