"You know very well that I pardon you, and that I preserve the happiest recollection of you."
"You are too good."
These thoughts were evidently in the mind of the lady; so there was here no more proof of ident.i.ty than in the other case.
All of a sudden the table begins to move vigorously, and another name is dictated, "Ravachol."[46]
"Oh, what is he going to say to us?"
I will set down here what he said, though not without shame, and with all due apologies to my lady readers. Here it is in all its crudity:
"_Bougres de cretins, votre sale gueule est encore plaine des odeurs du festin._"
("Nasty blackguards and idiots, your dirty throat is still full of the odors of the feast.")
"Monsieur Ravachol, this language of yours is exquisite! Have you nothing more refined than this to say to us?"
"You be blowed!"
Certainly no one of us was capable of consciously composing such a sentence as that. But everybody knows the words that were used.
Perhaps our conscious or sub-conscious thoughts spoke in them? Did they emanate from Mme. X., the medium?
In the uncertainty into which we were plunged by these two seances, we asked M. and Mme. X. to come and pa.s.s a Sunday at Juvisy and try some new studies and tests.
They came, and on Sunday, October 8, we obtained some remarkable levitations. But there are some dregs of doubt yet in our minds, and we make engagements for another reunion that day fortnight.
On Sunday, the 22d of October, 1899, in furtherance of my desire to exercise careful control over the investigators, I had four broad boards nailed together, forming a vertical frame in which I placed the little table to be used during the sitting. This framework made it impossible for the feet of the sitters to pa.s.s under the table; and if it rose in spite of this, then we should know that the levitation was due to an unknown force.
The remarks of Mme. X., when she saw this device, made me think at once that no levitation was going to take place.
"This power of ours," said she, "is capricious; on some days we get good results, on others none at all, and for no apparent reason."
"But we shall perhaps have raps, at any rate?"
"Certainly. We ought not to antic.i.p.ate results. One can always try."
Two hours after luncheon, Mme. X. agrees to try a sitting. _No levitation whatever occurred._
I had some suspicions that this would be the case. I ardently desired the contrary, and we willed the levitation with all our might. I was expressly careful to have the same experimenters (Mme. X. and Mme.
Cail, and myself) as a fortnight before, when everything succeeded so admirably,--same places, same chairs, same room, temperature, hour, etc.
Raps indicate that a spirit wishes to speak. I notice that the raps correspond to a muscular movement of Mme. X."s leg.
"Who are you?"
"In the library of the master of the house my name will be found in a book."
"How shall we find it?"
"It is written on a piece of paper."
"In what book?"
"_Astronomia._"
"Of what date?"
No reply.
"Of what color?"
"Yellow."
"Bound?"
"No."
"St.i.tched?"
"Yes."
"On what shelf?"
"Hunt."
"It impossible to go through thousands of volumes, and, besides, there is not such a book in the whole library."
No reply.
After a series of questions we learn that the book is on the sixth shelf of the main body of the library, to the right of the door. But first, we all went into the room to make sure it contained no such book as was described.
"Then the volume is bound in boards?"
"Yes, there are four _low_ volumes."
We return to the room, and, sure enough, find in a volume ent.i.tled _Anatomia Celeste_, Venice, 1573, a piece of paper, upon which is pencilled the name "Krishna." We return to the seance table.
"Is it really you, Krishna?"
"Yes."
"In what epoch did you live?"
"In the time of Jesus."
"In what country?"
"In the neighborhood of the Himalaya mountain system."