"Can you get a reply to a question I am going to ask you?" said he.
"Don't ask," I replied, "think it. We will try."
I must here tell you parenthetically that I had known of Dolard for thirty years. He was my comrade at the Beaux-Arts. I knew that he had lost an elder brother, that he had been married, and had had the misfortune to lose, one by one, all the members of his family. That was all I knew about them.
I took the pen and the Invisible wrote, "The sufferings of your sister Sophia have just ended."
Now Dolard had mentally asked what had become of the spirit of a sister named Sophia, whom he had lost forty-two years ago, and about whom I had never heard a word spoken.
3. My principal at the School of Fine Arts in Lyons, a former architect of the city of Paris, was M. Hédin. This M. Hédin had an only daughter, who some years ago had married another architect, M. Forget, in Paris. The woman became enceinte.
One day when I was thinking of anything but her, the same thing occurred as before. The Invisible wrote:
"Mme. Forget is going to die."
Mme. Forget was not at all ill, apart from her being in a delicate situation. The next day morning, M. Hédin said to me that his daughter was in her pains; and the same evening he told me that his wife had just set out for Paris to be with her. The next day I received instructions to assume his duties. Mme. Hédin had telegraphed to her husband to come to her. Her daughter was taken with puerperal fever. When the father got there he found only a corpse.
4. I had a cousin named Poncet (since dead) who was formerly an apothecary, at Beaune (Côte-d' Or). I had never been at his apartments. One day he came to Lyons to see our aunt (she who had the vision about which I spoke to you). We conversed about these extraordinary psychical occurrences. He was incredulous.