"But still, my dear professor, these things are after all merely a huge joke," said Riche.
The professor opened his blue eyes very wide and smiled.
"My dear doctor, a learned pedant who laughs at the possible comes very near being an idiot. To shun a fact purposely, and turn one's back upon it with a supercilious smile, is to bankrupt truth."
"Is that really your opinion?" asked Riche.
"It is, but they are not my words. Besides, do you not remember that the great English naturalist Huxley wrote 'I am unaware of anything that has the right to the title of an "impossibility" except a contradiction in terms. There are impossibilities logical but not natural. Walking on the water, turning water into wine, or raising the dead are plainly not impossibilities in this sense.'"
Renée's eyes sparkled as she looked up into his face with a sweet smile of approval.
The professor gave her a slight squeeze of the hand, and fell into a reverie of thought.
"But supposing, for the moment, that these phenomena were true," said Riche, "of what use are they? Surely spirits have something better to do than to waste their time in rapping tables, playing accordions or mandolins, ringing bells, or writing Greek sentences backwards, and answering all sorts of absurd questions. These things are only worthy of a mountebank, and not of serious people. Besides, these spirits never tell one anything new or worth knowing. If they informed us of their life on the other side, what they did, what they ate and drank, and how they amused themselves, I might think it worth while to examine the subject."
"Ah!" said Marcel, laughing, "what I should like them to tell me would be the name of the horse that is to win the Grand Prix, or the Derby, to tell me the winning number in the State lottery, or to let me know what numbers to put my money on at Monte Carlo. Then, I confess, I would take up spiritualism with all my heart."
"I think spiritualism is just delightful," interposed Céleste. "I always believed that we never really die, and I know that I can feel what other people are thinking of without their saying a word. I do hope that the professor will show us some of these wonderful things. I am longing to know all about it."