Théophraste shook Adolphe’s hand effusively. He complimented his wife on her beauty. He had his green umbrella that day, and in making his congratulations twirled it in a fashion, as he thought, resembling the manner in which they used canes in the beginning of the eighteenth century. He was not a vain person, but he knew by this scientific miracle that he had been a great man two hundred years ago, and he felt that he should convey the impression that he had moved among great people and affairs.
It was their custom upon their return to their country house to invite a few friends to a party to celebrate the occasion. Upon this occasion Théophraste was at his best. He was in high spirits, and while passing the good word to the gentlemen, made flattering speeches to the ladies. The table was set in the garden under a tent where the guests assembled. After a while the conversation turned to the latest doings in angling. M. Lopard had caught a trout of three pounds; old M. Tartoush had cast his line on Sunday-having caught nothing, complained that people made too much noise shooting during the week, and drove the fish from these waters. All joined in the conversation and gave their experiences except M. Théophraste.
He kept silent. He found the topic too commonplace and felt a desire to raise its level. He wanted it to drift into some subject related to that preoccupying his mind. After awhile he was able to get Adolphe interested in the subject of ghosts. From ghosts the conversation led on to spiritualism. One lady knew a somnambulist and related some strange stories which were calculated to work upon the imagination of the company. Adolphe, upon this, explained the spiritualistic point of view of the phenomena of somnambulism, and cited well-known authorities. He seemed quite in his element, and finally reached the point desired by Théophraste, the transmigration of souls and reincarnation.
“Is it possible,” said Marceline, “that a soul comes back to live in its body? You have often told me so, Adolphe, but it seems to me that one’s reason strongly repulses such an hypothesis.” “Nothing is lost in Nature,” replied Adolphe, positively. “Neither the soul nor the body. All is transformed, the soul as well as the body. The reincarnation of souls at the end of a century is a doctrine which goes back to such great antiquity that the ancient philosophers do not deny it.”
“If one’s soul returned to a body,” said Marceline, “one would surely know it.”
“Not always,” said Adolphe, “but sometimes.” “Ah, sometimes?” asked Théophraste, who was by this time becoming intensely interested.
“Yes, there are cases. For instance: Ptolemy Caesar, son of Caesar and Cleopatra, who was king of Egypt before Christ, remembered well to have been Pythagoras, a Greek philosopher, who lived 600 years before.”
“Impossible!” cried the ladies, and the gentlemen smiled skeptically.
“You need not laugh, gentlemen. It is impossible to be more serious. Our actual transformation, which is the final word in science, is in full accord with the theory of reincarnation. What is transformation except the idea that living things transform themselves, progressing one into another? Nature presents herself to us under the aspect of a spark, elaborately perfecting without ceasing to create, to attain an ideal which will be the millennium. Whatever Nature does for the body she does for the soul. It can be proved, for I have studied this side a great deal, and it is the original of all sciences.
Monsieur Adolphe was not understood by the company, a fact of which he was inwardly proud. He liked to feel a superiority of intellect, and often he would raise the conversation above the level of his audience just to gratify his vanity. He touched on many points which only need be referred to lightly here in order to convince skeptics that the extraordinary history of Théophraste is founded on a most scientific basis.