Soon after this, Precy received a confirmation of Rambouillet’s death, and was killed himself, according to the prediction, in the civil wars, at the battle of Faubourg St. Antoine.
LORD BROUGHAM’S VISION
The promise to appear was given and kept in the case of the apparition seen by Lord Brougham.
The story is given as follows in the first volume of “Lord Brougham’s Memoirs”:
“A most remarkable thing happened to me, so remarkable that I must tell the story from the beginning. After I left the High School I went with G——, my most intimate friend, to attend the classes in the University. There was no divinity class, but we frequently in our walks discussed many grave subjects—among others the immortality of the soul and a future state. This question, and the possibility of the dead appearing to the living, were the subject of much speculation, and we actually committed the folly of drawing up an agreement, written with our blood, to the effect that whichever of us died the first should appear to the other, and thus solve any doubts we had entertained of the ‘life after death.’ After we had finished our classes at the College, G—— went to India, having got an appointment there in the Civil Service. He seldom wrote to me, and after a lapse of a few years I had nearly forgotten his existence.... One day I had taken, as I have said, a warm bath, and, while lying in it and enjoying the comfort of the heat, I turned my head round, looking towards the chair on which I had deposited my clothes, as I was about to get out of the bath. On the chair sat G——, looking calmly at me! How I got out of the bath I know not; but on recovering my senses, I found myself sprawling on the floor. The apparition, or whatever it was that had taken the likeness of G——, had disappeared. This vision had produced such a shock that I had no inclination to talk about it, or to speak about it even to Stewart, but the impression it made upon me was too vivid to be easily forgotten, and so strongly was I affected by it that I have here written down the whole history, with the date, December 19th, and all the particulars, as they are now fresh before me. No doubt I had fallen asleep, and that the apparition presented so distinctly before my eyes was a dream I cannot for a moment doubt; yet for years I had had no communication with G——, nor had there been anything to recall him to my recollection. Nothing had taken place concerning our Swedish travels connected with G——, or with India, or with anything relating to him, or to any member of his family. I recollected quickly enough our old discussion, and the bargain we had made. I could not discharge from my mind the impression that G—— must have died, and that his appearance to me was to be received by me as a proof of a future state. This was on December 19th, 1799.”
In October, 1862, Lord Brougham added as a Postscript:
“I have just been copying out from my Journal the account of this strange dream. Certissima mortis imago! And now to finish the story begun about sixty years ago: Soon after my return to Edinborough there arrived a letter from India announcing G——’s death, and stating that he died on December 19th.”
Lord Brougham attempts to account for this vision by stating that it was probably a dream. But this is negatived by the fact that he was so startled by it as to scramble out of the bath in a great hurry—which would not be at all likely had it been a dream—for, as we know, nothing surprises us in dreams, or seems unlikely. And even granting that it were a dream, we still have the coincidence to account for. Why should Lord Brougham have dreamed this particular dream at the very moment his friend died? That fact has yet to be accounted for.