“I must pause a while. It seems that Mrs. Stephens did not care about returning to Paris during her husband’s absence; and—in the event of her hopes being well founded—had expressed to Professor Richet her great desire of passing the rest of the year near Biarritz, a place for which she had a great liking. She begged Professor Richet to write for her to a house agent to procure her a villa in that town. It seems also, that Mrs. Stephens—though her manner had never betrayed this—had taken a fancy to the medium and his family; one of his sisters is an experienced hospital nurse, and Mrs. Stephens was wondering—in quiet conversation with Professor Richet only—if it would be possible to persuade her to come and live with her at Biarritz. Upon this conversation Professor Richet obtained the address of an agent, and wrote to him according to Mrs. Stephens’s wishes. He showed the letter to Mrs. Stephens. The latter said [again I quote from Professor Richet’s notes]: ‘Since I spoke to you about Biarritz, Chappe has told me something. He wants me to go to Bordeaux. Do not post that letter yet, let me wait a little while; if my intuition be correct, if the idea of Bordeaux really came from the spirits, they are quite capable of finding a way of indicating it to M. Meurice and Dr. Maxwell. I do not wish to speak of it myself to M. Meurice; this must come from the spirits themselves....’
“[We are endeavouring to give a faithful account of what actually occurred, and beg to be forgiven the unscientific language, which is occasionally unavoidable, if we are to convey a correct notion of the physiognomy of the phenomena.]
“Now the morning (a Thursday) following the day on which the above conversation had taken place, Mrs. Stephens came to Professor Richet, and told him she had passed a very strange and perturbed night. She said that, towards eleven o’clock, she was suddenly awakened by a sensation that some one was in her room; she was filled with fear. She turned on the light, but saw nothing. She kept the light burning, but still felt unaccountably frightened. She heard raps on the head of her bed. Gradually her fear quieted down, and she said she began to feel as though there were a host of spirits in her room, and a Great Presence was among them. ‘And she imagined,’ writes Professor Richet, ‘that a voice spoke to her in these terms: “A powerful spirit is here, be not afraid; it is the child’s guide; your child will be a boy; he has a great destiny before him, he will be a reformer. We counsel you not to force his inclinations, to choose no career for him, but to let yourself be guided by the child himself, when the time comes to think of his education.”
“‘Mrs. Stephens was still speaking of her night’s experience, when Dr. Maxwell came into the room, and handed me,’ continues Professor Richet, ‘some verses which, he said, had just been written by M. Meurice—a kind of quasi-automatism—in a state of semi-somnolence. He could not understand what it meant, and simply stated the fact without offering any comment on it.’”
Here are the verses. For the sake of brevity we omit five of them, they are in the same strain as those given. We believe the reader will prefer to see these verses in the original:—
Quand un enfant vient au monde,
Vient au monde d’ici-bas,
Il faut qu’un ange en réponde,
Et le suive pas à pas.
Pas à pas il faut qu’il guide
La petite âme en chemin,
La petite âme timide,
Qu’il doit prendre par la main.
Et les anges se querellent
Autour des bébés naissants,
S’ils sont de ceux-là qu’appellent
Vers la Clarté les Puissants.
Dans la foule qui l’assaille
La petite âme choisit;
Elle est émue et tressaille,
Et la crainte la saisit.
Il faut qu’autour de la mère,
De la mère qui l’attend,
Seuls les anges de lumière
Guettent le petit enfant.