‘At the moment the collision with the tram took place, Meurice quickly opened the carriage door with the natural intention of jumping out; but he felt himself suddenly lifted up and carried on to the footpath, a distance of ten feet. He saw no one.
‘He probably jumped of his own accord, and the sensation he experienced was but the symbolical expression of the solicitude the personifications show for him. The protector was supposed to be H. B.
‘Now, on Saturday afternoon, the eve of the day on which the above accident occurred, I had a seance with my friend. We tried for luminous phenomena, but the experiment was null. Towards the close of the seance, Meurice said he saw the face of a dead man, with a wound on the left temple, the face was covered with blood. I asked who it was, and received by raps without contact: “Suicide, victime d’amour, Gaston”; the raps refused to give the surname. The aspect of the coachman’s face after the accident the next morning somewhat recalls the aspect of the vision; if we accept this, there is a curious mixture of true and false, the false showing forth when our personal activity intervenes in order to question: a fact which I have often observed.
‘The accident occurred between ten and a quarter past ten o’clock. My friend’s youngest sister—a young girl of twenty—is paying him a visit this week. Now, this Sunday morning she went into the kitchen at ten o’clock, looking very distressed, and said to the servants that she felt sure an accident had happened to her brother. The sister’s and servants’ versions concorded absolutely when questioned a few hours later on this coincidence.’
[26] The following is Dr. Maxwell’s detailed report of this incident as contained in a letter to Professor Richet:—
‘... There was nothing we might say but twaddle in the writing which followed, e.g. expressions of pleasure on the part of H. B. in that he was able to communicate with me, his long efforts to reach me, etc., when suddenly, at 5.30, without any rhyme or reason, so to say, our medium wrote (always under the influence of the H. B. personification): “Offer me some brandy and water....” Now, during fifty years H. B. had not been known to miss taking a glass of brandy and water every afternoon at half-past five. He was not in the habit of taking this concoction at other hours of the day; so that the coincidence is, to say the least, striking and curious....’
[27] Neither L. nor C. have ever lived in Bordeaux. In fact H. B. was the only member of his family to leave his native land.
[29] “Concerning the statuette: the medium was—two months previous to the seance here spoken of—given the catalogue of a sale of antiquities to be held at Bordeaux. When going to bed he took the catalogue to glance over it; but he says he was so sleepy, that he did not get any further than the first page. In the night, he dreamt that he was to buy No. 256 in the catalogue, which—he was told in his dream—was the Christ of whom he had seen the vision a few months previously, when Madame Stephens was with us. (See Series C, page [349].)
“When the medium awakened, he looked up No. 256, and found that it was an ancient wooden statuette of St. John the Baptist.”—Note by Dr. X.