My work done, I left my room. At once a formidable rap resounded: I ran to the room, everything had disappeared, the pedestal alone was still in its place. The Virgin, thrown on to the bed, was found buried in the eiderdown, whilst the casing was at the side of the bed.
My precautions having incurred displeasure, I took care not to renew them. When consulted on this, the next day, the somnambulist, or rather the spirit acting through her, said, ‘Never touch the Virgin, leave her there; otherwise she will be transferred,’ adding, ‘he who takes her away from her pedestal will know very well how to put her back again.’
This recommendation was followed; but one day the statuette disappeared. Madame Vergniat having quite got over her first fears, searched for it actively everywhere, and after having turned the house upside down in her quest, found it in a cupboard behind the children’s bed. This cupboard, being dissimulated by tapestry, had never been used, and we did not even know of its existence.
How had the Virgin got into it?
The displacements became more and more frequent. For instance, the statuette took it into its head to change rooms, and the sitting-room became its favourite resort, but it never let a whole day pass without reappearing upon its pedestal.
The doors opened and shut before it with the same sharp sound which followed each evolution. All this went on so rapidly that we were more surprised than inconvenienced.
Under the influence of these phenomena, the ordinary sleep of the somnambulist became heavier. At night she was often heard speaking aloud. She awakened with difficulty, and having shaken off her torpor, she could not open her eyes. ‘They feel as though they were glued down,’ she used to say. But placing her fingers on Marie’s eyelids, Madame Vergniat used to pray, and the difficulty would disappear.
In her ordinary sleep, the conversation was not serious; it was more often commonplace, full of jesting, sometimes even of bad taste; whereas in provoked sleep, we constantly found a serious spirit, professing the purest maxims, and giving advice full of sincere charity.
I asked this mysterious spirit if it were true that he was Madame’s father, as he had once declared himself to be.
Here is his reply, I give it word for word: ‘My son, I read in your mind (for you cannot hide your thoughts from me) that not having enough faith to attribute to God the happiness of the visit you receive in your house, you seek its explanation in absurd suppositions. Do not believe in spiritism, my son.