"Yes I mean all that, and then I think by some occultism we cannot define, or even recognize, they will torment us, and actually drag us into lunacy."
"Alfred, did you see Blanchette?"
"Why, yes, I saw something that brought her distinctly before me for an instant—but, Gabrielle," I was ashamed to betray my hope for some sort of bodily incarnation, "it was only a madness of the brain—only that."
"But, Alfred, you did see the light; they always come in light-clouds—les voiles de lumière."
"Oh, yes, I saw the shining figure—so it seemed—and the light, Gabrielle, that seemed to stream from your head in rays. All that I saw, but whether it was an actual light, or some infernal hallucination, or just some mesmeric phenomena, and we both were asleep, I fear to say. But it has left me queerly disgusted and upset. At any rate I will have nothing more to do with it—nothing. My work (Redaction of the Code Législatif for Court Practice) will be interfered with, and then perhaps my poor brain will leave me altogether."
We laughed, and at length Gabrielle answered, liberating herself from my hold and musingly watching the sparrows twittering and flying spasmodically in swarms from the thicketed ampelopsis on the house. Her voice was low, and its accent firm, and half persuasive too.
"Alfred, I will go half way. I will do nothing to bring back the visions, but if they come I shall not scare them away. And as for séances—well, we both have had all we want of them. Eh?"
"Truly Gabrielle, I think that if we continued these visitations, if they are that, it would be with us as it was with Argan in Le Malade Imaginaire, who was threatened by Dr. Purgan, you know, after a long line of disorders, avec la privation de la vie, ou nous aura conduit notre folie."
I never again spoke about the spirits to Gabrielle. I grew strangely fearful of them, the thought of them made me shudder—until the war brought upon us the awful visitation that I have written this book to describe, and which—Well, what it did is now the common knowledge of the world. Nor did Gabrielle allude to them until the gathering terrors of the dead broke her silence. And to describe that moment and its undreamed of marvels, its vast resurrections from the holocausts of the battle fields, the fathomless panorama of the endless dead, with the stupefying and convulsing climax of the horrid warfare, choked by their immitigable hosts, is now my dangerous and difficult task.