The new alphabet was enriched by certain other signs on the following days, thanks to the echos of that seance in the ordinary life of Hélène, who happened on several occasions to write not the true Martian as yet, but French in Martian letters, to her great stupefaction when she found herself after a while in the presence of these unknown hieroglyphics.
Fig. 22. Examples of isolated French words (française, lumière, prairie) automatically traced in Martian characters by Mlle. Smith in her normal handwriting. See also [Fig. 1], p. 56.
The first manifestation of that graphic automatism, being as yet concerned only with the form of the letters and not the vocabulary, dates from the day after the following seance:
August 23.—“Here,” wrote Hélène to me at noon, sending me some memoranda from which I have taken the three examples of [Fig. 22]—“here are some labels which I made it my business to make this morning at ten o’clock, and which I have not been able to finish in a satisfactory manner. I have only just now emerged from the rose-colored fog in which I have been continuously enwrapped for almost two hours.”
Three weeks later a complete automatic Martian handwriting was produced in a seance at my house, of which the following is a summary.
September 12, 1897.—At the end of a quite long Martian vision, Mlle. Smith sees Astané, who has something at the end of his finger and who signs to her to write. I offer her a pencil, and after various tergiversations she slowly begins to trace some Martian characters (Fig. 23). Astané has possession of her arm, and she is, during this time, altogether anæsthetic and absent. Leopold, on the contrary, is at hand, and gives various indications of his presence. At the end of the sixth line she seems to half awaken, and murmurs, “I am not afraid; no, I am not afraid.” Then she again falls into a dream in order to write the four last words (which signify “Then do not fear,” and which are the response of Astané to her exclamation).
Almost immediately Leopold substitutes himself for Astané and traces on the same sheet, in his characteristic handwriting (considerably distorted towards the end): “Place thy hand on her forehead,” by means of which he indicates to me that the time has arrived to pass on to the scene of translation by Esenale.