Soyez unis en Dieu; sur vous
L’Esprit Saint étendra ses ailes.
This stanza may be translated thus:
You one and all, oh friends, we love,
For you are good, and faithful tread.
Be one in God; and then above
The Holy Ghost his wings will spread.
Surely this is sufficiently innocent of poetic pretension; but the mode of dictation was decidedly difficult. This somewhat reduced, as it seemed to us, the supposition of fraud, but did not altogether destroy it.
A communication of a yet different kind is an imitation of Rabelais, which is not so badly done, but cannot be well translated into English, because of its grotesque and idiomatic character.
As to the identity of spirits, even if it could be demonstrated that the preceding quotations emanated from disembodied minds, this would not be a sufficient reason for admitting that the signatures are not entirely apocryphal.