No. 122

Pastor Rostan, who is referred to in the preceding seance in connection with the conversion of M. l'Abbe A--, desired in his turn to obtain an apparition. He asked for a person unknown to him, whose name had been given to him; but there had been a mistake made in giving him this name; in consequence a person appeared whose description we took, but who could not be recognised. At least, such is this gentleman's version, and I do not imagine that I was imposed upon. I suggested a second seance to him, especially as he persisted in asking for a person entirely unknown to him, to such an extent had he been influenced by M. Hebert's arguments. He then asked his maidservant to give him a name of one of her acquaintances who had been dead some time: he came armed with this name, and asked for Jeannette Jex. Adele replied: "I see a woman who is not tall, she may be between thirty and forty years of age; if she is not hump-backed she must be crook-backed, for she carries herself very badly. I cannot make her turn round. Her hair is auburn, approaching to red; she has small grey eyes, a thick nose. She is not good-looking. She has a prominent chin, a receding mouth, thin lips; her dress is countrified. I see that she has a cap with two flat bands, rounded over the ears.

She must have suffered from a flow of blood to the head, she has had indigestion. I see she has a swelling in the abdomen on the left side and in the glands of one breast. She has been ill a long time".

M. Rostan handed over the report to his servant, and gave it back to roe after adding his signature and the following remarks:-

"This is correct as regards stature, age, dress, carriage, the disease and deformed figure. (Signed) J. J. Rostan".

1 Journal du Magnetisme, vol. vii. p. 89. 2 Journal du Magnetisme, vol. viii. p. 24.

But if M. Rostan was staggered by the result of his test, his friends apparently still ascribed the results to thought-transference, which gives Cahagnet occasion for some argument on the subject.

There are, indeed, indications that some at least of the alleged apparitions were subjective - inspired, that is, by the imagination of the medium, supplemented occasionally by telepathic drafts from the sitter. We should probably be justified in assuming - in default of any corroborative evidence as to their reality - that the accounts of heaven and of the occupations of the spirits therein, given in the first volume [of the Arcanes], had no more remote origin than the medium's own mind, whose workings were no doubt directed, now by memories of lessons learnt in childhood, now by hints of the Swedenborgian philosophy received from Cahagnet himself.

[Descriptions of various visions of heaven, quoted by Mr. Podmore, are here omitted].

But there are other accounts which, while they point to the action of telepathy, are extremely difficult to reconcile with the theory of spirit-intercourse held by the recorder.

On two occasions Adele was asked to search for a long-lost relative of the sitter. On each occasion she found the man alive, and conversed with his spirit.

M. Lucas, a carrier (messager), of Rambouillet, came to inquire after the fate of his brother-in-law, who had disappeared after a quarrel some twelve years previously. Adele in the trance found the man at once, said that he was alive, and that she saw him in a foreign country, where there were trees like those in America, and that he was busy gathering seeds from small shrubs, about 3 feet high. He would not answer her question, and she asked to be awoke, as she was afraid of wild beasts. M. Lucas returned a few days afterwards, bringing with him the mother of the missing man.