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Flammarion, C., Carroll, L, - Death and its mystery: before death

235 DEATH AND ITS MYSTERY

As I promised you, I am sending you under this cover, accompanied by two testimonials, the account of the premonitory dream which you showed a desire to publish. I am very happy to send you this exact observation and beg you to accept, etc. A. Saurel.

In 1911 I dreamed I was in a new country-side, in a land that I felt was unknown to me.

On a little eminence, the gentle slopes of which were covered with fresh meadows, I saw a large building of medieval appearance, half small country-seat, half fortified farm. Its walls, weathered by storms, surrounded the buildings with their unbroken girdle. Four massive towers, not very high, flanked the corners. Before the principal part and through the meadow there ran a pretty brook, with clear, babbling waters.

Soldiers were fetching water from it. Others were lighting fires not far from stacks of guns ranged along the walls. These men were clad in a curious pale-blue uniform which I did not know, and wore a helmet which seemed to be of a strange shape.

I saw myself clad in the uniform of an officer and giving the orders of the camp.

By one of those odd phenomena which many persons have experienced, I thought, while attending to these affairs: 'What an absurd situation ! Why am I here and in this costume ?"

As this dream had left me, on my awakening, with a very clear and precise impression, I did not cease to be interested in the absence of those incoherent or ridiculous details which people normally get in sleep, and by this appearance of harmony and logic in the absurd; for absurd it seemed to me, this situation as officer in an unknown army.

During the day I spoke to those about me of this dream and of the blue soldiers which animated it. Then I thought no more of it.

But the war, which overthrew so many existences, made me a lieutenant of infantry. My regiment happened to be resting close to the front in the Aube. I was taking forward my recruits of the class of 1918.

The battalion had been marching since early morning. The heat which failed the tender green of the tall rye made itself keenly felt by my poor young greenhorns. The cloud of dust raised on the road by the thousands of weary feet did not permit me to see where we were. I had received the order to camp under the walls of "the chateau" which was, the quartermaster told me, two hundred meters to the right. After having given my orders to the chiefs of section, I went to join the major.

A few minutes later I rejoined my company around the poplar walk which hid the chateau from me.

The country-side which appeared after I had passed the last intervening tree, struck me immediately. It was the same gently sloping meadow, all gay with the flowers which June scatters everywhere; the walls, the towers-all was exactly like that which I had seen seven years before in my dream. All it lacked were the pretty, noisy brook and the monumental gateway.

As I was noting this difference between the dream and the reality, an adjutant came to ask me where the troop should go to get water.

“Send to the brook" I answered, laughing. The non-commissioned officer looked at me in astonishment. I added: "Yes, if it isn't on this side it must surely be on the other side of the building. Come with me."

When we had rounded the tower at the north corner I saw, without astonishment, the gay brook running over the mossy stones and, toward the middle of the wall, the large gateway just as I had seen it in my dream with its pillars of old brick.

The two leading sections had already solved the problem of water.

Stacks of guns stood at the foot of the walls, in the shadow of which many of my men were already enjoying deeply desired rest.

The tableau thus formed was that of the dream of 1911. Nothing sensational took place in this spot; therefore, this dream consisted of nothing but a startling view into the future, showing me, notably, my future situation as an officer, which it was impossible to suspect in 1911.

A" Saurel (Letter 4106.)