Observations placeholder

…. both through books loaned from Mr. David and through volumes he had purchased, my father, by reading them, began to learn, at the same time as we did, about spiritual morality and philosophy.

In short, after a few months, informed about almost everything that could be seen in this kind of facts by the accounts of Allan Kardec, William Crookes, Léon Denis, Gabriel Delanne, Gibier, Colonel de Rochas etc... we were still at the same point, that is, at the séances at Mr. David's. But...., we wished to get something at home, .. my father, my mother, my grandmother and me.

So, one evening, the four of us sat around the table in our dining room.

And... after three hours of waiting in vain, we decided, given the late hour, to go and rest.

But, being a Breton, my father wanted to have the last word; it was then that we submitted ourselves to a work of perseverance that I can describe as rare.

It was indeed, for three months, every evening, for two hours, that we sought to obtain a result.

It was also, for three months, every evening for two hours, that we stood still in front of an inert wooden block, without the slightest desire for movement.

Really, it was desperate and I will admit that personally, I was getting tired of this. Can you imagine an eighteen-year-old man with this patience?

Well, I had it, and the rest will prove I was right.

Seeing the futility of our efforts, I muttered strongly, and with the ignorance that I had of the conditions that govern spiritualist phenomena, I decided that, since we were not getting any facts,  but a lot were obtained from Mr. David, it was that it was in some way 'rigged' and that, certainly, there must have been something (sic) that we had not detected and that Madame David was using.

With this doubt, I was looking for a way to confuse Mr. David and one day I thought I had found it.

It was with these words that I opened myself up to my father:

"To see whether what's happening at Mr. David's is not fake, this is what I propose:

"We are going to simulate a fake séance.

"Suppose that Emile T..... has finally come to say a few words to us; well, we will leave the communication open and "next Sunday, at Mr. David's, we will "ask for the rest".

Here we are right away at work. We compose, from scratch, a conversation with questions and answers and..... we stop in the middle of a sentence.

It is obvious that if the next Sunday, at Mr. David's, the end of the communication had been given to us, it would have been the end of our belief. Can you imagine a gentleman finishing a speech he has never started?

Ah! we would have been fixed and that poor Mrs. David would have been well judged!

After this masterpiece, this tense trap, my father, overcome with remorse, wanted to try again to get so little, and we got back together around the table.

And then, after two or three minutes, like a spring that relaxes, the table began to turn with incredible violence, knocking over the chairs, pushing us around, seemingly telling us,

"You wanted it, my friends, well, here it is".

*****************************************

You could see how stubbornly we had been working on the furniture. This is the reason that made me tell you in my foreword that perseverance is a key quality in the study of spiritualist phenomena.

In any case, I think the advice is excellent, since it is because of this quality of my father that we had the pleasure of getting everything you are going to read.