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The Life of a Sensitive – Madame Michael Bouissou

At the age of twelve my maternal grandmother fell ill.

She was to die in November after several months of serious illness which she bore with a patience and gentleness I have never forgotten. We had spent the summer with her in the charming old manor house in the Brie country where she and my great-aunt had lived for forty years. The family returned to Paris but Maman remained with my grandmother.

One day -I was to receive Holy Communion on the following day –Mademoiselle [her governess] and I were returning from church, where we had been to confession. She told me to pray for my grandmother's recovery and that she would join her prayers to mine. I looked at her. . . . I can still see the scene quite vividly . . . the avenue along which we were walking, the fallen leaves with their golden tints beneath the trees, the grey, rainy, autumn sky . . . and I can still recall the infinite sorrow that filled my heart. I could not help weeping as I said to Mademoiselle: "Our prayers will greet Grandmother when she arrives in Heaven, for she is going to die tomorrow."

The governess thought that it was perhaps my grief and anxiety which had caused me to make this remark.

Although very stern, she replied gently that no one, apart from God, knew the hour of our death and that I should pray for my grandmother and not express myself in such a way.

I listened to her and wanted to believe her with all my heart-with all my heart which rebelled against this great sorrow while knowing in some mysterious way that it was inevitable!

The following morning my father sent for me to come to his study. I was overcome on seeing tears in his eyes, because he was a very cold and authoritative man and was not in the habit of showing his feelings. He told me that a telegram had just arrived announcing the death of my grandmother. He was leaving immediately to rejoin my mother and, in a hurry to catch the train, he told me to pass on the news to my brother and sister, reminding me that since I was the eldest I must hide my own grief and break the news gently without frightening them.

He sent me back to Mademoiselle, who happened to be alone at the moment, and I told her what my father had just said. She made no allusion to my "premonition" until many years later, when she asked me if I remembered it.

I told her that I had never forgotten it, adding that the hardest thing at that moment had been my sensation of powerlessness in the face of irrevocable death while I knew that my grandmother was still alive.

These facts alone prove that at that early age I already possessed the gift of clairvoyance.