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Death and its Mystery: After Death – Camille Flammarion

Let us open, for example, Don Calmet's book, published in 1746: "Dissertations sur les apparitions des anges des demons et des esprits et sur les revenants" ("Dissertations upon Apparitions of Angels, Demons, and Spirits, and upon Ghosts"). In Chapter XLVI, Part II (page 375), we find under the heading " Persons who have promised one another to give, after their death, news of the other world, " the following lines:

The Marquis of Rambouillet's story, told after the death of the Marquis of Precy, is famous. The two noblemen were discussing the after life, as men who were not entirely convinced of all that is said of it. They promised each other that the first of the two who should die would appear and bring news of the death, to the other.

The Marquis of Rambouillet left for Flanders, where war was then being waged, and the Marquis of Precy remained in Paris, kept there by a severe fever. Six weeks afterward, he heard the curtains of his bed being drawn. Turning to see who it was, he perceived the Marquis of Rambouillet in a buff-jacket and boots.

He rose from his bed to embrace him, but Rambouillet, stepping back several paces, told him that he had come to fulfil his promise; that all that was said of the other life was true; that he (Precy) should change his way of life; that he would soon die.

Precy again made an effort to embrace his friend, but his arms closed on nothing but air.

Then Rambouillet, seeing that he did not believe what he had said, showed him the spot where he had received a musket wound in the back, from which the blood still seemed to be flowing. Precy received soon afterward, by letter, confirmation of the Marquis of Rambouillet's death. When fighting in the civil war, he was, himself, killed in the battle of Faubourg Saint-Antoine.