things were different; here was a quiet citizen, with little scientific knowledge, who had to prove that a manufacturer of India rubber in the year 1899 had been shut up in a dungeon after having buried treasures in 1721. But the revelation of this extraordinary fact had come to him spontaneously and remained so fixed in his mind that he resolved to probe the matter to the bottom.
His instinct abandoned him momentarily and he would search books and discover who this powerful, rich person was who had been betrayed on April 1st; which April 1st? This remained to be determined. He haunted the libraries from that time on. He marshaled before him the Premiers of the Kingdom. He found nothing to give him a clue. Some dukes and peers, some illustrious generals, some great financiers, a few princes of the blood. He stopped an instant at Law, but he was too dissipated; at Maurice de Saxe, who ought to have won the Battle of Fontenoy; at the Count du Barry, who had had the most beautiful mistress in Paris. He feared that perhaps he had been the Count de Charolais, who distinguished himself by his debauches, and killed the thatchers on the roofs by shooting at them. He was forty-eight hours the Cardinal of Palegria, but was disgusted when he learned that his Eminence had been a farm hand for the Duchess of Maine. It was refreshing to find in some corner of history a sympathetic count or lord that the writers of the epoch had adorned in engaging colors and on whom they had bestowed some virtues. But Théophraste soon saw that all these would have to be abandoned. For none of them had the principal qualifications of having been shut up in the Conciergerie in 1721, or having been betrayed on an April 1st.
However, in the Journal of the Barber, he discovered a bastard of the Regent, about whom were some startling facts which precipitated him into a state of great excitement.
Before entering into the details, however, of this discovery, we will return to the doings of Marceline and M. Adolphe Lecamus.
CHAPTER IV
Some Philosophy and a Song
LET us leave Paris awhile and return to the little estate on the banks of the Marne, which Théophraste generally moved to with the first rays of the July sun. This year he was to go there before Marceline and his friend, Adolphe, who had been commissioned to survey the timbers on some lands elsewhere. Thus these last few days he could spend alone in security and peace to attend to this unusual treatise which his new position in the world had given him.
The name of the house was “Villa Flots d’Azure.” Théophraste had given it this name against the wishes of Adolphe, who protested that the name was for a villa near the sea. He had replied with logic that he had often gone to the Preport, and that he had always seen the sea green; that he knew the Marne, and that on account of the reflected blue sky the water seemed blue. Do they not say “the beautiful blue Danube”? It was not only the ocean that had blue waves, so he did not see why he should not call his villa on the Marne “Villa Flots d’Azure.”
That day was the anniversary of their marriage. Théophraste was very fond of Marceline, and these anniversaries were always the occasion for much merry-making. Marceline also loved Théophraste, and saw no reason why she should not like Adolphe equally as well, whereas, on the other side, Adolphe adored Marceline and would have died for Théophraste. On reflection, the name “Villa Flots d’Amour” would have been more appropriate than “Villa Flots d’Azure,” such harmony existed therein.
Théophraste shook Adolphe’s hand effusively. He complimented his wife on her beauty. He had his green umbrella that day, and in making his congratulations twirled it in a fashion, as he thought, resembling the manner in which they used canes in the beginning of the eighteenth century. He was not a vain person, but he knew by this scientific miracle that he had been a great man two hundred years ago, and he felt that he should convey the impression that he had moved among great people and affairs.
It was their custom upon their return to their country house to invite a few friends to a party to celebrate the occasion. Upon this occasion Théophraste was at his best. He was in high spirits, and while passing the good word to the gentlemen, made flattering speeches to the ladies. The table was set in the garden under a tent where the guests assembled. After a while the conversation turned to the latest doings in angling. M. Lopard had caught a trout of three pounds; old M. Tartoush had cast his line on Sunday-having caught nothing, complained that people made too much noise shooting during the week, and drove the fish from these waters. All joined in the conversation and gave their experiences except M. Théophraste.
He kept silent. He found the topic too commonplace and felt a desire to raise its level. He wanted it to drift into some subject related to that preoccupying his mind. After awhile he was able to get Adolphe interested in the subject of ghosts. From ghosts the conversation led on to spiritualism. One lady knew a somnambulist and related some strange stories which were calculated to work upon the imagination of the company. Adolphe, upon this, explained the spiritualistic point of view of the phenomena of somnambulism, and cited well-known authorities. He seemed quite in his element, and finally reached the point desired by Théophraste, the transmigration of souls and reincarnation.
“Is it possible,” said Marceline, “that a soul comes back to live in its body? You have often told me so, Adolphe, but it seems to me that one’s reason strongly repulses such an hypothesis.” “Nothing is lost in Nature,” replied Adolphe, positively. “Neither the soul nor the body. All is transformed, the soul as well as the body. The reincarnation of souls at the end of a century is a doctrine which goes back to such great antiquity that the ancient philosophers do not deny it.”
“If one’s soul returned to a body,” said Marceline, “one would surely know it.”
“Not always,” said Adolphe, “but sometimes.” “Ah, sometimes?” asked Théophraste, who was by this time becoming intensely interested.
“Yes, there are cases. For instance: Ptolemy Caesar, son of Caesar and Cleopatra, who was king of Egypt before Christ, remembered well to have been Pythagoras, a Greek philosopher, who lived 600 years before.”
“Impossible!” cried the ladies, and the gentlemen smiled skeptically.
“You need not laugh, gentlemen. It is impossible to be more serious. Our actual transformation, which is the final word in science, is in full accord with the theory of reincarnation. What is transformation except the idea that living things transform themselves, progressing one into another? Nature presents herself to us under the aspect of a spark, elaborately perfecting without ceasing to create, to attain an ideal which will be the millennium. Whatever Nature does for the body she does for the soul. It can be proved, for I have studied this side a great deal, and it is the original of all sciences.
Monsieur Adolphe was not understood by the company, a fact of which he was inwardly proud. He liked to feel a superiority of intellect, and often he would raise the conversation above the level of his audience just to gratify his vanity. He touched on many points which only need be referred to lightly here in order to convince skeptics that the extraordinary history of Théophraste is founded on a most scientific basis.
“The transmigration of souls was taught in India,” said Adolphe; “the cradle of the genus human, then in Egypt, then in Greece. They chanted its mysteries in the name of Orpheus. Pythagoras, who continued the teaching, did not admit with the philosophers on the banks of the Ganges that the soul traveled over the cycle of all animal existence. He made it come back, for example, into a pig.”
“There are some men,” said Madame Beulie, “who still have the souls of pigs.”
“Without doubt,” said Adolphe, smiling; “but what Pythagoras says is that we must not conclude from that, that pigs have the souls of men. Plato also adopts this doctrine. It is the first which gave in the Phidon the proof that souls do not exile themselves forever and that they come back to animate bodies anew.”
“Oh,
