Belgian essays (French) -- Translations into English; Death
On the 10th of September, a friend of Mr. and Mrs. Jones was confined of
a boy, who died on the 29th of the same month. Their own little boy died
on the following Monday, the 2nd of October, being then sixteen months
old. It was decided to bury the two children on the same day. On the
morning of the day chosen, the parish priest informed Mr. and Mrs. Jones
that another child had died in the neighbourhood and that its body would
be brought into church along with the two others. Mrs. Jones remarked to
her husband:
“If the coffin is blue, then my dream will come true. For the two other
coffins were white.”
The third coffin was brought; it was blue. It remains to be observed
that the dimensions of the coffins corresponded exactly with the dream
premonitions, the smallest being that of the child who died first, the
next that of the little Jones boy, who was sixteen months old, and the
largest, the blue one, that of a boy six years of age.
Let us take, more or less at random, another case from the inexhaustible
_Proceedings_.[13] The report is written by Mr. Alfred Cooper and
attested by the Duchess of Hamilton, the Duke of Manchester and another
gentleman to whom the duchess related the incident before the fulfilment
of the prophetic vision:
“A fortnight before the death of the late Earl of L⸺,” says Mr. Cooper,
“in 1882, I called upon the Duke of Hamilton, in Hill Street, to see
him professionally. After I had finished seeing him, we went into the
drawing-room, where the duchess was, and the duke said to me:
“‘Oh, Cooper, how is the earl?’
“The duchess said, ‘What earl?’ and, on my answering, ‘Lord L⸺,’ she
replied:
“‘That is very odd. I have had a most extraordinary vision. I went to
bed, but, after being in bed a short time, I was not exactly asleep, but
thought I saw a scene as if from a play before me. The actors in it were
Lord L⸺, in a chair, as if in a fit, with a man standing over him with a
red beard. He was by the side of a bath, over which bath a red lamp was
distinctly shown.’
“I then said:
“‘I am attending Lord L⸺ at present; there is very little the matter with
him; he is not going to die; he will be all right very soon.’
“Well, he got better for a week and was nearly well, but, at the end of
six or seven days after this, I was called to see him suddenly. He had
inflammation of both lungs.
“I called in Sir William Jenner, but in six days he was a dead man. There
were two male nurses attending on him; one had been taken ill. But, when
I saw the other, the dream of the duchess was exactly represented. He was
standing near a bath over the earl and, strange to say, his beard was
red. There was the bath with the red lamp over it; and this brought the
story to my mind.
“The vision seen by the duchess was told two weeks before the death of
Lord L⸺. It is a most remarkable thing.”
7
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account