“Now, early one morning, three weeks after we had begun this series, Mrs. Stephens remarked to Professor Richet that [I again quote from Professor Richet’s notes] ‘during the night she had been thinking a great deal about the Christ, and had said to herself, if the spirits of the deceased can appear to man, why not the Christ? And she said she had asked for a sign to be given her that this could be. Mrs. Stephens had scarcely pronounced these words, when Dr. Maxwell came into the sitting-room and said: “I have just seen M. Meurice, he had a vision while I was conversing with him. He said he perceived the form of a man with short hair and beard; a halo of light behind him, a circle of gold on his head; he was dressed in white; M. Meurice says it was the Christ. With an imperious air, the form showed him a thick yellow manuscript—a papyrus—covered with writing. As M. Meurice was trying to decipher the characters for me, the vision disappeared. M. Meurice was suddenly exhausted, and had a fit of weeping before recovering his normal condition.” “‘A few mornings afterwards the medium had another vision. This time it was Chappe who came, it appears, to tell him that it was not _the_ Christ whom he had seen, but _a_ Christ.’[32] [32] See note, p. 329. * * * * * “I must pause a while. It seems that Mrs. Stephens did not care about returning to Paris during her husband’s absence; and—in the event of her hopes being well founded—had expressed to Professor Richet her great desire of passing the rest of the year near Biarritz, a place for which she had a great liking. She begged Professor Richet to write for her to a house agent to procure her a villa in that town. It seems also, that Mrs. Stephens—though her manner had never betrayed this—had taken a fancy to the medium and his family; one of his sisters is an experienced hospital nurse, and Mrs. Stephens was wondering—in quiet conversation with Professor Richet only—if it would be possible to persuade her to come and live with her at Biarritz. Upon this conversation Professor Richet obtained the address of an agent, and wrote to him according to Mrs. Stephens’s wishes. He showed the letter to Mrs. Stephens. The latter said [again I quote from Professor Richet’s notes]: ‘Since I spoke to you about Biarritz, Chappe has told me something. He wants me to go to Bordeaux. Do not post that letter yet, let me wait a little while; if my intuition be correct, if the idea of Bordeaux really came from the spirits, they are quite capable of finding a way of indicating it to M. Meurice and Dr. Maxwell. I do not wish to speak of it myself to M. Meurice; this must come from the spirits themselves....’ “[We are endeavouring to give a faithful account of what actually occurred, and beg to be forgiven the unscientific language, which is occasionally unavoidable, if we are to convey a correct notion of the physiognomy of the phenomena.]