The next thing to be done is to go back beyond Jean Claude. A mesmerization lasting nearly three quarters of an hour, without lingering at any intermediate stage, brings the old man back to babyhood. A fresh silence, a new limbo; and then, suddenly, another voice and an unexpected individual. This time, it is an old woman who has been very wicked; and so she is in great torment (she is dead, at the actual instant; for, in this inverted world, lives go backwards and of course begin at the end). She is in deep darkness, surrounded by evil spirits. She speaks in a faint voice, but always gives definite replies to the questions put to her, instead of cavilling at every moment, as Jean Claude did. Her name is Philomène Carteron. “By intensifying the sleep,” adds Colonel de Rochas, whom I will now quote, “I induce the manifestations of a living Philomène. She no longer suffers, seems very calm and always answers very coldly and distinctly. She knows that she is unpopular in the neighbourhood, but no one is a penny the worse and she will be even with them yet. She was born in 1702; her maiden name was Philomène Charpigny; her grandfather on the mother’s side was called Pierre Machon and lived at Ozan. In 1732, she married, at Chevroux, a man named Carteron, by whom she had two children, both of whom she lost. “Before her incarnation, Philomène had been a little girl, who died in infancy. Previous to that, she was a man who had committed murder; and it was to expiate this crime that she endured much suffering in the darkness, even after her life as a little girl, when she had had no time to do wrong. I did not think it necessary to carry the hypnosis further, because the subject appeared exhausted and her paroxysms were painful to watch. “But, on the other hand, I noticed one thing which would tend to show that the revelations of these mediums rest on an objective reality. At Voiron, one of the regular attendants at my demonstrations is a young girl, Louise ——. She possesses a very sedate and thoughtful cast of mind, not at all open to hypnotic suggestion; and she has in a very high degree the capacity (which is comparatively common in a lesser degree) of perceiving the magnetic effluvia of human beings and, consequently, the fluidic body. When Joséphine revives the memory of her past, a luminous aura is observed around her and is perceived by Louise. Now, to the eyes of Louise, this aura becomes dark when Joséphine is in the phase separating two existences. In every instance, there is a strong reaction in Joséphine when I touch points where Louise tells me that she perceives the aura, whether it be dark or light.” 2