"When the Man of Light," says Theophrastus in his memoirs, "undertook to relieve me of this obsession by Cartouche, which was not, alas! a matter of imagination but a very real thing, I could only smile pitifully at his vast conceit. But when I understood that he proposed to drive him out by the sole miracle of the reason, I thought it was time to serve the Mage up hot at Charenton lunatic asylum. "But presently, when he had explained the matter more fully to me, and I began to understand his theory and method, I found myself in full agreement with him and ready to serve his purpose of driving Cartouche out of me by the sole miracle of the reason. Indeed I came in the end to appreciate the vast abyss which separated the Man of Light from my friend Adolphe, the vast abyss which will always separate the Man of Reason from the Learned Ape. "First of all, he assured me that I had been Cartouche. He was assured of it. And furthermore it was the most natural thing in the world. He said he had scolded Adolphe for having presented my case to him as exceptional, when my case was the case of everybody. Of course, everybody has not been Cartouche. But everybody has been, before their existence of to-day, a good many other people, among whom may very well have been found persons every whit as bad as Cartouche. "You understand the Man of Light: mine was an every-day case. Everybody has lived before living and will live again. He told me that it was 'The Law of Karma.' _One is being born all the time; one never dies. And when one dies, it is that one is being born again, and so on from the beginning of beginnings!_ "It is understood that at each birth the personality differs from the preceding and succeeding personalities, but each is only a modification of the divine and spiritual ego. These different personalities are in a way only the rings in the infinite chain of life which constitutes throughout the ages our Immortal Individuality.