The Valet's Tragedy, and Other StudiesLang, Andrew
History
The Valet's Tragedy, and Other Studies
Lang, Andrew
History; World history
The case is that of Madame B., a peasant woman near Cherbourg. She has
her common work-a-day personality, called, for convenience, ‘Leonie.’
There is also her hypnotic personality, ‘Leontine.’ Now Leontine (that
is, Madame B. in a somnambulistic state) was one day hysterical and
troublesome. Suddenly she exclaimed in terror that she heard A VOICE ON
THE LEFT, crying, ‘Enough, be quiet, you are a nuisance.’ She hunted in
vain for the speaker, who, of course, was inaudible to M. Janet, though
he was present. This sagacious speaker (a faculty of Madame B.’s own
nature) is ‘brought out’ by repeated passes, and when this moral and
sensible phase of her character is thus evoked, Madame B. is ‘Leonore.’
Madame B. now sometimes assumes an expression of beatitude, smiling and
looking upwards. As Dunois said of Jeanne when she was recalling her
visions, ‘miro modo exsultabat, levando suos oculos ad coelum.’ This
ecstasy Madame B. (as Leonie) dimly remembers, averring that ‘she has
been dazzled BY A LIGHT ON THE LEFT SIDE.’ Here apparently we have the
best aspect of poor Madame B. revealing itself in a mixture of hysterics
and hypnotism, and associating itself with an audible sagacious voice
and a dazzling light on the left, both hallucinatory.
The coincidence (not observed by M. Janet) with Jeanne’s earliest
experience is most curious. Audivit vocem a dextero latere.... claritas
est ab eodem latere in quo vox auditur, sed ibi communiter est magna
claritas. (She heard a voice from the right. There is usually a bright
light on the same side as the voice.) Like Madame B., Jeanne was at
first alarmed by these sensations.
The parallel, so far, is perfectly complete (except that ‘Leonore’
merely talks common sense, while Jeanne’s voices gave information
not normally acquired). But in Jeanne’s case I have found no hint of
temporary unconsciousness or ‘dissociation.’ When strung up to the most
intense mental eagerness in court, she still heard her voices, though,
because of the tumult of the assembly, she heard them indistinctly.
Thus her experiences are not associated with insanity, partial
unconsciousness, or any physical disturbance (as in some tales of second
sight), while the sagacity of the communications and their veracity
distinguish them from the hallucinations of mad people. As far as the
affair of Rouvray, the prophecy of the instant death of an insolent
soldier at Chinon (evidence of Pasquerel, her confessor), and such
things go, we have, of course, many alleged parallels in the predictions
of Mr. Peden and other seers of the Covenant. But Mr. Peden’s political
predictions are still unfulfilled, whereas concerning the ‘dear gage’
which the English should lose in France within seven years, Jeanne may
be called successful.
On the whole, if we explain Jeanne’s experiences as the expressions
of her higher self (as Leonore is Madame B.’s higher self), we are
compelled to ask what is the nature of that self?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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