If we admit reincarnation, nothing exists but the present personality. Marie Antoinette comporting herself as the real person might do, is an intangible, non-existent thing; there could never be two persons in one. The caterpillar and the butterfly which has issued from it cannot exist simultaneously.

Nevertheless, I am not quite sure that M. Flournoy has not attempted to put a check upon this hypothesis from the fact that he succeeded through the medium in attributing the roles of Philippe Egalite, and the Marquis de Mirabeau to Messrs. Demole and Auguste de Morsier, presented as such.

All present excitation can receive only a response improvised at the moment. Marie Antoinette, become the Smith girl, is incapable of acting spontaneously as a queen, but Miss Smith is capable of regression. The only thing that she can do is to set in motion authentic negatives. Her somnambulistic consciousness may very well make use of images of the past to compose Harlequins: but although the medium possess no historic culture her presentments always show probability; the style and spelling are of the period, the facts and images conform to history. What is more natural than that among the effaced images she should revive a family scene wherein she sees herself with her three children and Madame Elizabeth. This scene calls back the memory of an innocent melody, rather archaic and true to the period. The song of a mother who rocks her baby is among all actions one of those best calculated to affect the mechanism of memory. • These ancient images should have been collected with reverent care in order not to strain the delicate instrument which has registered them.

If it had been possible to use the method of M. Rochas in this case, one would have begun by asking the cooperation of Leopold, sole master of the organism of the subject, and persuading him to lend his aid, because of the great value of the experiment.

Then the medium, once hypnotized, instead of making a difficult leap into a too remote time, would have been led, little by little, to retrace the course of her present life: would have reentered the body of her mother: and it would have been interesting to learn if, in the Beyond, in the spirit state, she would have found the same evidences of her former lives.

In place of that, what was done? Miss Smith was made a source of amusement. At the close of a seance in which she had embodied the Hindu princess, or some one else, they suddenly suggested to her a return to the role of Marie Antoinette: for what reason? In order to escort the Queen to dinner, where they poured bumpers of wine for her, which she drained glass after glass, without turning a hair: whereas, in her normal state, Miss Smith was sobriety itself. Marie Antoinette took coffee . . . they made her smoke, etc. How different should be the procedure befitting the investigation of a mystery ! Is it true then, as the author affirms, that this subject provokes in him only a mild amusement? Alas!

The truth is that for the learned professor there was no mystery: he believed sincerely in his theory of the pathological neoplasm and experiments conducted in such a fashion could not militate against his theory.

Thus, no order was observed in the production of the phenomena; and it was not by a series of regressions, but suddenly, that Miss Smith reentered a far distant cycle of existence, returning to an incarnation which took place in India.

"Miss Smith," declares Professor Flournoy, "is truly most remarkable in her Hindu somnambulism. One wonders, with stupefaction, how there comes to this girl from the shores of Lake Leman, who is without artistic education or special knowledge of the Orient, a perfection of technique which the greatest actress doubtless could not attain save by prolonged studies or a visit to the banks of the Ganges." {From the Indies, p. 272.)

However it may be, here are the facts: Helen in a somnambulistic state plays the role of a Hindu princess, Simandini, daughter of an Arab Sheik and wife of an Indian prince, Sivrouka Nayaca. This prince lived in Kanara and built there in 1401 the fortress of Tchandraghiri. At his death Simandini was burned alive upon his pyre.

None of the persons present knew these proper names when they were cited: the history of India is obscure and the medium had complete freedom of invention. Nevertheless, it was found that Kanara was situated in the province of Malabar, but no Tchandraghiri was found: or rather, Flour-noy discovered three, but they did not correspond in situation or date to the medium's story. As for the other names, at first undiscoverable, the scholars and historians consulted gave up hope of locating any clues to them. It was M. Flournoy himself who one day stumbled upon an old history of India in which he found the following passage:

"Kanara and the adjacent provinces on the side of Delby may be regarded as the Georgia of Hin-doustan: it is there, they say, that the most beautiful women are found of whom the natives are very jealous, seldom allowing them to be seen by strangers."

"Tchandragari, whose name means Mountain of the Moon, is a vast fortress constructed in 1401 by the Rajah Sivrouka Nayaca. This prince, like his successors, was of the sect of Djains." (From General History of Ancient India, by Marles, Paris, 1828, t. I. pp. 268-269.)

M. Flournoy finds this document to fall short, under the pretext that the guarantee of Marles, as an historian, is not of the first order. If the work had been good, it would have been more widely known and might very probably have been the source of a romance imagined by the subliminal consciousness of Miss Smith. But the valueless book was buried in the deepest oblivion. For M. Flournoy it fails as an historical document, which means that we must nevertheless seek the source of the romance in the book by Marles, but we must guard against imagining it to have a basis of truth. However, they had not yet found Tchandragari; it was Mr. Barth who filled this lack by finding a Fort Tchandraghiri, situated in South Kanara - that is, corresponding to the conditions of time and place necessary to corroborate the romance.