(243) "Some months before his demise, my brother (Senator Carlo Fenzi) one day, as we were driving to town together from our villa of St. Andrea, told me that if he should be summoned first, he would endeavour to prove to me that life continued beyond the chasm of the grave, and that I was to promise him the same in case I went first; 'but,' said he, ' I am sure to go first, and, mind you, I feel quite sure that before the year is out - nay, in three months - I shall be no more.' This was said in June and he died on the 2nd of September, the same year, 1881.

"Now, on that fatal morning (the 2nd of September), I was some 70 miles away from Florence, namely, at Fortullino, a villa of ours on a rock on the sea, 10 miles south-east of Leghorn. Well, at about half-past 10 in the morning, I was seized with a fit of deep melancholy - a thing very unusual with me, who enjoy great serenity of mind. I had, however, no reason for being alarmed about my brother, who was then in Florence - as, although he had not been very well, the latest news of him was very good, as my nephew had written to say, 'Uncle is doing very comfortably, and it cannot even be said that he has really been ill' - so that I could not account for this sudden gloomy impression; yet the tears stood in my eyes, and in order not to burst out crying like a baby before our family party, I rushed out of the house without my hat on, although it was blowing a hurricane, and the rain fell in torrents, accompanied by permanent flashes of lightning, and the loud and unceasing roar of the sea and of thunder.

"I ran and ran, and only stopped when I had reached the end of a spacious lawn, from whence are seen, close on the other side of a small stream (the Fortulla), the huge stones or rocks heaped on one another, and stretching for a good half-mile along the sea coast. I there gazed to try and see a youth, a cousin of mine, who, having been born among the Zulus, retained enough of love for savage life to have yielded to the wish of going out in that terrible weather, 'to enjoy,' he said, 'the fury of the elements.' Judge of my surprise and astonishment when, instead of Giovanni (such is my cousin's name), I saw my brother, with a top hat and his big white moustachios, stepping leisurely along from one rock to another, as if the weather were fair and calm! I could not believe my eyes; and yet, there he was - he, unmistakably! I thought of rushing back to the house to call every one out to give him a hearty welcome, but then preferred waiting for him, and meanwhile waved my hand to him and called out his name as loud as I possibly could, although with the awful noise of wind, and sea, and thunder combined, nothing could naturally be heard. He meanwhile continued to advance, until, having reached a rock larger than the rest, he slipped behind it.

The distance between myself and the rock was, as nearly as I can judge, not more than 60 paces. I waited for him to reappear on the other side - but to no purpose, and I only saw Giovanni, who was just then emerging from a wood, and stepping on to the rocks. Giovanni, tall and slight, with a broad-brimmed hat and dark beard, was altogether a very different type, and I thought that my having seen Charles, my brother, must have been a freak of my sense of vision, and felt rather annoyed, and almost blushed at the idea that I could have been so deceived by a sort of phantom of my own fancy; yet could not help telling Giovanni, ' There must be some family likeness, for I must positively have taken you for Charles, although I cannot make out how you could have gone from behind the huge rock into the wood without my seeing you cross over.' ' I never was behind the rock,' he said,'for when you saw me, I had but just put my foot on the rocks'.

"Meanwhile we went home, put on fresh clothes, and then joined the rest to breakfast. My melancholy had left me, and I conversed merrily with all the young people. After breakfast a telegram came, telling me and my daughter Christina to hasten home, as Carlo had suddenly been taken very ill. We made preparations to at once depart, and meanwhile another telegram came, urging us to make all possible haste, as the illness was making rapid strides, but although we caught the nearest train, we only arrived in Florence at night; where we found, to our horror, that my brother had died just at the time when in the morning I had seen him on the rocks, when, feeling that his moments were numbered, he had been continually asking for me, regretting not to see me appear.

"In kissing his cold forehead with intense sorrow, as we had lived together, and loved one another during our whole lives, I thought, ' Poor dear Charlie; he kept his word!' "Sebastiano Fenzi".

In answer to inquiries, Chevalier Fenzi tells us that his "eyesight is excellent, especially at moderate distances.1' He has had one other experience of visual hallucination - representing an unrecognised figure - which was probably subjective.

The "Giovanni" of the narrative corroborates as follows: -

"Athens, (English address, 131, Tavistock Street, Bedford).

"May 3rd, 1884.

"My cousin, Sebastiano Fenzi, of Florence, has sent me your letter of 13th March last, with a request that I would give you my recollections of the strange circumstance attending the death of his brother, Carlo Fenzi, in September, 1881, a circumstance which made (and has left) a deep impression on my mind. I will endeavour to recall the whole circumstance. Nearly three years, it is true, have since passed, but my recollection of the event, on account of its strangeness, remains clear.

"Passing through Italy in the autumn of 1881, I profited by the occasion to visit my relatives. At Milan I learnt that the major portion were at Fortullino, my cousin's seaside villa. Thither I accordingly went, arriving the last days of August. Fortullino is a charming villa, situated on the top of a cliff on the sea, and surrounded by deep growths of trees and shrubs. The weather, during the beginning of my stay, was very bad, rain, thunder, strong winds, and heavy sea. I remember that on the morning of my cousin's death - none then dreamed the end was near - indulging in a favourite weakness (?). - I started off alone for an escapade along the shore. Descending by the hillside to the beach, I passed on, leaping from boulder to boulder, climbing over, or passing round them when too huge, past a bend, which hid me from a view of the villa, for some distance along the shore.

"Returning for breakfast, I found the rain (driven into my face by the wind) blinding, and, fearing an accident, entered the wood. The undergrowth of the shrubs, and the wet state of the ground, urged me to try the open again. This I did, emerging just inside the bend, in full sight of the house. To my surprise I saw my cousin standing on the edge of the cliff. When I approached him he remarked that there must be a strange family likeness, as he had mistaken me for his brother Carlo, being on the rocks, but wondered how I had managed to enter the wood unseen by him, and then suddenly leave it again. I replied that he had not seen me on the rocks before leaving the wood (for I was out of sight). The matter shortly afterwards dropped. Scarcely was breakfast over than a wire arrived, summoning him and his daughter Christina to Florence, - Carlo was very ill. They left at once, I staying, at their request, with the younger members at Fortullino. Our next news was that Carlo Fenzi had died - about the very time that Sebastiano had fancied to have mistaken me for his brother. " J0HN Douglas de Fenzi".

[Even apart from the evidence that "Giovanni" was not in sight when the figure was seen, it would be difficult to regard this as a case of mistaken identity. For Chevalier Fenzi, being specially on the look out for "Giovanni," would be specially unlikely to mistake him for someone else].

Here we encounter a feature of which there are altogether nine examples in the present collection1 - a previous compact between the parties that the one who died first should endeavour to make the other sensible of his presence. Considering what an extremely small number of persons make such a compact, compared with those who do not, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that its existence has a certain efficacy. The cause of this might be sought in some quickening of the agent's thought, in relation to the percipient, as the time for fulfilment approached. But considering how often spontaneous telepathy acts without any conscious set of the distant mind towards the person impressed, it is safer to refer the phenomenon to the same sort of blind movements as seem sometimes, at supreme crises, to evoke a response out of memories and affinities that have long lapsed from consciousness (see Chapter XII (The Development Of Telepathic Hallucinations), § 9); on which view, the efficacy of the compact may quite as readily be conceived to depend on its latent place in the percipient's mind as in the agent's.

In the next case - from Major Owen, of 4, Grove Road, Eastbourne - the tie between the two parties was, we learn, one rather of blood than of affection.

"November 17th, 1883.