I resume my narrative, passing over numerous
small occurrences which may be noticed hereafter.
Of the long and serious conversation which I had
that night with Frederick Brandon, I shall say nothing;
as much of the material was necessarily

[figure description] Page 087.[end figure description]

employed the next day in his conference with Marie de
Berniere. To this conference let us now proceed.
At the appointed hour, the carriage of Madame de
Chateauneuve stopped suddenly at the door of the
fair young mourner's habitation. The door was instantly
opened to receive her, and she was soon
welcomed to the embraces of her friend. Marie
was already dressed to receive her; but habited so
plainly, and in a style so unusual for the street, that
none of her servants dreamed, when she was making
her toilet, that she was preparing or designing to go
abroad. In this proceeding, by a just instinct, she
consulted the unexpressed objects of her lover. Her
attendants were quite taken by surprise when she
ordered her bonnet and cloak. Her maid, indeed,
expostulated with her with that earnestness which duty
and affection may be suffered to indulge in; first, in
regard to her health, sudden exposure to capricious
weather, and all that sort of thing; and, next, in
relation to her style of dress, which the Tabitha asseverated,
was by no means fit to be seen by fashionable
eyes. But Marie silenced the officious damsel by
a word, which was sufficiently positive without being
harsh or stern. She herself, by the way, took the
initiate in all the proceeding, and spoke to her visitor
as if the proposed drive was altogether an extemporaneous
suggestion of her own.

“I am so rejoiced that you are come,” said she,
“for somehow, I feel to-day, for the first time, like
taking a little sunshine and fresh air. Everything
looks so gloomy here. You shall give me a seat, dear

[figure description] Page 088.[end figure description]

Ninine (a pet term of endearment to her friend), and
talk to me as we ride, and cheer me, if you can, into
better spirits. I am so glad that you are come.”

And, hurrying her toilet, and wrapping herself
closely up in the ample territory of a shawl of Thibet,
she took her friend's arm and eagerly led the way to
the carriage.

“If the Father should come?” was the apparent
question of the old dark mulatto servant-man, Andres,
as, with a hesitating and reluctant manner; he opened
the door.

“Tell him that I have gone out to ride, Andres;
that I want fresh air and sunshine. Say that I am
gone with Madame de Chateauneuve.”

Nothing more was said, and the carriage, with its
precious burden, was soon out of sight of the porter,
who yet lingered at the door. The drive, by Madame
de Chateauneuve's instructions, was purposely a circuitous
one. It led at first directly out of the city,
but when a certain distance had been reached, the
carriage was wheeled about, and, after wending its
way through other parts of the city, was at length
brought to a stand before Madame de Chateauneuve's
dwelling. The friends alighted and entered the house,
where Brandon was in waiting to receive them. He
saw them approaching from the window, but did not
dare to descend and assist them, as he was unwilling
that any watchful or suspicious eye might detect his
presence on this occasion. His plan of operations
was one which must fail without the nicest precautions,
and, as he observed to me the night before,

[figure description] Page 089.[end figure description]

“Whether I am to play against man or devil, it is
evident that my opponent is an old and adroit manager
of the cards. We must beware that he does not
get the deal.” The impatience of Madame de Berniere,
when they encountered, left him little time or
occasion for preliminaries.

“You have provoked my doubts and curiosity,
Frederick, to such a degree that I could not sleep last
night. It is not that I believe it in your power to
shake my faith in what I have seen and know. But
the bare possibility that I may have been deceived,
which your view of the case has suggested—my great
respect for your judgment, which is confessedly so
cool and so sagacious—my own present dissatisfaction
and discontent—in short, the total loss of that peace
of mind which should undoubtedly have followed my
complete resignation to that fate which required that
I should make every sacrifice of self; these all combine
to make me eager to hear anything—even though
it be against my hope—if it will only silence my
anxieties. Tell me, then, Frederick, what is it that
you know, or wherefore and whom do you suspect?”

“I have said, Marie, that I regarded you as the
victim of a most cunning and shocking imposture. I
am not the man easily to delude myself, and until I
am assured, myself, I am not the man to attempt to
delude others. I have listened patiently and thoughtfully
to the curious and startling narrative of facts
which you have given me. Startling they are—and
they would be terrible indeed, were there not certain
peculiarities in the history of this affair, which seem

[figure description] Page 090.[end figure description]

to me to divest it of all its supernatural elements,
and reduce it to nothing more stupendous than a well-conceived
and cleverly played scheme of a practised
and subtle juggler.”

“But that face of death, Frederick—those fearful
and glassy eyes, which stared into my own, freezing
me to my very soul; that voice, so entirely the same;
that ghastly aspect, and over all, the revelation of
that terrible secret which I had fondly imagined was
buried and obliterated in the insane thought in which
it had existence.”

“Stay, Marie; suffer me to proceed. In particular,
let me request that you do not allow your imagination
to become once more the ally of this superstition.
It has done some mischief in this manner already.
It was in some degree the knowledge of this susceptibility
of yours that first persuaded the ghost-raiser
to an experiment upon your fears, in which he has
hitherto been only too successful.”

“But do you, then, not believe at all in ghosts,
Frederick?”

“I have no knowledge of the subject, Marie. I
have never seen a ghost; but am rather more inclined
to believe in them than otherwise, since I believe in
the immortality of the soul—since I know not where
or how the soul is employed after it shuffles off its
earthly garment; and since I can easily believe that
there are many cases, where, for specific purposes
of mortal benefit, the Deity may permit the freed
spirit to resume its habit and reappear in the ancient
places which it has long abandoned.”

[figure description] Page 091.[end figure description]

“Well?”

“You would contend that this is one of those very
cases, but I confidently say, `No.' Indeed, it would
be one of those cases which, by showing to me what
monstrous crimes might be committed under such a
sanction, would be almost conclusive, to my mind,
against the whole doctrine of pneumatology. I am
not unwilling to believe that the spectre may be permitted
to reappear for warning and counsel—in order to
succor the innocent whom no help could otherwise reach—
or to baffle the meditated guilt to which there is no
means of earthly opposition. But how can I persuade
myself that the Deity will yield such privilege to the
spirit who seeks only to mortify and affright; to the
guilty spirit also: one who, in life, was himself a
criminal—brutally regardless of the nature which he
outraged! Should he be permitted, in both lives, to
exercise a power of wrong? Shall he, after death,
be suffered to renew his outrages to the mortal terror
and prolonged suffering of his former victim?—to
her public shame and exposure?”

“Alas, Frederick! but I too was guilty!”

“Not to him! You meditated a crime against him,
it is true; but as you did not execute your offence, as
he did not suffer from it, your real crime was against
the Deity. To both did you endeavor to atone. You
repented of your evil purpose almost as soon as you
conceived it; certainly in season to prevent its execution.
It was a guilty thought only, which better
thoughts have sufficed to eradicate. He surely has no
work of vengeance to execute!”

[figure description] Page 092.[end figure description]

“But he may execute the vengeance of the good
God, Frederick?”

“Scarcely! How can we suppose that the Deity
will employ against the offender the agency of a far
greater criminal? How suppose that he will leave to
the spirit of malice to execute the decrees of justice?
This would be to put into the hands of the aggressor
the means of further aggression. Of course, we cannot
pretend to sit in judgment upon the will and purposes
of God. But it is not denied to us that we
shall exercise our best modes of thinking—our human
faculties of reason—according to the usual standards
of mortal judgment. We know that the unfortunate
person whose spectre you suppose yourself to have seen
was a heinous criminal—a bold blasphemer—a brutal
tyrant—a man who died literally with curses upon his
lips! That he should be in a situation to receive miraculous
power from the Divine Father of Good—that
he should be chosen as the special agent for the prosecution
of omniscient judgment—is scarcely compatible
with possibility, according to any of those laws and principles
which a merely human reason recognizes as characteristic
of propriety or justice. If we are to regard
this as a supernatural visitation, how much more
reasonable to ascribe it to the malicious dispensations
of a Power of Evil, rather than one of Good! This
power, it is quite probable, from all that we see and
learn, is as active and present now, in malignant
hostility to the interests of earth, as it was five
thousand years ago. It may work its miracles also;
and the mission which it is thought to execute, in the

[figure description] Page 093.[end figure description]

present instance, is of a kind rather to proceed from
a cruel and envious than from a benevolent original.
What does it seek? To vex and separate the hearts
that love would unite; to disturb the repose and destroy
the happiness of that being to whom it allowed
neither peace nor happiness in life; to continue, beyond
the grave, a persecution which it delighted to indulge
while living; to mar the harmony and order of society;
to fill our souls with vague terrors—with a constant
sense of insecurity—with the dread of evils ever at
the elbow—and to inspire horror in scenes the most
sweet and peaceful! And all for what? Because of
ancient offences—meditated and not performed, and
amply repented, if not wholly atoned for. Are we to
suppose that all our thoughts are thus watched by
malignant spirits, in order that we may be tormented
by their capricious hate and tyranny? Why was
this revelation never made to you before? Why was
this terrible rebuke to your hopes left unadministered
so long? Why, if the purpose had been to adjudge
you unworthy of all future happiness, such as the
natural affections of youth bestow, why were you not
counselled to the proper preparation for this sacrifice,
that you might wean your thoughts from every but
immortal attachments—taught sternly, at an earlier
season, that, for the meditated crime of your heart,
you were to make that heart expiate by a dark and
gloomy isolation for its single unhappy fault? This
warning was doubly necessary at an early period, to
prevent you from involving other destinies with your
own! You do not say that your spectral visitant

[figure description] Page 094.[end figure description]

warned you against me? He did not say to you that
I did not truly and tenderly love you—that I had
not built largely and with confidence upon the hopes
with which my love for you had inspired me? He
did not say that I was unworthy of you, or that we
were unfit for each other?”

“No! no! Frederick, no!”

“Why, then, am I to share your punishment? I
was certainly in no way privy to your offence. If I
truly and tenderly love you—if I am guiltless of this
crime; if the prospect be a reasonable one, that we
should be happy together in the bonds of marriage—
what are we to think of that benevolence or justice
in the Father of all blessings—whom we are taught
to honor chiefly because of his fast attributes of benevolence
and justice—if he shall forbear his judgment
upon the guilty until he can sweep, with the same
doom, the innocent also? Allowing that this messenger
of evil comes from the grave, it is impossible that
I can persuade myself that his mission is from God!
Rather”—

“Forbear, Frederick, forbear! For my sake!”

“But in truth, dear Marie, he comes from neither!
He is but a vulgar ghost of mortal manufacture. You
perceive that he does not come at all until we are
engaged to be married. This is a fact of considerable
significance! For thirteen months has this ghost kept
quietly in possession of your secret. For that space
of time you too have been permitted to sleep quietly,
with all its weight upon your conscience. There was
no incumbent duty felt, in all this period, to awaken

[figure description] Page 095.[end figure description]

your guilty heart—to check and rebuke your enjoyments—
to school you with terrors of the future. You
might engage in dances and song—to wander through
the fascinating mazes of a gay society, on the brink
always of eternal dangers, yet without a word of
warning. It is only when you are in possession of
another secret, that the awful monitor wakes up to
chide you for the past and to warn you against the
future. Clearly, then, it is the marriage that disturbs
the ghost, and not your past offences. He leaves his
cerements, and revisits the glimpses of our moon, when
he finds that you are about to wed another. Was
your crime, upon which he now so much insists, of no
importance, and totally unmeriting regard? It would
seem so. One would say, reasoning from common
laws, that our excellent ghost has not so much desired
to make you a penitent, as to keep you a widow.”

The case was put with evident effect. A pause ensued,
in which Frederick Brandon appeared to await
her answer. She replied after a little interval.

“You are reasoning, Frederick, as men are apt to
reason in ordinary concerns. But how shall we sit
in judgment upon the means and processes, the agents
and creatures, by which the Deity thinks fit to work.
Lucifer, himself, we are told, is but a creature of his
will, who works in obedience to his manifestation.”

“I do not gainsay this. I say nothing against it;
nor do I propose, dear Marie, to reason for the propriety
of God's performances. But this is what men
call a begging of the question. This is really the

[figure description] Page 096.[end figure description]

question. Is it the Deity who works, or is it the man,
or is it the devil? You assume the former, and I
deny it; and we have but one process left to us, that
of human reason (or it is our mockery only) to determine
upon our several opinions. Neither of us may
assume anything in the matter.”

“But the peculiar revelation which is made by this
messenger, Frederick?”

“To that I shall come directly. There are still
some preliminary considerations. Assuming that
Heaven has designed to influence your conduct by a
special messenger—and here, dear Marie, we must be
wonderfully cautious not to suffer the amour propre
too readily to persuade us of an importance in one
particular instance, which is to secure us this peculiar
consideration of the Deity—assuming, I say, that this
visitor is not only what he really pretends, but that
he is a special messenger from God—and the question
occurs, has he pursued a course which is consistent
with the usual workings of heavenly interposition?
The ministry of God, when he would work upon the
stubborn heart of man, is as really gentle and unobtrusive,
as silent and natural, as is the gentle falling
of the dews by night upon the feverish and famished
plant. Was the season chosen for this warning altogether
consistent with a divine and benevolent intention?
Would God delight, not only to counsel the
sinner, but to scare and shame him to confession by
a coup de theatre? Would he choose the scene of
revelry for such an annunciation? Were there not a

[figure description] Page 097.[end figure description]

thousand other and better opportunities in the long
interval of thirteen months before—the still hours of
the night—the solitude of one's chamber—one of those
periods when the heart inclines to look back, and to
sigh and weep over the memorials of the past!—when
the mind is most free for contemplation and reflection,
and the conscience most susceptible to all teachings
which appeal to it through its consciousness of past
errors and mistakes? Is it not reasonable to conjecture,
from all that we know of the Deity, that he
would choose for such a purpose some such period of
self-security and solitude? But, on the other hand,
how natural for the vulgar mortal, conceiving the idea
of producing an impression by some cunning jugglery
(such as I take this to be) to execute his design just
at the period chosen—when there would be a great
and vulgar sensation in consequence—a town talk—
and when the superstitious terrors of the victim would
be necessarily heightened by the most cruel mortification
of her pride! How could we suppose that the
Deity would work through such a medium, or with
such motives? You remember the spectre in Job?
How a thing was secretly brought to him, his ear only
receiving it faintly and imperfectly at first. The hour
chosen was that of midnight—when the deep sleep
has fallen upon earth and all its living creatures. His
instincts promptly teach him to shudder even at this
little whisper. It is premonitory. It is sent to prepare
and strengthen him against what follows. He
feels the approach of the unknown presence, which he
does not see, which had not yet spoken audibly.

[figure description] Page 098.[end figure description]

Then he becomes conscious that a spirit stands before
him, vague, formless, indefinite—shapeless and featureless—
but looking a terrible power before his eyes.
The voice then follows. The burden of the speech is
spoken! How brief—how simple—how awful—how
utterly wanting in details—yet ample, as addressing
itself to a conscience already fully counselled by all
its instincts. And thus it is everywhere in sacred
history, that the Spirit of God reveals himself to the
objects of his interest. He awes, but he does not scare
them. He endows them with an adequate strength
to endure his visitation, and does not overwhelm them
with such terrors as threaten life. It is in this particular
that we find the conclusive difference between the
really supernatural visitation and the simulacrum. It
is in this particular that the art of the juggler fails.
That you should have been stricken into senselessness
almost to death, by the spectre, is to me conclusive of
the total absence of the supernatural. Look at all
the cases that occur in sacred history. It is with a
whisper that the Deity calls the boy Samuel, at midnight,
to his mission. He accommodates his voice to
the strength of the being whom he summons, and nowhere
leaves him without the strength to endure his
presence. It is thus that he enables his inspired men
to seek him in the lonely mountains, the multitude
being kept away—and they are never crushed by the
encounter. There is but a single instance that I can
recall, looking like an exception to this rule—which it
really is not—and that is the sudden, silent hand, at
the feast of Belshazzar, which wrote Heaven's

[figure description] Page 099.[end figure description]

judgment upon the wall. Awe and fear possessed the
hearts of the spectators, but not an utter death-like
prostration of the faculties. But it was in secret only,
in the ear of Daniel, that the mysterious signification
of the writing was made known. It is one of the
wondrous features which distinguish the operations of
the Deity, that they are so quiet, so unobtrusive, so
wholly unostentatious. Were it otherwise, his visitations
would utterly wreck the reason of men; and a
miracle, instead of being what it is, a special advent
of truth, would be only a visitation of death. Ours
is a day of human marvels, and science performs for
the ignorant her full amount of miracles. In the
spectre that we now discuss, I fancy that I can discern
some of the workings of human science, and quite as
much of a human art. Let us look to some other
particulars. I am very sure that the features of which
you speak, as distinguishing the spectre—the glazed
eyes, which yet see—the wan cheeks—the whitened lips—
the general aspect of the grave and death, which it
wore, are all rather due to chemical agents than to
the spiritual world. But, then, you recognized a
striking resemblance to the features of the late Colonel
de Berniere?”

“I certainly did.”

“Now, then, if it were important to the mission of
the spectre that you should see and recognize his
features, and that they should so strikingly resemble
those of the person of whom it claimed to be the
spirit, why should they wear the appearance of death,
also, as well as life? If the spirit were living, why

[figure description] Page 100.[end figure description]

voluntarily assume the features of the grave, when it
was the object to impress you with the recollection of
the living man? Why, on the other hand, if the aspect
of the grave were to be worn—of absolute death—
why is it that the exhibition was not one of that
complete corruption and decay which we know to be
inevitable after a thirteen months' burial? The spectre
tries to do too much. He does not rely upon his supernatural
endowments so much as upon your memory
and your conscience. He shows himself in a doubtfuldouble—
at once the spirit of a dead and a living
man, without wholly or correctly representing either!
But there is a still more striking difficulty in this personification.
Colonel de Berniere seems to have grown
a number of inches since his burial. Nobody who knew
him in New Orleans—and everybody did—but must
remember that he was of under-size—I think he could
not have been more than five feet four or five inches
high; and yet you will remember that the ghost was able
to impose himself upon you, in my Egyptian costume,
and yet I am fully five feet eleven. I myself remarked,
when I conducted him to you, that the appearance
was not only very like, but that he was just of
my height. We stood side by side, for a moment, at
the entrance, and our shoulders were on the same
level. I noticed one difference, that my simulacrum
stooped a little, which I do not; this would prove him
to be even taller than myself. Now, Colonel de Berniere
not only did not stoop, but was remarkable for
his erectness; throwing himself back rather, as is common
with persons consciously small, who are

[figure description] Page 101.[end figure description]

necessarily compelled to do so if they would seek the eyes
of their neighbors. You, I suppose, dear Marie, were
quite too much frightened to have discriminated these
things, else how could you suppose the Egyptian, at
one moment, to be me, and, in the very next, Colonel
de Berniere?”

Marie seemed to admit the charge by her silence,
her head drooping, but her eyes dilating—her soul at
sea—at strife, in that deep interest which her lover
had provoked in the singular and now dubious question
which he had raised. He resumed—

“Now, Marie, it is one way to defeat a supernatural
mission, which seeks only to impress warning and
convey command, so to terrify the mind of the person
receiving the visitation, as nearly to rob him of life
and reason. We are bound to assume the condition
in which you were left, as rather against than in favor
of the supernatural pretension of your visitor. Such
results never are known to follow a genuine spiritual
visitation. But terror is easily inspired, even
to death, by the blundering cruelty of mere vulgar
agents among men. I have glanced already at the
reason for this, but the point is one of too much importance
to the argument to be passed over lightly;
and I dwell on it the more particularly as one of the
most famous metaphysicians of the age has adverted
to the subject, arguing against the supernatural altogether.
It is Coleridge who contends that no mortal
could survive the presence of a real ghost; and he gives
an anecdote of two youths, one of whom endeavored
to frighten the other, who coolly mocked his

[figure description] Page 102.[end figure description]

pretensions, and, being armed with a loaded pistol, warned
him that he would fire if he persisted. But the
former, having secretly drawn the bullet, persevered,
and fearlessly stood the shot. The other, when he
found his bullet of no avail against the spectre, swooned
instantly, and finally died. The argument of the
`old man eloquent' is not urged with his usual ingenuity
or profundity. He overlooks one element of
the subject to which I have already adverted. The
mortal might well frighten to death the mortal who
relied wholly on carnal weapons, and offered merely a
general sentiment of incredulity to a philosophy which
has baffled the most thorough investigations. We, however,
are to assume that the power which decrees the
advent and the duty of the ghost, will so provide that
his object shall not be rendered ineffectual. We must
not doubt that he will prepare the mind of the spectator
with a supernatural strength adequate to the encounter.
His instincts, as in the case of Job, will
become his premonitors. Coleridge's student had
none of these premonitions, and his death was the
consequence of an instantaneous transition from a blind
and boyish incredulity to an equally boyish belief in
the reality of the spectre! The solemn purposes of
the Deity will not suffer to be baffled by the infirmities
of the flesh, when it is so certainly in his power to
succor and sustain the shrinking nature of humanity
by a provision as mysterious as that by which it is
assailed. That your Egyptian, in his first contact
with you, myself, and others, should have inspired no
such mysterious doubts and sensibilities as oppressed

[figure description] Page 103.[end figure description]

Job—and such as seem, in all cases, to have attended
the approach of the supernatural guest—is sufficiently
against his pretensions. That he should have frightened
you into convulsions is not more conclusive in
his favor than is the attainment of the same result
by the trick of the brutal juggler, when he seizes upon
the unprepared and superstitious child, and overwhelms
him with a terror against which, if from a divine intelligence,
the spectator is always measurably armed
and protected.”