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The Unknown Guest by Maurice Maeterlinck

II. PSYCHOMETRY

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She made two rather curious mistakes in this experiment. The first was that, at the time when she saw me in Krall's stable-yard, I was no longer there. She had received her vision just in the interval of a few hours between two visits. Experience shows, however, that this is a usual error among psychometers. They do not, properly speaking, see the action at the very moment of its performance, but rather the customary and familiar action, the principal thing that preoccupies either the person about whom they are being consulted or the person consulting them. They frequently go astray in time. There is not, therefore, necessarily any simultaneity between the action and the vision; and it is well never to take their statements in this respect literally.

The other mistake referred to our dress: Krall and I were in ordinary town clothes, whereas she saw us in those long coats which stable-lads wear when grooming their horses.

Let us now make every allowance for my wife's unconscious suggestions: she knew that I was at Elberfeld and that I should be in the midst of the horses, and she knew or could easily conjecture my state of mind. The transmission of thought is remarkable; but this is a recognized phenomenon and one of frequent occurrence and we need not therefore linger over it.

The real mystery begins with the description of a place which my wife had never seen and which I had not seen either at the time of writing the note which established the psychometrical communication. Are we to believe that the appearance of what I was one day to see was already inscribed on that prophetic sheet of paper, or more simply and more probably that the paper which represented myself was enough to transmit either to my wife's subconsciousness or to Mme. M--, whom at that time I had never met, an exact picture of what my eyes beheld three or four hundred miles away? But, although this description is exceedingly accurate--paved yard, big tree, building on the left, garden at the back--is it not too general for all idea of chance coincidence to be eliminated? Perhaps, by insisting further, greater precision might have been obtained; but this is not certain, for as a role the pictures follow upon one another so swiftly in the medium's vision that he has no time to perceive the details. When all is said, experiences of this kind do not enable us to go beyond the telepathic explanation. But here is a different one, in which subconscious suggestion cannot play any part whatever.

Some days after the experiment which I have related, I received from England a request for my autograph. Unlike most of those which assail an author of any celebrity, it was charming and unaffected; but it told me nothing about its writer. Without even noticing from what town it was sent to me, after showing it to my wife, I replaced it in its envelope and took it to Mme. M--. She began by describing us, my wife and myself, who both of us had touched the paper and consequently impregnated it with our respective "fluids."

I asked her to pass beyond us and come to the writer of the note. She then saw a girl of fifteen or sixteen, almost a child, who had been in rather indifferent health, but who was now very well indeed. The girl was in a beautiful garden, in front of a large and luxurious house standing in the midst of rather hilly country. She was playing with a big, curly-haired, long-eared dog. Through the branches of the trees one caught a glimpse of the sea.