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The Unknown Guest by Maurice Maeterlinck

IV. THE ELBERFELD HORSES

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"It is the time when there are apples," Rolf replied.

On the same occasion, the same professor, without knowing what it represented, held out to him a card marked with red and blue squares:

"What's this?"

"Blue, red, lots of cubes," replied the dog.

Sometimes his repartees are not lacking in humour.

"Is there anything you would like me to do for you?" a lady of his acquaintance asked, one day.

And Master Rolf gravely answered:

"Wedelen," which means, "Wag your tail!"

Rolf, whose fame is comparatively young, has not yet, like his illustrious rivals of the Rhine Province, been the object of minute enquiries and copious and innumerable reports. But the incidents which I have just mentioned and which are vouched for by such men as Professor Mackenzie and M. Duchatel, the learned and clear-sighted vice-president of the Societe Universelle d'Etudes Psychiques,[1] who went to Mannheim for the express purpose of studying them, appear to be no more controvertible than the Elbenfeld occurrences, of which they are a sort of replica or echo. It is not unusual to find these coincidences amongst abnormal phenomena. They spring up simultaneously in different quarters of the globe, correspond with one another and multiply as though in obedience to a word of command. It is probable therefore that we shall see still more manifestations of the same class. One might almost say that a new spirit is passing over the world and, after awakening in man forces whereof he was not aware, is now reaching other creatures who with us inhabit this mysterious earth, on which they live, suffer and die, as we do, without knowing why.

[1] See the interesting lecture by M. Edmond Duchatel, published in the Annales des Sciences Psychiques, October 1913.

I have not been to Mannheim, but I made my pilgrimage to Elberfeld and stayed long enough in the town to carry away with me the conviction shared by all those who have undertaken the journey.

A few months ago, Herr Krall, whom I had promised the year before that I would come and see his wonderful horses, was kind enough to repeat his invitation in a more pressing fashion, adding that his stable would perhaps be broken up after the 15th of September and that, in any case, be would be obliged, by his doctor's orders, to interrupt for an indefinite period a course of training which he found exceedingly fatiguing.

I at once left for Elberfeld, which, as everybody knows, is an important manufacturing-town in Rhenish Prussia and is, in fact, more quaint, pleasing and picturesque than one might expect. I had long since read everything that had been published on the question; and I was wholly persuaded of the genuineness of the incidents. Indeed it would be difficult to have any doubts after the repeated and unremitting supervision and verification to which the experiments are subjected, a supervision which is of the most rigorous type, often hostile and almost ill-mannered. As for their interpretation, I was convinced that telepathy, that is to say, the transmission of thought from one subconsciousness to another, remained, however strange it might be in this new region, the only acceptable theory; and this in spite of certain circumstances that seemed plainly to exclude it. In default of telepathy proper, I inclined toward the mediumistic or subliminal theory, which was very ably outlined by M. de Vesmes in a remarkable lecture delivered, on the 22nd of December, 1912, before the Societe Universelle d'Etudes Psychiques. It is true that telepathy, especially when carried to its extreme limits, appeals above all to the subliminal forces, so that the two theories overlap at more than one point and it is often difficult to make out where the first ends and the second begins. But this discussion will be more appropriate a little later.