ly through Madame de Girardin. Its
communications soothed her last days, and prepared her for a death
fragrant with hope. She believed she was in communication with the
spirits of Sappho, Shakespeare, Madame de Sevigne, and Moliere; and
amidst these convictions she died, without disquietude, without
rebellion, without regret. She had introduced a taste for such
experiments into the home of Victor Hugo, in Jersey. Nine years later,
Auguste Vacquerie, in Les Miettes de l'Histoire (Crumbs of History),
wrote as follows:

Madame de Girardin's departure [from Jersey] did not abate my
desire for experimenting with the tables. I pressed eagerly
forward into this great marvel,--the half-opened door of death.

No longer did I wait for the evening. At midday I began my
investigations, and forsook them only with the dawn. If I
interrupted myself at all during that time, it was only to dine.
Personally I had no effect upon the table, and did not touch it;
but I asked questions. The mode of communication was always the
same, and I had accustomed myself to it. Madame de Girardin sent
me two tablets from Paris,--a little tablet, one of whose legs
was a pencil, for writing and drawing. A few trials proved that
this tablet designed poorly and wrote badly. The other was
larger, and consisted of a disk, or dial, whereon was inscribed
the alphabet, the letters being designated by a movable pointer.
This apparatus also was rejected after an unsuccessful trial,
and I finally resumed the primitive process, which--simplified
by familiarity and sundry convenient abbreviations--soon
afforded all desirable rapidity. I talked fluently with the
table, the murmur of the sea mingling with our conversation,
whose mysteriousness was increased by the winter, at night,
amidst storms, and through isolation. The table no longer
responded by a few words merely, but by sentences and pages. It
was usually grave and magisterial, but at times it would be
witty and even comical. Sometimes it had an access of choler.
More than once I was insolently reproved for speaking to it
irreverently, and I confess to not feeling at ease until I had
obtained forgiveness. The table made certain exactions. It chose
the interlocutors it preferred. It wished sometimes to be
questioned in verse, and was obeyed; and then it would answer in
verse. All these dial