“Let us, to come to details, take one of the simplest cases.  The subject is a girl of eighteen, called Josephine.  She lives at Voiron, in the department of Isere.  By means of downward passes she is brought back to the condition of a baby at its mother’s breast The passes continue and the wonder-tale runs its course.  Josephine can no longer speak; and we have the great silence of infancy, which seems to be followed by a silence more mysterious still.  Josephine no longer answers except by signs:  she is not yet born.  ’She is floating in darkness.’  They persist; the sleep becomes heavier; and suddenly, from the depths of that sleep, rises the voice of another being, a voice unexpected and unknown, the voice of a churlish, distrustful and discontented old man.  They question him.  At first he refuses to answer, saying that ’of course he’s there, and he’s speaking;’ that ‘he sees nothing;’ and ‘he’s in the dark.’  They increase the number of passes and gradually gain his confidence.  His name is Jean Claude Bourdon; he is an old man; he has long been ailing and bedridden.  He tells the story of his life.  He was born at Champvent, in the parish of Polliat, in 1812.  He went to school until he was eighteen and served his time in the army with the Seventh Artillery at Besancon; and he describes his gay time there, while the sleeping girl makes gestures of twirling an imaginary moustache.  When he goes back to his native place, he does not marry, but he has a mistress.  He leads a solitary life (I omit all but the essential facts), and dies at the age of seventy, after a long illness.

“We now hear the dead man speak; and his posthumous revelations are not sensational, which, however, is not an adequate reason for doubting their genuineness.  He feels himself growing out of his body; but he remains attached to it for a fairly long time.  His fluidic body, which is at first diffused, takes a more concentrated form.  He lives in darkness, which he finds disagreeable; but he does not suffer.  At last, the night in which he is plunged is streaked with a few flashes of light.  The idea comes to reincarnate himself and he draws near to her who is to be his mother (that is, the mother of Josephine).  He encircles her until the child is born, whereupon he gradually enters the child’s body.  Until about the seventh year, his body is surrounded by a sort of floating mist, in which he used to see many things which he has not seen since.

“The next thing to be done is to go back beyond Jean Claude.  A mesmerization lasting nearly three-quarters of an hour, without lingering at any intermediate stage, brings the old man back to babyhood.  A fresh silence, a new limbo; and then, suddenly, another voice and an unexpected individual.  This time it is an old woman who has been very wicked; and so she is in great torment (she is dead, at the actual instant; for, in this inverted world, lives go backward and of course begin at the end).  She is in deep darkness, surrounded by evil spirits.  She speaks at first in a faint voice, but always gives definite replies to the questions put to her, instead of cavilling at every moment, as Jean Claude did.  Her name is Philomene Carteron.