Inhaltsangabe
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1900 Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IX THE ROYAL CYCLE IF I were obliged to give this cycle a place proportioned to that which it occupies in the somambulic life of Mlle. Smith, a hundred pages would not suffice. But permit me to pass rapidly over facts concerning which l should only be obliged to repeat the greater part of the observations called forth by the preceding romances, which apply equally well, mutatis mutandis, to the personification of Marie Antoinette by Helene. The choice of this role is naturally explained by the innate tastes of Mlle. Smith for everything that is noble, distinguished, elevated above the level of the common herd, and by the fact that some exterior circumstance fixed her hypnoid attention upon the illustrious queen of France in preference to the many other historic figures equally qualified to serve as a point of attachment for her subconscious megalomaniac reveries. In default of absolutely certain information on this point, I strongly suspect the engraving from the Memoirs of a Physician, representing the dramatic scene of the decanter between Balsamo and the Dauphiness, of having given birth to this identification of Helene with Marie Antoinette, as well as to that of her secondary personality of Leopold with Cagliostro. We have, in fact, seen that this engraving (pp. 9495), so well calculated to impress the imagination, was shown to Mlle. Smith by Mme. B. at the end of a seance--that is, at a moment when one is never sure that Helene's return to her normal state is complete, and in which her hypnoid personality, still on a level with consciousness, so to speak, is very prone to absorb the interesting suggestions which the environment may furnish. It was several months--a year and a quarter, possibly--after this incident (the precise date of which, ...
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