|
THE GHOST OF VOLTAIRE
Alice Bodington in the Open Court.
 A
very curious instance is given of a strong and undoubtedly
subjective impression by Mrs. Pittar, a near connection of
the Bishop of Ripon. Travelling in Switzerland in the
year of 1867, Mrs. Pittar stayed at the Chateau de Prangias,
near Nyon, with her husband. They occupied a large,
oblong room, overlooking the terrace and Lake Leman, with an
old-fashioned black writing table in the middle of it. In
the middle of the night Mrs. Pittar woke suddenly from a
deep sleep and saw the room was flooded with a brilliant
moonlight. A strange feeling possessed her, a "sort of
certainty that a tall, thin old man in a flowered dressing
gown was seated and writing at the table in the middle of
the room." Not once did she turn her head in that
direction, nor did it occur to her at the time how odd it
was that she felt the old man was there without seeing him.
Her cries woke her husband, who naturally thought she had
had a nightmare, and could not understand his wife's
persistent assertions that an old man in a flowered dressing
gown was in the room. When at last he persuaded her to
look, there was no one there. |
February 7, 1892
GHOST
CLIPART INDEX
NEWSPAPER ARTICLES HOME |
"Next morning," says Mrs. Pittar, "my husband mentioned my
extraordinary nocturnal terror; the account, to my great surprise,
was received as a matter of course, the landlady's married daughter
merely remarking, "Ah, you have seen Voltaire!" "It appeared on
inquiry that Voltaire, in extreme old age, used often to visit this
chateau, and the room in which we slept was known to have been his
sitting-room. Of this neither my husband nor myself knew
anything. I had not been thinking about Voltaire, nor looking
at any portrait of him. Syracuse Herald, Syracuse, New York -
February 7
1892
'Tis best the mind should be employed,
Indolence leaves a craving void;
The soul is like a subtle fire,
Which if not fed must soon expire.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
|
