Response from the editor of La Vérité to the complaint by Father Barricand
“Dear Mr. Allan Kardec,
Would you kindly insert the following lines in the next issue of your Spiritist Review?
I was very surprised when I opened the last issue of your Review (July 1864) and find there one letter signed by Barricand, in which that theologian mentioned my name with respect to a report that I published about one of his anti-Spiritist courses (La Vérité, April 10th, 1864).
The very judicious observations with which you followed that unqualifiable and much delayed protest would certainly dismiss my personal response if I were not afraid that my silence would go like a defeat or a mistake to the eyes of some. I herein declare that my conscience could not have associated to the serious criticism he made to me for supposedly having fantasized and deviated the course in question. I attest before God if I have not reproduced exactly the same phrases and the same words pronounced by my contradictor, continuing certain of having given them the true meaning.
Besides, if the high intelligence of Father Barricand considers my own too little or too heavy to have been able to extract the true meaning of his speech through the sinuous but flowery paths that he walked; if Father Barricand takes from that premise the induction that in such a case I am not allowed to affirm or attest; my word, it is very possible! In such a case and to be faithful to my principles of tolerance, and would almost criticize myself for having defended La Vérité and the other Spiritist journals against delusional accusations, born in my delirious brain; in being proud for having understood that instead of breaking the bells ringing above our heads it seems that they were satisfied in taking our pulses.
Therefore and as I expect the rage of Mr. Dean of the Faculty of Theology will be appeased; that is how, to the eyes of the world, his person and his teachings will be rehabilitated.
Yours sincerely, etc.”
E. Edoux, director of La Vérité
