NecrologyMrs. Widow FoulonThe journal Siècle on February 13th, 1865 in the necrology section, published the following note reproduced by the Havre and the Antibes:
“A well liked and appreciated artist in the Havre, Mrs. Widow Foulon, a skillful miniaturist, died on February 3rd in Antibes where she had gone looking for the recovery of her health, altered by work and age, in a more pleasant climate.”
Since we personally knew Mrs. Foulon and enjoyed her friendship we feel happy to complete the very short notice above. It is a duty of friendship and a deserved tribute payed to her unknown virtues and a healthy example to everyone, and to the Spiritists in particular, that will find precious teachings here.
As an artist, Mrs. Foulon was remarkably talented. Her works, fairly appreciated in many exhibitions, were granted multiple honorofic rewards. It is certainly a merit but that is not exception. What actually made her loved and esteemed, what turns her memory dear to all of those that knew her, is the kindness of her character; her private qualities whose reach could only be apprecitated by those that shared her private life because as with all those that have an inate feeling of good, she did not exhibited them and not even was suspicious of them. If there was someone that had no influence of pride that was undoubtedly her. The feeling of personal abnegation had not perhaps ever gone so far as with her. She was always ready to sacrifice her rest, her health and her interests for those that could benefit from her help; her life was not but a long series of dedications as it was, since her youth, a long series of tough and painful trials bedore which her courage, resignation and perseverance have never failed her.
Her talent was the only thing left by the setbacks of life and it was the the brushes that she raised a large family, ensuring an honorable position to all children through her teachings and paintings. Only by knowing her private life one can realize everything that she had to endure in fatigues and deprivations, all difficulties against which she had to fight to reach her objective. But ah! Her sight, worn out by the demanding work of miniatures, was fading away on a daily basis; still sometime more and her already advanced blindness would have been complete.
When Mrs. Foulon learned about the Spiritist Doctrine some years ago, it was like a beam of light to her. She felt like having a veil lifted up from something that was not unknown to ther but that she only had a vague intuition about.
She then studied it with eargerness but at the same time with that lucidity of Spirit and fairness of appreciation that was peculiar to her elevated intelligence. It is necessary to get to know the perplexities of her life, perplexities that instead of affecting her always affected the loved ones, to understand all the consolations that she obtained from this sublime revelation that gave her an umbreakable faith in the future, and showed her the insignificance of the earthly things.
Without the respect due to the intimate things, great teachings would come out of the last period of this life so fruitful in emotions! So the assistance of good spirits did not fail her; the instructions and teachings which they were pleased to bring to this honorable soul form the most edifying collection, but very private, of which we are pleased to have been the provocative agent more than once. Her death was also worthy of her life. She saw the moment approaching without any painful apprehension: to her it was the deliverance of the terrestrial bonds which was to open to her the blessed spiritual life with which she had identified herself by the study of Spiritism.
She died calmly because she was mindful of having accomplished her mission, a mission that she accepted before coming to Earth; of having scrupulously done her duties of wife and mother because also during her life she had abjured every resentiment against those that she could have hard feelings and that had payed her with ungratefulness. She always payed bad with good and left her life with everybody forgiven, delivering herself to the justice and goodness of God. Finally, she died with the serenity that is given by a pure conscience and the certainty of being less separated from her children than during her material life since from now on she could be with them in Spirit in any point of the globe where they could be; help them with her advices and extend her protection to them. Now, what is her fate in the world where she is now? The Spiritists present that already. Let us allow her to report her impressions.
As before, she died on February 3rd. We received the news on the 6th and our first wish was to communicate with her, if possible. At the time we were experiencing a serious illness what explains some of her words. It is important to mention that the medium did not know her and knew nothing about the particularities of her life, of which she speaks spontaneously. Here her first communication on February 6th:
February 6th, 1865 – medium Mrs. Cazemajour
“I was certain that you would like to evoke me just after my passing and therefore I was ready to respond to you since I did not experience disturbance. It is only those that have fear that are involved in its thick darkness. Then, my friend, I am happy now. These poor weakened eyes that only left me with the memory of prisms that had colored my youth with their changing shine, have now opened and found again the splendid horizons that some of your artists idealize in their vague reproductions, but whose majestic and strict reality, and yet full of enchantment, is marked by the most thorough reality. I have been dead for three days only and I feel that I am an artist. My aspirations towards the ideal of beauty in art were not but the intuition of a faculty that I had studied and acquired on other existences, and that developed on the last one. However, what can I do to reproduce a masterpiece worthy of the great scene that impresses the Spirit when arrives at the region of light? Brushes! Brushes! And I will prove to the world that the Spiritst art is the crowning of the Pagan art, of the endangered Christian art that is reserved to the glory of making it revive in its full shine in yor disowned world. Done with the artist. It is time for the friend.
Why, my dear friend (Mrs. Allan Kardec) to suffer so much for my death? Particularly you that know the deceptions and bitterness of my life, you must, on the contrary, rejoice for seeing that I no longer have to drink from the bitter chalice of the earthly pains, a chalice that I drank to the end. Believe me, the dead are happier than the living ones and crying for them is to doubt the truth of Spiritism. Rest assured that you will see me again; I left first because my task was over down here; each one has their own to carry out on Earth and when yours is over you shall come to rest a bit by my side, to restart again if necessary considering that idleness is not part of nature. Each one carries their own tendencies and bows before them; it is a supreme law that demonstrates the power of free-will. Therefore, good friend, indulgence and charity that all of us need mutually be it in the visible as well as in the invisible world. With such a banner everything is alright. Do not ask me to stop talking. Know this, it is the first time I speak! I leave you there.
It is now time for my excellent friend Mr. Kardec. I want to thank him for the kind words that he was so good to address to the friend that preceded him in the tomb, because we did not depart together to the world where I am, my good friend (we had fallen sick on January 31st). What would you have told the beloved companion of your days if the Spirits had not followed a good order on this? She would then have groaned and cried! I understand it, but it is also necessary that you watch him so that he is not exposed to the danger again before finishing the work of Spiritist initiation, without which you take the risk of arriving to our place too early, and like Moses only see the Promised Land from far away. Therefore, remain on guard. It is a friend that advises.
I must go now. I return to my dear children; I will then check, beyond the oceans, if my traveling sheep has finally gotten to the port or if she is a toy to the storms. May the good Spirits protect her! I will join them for that. I will come back to talk to you because I am an untiring speaker. You remember that. So long, good and dear friends. So long.”
Widow Foulon
Observation: Her traveling sheep is one of her daughters, residing in America, and that had just gone through a long and painful journey. Death is only feared by the uncertainty about what happens at that supreme moment and of what is coming next and beyond. The vague belief in future life is not always enough to appease the apprehension of the unknown. Every communication that aims at our initiation in the details and the impressions of the passage tend to mitigate that fear as they gradually make us familiar and identify us with the transition that takes place in us. From that point of view the communication from Mrs. Foulon and Dr. Demeure, that come later, are eminently instructive. The condition of the Spirits after death is essentially variable, according to the diversity of aptitudes, skills and character of each one. Hence, it is through the multiplicity of examples that one may come to understand the real state in the invisible world.
February 8th, 1865
Spontaneous: Here I am among you, sooner than you thought and very happy to see you again, particularly now that you are better and that you will be soon completely recovered, I hope. But I want you to ask me the questions that are of your interest because then I can respond better. Without that there is the risk that I will speak too much and it is necessary that we speak of truly serious things. Isn’t that the case my good Spiritist teacher?
Q. – Dear Mrs. Foulon, I was very happy with the communication you gave the other day with the promise to continue our conversations. I recognized you perfectly well in the communication. You spoke of things that are unknown to the medium and that could only have come from you. Besides, your kind language towards us is very characteristic of your loving soul, but there is in your language a security, a straightness, a firmness that I ignored when you were alive. You know that I allowed myself more than one reprimand in some cases. A. – It is true but since I saw myself seriously ill I recoved the fimness of Spirit, lost by the griefs and vicissitudes that sometimes made me fearful in life. I said to myself: You are Spirit. Forget Earth and prepare yourself to the transformation of your being and see through your thouhgts the luminous path that your soul must follow when you leave the body, and that shall lead you happy and free to the celestial spheres that you shall henceforth inhabit. You will say that it was a bit presumptuous on my side to count on a perfect happiness on leaving Earth but I had suffered so much that I must have atoned my faults from this life and from the preceding ones. Such intuition had not deceived me and it was that intuition that gave me courage, calmness and determination in my last moments. Such determination naturally increased when I saw my hopes come true after my passing.
Q. – Can you describe to us now your passage, awakening and first impressions? A. – I did suffer but my Spirit was stronger than the material suffering caused by the detachment. After the supreme breath I found myself like the syncope patient, unconscious, thinking of nothing, and in a vague sleepiness that wasn’t either the sleepness of the body or the wakening of the soul. I remained like that for a long time. Then, as if coming out of a long faint, I slowly woke up among brothers that were unknown to me. They were all care and kindness towards me; they showed me a point in space that looked like a shiny star and said: “there is the place you are going with us since you no longer belong to Earth.” I then recovered my memory, leaned on them and like a graceful group that shoots towards unknown stars, but certain to find happiness there, we climbed, climbed and the star grew before us: it was a happy world, a superior world where your friend will finally fint rest. I mean rest with respect to the physical fatigues that I endured and the vicissitudes of earthly life but not the indolence of the Spirit because the activity of the Spirit is a pleasure.
Q. – Have you left Earth definitely? A. – I leave here many creatures that are dear to me to leave it definitely. As a Spirit I will then return here because I have a mission to accomplish together with my grandchildren. As a matter of fact you must know well that there is no obstacle to Spirits that live on superior worlds to come and visit Earth.
Q. – It seems that your current position must weaken the relationships that you left here. A. – No, my friend. Love gets the souls together. Belive me, on Earth it is possible to be closer to those that have reached perfection than to those whose inferiority and egotism cause uproar around the terrestrial sphere. Charity and love are two engines of a powerful attraction. They are the link that bonds the union of souls to one another that remains, in spite of distances and places. There is distance only to material bodies. It does not exist to the Spirits.
Q. – According to what you said in your previous communication about your artistic instincts and about the development of the Spiritist art, I thought that you would be one of its main interpreters in a new existence. A. – No. It is like a guide and protector Spirit that I must give the world demonstrations of the possibility of producing masterpieces in the Spiritist art. Children will be painting mediums, and in an age when only fuzzy sketches are produced, they will paint but not things from Earth, they will paint things from worlds where art has reached its full perfection.
Q. – What is your idea now about my works with Spiritism? A. – I think you have the work of souls and that the burden is difficult to carry but I see the objective and know that you will reach it. If possible I will help you out with my advices so that you can overcome the difficulties that will come, by the way inducing you to take some adequate measures to activate, in life, the renovating movement enticed by Spiritism. Your friend, Demeure, together with the Spirit of Truth, will give you an even more useful help. He is wiser and more serious than I am but since I know that the assistance of the good Spirits strengthen you and sustain your work, believe me that you can always and everywhere count on my help.
Q. – Could we conclude from some of your words that you will not give me a personal and very active cooperation to the works of Spiritism? A. – You are mistaken. But I see so many Spirits more capable than me to handle such important question that an invencible feeling of shyness precludes me from responding to you at this time, according to your wishes. It might come. I shall have more courage and wisdom but I need to get to know them better. I died less than four days ago and still am baffled by the dazzling surroundings. Would you understand, my friend? I cannot express the new sensations that I feel. I had to force myself to set aside the fascination that the admirable wonders exert on me. I can only praise and worship God in his works. But that will pass. The Spirits assure me that soon I will be used to all these magnificences and that I will be able to handle all questions related to the earthly renovation with my lucidity of Spirit. Besides all that, keep in mind that I have a family to reassure. Enthusiams has invaded my soul and I hope that it mitigates a bit to be able to handle serious Spiritism with you and not a poetic Spiritism, something that is not good to mankind since they would not understand it.
Good-bye, so long,
From your good friend that loves you and will always love you, my teacher, for she owes you the only lasting and true consolation she had on Earth.
Widow Foulon
Observation: Every serious and enlightened Spiritist will easily find the teachings that stick out from these communications. We will then call your attention to two points only. The first one is the fact that this example shows us the possibility of no longer incarnating on Earth and to move from here to a superior world, without being separated from our loved ones that we left here, because of that. Those that fear reincarnation due to the miseries of life may free themselves from them by doing what is necessary to do, that is, work for their own betterment. The one that does not want to stagnate in inferior layers must instruct oneself and work to move upwards. The second point is the confirmation of this truth: After death we are less separated from those that are dear to us than during life. Just a few days back Mrs. Foulon, restrained by her disease in a little town of the South, only had part of her family by her side. The majority of her children and friends were disperse and far away so that material obstacles precluded them from seeing each other as frequently as they wished. The great distance made even correspondence rare and difficult to some. Just separated from her heavy envelope, she now moves quickly close to each one, transposing distances without fatigue, with the speed of a bolt, she sees them, attend her friendly gatherings, surrounds them with her protection and can, through mediumship, communicate with them any time, as when alive. If we think that some prefer an indefinite separation to this reassuring thought!
Note: It was too late when we received the detailed and interesting necrology published in the Journal du Havre, on Frebruary 10th. Our issue was already composed and complete, ready for publication.
Dr. Demeure
Deceased in Albi, Tarn, January 26th, 1865
Another soul of excellence has just left Earth! Mr. Demeure was a very distinguished homeopathy doctor in Albi. His character, as well as his knowledge, had granted him the regard and veneration of his fellow citizens. We only knew him from his correspondence and that of his friends but that was enough to reveal all the greatness and nobility of his feelings. His goodness and charity were unquestionable, and despite his advanced age he would tirelessly help his poor patients. The price of his consultations were the least of his concerns. He was more worried about the unfortunate ones than with those that could pay because, he used to say, in his absence the latter could always find another doctor. To the former he not only gave the medication for free but also many ttimes left them with the sufficient to face their material needs, what sometimes is the most useful medicine. We can say that he was the healing Vicar D’Ars of medicine.
Mr. Demeure had embraced the Spiritist Doctrine with enthusiasm where he had found the key to the most serious problems whose solution he had uselessly asked science and all philosophies. His profound and investigative Spirit made him immediately understand its whole reach and therefore became one of its most dedicated promoters. Although we had never met face to face he mentioned in one of his letters that he was certain that we were not strangers to one another and that there was previous relationships between us. His rush to come to us as soon as he died, his solicitude and care towards us in the situation, the role that he seems to have been called to play, all seem to confirm his forecast that we have not yet been able to verify. We learned about his death on January 30th and our first thought was to communicate with him. Here the communication that he did on that same evening through the intermediary of Mrs. Cazemajour, medium.
“I am here. When alive I had promised myself that as soon as I was dead I would come, if allowed, to shake hands with my dear teacher and friend Mr. Allan Kardec. Death had given my soul this heavy sleep that we call lethargy, but my mind waked. I shook off that dismal torpor that prolongates the confusion following death, then I woke up and all of a sudden I traveled here. Oh happiness! I am no longer old or sick. My body was only an imposed disguise. I am young and handsome, handsome of this eternal youth of the Spirits whose faces are not wrinkled and whose hairs are not withened by the action of time. I am light like a bird that crosses the horizon in a short flight over your cloudy skies and I admire, contemplate, praise, love and bow, an atom before the greatness, wisdom and science of our Creator, before the wonders that sourround me. I was near you, dear and vererable friend, when Mr. Sabò talked about doing my evocation and I followed him. I am happy! I am in glory! Ah who could ever translate the splendid beauties of the land of the elected: the skies, the worlds, the suns and their role in the great concert of universal harmony? Well, I will try my teacher. I will do your study and will come to bring you the tribute of my works of Spirit that, in anticipation, I dedicate to you. So long.”
Demeure
Observation: The two following communications from February 1st and 2nd are relative to our sudden illness on January 1st. Although personal we reproduce them here because they demonstrate that Dr. Demeure is as good a Spirit as he was a man and because they offer a teaching in addition. It is a testimony of gratitude for his solicitude towards us in that circumstance:
“My good friend, have confidence in us and much courage. The current crisis, although tyring and painful, will not take long and with the prescribed care you will be able to complete, according to you wishes, the work that has been the main objective of your life. However, I am the one here by your side with the Spirit of Truth that allows me to have the word in his name, like the last of your friends among the Spirits! They honor me with their welcome. Dear teacher, I am so happy to have died in time to be with them at this time! If I had died earlier I could perhaps have avoided this crisis that I did not foresee. It was only a short while since I discarnate to be occupied with anything else other than spiritual things, but now I will watch your back, dear teacher. It is your brother and friend, a Spirit happy to be near you and take care of your disease. However, you know the proverb: “Help yourself and the skies will help you”. Help therefore the good Spirits in their care for you, strictly following their prescriptions. It is too hot here. This charcoal is too much. While you are sick do not burn that because it raises your pressure. Its fumes are deleterious.”
Your friend, Demeure.
“It is me, Demeure, Mr. Allan Kardec’s friend. I come to tell him that I was by his side when the accident happened, an accident that could have been really bad without an efficient intervention which I had the honor to contribute. According to my observations and the teachings that I collected from a respectable source, it is evident that the sooner his discarnation may occur the sooner his reincarnation may take place so that he may complete his work. However, before departing he needs to do the final touches to his works that must complete the doctrinary theory that he initiated, and he will be considered a case of voluntary suicide for excess of work, causing the deficiency of his physical organization that threatens him with a sudden departure to our world. One must have no fear to tell him the whole truth so that he can take care of himself and strictly follow the prescriptions.”
Demeure
The communication below was obtained in Moltalban on February 1st, in the circle of Spiritist friends that he had there.
“Antoine Demeure. I am not dead to you my good friends, but to those that unlike you do not know this sacred doctrine that reunites those that loved one another on Earth and that shared the same thoughts, the same feelings of love and charity. I am happy. I am happier than I could expect since I enjoy a rare lucidity among the Spirits that have separated from matter a short while ago. Have courage, good friends! I will be near you many times and will certainly instruct you about many things that we ignore when bonded to matter that hides from us so many magnificences and pleasures. Pray fro those that are precluded from such a happiness for they do not know how much they hurt themselves. I will not stay long today but I tell you that I find nothing strange in this world of the Spirits. It seems to me that I have always inhabited it. I feel happy here because I see my friends and can communicate with them whenever I desire. Do not cry, friends. You would make me feel sorry for having met you. Allow time to follow its course and God will lead you to this dwelling where we shall all reunite. Good night, my friends. God bless you. I am here by your side.”
Demeure
Observation: The situation of Mr. Demeure as a Spirit is exactly the one that he could foresee from his so dignified and usefully lived life but another not less instructive aspect sticks out of his communications that is the activity that he develops to be useful, almost immediately after his death. For his intelligence and moral qualities he belongs to the order of the well advanced Spirits. He is very happy but his happiness is not idleness. A few days back and he was taking care of patients as a doctor and as soon as he died he promptly begins to look after them as a Spirit. What is the benefit then of being in the spiritual world if one cannot enjoy some rest there? We reply with this question: isn’t that much the fact that there is no more concerns and needs or the illnesses of life; being free and being able to travel the space without fatigue and with the speed of the thought, and see one’s friends at any time, irrespective of the distance that separates them? We then add: When you are on the other world nothing will force you to do anything. You shall be perfectly free to remain in a pious indolence, as long as you wish, but you shall soon get tired of that selfish idleness. I will be the first one to request something to do. You will then hear: if you are bored for not be doing anything you must seek something to do yourself. There is no lack of opportunity to do good both among mankind and the Spirits. That is how the spiritual activity is not an embarassement. It is a necessity, a satisfaction to the Spirits that look for them in accordance to their tastes and aptitudes, and preferably choose the ones that may help in their advancement.
