SOME eighteen years ago the writer became acquainted with an old French gentleman who had been in Napoleon Bonaparte’s army, and who, like too many Frenchmen of that period, was an avowed atheist. He called himself a “materialist,” and professed to believe that there was nothing in existence but what could be seen or otherwise taken cognizance of by the senses. Happening one evening to be in conversation with a lady, in the writer’s presence, this Frenchman said to her, “There is nothing, madam, after death. The last breath is the soul, and” (suiting the action to the word) “puff! it is gone.” This remark called forth a reply on the writer’s part which resulted in some discussion, after which the Frenchman left.
Some weeks passed away, and the writer received an urgent message requesting him to visit “monsieur,” as he was called. Monsieur was an aged bachelor, and lived alone in one room, which he kept in order himself, being too poor to afford an attendant. On entering, the writer was both surprised and shocked at his appearance. His face, usually sallow, had become as “yellow as a guinea;” his cheeks and eyes were so sunken that his high cheek-bones gave him a most ghastly appearance, which was greatly increased by a habit he had of dying his gray hair black. A more deplorable-looking person it would have been hard to find, and the first impression of the visitor was that, although not in bed, he was dying.
“Monsieur,” said the Frenchman, “I have one favor to ask of you.”
“What is it, monsieur?” inquired the visitor, hoping that, as the aged man was evidently very ill, he had sent for him to speak about his soul.
“Monsieur, I believe I am dying. I would be decently buried, but I have no friends, only one. When I am dead, will you look behind that glass?” (pointing to a small mirror on the mantelpiece) “and you will find a letter addressed to my friend, who is a barrister, and who will take care to have me buried.”
“Is that all you have to say, monsieur? I hoped you had sent for me to speak a word or two about things of more importance. If you are dying, and you certainly look like it, what is to become of your soul? You know ‘the last breath’ is not the soul —”
“Ah, monsieur,” exclaimed the Frenchman, raising his hands in a deprecating manner, while his hollow eyes expressed the utmost consternation. “Ah, monsieur, do not say anything more. It is that which has made me so ill. I have never slept since that evening when we discussed about the soul. It is more than one month ago, and I cannot go to sleep. All night, monsieur, all night I keep awake. I sit in my chair, I walk about, I lie on my bed, I am very tired, but I cannot get one sleep,” and the poor haggard old man settled his hollow features firmly to restrain his tears.
“And you still resist conviction, monsieur? You know —”
“Pardon, monsieur,” cried the Frenchman, interrupting; “please do not say any more. See, I want to show you something,” and tottering to his feet the old gentleman (he was eighty years of age) picked up a dingy white duster which was hanging on his chair, and threw it into a corner of the room.
“Look, monsieur,” he said, laying his trembling hand on the writer’s shoulder, “will you tell me what that looks like?” pointing to the duster.
“Well,” replied his visitor, “it looks more like a skull than anything else.”
Without uttering a word, and with an air of deep solemnity, the old man went and took it up. Then shaking it out, and catching it up carelessly in his fingers, he threw it on to his little bed. Again he said, “Look, monsieur, what is it like?”
“A skull decidedly,” his visitor was constrained to reply; for the duster, in falling on the bed, had assumed the exact shape of the upper part of a human skull.
There was the rounded frontal-bone, the hollow eyeless sockets, the nasal orifice, and the upper jaw, all so exactly modeled by the cloth, that the nicest effort of art could not have formed a more complete imitation of a human skull. The lower jaw was wanting. It was broad daylight, the sun was shining into the little room, the distance at which the cloth lay was not eight feet, yet there, without any effort of the imagination, lay, as it seemed, a veritable “death’s-head” on the couch. Again, for a third and a fourth time, the Frenchman took up the duster and threw it into a corner; now in this direction, now in that; but always with a like result; then, turning to the writer, he said in hollow tones, while his face blanched, if possible, more than before, “That has happened to me, monsieur, ever since that night” (referring to the evening of our conversation about the soul). “When I came home that night I did use that cloth for to dust something, and then threw it down in a corner, as I always do. I did not sleep all night, and when there was a little light in the morning I did sit up in my bed, and happened to look in that corner. Ah, monsieur, what did I see? What you English call a death’s-head was staring at me in the corner. I did shut my eyes till it was a little more light, and then I did get up. But it was there still. Then at last I went to it so” (walking cautiously towards the duster, and picking it up with all the demonstrative action of a Frenchman), “and I found it was only my cloth! ‘Foolish man,’ I said to myself, ‘how superstitious!’ But, monsieur, when I did throw it down again, it was a death’s-head once more! I hang it on my chair now; but if I happen to forget it, ah, monsieur, I am made miserable!”
“Well, monsieur, and what do you think of it?”
“I believe it is an omen, monsieur,” replied the Frenchman deliberately.
“Of what?”
“That I must die, monsieur.”
“But you do not believe in the existence of anything beyond this material world, monsieur? Now the cloth cannot know you are going to die. If, then, it be an omen of your coming death, who sends it?”
To this inquiry he replied only with a shrug of his shoulders and a shake of the head.
“Monsieur, will you do me the one kindness to send that letter when I am dead?” he asked.
“I will; but —”
“Pardon, monsieur,” he cried, bowing with true French politeness, but at the same moment putting a finger into each ear. “I thank you much,” and then, with a glance and a step towards the door, he stood in a waiting attitude, as if to say, “Which of us is to leave the room?”
The visitor left. The old man did not die then. Medical skill gave him sleep at last, and his life was spared a little longer. The last the writer saw of him was in Drury Lane, London, a few months afterward. He was wandering the streets, without a home, and penniless; his hair (which he had once told the writer was naturally quite white) still dyed as black as jet, and under his arm all the property he possessed in the world; viz., the few articles of his toilet in a little case, which with characteristic vanity he still clung to. His black, threadbare clothing was scrupulously neat; but his aged form was bent and worn with age and suffering. He had not been in a bed, he said, for many weeks, but had slept in coffee-houses, or wherever he could find shelter for the night. Oh, how true is it that “the way of transgressors is hard!” In the hope that he might yet be won, the writer invited him to a place where he was going to preach that evening, intending then to get him some temporal aid. The poor old gentleman promised to attend; but his manner of doing so showed but too plainly his object, which was merely to escape importunity. He never came, and was never seen again. How he died, or where, is known only to the Lord; but a more awful instance of determined and persistent rejection of the gospel of the grace of God in spite of conviction has perhaps never been met with. He was the son of parents in a respectable position in France, had been well and even religiously brought up as a Romanist, had been compelled to serve in Bonaparte’s army as a conscript, and had seen several campaigns, associating with the notoriously infidel soldiery of the old empire. “Evil communications corrupt good manners,” and he had become thoroughly indoctrinated with their atheistic principles. His brief, sad history is a solemn warning to all who despise the truth. We read of some, “God gave them up” (Romans 1:2424Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves: (Romans 1:24)); and when once a man is given up to what he is in himself, repentance is impossible. What the mental anguish must have been which kept him sleepless day and night, aged, worn, and weary, “seeking rest and finding none,” the reader must judge; yet neither the agony of conviction, nor his own persuasion that that strange “death’s-head” (however it might be accounted for) was specially sent as an omen of his own decease, could bring him to repentance. “Hardened through the deceitfulness of sin,” NOTHING would move him.
Dear reader, how is it with you? Have you listened to the truth of the gospel until it has become as “an oft-told tale” in your ears, powerless to move? Do you know that you are resisting the Spirit, and despising Christ? How often and how long have you been doing this? What if God gave you up? Were He to do so tomorrow, NOTHING would move you to repentance; no, not even “though one rose from the dead,” much less the apparition in your very bed-chamber of a “death’s-head.” K.