A FRENCH STORY ABOUT THE QUEEN.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1062, 1 February 1883, Page 3

A FRENCH STORY ABOUT THE QUEEN.

The Gaulois publishes the following, but whether as a joke or as a piece of serious information, we must leave the reader to decide for himself ‘ The Empress of India is at her royal residence of Balmoral, in Scotland, that residence which she prefers to all others, because it belonged to Prince Albert, whom she has been mourning for 21 years. The most devoted and faithful of widows, the most kindly and respected of sovereigns, believes that at Balmoral, more than elsewhere, she meets the Consort 'she has lost, and communicates with his spirit. Faithful John Brown, who is a medium, servesas a connecting link between the Queen and the deceased Prince, People have often wondered why the Queen manifests such singular favor for Brown ; why she offered him titles of nobility which the modest servant refused, only accepting that of esquire ; why the marble statuette of Brown by Boehm is placed in the Queen’s bedchamber on a whatnot, amidst portraits of members of the Royal family The reply to the question which has excited such curiosity in France and England is this : John Brown is the Queen’s Minister for her spiritual relations with the late Prince Albert. In the Cabinet Councils Her Majesty will sometimes say, ‘ I must first consult the Prince. ’ It is at Balmoral that she invokes the Prince and that he replies to her. She goes into the study of the deceased who is still alive for her ; sits in an armchair he formerly used. In a chair near her are placed his night clothes, as if in readiness for him. A large fire burns in the spacious fire-place of the seignorial chateau. John Brown brings respectively on a tray the basin of gruel which his master was accustomed to take every evening, and places it on a table as if the Prince were about to come and take it. The Queen has a Sheet of paper on her knees and a pencil in her hand. The chair moves about ; creaks and strikes the ground. According to the Spiritist Alphabet, each letter - is indicated by so many raps. The Queen puts the questions and John Brown interprets the answers of the Prince. The living and the dead converse on topics of this world and the next. The mind of the Queen is calmed, if not consoled, by the pious conversations, for her grief is of that kind which ends only with life. We pity those who may be tempted to smile at this laithtul picture. Is it only a hallucination ? Who can say ? The worst of hallucinations is that of those men who imagine they have fathomed all the law's of Nature.