he had been reading in Paris. He is in the habit of reading in bed, but has electric light in his bedroom at home, so that he had not read 'in bed or on a sofa by candle light' for months, till he read Marmontel in Paris.
"On his return to town Mr. Marsh wrote to me (March 4, 1902), that on February 21st, while lying on two chairs, he read a chapter in the first volume of Marmontel's Memoirs describing the finding at Passy of a panel, etc., connected with a story in which Fleury plays an important part.[1]
"It will thus be noted that the script in December, 1901, describes (as past) an incident which actually occurred two and a half months later, in February, 1902,—an incident which at the time of writing was not likely to have been foreseen by any one. I ascertained from Mr. Marsh that the idea of reading Marmontel occurred to him not long before his visit to Paris. It is probable that had he not seen me almost immediately upon his return, when his mind was full of the book, I should never have heard of his reading it, and therefore not have discovered the application of the script of December 16th and 17th."
The coincidences here are so numerous and definite that it is extremely difficult to attribute them to chance, and the difficulty is increased when we take into account the other instances of the same kind contained in Mrs. Verrall's script.
There remain, as already indicated, a considerable number of cases of dreams which seem to foreshadow in some detail future events, and for which no explanation can apparently be suggested. Of these narratives the two which follow are perhaps the best attested.
- ↑ Mrs. Verrall adds that, as far as she can discover, the names Pussy and Fleury do not appear together in any passage except that read by Mr. Marsh on 21st February.
