At
about twelve years of age she began to see, and hear, a visionary
being named Leopold, who, in life, had been Cagliostro. His
appearance was probably suggested by an illustration in the Joseph
Balsamo of Alexandre Dumas. The saints of Jeanne, in the same way,
may have been suggested by works of sacred art in statues and church
windows. To Miss Smith, Leopold played the part of Jeanne's saints.
He appeared and warned her not to take such or such a street when
walking, not to try to lift a parcel which seemed light, but was
very heavy, and in other ways displayed knowledge not present to her
ordinary workaday self.
*See Flournoy, Des Indes a la Planete Mars. Alcan, Paris, 1900.
There was no real Leopold, and Jeanne's St. Catherine cannot be
shown to have ever been a real historical personage.* These
figures, in fact, are more or less akin to the 'invisible playmates'
familiar to many children.** They are not objective personalities,
but part of the mechanism of a certain class of mind. The mind may
be that of a person devoid of genius, like Miss Smith, or of a
genius like Goethe, Shelley, or Jeanne d'Arc, or Socrates with his
'Daemon,' and its warnings.
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