ANOTHER COINCIDENCE.
[TO THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR"]
SIR,—In the French weekly paper, Les Annales Politique et Littiraire of March 26th, M. Camille Flammarion, in one of a series of articles on psychical problems, gives this story of coincidences :—" The poet, Emile Deschamps tells that when he was at school at Orleans, he happened one day to dine with a M. de Fontgibu, a refugee who had lately returned from England, and he there tested some plum. pudding, then an almost unknown dish in France. The memory of this was gradually fading when one day, ten years after, passing a restaurant on the Boulevard Poissonniere, he caught sight of a delicious-looking plum-pudding. He went in and asked for some, but was told that it had just been sold. The shopwoman saw that he looked disappointed and said, ' M. de Fontgibu, would you be so very kind as to let this gentle- man have part of your plum-pudding V He then recognised M. de Fontgibu in the middle-aged man in a Colonel's uniform who was sitting eating at a table near, and who courteously offered him some pudding. Many years passed without his coming across either a plum-pudding or M. de Fontgibu, when one day Deschamps was invited to a dinner-party to eat a real English plum-pudding. He accepted, and laughingly told his hostess that M. de Fontgibu would certainly be of the party, telling her his reason for saying this. The day came. Ten guests filled the ten places laid for them, and there was a magnificent plum-pudding on the table. They were beginning to laugh at his M. de Fontgibu when the door was opened and the servant announced ' M. de Fontgibu,' and an old man came in walking.with difficulty and helped by a servant. He walked slowly round the table evidently looking for some one, and seemed quite bewildered. Was this an apparition or a joke? It was the time of the Carnival, and Deschamps thought at first that it was a hoax, but when the old man came up to him he saw that it certainly was M. de Fontgibu. His hair stood on end. Don Juan in Mozart's masterpiece could not have been more terrified by the guest of stone. It was all explained, however. M. de Fontgibu was dining with some people in the same house and had mistaken the door. This series of coincidences is so surprising that one can understand Deschamps saying • when he told this startling:story : Plum- pudding has come into my life three times and so has M. de Fontgibu ! Why is this ? If it happened a fourth time I should be capable of anything or nothing.' "—I am, Sir, &e., F. S.
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