The members of the commission were not able to verify any of the features announced. There was no report made, and Angelica's parents, worthy people of the most exemplary probity, returned with her from Paris to their own locality. The good faith of this couple and of a friend who accompanied them interested me very much, and I would have given anything in the world to find some reality in the wonders that had been proclaimed about the girl. The only remarkable thing she did was to rise from her chair in the most matter of fact way in the world and hurl it behind her with such force that often the chair was broken against the wall. But the supreme experiment,--that in which, according to her parents, the miracle was revealed of motion produced without contact,--was as follows: She was placed standing before a light centre-table covered with a thin silken stuff. Her ap.r.o.n also made of a very light and almost transparent silk, rested on the centre-table (though this last condition was not indispensable). Then, _when the electric force appeared_, the table was overturned, while "the electric girl" maintained her usual stupid impa.s.sivity. I had never personally seen any success attained in this particular feature of the girl's performances; nor had my colleagues of the commission of the Inst.i.tute, nor the physicians, nor certain writers, who, with great a.s.siduity, had attended all the seances appointed at the headquarters of the girl's parents in Paris. As for myself, I had already overstepped all the bounds of friendly complaisance, when, one evening the parents came to beseech me, in virtue of the interest I had shown in them, to attended one more seance, saying that the electric force was going to declare itself anew with great energy. I arrived about eight o'clock in the evening at the hotel where the Cottin family was staying. I was disagreeably surprised at finding a seance intended only for myself, and the friends whom I brought with me, overrun by a crowd of physicians and journalists who had been attracted by the announcement of the prodigies which were to begin again. After due excuses had been made I was introduced to a back room which served as dining-room, and there I found an immense kitchen table made of oak planks of an enormous thickness and weight. At the moment when dinner was being served the electric girl had, by an act of her will (it was said), overturned this ma.s.sive table, and, as a necessary result, broken all the plates and bottles that were on it.

But her excellent parents did not regret the loss, nor the poor dinner that resulted from it, on account of the hope that animated them that the marvellous qualities of the poor idiot were going to manifest themselves and receive the official stamp of authenticity. There was no possibility of doubting the veracity of these honest witnesses. An octogenarian who accompanied me (M. M.--, the most sceptical of men) believed their recital as I did; but, after entering with me the room full of people, this distrustful observer took his stand in the very entrance-door, alleging as a pretext the crowd in the room, and so placed himself as to have a side view of the electric girl with her centre-table before her. The crowd that faced the girl occupied the farther end and the sides of the room.

After an hour of patient waiting, and all in vain, I withdrew, expressing my sympathy and my regrets. M. M. remained obstinately at his post. He _pointed_ the electric girl with his unwearied eye, as a crouching setter does a partridge. At last, at the end of another hour, when the attention of the company was distracted by innumerable preoccupations and several centres of conversation had been formed--suddenly the miracle occurred: the centre-table was overturned. Great amazement! great expectations! They were just beginning to cry "Bravo!" when M. M., advancing by warrant of age and the love of truth, declared that he had seen Angelica, by a convulsive movement of the knee, push the table that was placed before her. He drew the conclusion that the effort she must have made before dinner in the overturning of the heavy kitchen table would have occasioned a severe contusion above her knee,--a matter that was investigated and found to be true. Such was the end of this melancholy affair in which so many people had been duped by a poor idiot, who yet had enough crafty cunning to inspire illusion by her very calmness and impa.s.sivity. We have still to account for the singular facts observed near Rambouillet (see the _Reports_ of the Academy), at the house of a wealthy manufacturer, all whose vases and other vessels of pottery-ware burst into a thousand pieces at the moment when least expected. Kettles and other large vessels cast in metal also flew into fragments, to the great loss of the proprietor, whose troubles, however, ceased with the discharge of a servant, who had come to an understanding with a man who was to occupy the factory so that he might get it at a better bargain. Nevertheless, it is to be regretted that the matter ended before it was discovered what fulminating powder had been employed to produce such curious results, so new, and, apparently, so well proved.[50]

Babinet adds farther on in the same volume the following remarks on Angelica Cottin:

In the midst of wonders which she did _not_ perform there was seen a very natural effect of _the first relaxation of muscles_ which was curious in the highest degree. The girl, of slight figure and torpid physique, who was correctly styled the "torpedo-fish," being first seated on a chair and then rising very slowly (in the midst of the movement she was making in the act of rising) had the _power_ of throwing backward, with terrifying suddenness, the chair she was leaving, without anybody being able to perceive the slightest movement of the trunk of the body, and solely by the relaxation of the muscle which had been in contact with the chair. At one of the test-seances in the laboratory of physics at the Jardin des Plantes, several amphitheatre chairs of white wood were hurled against the walls in such a way as to break them. A second chair, which I had once taken the precaution to place behind that in which the electric girl was seated (for the purpose of protecting, if need were, two persons who were conversing at the back part of the room) was drawn along with the propelled chair and went with it to arouse from their absent-mindedness the two savants. I will add that several young employees at the Jardin des Plantes succeeded in performing--although in a less brilliant way--this pretty trick in bodily mechanics. In order to get a good idea of this play of the muscles by a similar effect, you have only to gently squeeze that part of the muscle of some one's arm that is most developed, at the same time that he makes the motion of opening and closing his fist several times. You will at once feel the swelling up of the muscles and divine the movement that would result from it were the change of shape made very rapid.

Such is the report of the learned physicist. It is thus that fraud once more hindered the recognition of the reality of phenomena that had been duly proved before. Accompanying this there was also a weakening of the faculties of the performer. But it is absurd to conclude from this that the observers of the earlier days in this case (including Arago and his colleagues of the Observatory,--Mathieu, Laugier, and Goujon,--as well as the examiner Hebert, Dr. Beaumont Chardon, and others) were poor observers, and were deceived by movements of the foot of this child.

We may allow for the fraud, conscious and unconscious of mediums. We may deplore it, for it throws an unpleasant gloom upon all the phenomena; but let us render justice to incontestable facts, and continue to observe them.

_Quaere et invenies!_ Seek and thou shalt find. _The Unknown_, the science of to-morrow.

CHAPTER VI

THE EXPERIMENTS OF COUNT DE GASPARIN

One of the most important series of experiments that has been made on the subject of moving tables is that of Count Agenor de Gasparin at Valleyres, Switzerland, in September, October, November, and December of the year 1853. The Count has published formal reports of these studies in two large volumes.[51] These seances may be called purely scientific, for they were conducted with the most scrupulous care and were under the severest control. The table usually employed had a round oak top thirty-two inches in diameter, which rested on a heavy three-footed central column, the feet being about twenty-two inches apart. There were usually ten or twelve experimenters, and they formed the chain on the table by touching each other with their little fingers in such a way that the thumb of the left hand of each operator touched that of his right hand, and the little finger of the right hand touched that of the left hand of his neighbor. In the opinion of the author, this chain is useful, but not absolutely necessary. The rotation of the table usually began after a waiting of five or ten minutes. Then it lifted one foot to a height that varied from time to time, and fell back again. The levitation took place even when a very heavy man was seated on the table. Rotations and levitations were obtained without the contact of hands. But let us hear the author himself:

It is a question of positive fact that I wish to solve. The theory will come later. To prove that the phenomenon of turning tables is real and of a purely physical nature; that it can neither be explained by the mechanical action of our muscles nor by the mysterious action of spirits,--such is my thesis. It is my wish to state it with precision and circ.u.mscribe its limits here at the very start. I confess I find some satisfaction in meeting with unanswerable proofs the sarcasms of people who find it easier to mock than to examine. I am well aware that we have got to put up with that. No new truth becomes evident without having been first ridiculed. But it is none the less agreeable to reach the moment when things a.s.sume their legitimate place, and when roles cease to be inverted. This moment might have been long in coming. For a long time I feared that table-phenomena would not admit of a definite scientific demonstration; that, while they inspired absolute certainty in the minds of the operators and witnesses at first hand, they would not furnish irrefutable arguments to the public. In the presence of bare possibilities, each person would be free to cherish his own particular opinion; we should have had believers and sceptics. The cla.s.sification would have taken place in virtue of tendencies rather than by reason of one's knowledge or ignorance of the facts. Some, in the agreeable sensation of their intellectual superiority, would have carried their head very high, and others would have abandoned themselves in despair to the current superst.i.tions of the day. The truth incompletely demonstrated would have been treated as a lie, and, what is worse, would have ended by becoming such.

But thank G.o.d! it will not be so now. Our meetings were real and formal seances, to which the best hours of the day were given. The results, verified with the most minute care, were embodied in formal and official declarations. I have these _proces-verbaux_ before me now, and it seems to me that I could not do better than to take up one after another and extract from each the interesting observations it may contain. I shall thus follow the method of certain historians, and relate the truth rather than systematize it. The reader will, as it were, follow us step by step. He will examine and check my various a.s.sertions by comparing them; he will form his own conviction, and will judge whether my proofs have that character of frequent occurrence, of persistency, of progressive development which false discoveries, based upon some fortuitous and poorly described coincidence, never have.

These are promising premises. We shall see whether the promises will be kept. The report (or minutes) of the first meeting bears the date of September 20, 1853. Numerous seances had been held before, but it had not been thought necessary to write down the results. What those results were will be seen by the following brief account:

Only those have an invincible conviction (writes Count de Gasparin) who have partic.i.p.ated in seance studies frequently and directly, who have felt under their very fingers the production of those peculiar movements which the action of our muscles cannot imitate. They know the limitations of their powers and where to stop. For they have seen the table refuse to rotate at all, in spite of the impatience of the investigators, and in spite of their clamorous appeals. Then again, they have been present when it started to move so gently, so softly and spontaneously started, it can be said, under fingers which hardly touched it. They have at times seen the legs of the table (riveted by some enchantment to the floor) refuse to budge on any terms, in spite of the incitement and coaxing of those who composed the chain. On other occasions they have seen the same table-legs perform levitations that were so free and energetic that they antic.i.p.ated the hands, got the start of the orders, and executed the thoughts almost before they were conceived, and with an energy well-nigh terrifying. They have heard with their own ears stunning raps and gentle raps, the one threatening to break the table, the others of such incredible fineness and delicacy that one could scarcely catch the sounds, and none of us could in any degree imitate them. They have remarked that the force of the levitations is not diminished when the sitters are removed from the side of the table that is to form the fulcrum. They have themselves commanded the table to lift that one of its legs over which rest the only hands that compose that portion of the chain still remaining, and the leg has risen as often and as high as they wished.

They have observed the table in its dances when it beats the measure with one foot or with two; when it reproduces exactly the rhythm of the music that has just been sung; when, yielding in the most comic way to the invitation to dance the minuet, it takes on grandmotherly airs, sedately makes a half turn, curtsies, and then comes forward turning the other side! The manner in which the events took place told the experimenters more than the events themselves. They were in contact with a reality which soon made itself understood.

The persevering experiments we had made before the 20th of September had already given us proof of two princ.i.p.al things,--the levitation of a weight that the muscular action of the operators was powerless to move, and the reproduction of numbers by mind reading.

I shall now give the formal declarations or reports, by Count de Gasparin, or at least the essential parts of them. I shall present them here as the author has done, seance after seance. The reader will judge. He is urged to read the reports with the greatest attention. They are scientific doc.u.ments of the highest value, and quite as important as the preceding ones.

_Seance of September 20_

Some one proposed the experiment which consists in causing a table to rotate and give raps while it has on it a man weighing say a hundred and ninety pounds. We accordingly placed such a man on the table, and the twelve experimenters, in chain, applied their fingers to it.

The success was complete: the table turned, and rapped several strokes. Then _it rose up entirely off the floor_ in such a way as to upset the person who was upon it. Let me be permitted here, in pa.s.sing, to make a general remark. We had already had numerous meetings. Our experimenters, among whom were several young ladies of delicate physique, had worked with very unusual perseverance and energy. Their bodily fatigue at the end of each sitting was naturally very great. It seems as if we should therefore have expected some nervous collapses more or less grave, to show themselves among us. If explanations based upon involuntary acts performed in a state of extraordinary excitement had the least foundation in fact, we should have had trances, almost possessions, and, at any rate, nervous attacks. Now, in spite of the exciting and noisy character of our meetings, it did not happen, in five months time, that any one of us experienced a single moment of indisposition or sickness of any kind.

We learned something more: when a person is in a state of nervous tension, he or she becomes positively unfit to act upon the table. It must be handled cheerfully, lightly, and deftly, with confidence and authority, but without pa.s.sion. This is so true that the moment I took too much interest in things I ceased to obtain obedience. If, on account of public discussions in which I had been engaged, I chanced to desire success too ardently and to grow impatient over delay, I had no longer any control over the table; it remain inert.

_Seance of September 24_

We began pretty poorly, and were almost inclined to think that the net result of the day's experiments would be limited to the two following observations, which have their value, to tell the truth, and which our experience has always confirmed: First, there are days when nothing can be done, nothing prospers, although the sitters are as numerous, as strong, and as excited as ever,--which proves that the movements of the table are not obtained by fraud or by the involuntary pressure of the muscles. Second, there are persons (those among others who are sickly or fatigued) whose presence in the chain is not only of no use, but even detrimental. Dest.i.tute themselves of the fluidic force, they seem, besides, to hinder its circulation and transmission. Their good will, their faith in the table are of no avail; as long as they are there the rotations are feeble, the levitations spiritless, the drafts drawn on the table are not honored; that one of its feet facing them is especially struck with paralysis. Beg them to retire, and immediately the vitality appears again and everything succeeds as if by magic. Indeed, it was only after we had taken this course that we finally obtained the free and energetic movements to which we had been accustomed. We had become quite discouraged; but when the purging of which I have just spoken took place, lo, what a change! Nothing seems difficult to us. Even those who (like myself) ordinarily have only mediocre success, now think of numbers and make the table rap them out with complete success, or with the slight imperfection (that frequently occurs) of a tap too many, owing to the delay in giving the mental order to stop the taps.

Seeing that everything was going according to our wish, and having decided to try the impossible, we next undertake an experiment which marks our entrance into a wholly new phase of the study and places our former experimental demonstrations under the guarantee of a positively irrefutable demonstration. We are going to leave probability behind and dwell with evidence. We are going to make the table move _without touching it_. And this is how we succeeded that first time:

At the moment when the table was whirling with a powerful and irresistible rotation, at a given signal we all lifted our fingers.

Then keeping our hands united by means of the little fingers, and continuing to form the chain at a height of say an eighth or a quarter of an inch above the table, we continued our circular movement. _To our great surprise the table did the same_; it made in this way three or four turns! We could scarcely believe our good fortune; the by-standers (witnesses) could not keep from clapping their hands. And the way in which the rotation took place was as remarkable as the rotation itself. Once or twice the table stopped following us because the little accidents and interruptions of our march had withdrawn our fingers from their regular distance from the top of the table. Once or twice the table had come to life again--if I may so express myself--when the turning chain had again got into the right relation with it. We all had the feeling that each hand had carried along in its course that portion of the table immediately beneath it.

_Seance of September 29_

We were naturally impatient to submit rotation without contact to a new test. In the confusion of the first success we forgot to renew and vary this decisive experiment. When we got to thinking about it afterwards we saw that it behooved us to do the thing over again with more care and in the presence of new witnesses; that it was, above all, important to produce the movement and not merely to continue it, and to produce it in the form of levitations instead of limiting it to rotations. Such was the program of our meeting of September 29. Never was program carried out with greater precision. As a preliminary, we repeated our successful feat of the 24th. While the table was rotating rapidly, the interlocked hands were lifted from it, though continuing to turn above it and form the chain. The table followed, making now one or two revolutions, and now a half or a quarter turn only. The success, more or less prolonged, was certain. We confirmed it several times. But some one might say that, the table being already in motion, the momentum carried it along mechanically while we imagined it was yielding to our fluidic force. The objection was absurd, and we would have challenged anybody to obtain a single quarter of a turn without forming the chain, however rapid might have been the rotation imparted. Above all, would we have challenged anyone to renew its motion when it had been for an instant suspended. However, it is well in such cases to forestall even absurd objections, however little of plausibility they may have. And this particular objection might seem plausible to the inattentive man. It was imperative, then, that we should produce rotation starting from a state of complete inertia.

This we did. The table being as motionless as we were, the chain of hands parted from it and began to turn slowly at a height of about three-eighths of an inch above its edge. In a moment the table made a slight movement, and each of us striving to draw along by his will that part situated under his own fingers, we succeeded in drawing the disk in our train. The details that followed resembled those of the preceding case. There is such difficulty in maintaining the chain in the air without breaking it, in keeping it near the border of the table without going too quick and thus destroying the harmonious relation established, that it often happens that the rotation stops after a turn or a half-turn. Yet it is sometimes prolonged during three or even four revolutions. We expected to encounter still greater obstacles when we should undertake levitation without contact. But the matter turned out quite otherwise. This is easily explained when we remember that in this ease there is no circular movement and it is much easier to maintain the normal position of the hands above the table. The chain, then, being formed at a distance of an eighth of an inch or so above the round top of the table, we ordered one of its legs to lift itself up, and it did so.

We were highly delighted, and repeated this pretty experiment many times. Without touching it in any way, we ordered the whole table to rise into the air, and to resist the witnesses, who had to put forth effort to bring it down to the floor. We commanded it to turn bottom side up, and it fell over with its feet in the air, although we never touched it with our fingers, but kept them in advance of it as it fell, at the distance agreed upon.

Such were the essential results of this meeting. They are such that I hesitate to mention in the same connection incidents of secondary importance.

I will only say, in pa.s.sing, that the seance was very discouraging at the start; for, not only was it found necessary to remove certain new operators, but several of the old ones did not bring to it their usual high spirits. The table responded poorly; raps were made faintly and as if with reluctance; the telepathic reading of numbers did not succeed. Then we took a resolution from which we derived much benefit: we persevered, and persevered gaily; we sang, we made the table dance; we gave up all thoughts of new experiments and persisted in easy and amusing ones. After a while conditions changed; the table fairly bounded, and hardly waited for our orders; we were now in condition to try more serious things.

_Seance of October 7_

A long meeting, and very fatiguing. It was princ.i.p.ally devoted to the trial of various mechanical devices which had no success whatever,--such as metal rings; frameworks of canvas or of paper placed upon the table; plates on pivots and spring-keys. Whether the sight of all this gear hindered the radiation of the fluidic force from the operators, whether the contrivances themselves stopped its circulation in the table, or whether, in fine, the natural conditions of the phenomenon were disturbed in some other way, it is certain that the results amounted to nothing or were doubtful.

One new experiment succeeded. A plate turning on a pivot held a tub. I filled this tub with water, and two of my collaborators and I plunged our hands into it. We formed the chain and began a circular walk, being careful not to touch the tub. This at once imitated our movement. We repeated the thing several times in succession.

Since it might be supposed that the impulse given to the water would suffice to set in motion a tub resting on so delicately balanced a plate, we at once proceeded to prove the contrary. The water was given a circular whirl causing it to move with much greater rapidity than when we formed the chain; but the tub moved not a peg. Undoubtedly the point remains to be considered whether one of us three did not touch the inside of the tub and so determine its movement. To that I reply, first, that the way in which our hands were held in the water obviously proves that none of our fingers could really touch bottom; secondly, that, taking pains as we did to form the chain at the centre, it would have been scarcely less difficult for us to touch the vertical sides of the tub.

And yet, the doubt being not wholly inadmissible, I cla.s.s this experiment among those of which I do not purpose to make any use. I wish to show that I am hard to please in the matter of evidence.

The proof which the rapping of numbers by mind-reading furnishes has always seemed to be one of the most convincing. In the sitting I am describing, it had this special feature, that each of the ten operators in turn received the communication of a number in writing, the others having their eyes shut. Now, in the whole ten, one alone failed to obtain perfect obedience from the table-leg which had been a.s.signed to him by very suspicious witnesses, or by-standers. If my readers will reflect carefully they will see that the combinations of movements communicated and of cheating tricks which such a solid result as this would require pa.s.ses far beyond the bounds of admissible things. To justify it the objector must invent a miracle much more astounding than ours.

Let us turn again to the finest of all demonstrations, that of levitation without contact. We began by performing it three times.

Then, since it was thought by some that the inspection of the witnesses could be carried on in a surer way in the case of a small table than in that of a large one, and with five operators more certainly than with ten, we had a plain deal centre-table brought which the chain, reduced by half, sufficed to put in rotation. Then the hands were lifted, and, _contact with the table being entirely broken, it rose seven times into the air at our command_.

_Seance of October 8_

Two circ.u.mstances occurred to confirm the results we had obtained in preceding seances. Among the numbers selected for the thought-test the roguery of one of the witnesses had placed a zero, and the leg selected by him to respond was at the left of the operator and beyond the reach of his muscular action. Now, the command having been given to the leg and no action resulting, we were all feeling disconsolate, being convinced that our weakness that day was so great that we were not going to obtain even simple levitations. I affirm most emphatically that if movement had ever been imparted by an experimenter to a table leg, it would have appeared at that moment.

Our nerves were in an exalted state and our impatience was at its height. Yet no movement of the table took place, and we were consequently all the more solaced when we learned that the figure communicated had been a cipher.

Movement without contact was accomplished twice.

To our experiment of a table that gave raps while having a man upon it, it had been objected that this man might lend his aid to the movement, and even incite it in part. Determined to seek out the truth with the most anxious care, we had recognized a certain plausibility in this objection, and had decided to meet it fairly. The being who was living, intelligent, and consequently suspected must be replaced by an inert weight. Buckets filled with sand must be placed in the precise centre of the table, which should then be called on to exhibit its skill.

But the day was badly chosen. After we had placed on the table two buckets, one upon the other, both weighing in all 143 pounds, it was discovered that we were unable to produce the levitation. It was necessary for us to content ourselves with continuing them in circular movement after they had been started. The buckets were removed, the table was set in motion, and the buckets replaced while the movement was at its height. They did not arrest it in the least, but were carried around with such force that the sand flew out on all sides.

The remainder of the sitting was given up to an investigation of the subject of (alleged) divination, or guessing.

When the table was asked to guess something known to one of the members of the chain, it pretty frequently and quite naturally happened that it guessed it. It is the case of thought-reading by numbers,--nothing more, nothing less.

When it is asked to guess a thing known to a member of the company who does not form at the time a part of the chain, it happens sometimes that it guesses it. But the person in question must be endowed with great fluidic power and be able to exercise it at a distance. We did not ourselves obtain anything like this; but others have succeded, and their testimony seems too well established to be called in question.