She replied that Colonel S. M—— was in garrison at Lyons and at that moment, at the officers' café, where he was standing talking with the lieutenant-colonel, near the billiard-table. Then, suddenly, she saw the colonel grow pale, totter and sit down on a bench. He had just been seized with rheumatics in his knee. I touched her on the knee and willed that she should feel the same pain herself: she uttered a cry, grew rigid and shed many tears. We were so alarmed by this fictitious grief, which showed every symptom of real trouble, that I woke her up. As soon as she was awakened, she remembered what I wished her to remember, and forgot the things I commanded her to forget.
Then began another series of experiments on the woman when she was awake.
I enclosed her within an imaginary circle, which I drew with a stick, and I left the room, forbidding her to quit the circle. In five minutes' time I came back, and found her seated in the centre of the salon, waiting my permission to regain her liberty. She sat in one corner of the room, and I placed myself at the opposite end; I told her to do her utmost to resist coming over to me, and at the same time I commanded her to come to me. She clung tight to her arm-chair, but, drawn by an irresistible force, she was obliged to release her hold; then she sat down on the floor to resist the attraction, but the precaution was useless: she came, dragging herself along. When she was at my feet, I only had to stretch out my hand to her head and slowly lift my hand; she rose obediently, and in spite of her efforts, she stood before me. She asked for a glass of water; she tasted it, and it was really water; then, before she had put the glass down, or it had left her hands, I told her the water was Kirsch: she knew perfectly well it was not, and yet, at the first draught she swallowed, she cried out that it was burning her mouth. Poor woman! She was a charming young creature, who has since experienced an even profounder mystery—that of death! I wonder whether she remembers or has forgotten what happened when she was on the earth?
I have not yet done with the subject of magnetism; on the contrary, I have another most extraordinary incident of this kind to relate which took place in the presence of twelve to fifteen people. What follows is a simple recital, drawn up in the form of a legal report by two of the witnesses and signed at the time by us all.
During my stay at Auxerre, I was received into the house of M. D——. He had two children, a boy of six and a girl of eleven years of age. Marie was the name of the daughter, and she was a lovely child, like an angel, for her cheeks were pale and her eyes were black and almost austere. She was an exquisitely delicate creature, but, of course, she only possessed the intelligence and qualities usual to a child of her age, and I had, accordingly, paid very little attention to her, beyond remarking to my daughter that she was very pretty. And my daughter, who agreed with me, made a portrait of the child awake. One day we were dining in a room which opened out on the garden. We had reached dessert; the two children had left the table and were playing amidst the shrubs and flowers. We were discussing the everlasting question of magnetism, a subject the constant recurrence of which bored me the more because the usual doubts were expressed which I could only confront with facts; now, as these facts had nearly always taken place in a different locality from that in which the discussion was being held, I was obliged to choose from among those present a subject whom I guessed might be easily hypnotised, and, whether willing or not, to operate on this subject. Now, anyone who has ever practised the hypnotic art knows that the exercise is as fatiguing to the hypnotiser as to the hypnotised. I related several of the incidents I have just recorded in the preceding chapter, but they were received with the utmost incredulity.
"I should not believe in mesmerism," Madame D—— said to me, "unless, for instance (and she tried to think of the most unlikely subject she could find),—unless you could send my daughter Marie into a trance."
"Call Mademoiselle Marie and let her sit down to her usual place at the table; give her a biscuit and some fruit, and while she is eating I will try and put her into a trance."
"There is no danger, is there?"
"Of what?"