"Yes, you are well aware that your son's opinions differ from yours."
My daughter and I exchanged glances and burst out laughing, for Alexandre and I are eternally squabbling over politics.
"And when Henri V. is dead Léon I. will succeed to the throne?"
"Yes, monsieur."
"What will happen during his reign?"
"I cannot see any further: wake me."
I made haste to awake her, but she did not remember anything when she was awakened; I asked her a few questions about Lamartine, Ledru-Rollin, Grenoble, Henri V. and Léon I., and she burst out laughing. I passed two thumbs across her forehead to will her to remember, and she remembered instantly; I begged her to begin the story over again, and she repeated it faithfully, in exactly the same terms, so that the person who had written down my questions and her answers while she uttered them was able to correct the first narration by the second.
I have since, upon several occasions, carried out other experiments on this child; there seemed to be no limits to the power which mesmerism had in or, rather, upon her; I could make her dumb, blind, or deaf at will; and, by a word, I could give her back all her faculties and excite them to a degree of perfection which seemed to exceed the limits of mortal knowledge. For instance, if I sent her to the piano—asleep or awake, it mattered little—she would begin a sonata; some person present would hum in a low voice to me an air that the child was desired to play, instead of the sonata; the sonata would instantly cease, and directly I stretched out my hand towards her the child would play the required tune. We tried this experiment a score of times before the most incredulous people, and she never failed.
Marie's father's house was built on the site of an old cemetery; several burial inscriptions could be deciphered even on the stones of the garden wall; and, because of these, when night fell, the poor child dared not stir out, but trembled with fear. The night I left, Madame D—— spoke to me of this terror, and so great was my influence over the child, that she asked me if I could not do anything in the matter. I was so accustomed to working miracles that I replied that nothing could be easier and that we would at once make the experiment. So I called the child, and, putting both my hands on her head, willing that all fear should be taken away from her, I said—
"Marie, your mother has just given me some peaches for my journey; go and fetch me a few vine leaves from the garden to wrap them in."