Now the hand which I saw was a right hand, stretched out and presented in profile. It remained for a moment motionless in the air, at about from twenty-four to twenty-eight inches above the table and thirty-six inches from Eusapia. As its immobility (I suppose) was the cause of my not seeing it, it therefore opened and closed: it was these movements which attracted my attention.
My favorable position in respect to the window, unfortunately permitted me alone to see this mysterious hand; but M. Mangin saw, at two separate times, not a hand, but the shadow of a hand outlined in profile upon the opposite window.
Eusapia turns her head in the direction of the curtain, behind which there is a leather-covered easy-chair, and, displacing the curtain, this chair comes and leans against me.
She takes my left hand, lifts it above the table the whole length of her right arm, and makes the feint of rapping in the air: the echo of three blows is heard on the table.
A little bell is placed before her. She stretches out her two hands to the right and the left of the bell at a distance of from three to four inches; then she draws back her hands toward her body, and, lo and behold! the bell comes gliding along over the table until it bumps against something and falls over. Eusapia repeats the experiment several times. You would think that her hands were invisibly prolonged; and that seems to me to justify the term "ectenic force," which Professor Thury, of Geneva, gave in the year 1855 to this unknown energy.
I was just asking if she did not perchance have some invisible thread between her fingers, when suddenly, an irresistible itching made her put her left hand to her nose; her right had remained upon the table near the bell; the two hands at this moment were about two feet apart. I observed carefully. Eusapia rested her left hand upon the table, some inches from the bell, and this was again set in motion. Considering the gesture made by her, it would have been necessary, in order to perform this feat, to have a wonderfully elastic thread, absolutely invisible; for our eyes were, so to speak, upon the bell, and the light was abundant. My eyes were only a foot distant from the bell, at the utmost.
This was a certain and undeniable case, and Sully-Prudhomme returned to his home with me as thoroughly convinced as I am.
The poet of Solitudes and of Justice, wrote on his part, as follows:
After a rather long wait, an architect's stool came marching up all alone toward me. It grazed my left side, rose to the height of the table, and succeeded in placing itself upon it. As I lifted my hand, I felt it at once seized.
"Why do you take my hand?" I asked of my neighbor.