I have imprints in boxes of clay weighing anywhere between fifty-five and sixty-five pounds. I mention the weight in order to let you see the impossibility of lifting and transporting with one hand alone so heavy a tray, even upon the supposition that Eusapia might, unknown to us, free one of her hands. In almost every case, in fact, this tray, placed upon a chair three feet behind the medium, was brought forward and placed very gently upon the table about which we were seated. The transfer was made with such nicety that the persons who formed the chain and held firmly the hands of Eusapia did not hear the least noise, did not perceive the least rustling. We were forewarned of the arrival of the tray upon the table by seven taps, which, according to our conventional arrangement, John struck in the wall to inform us that we could turn on the light. I did so at once by turning the cock of the gas-fixture which was suspended above the table. (We had never completely extinguished it.) We then found the tray upon the table, and, upon the clay, the imprint which we supposed must have been made before its transfer, and while it was behind Eusapia, in the cabinet where John usually materializes and manifests himself.
The totality of these observations (which are very numerous) leads us to the thought that, in spite of the improbability of the thing, these imprints are produced at a distance by the medium.
However, some days after the séance at Montfort-l'Amaury I wrote as follows:
These different manifestations are not to me equally authentic. I am not sure of all of them, for the phenomena were not all produced under the same conditions of certainty. I should wish to class the facts in the following order of decreasing certainty:
1. Levitations of the table.
2. Movements of the round table without contact.
3. Mallet blows.
4. Movements of the curtain.
5. Opaque silhouette passing before the red lamp.
6. Sensation of a beard upon the back of the hand.