I hasten to say that from this moment up to the end of the experiments we did not leave the room for a single minute, and that, so to speak, we had our eyes constantly fixed upon this corner, the curtains of which, however, were always partly open.
Some moments after my examination of the cabinet Eusapia arrives,—the famous Eusapia. As almost always happens, she looks quite different from what I had anticipated. Where I had expected to see—I do not well know why, indeed—a tall thin woman with a fixed look, piercing eyes, with bony hands, and abrupt movements, agitated by nerves incessantly trembling under perpetual tension, I find a woman in the forties, rather plump, with a tranquil air, soft hand, simple in her manners, and slightly shrinking. Altogether, she has the air of an excellent woman of the people. Yet two things arrest the attention when you look at her. First, her large eyes, filled with strange fire, sparkle in their orbits, or, again, seem filled with swift gleams of phosphorescent fire, sometimes bluish, sometimes golden. If I did not fear that the metaphor was too easy when it concerns a Neapolitan woman, I should say that her eyes appear like the glowing lava fires of Vesuvius, seen from a distance in a dark night.
The other peculiarity is a mouth with strange contours. We do not know whether it expresses amusement, suffering, or scorn. These peculiarities impress themselves on the mind almost simultaneously, without our knowing on which one to fix the attention. Perhaps we should find in these features of her face an indication of forces which are acting in her, and of which she is not altogether the mistress.
She takes a seat, enters into all the commonplaces of the conversation, speaking in a gentle, melodious voice, like many women of her country. She uses a language difficult for herself and not less difficult for others, for it is neither French nor Italian. She makes painful efforts to make herself understood, and sometimes does this by mimicry (or sign-language) and by willing to obtain that which she wants. However, a persistent irritation of the throat, like a pressure of blood returning at short intervals, forces her to cough, to ask for water. I confess that these paroxysms, in which her face became deeply flushed, caused me great anxiety. Were we going to have the inevitable indisposition of the rare tenor, on the day when he was to be heard on the stage? Happily, nothing of the kind took place. It was rather a sign of the contrary, and seemed like a forerunner of the extreme excitement which was going to take possession of her on that evening. In fact, it is very remarkable that from the moment when she put herself—how shall I say it?—in condition for work, the cough, the irritation of the throat, completely disappeared.
When her fingers were placed on black wool,—to be frank, upon the trousers cloth of one of the company,—Eusapia called our attention to the kind of diaphanous marks made upon them (the fingers), a distorted, elongated second contour. She tells us that that is a sign that she is going to be given great power to-day.
While we are talking some one puts a letter-weigher on the table. Putting her hands down on each side of the letter-weigher, and at a distance of four inches, she causes the needle to move to No. 35 engraved on the dial plate of the weigher. Eusapia herself asked us to convince ourselves, by inspection, that she did not have a hair leading from one hand to the other, and with which she could fraudulently press upon the tray of the letter-weigher. This little by-play took place when all the lamps of the salon were fully lighted. Then commenced the main series of experiments.
We sit around a rectangular table of white wood, the common kitchen table. There are six of us. Close to the curtains, at one of the narrow ends of the table, sits Eusapia; at her left, also near the curtains, is M. Georges Mathieu, an agricultural engineer at the observatory in Juvisy; next comes my wife; M. Flammarion is at the other end, facing Eusapia; then Mme. Flammarion; finally myself. I am thus placed at the right hand of Eusapia, and also against the curtain. M. Mathieu and myself each hold a hand of the medium resting upon his knee, and, furthermore, Eusapia places one of her feet upon ours. Consequently, no movements of her legs or arms can escape our attention. Note well, therefore, that this woman has the use only of her head and of her bust, which latter is of course without the use of the arms, and is in absolute contact with our shoulders.
We rest our hands on the table. In a few moments it begins to oscillate, stands on one foot, strikes the floor, rears up, rises wholly into the air,—sometimes twelve inches, sometimes eight inches, from the ground. Eusapia utters a sharp cry, resembling a cry of joy, of deliverance; the curtain behind her swells out, and, all inflated as it is, comes forward upon the table. Other raps are heard in the table, and simultaneously in the floor at a distance of about ten feet from us. All this in full light.
Already excited, Eusapia asks in a supplicating voice and broken words that we lessen the lights. She cannot endure the dazzling glare in her eyes. She affirms that she is tortured, wants us to hurry; "for," she adds, "you shall see fine things." After one of us has placed the lamp on the floor behind the piano, in the corner opposite the place where we are (at a distance of about twenty-three feet), Eusapia no longer sees the light and is satisfied; but we can distinguish faces and hands. Let it not be forgotten that M. Mathieu and I each have a foot of the medium on ours, and that we are holding her hands and knees, that we are pressing against her shoulders.
The table is always shaking and makes sudden jolts. Eusapia calls to us to look. Above her head appears a hand. It is a small hand, like that of a little girl of fifteen years, the palm forward, the fingers joined, the thumb projecting. The color of this hand is livid; its form is not rigid, nor is it fluid; one would say rather that it is the hand of a big doll stuffed with bran.