MM. Ascensi and Bianchi refused to form part of the circle, and remained standing behind MM. Tamburini and Penta. I paid little attention to these two, being certain that their action was a premeditated combination in order to redouble the vigilance. I simply recommended that, while they were observing with extreme care, each should remain quiet.
The experiments began in candlelight strong enough to light up the whole room. After a long wait the table began to move, slowly at first, then more energetically. However, the movements remained intermittent, labored, and much less vigorous than at Saturday's séance.
The table volunteered a request by taps of its leg designating the letters of the alphabet, that MM. Limoncelli and Penta should exchange places. This exchange effected, the table called for the turning out of lights.
A moment after, and with more force this time, the movements of the table began again. Suddenly, in the midst of these, violent blows were heard. The chair placed at M. Lombroso's right tried to climb up on the table, then hung suspended upon the arm of the learned professor. All of a sudden the curtains of the alcove were shaken, and swung forward over the table in such a way as to envelop M. Lombroso, who was very much moved by such a wonder, as he himself has declared.
All these phenomena, happening at long intervals, in the darkness, and in the midst of noisy conversation, were not estimated at their true worth. It was thought that they were only the effects of chance or were jests of some member of the company.
While we are all waiting and discussing the import of the phenomena and the greater or less value that should be set on them, the noise of the fall of an object is heard. When the room is lighted, there is found at our feet under the table the trumpet which had been placed on the round table in the alcove behind the curtains. This circumstance, which MM. Bianchi and Ascensi receive with a burst of laughter, surprises the experimenters, and has the effect of more completely fixing their attention.
The room is darkened again, and, by urgent request some fugitive glimmers of light are seen to appear and disappear at long intervals. This phenomenon impressed MM. Bianchi and Ascensi, and put an end to their incessant railleries, so much so that they came and formed a part of the circle. At the moment of the appearance of the gleams, and even some time after they had ceased to show themselves, MM. Limoncelli and Tamburini, at the right of the medium, said that they were touched in several places by a hand. M. Lombroso's young nephew, absolutely sceptical, who had taken a seat by the side of M. Limoncelli, declared that he felt the touch of a flesh-and-blood hand, and asked with some impetuosity who did that. He forgot—being not only sceptical, but artless—that, like himself, all the persons present were helping to form the chain of hands and were in mutual contact.
It was getting late, and the lack of homogeneity in the circle was abridging the phenomena. Under these conditions I thought I ought to end the séance and cause the candles to be lighted.
When MM. Limoncelli and Vizioli were taking leave, the medium being still seated and bound, and all of us were standing around the table conversing about the luminous phenomena, and comparing the scattered and feeble effects obtained in this soirée with those of the Saturday preceding, and seeking the reason for this difference, we heard noise in the alcove, and saw the portières which enclosed it vigorously shaken, and the round table which was behind them slowly advancing toward Mme. Paladino, still seated and bound.
On seeing this strange, unexpected phenomena occur in full light, we were all stupefied with amazement. M. Bianchi and M. Lombroso's nephew dashed into the alcove, under the impression that some person concealed there was producing the movement of the portières and the round table. Their astonishment was unbounded when they ascertained that there was no one there, and that, under their very eyes, the table continued to glide over the floor in the direction of the medium. That is not all. Professor Lombroso observed that, while the table was in movement, the salver on it had been turned upside down without a single particle of the flour which it contained being spilled; and he added that no prestidigitator would have been able to accomplish such a feat. In the presence of these phenomena taking place as they did, after the breaking up of the circle, in such a way as to eliminate the hypothesis of a magnetic current, Professor Bianchi, in obedience to the love of truth, confessed that it was he who, for the sake of a joke, had contrived and brought about the fall of the tin trumpet, but that in the presence of such achievements as this he could no longer be sceptical, and was going to apply himself to the study of them in order to investigate their causes.