“Dear friend, I saw her above the abyss; her eyes of celestial blue were filled with fire, her red lips were violet, her mild and divine voice had become hard and terrible, and like thunderbolt she hurled these words at me: ‘Writhe, proud one, in those fiery regions inhabited by demons.’
“All my blood flowed back to my heart; it seemed that the hour had struck wherein an earthly hell was to replace the hell that is eternal; I could still utter a few words of the Ave, Maria. How the time passed I knew not, but on returning the servant was asleep and said that it was late. O, if only I revealed to the enemies of the Work of Mercy that which passes within me, would they not cry victory? They would say that here indeed was evidence of monomania. Would God that it were so, for I should have less to lament. And yet fear nothing; if God will not hear my voice when it pleads my own cause, I will pray Him to double my sufferings, on condition that he hides them from my enemies.”
Here triumphant hallucination reaches the point of the sublime; Vintras consents to be damned, provided he is not classed as a fool. It is the last instinct of reason’s inestimable value, surviving reason itself. The drunken man is afraid only of being regarded as drunk; the monomaniac chooses death rather than admit his delirium. The explanation is that, according to the beautiful sentence of Cebes, already quoted, there is only one good desirable for man; it is that wisdom which is the practice of reason: there is also one only true and supreme misfortune to dread, which is madness.
CHAPTER III
MESMERISTS AND SOMNAMBULISTS
The Church in its great wisdom forbids us to consult oracles and to violate by indiscreet curiosity the secrets of futurity. In our day the voice of the Church is no longer heeded; the people go back to diviners and pythonesses; the somnambulists have become prophets for those who believe no longer in the gospel precepts. It is not realised that preoccupation over a predicted event suppresses our freedom in a sense and paralyses our means of defence; by consulting Magic, to foresee future events, we give earnests to fatality. The somnambulists are the sibyls of our epoch, as the sibyls were somnambulists of antiquity; happy are those querents who do not place their credulity at the service of immoral or senseless magnetists, for by the very fact of their friendly consultations they place themselves in communion with the immorality or folly of those who inspire the oracle; the business of the mesmerist is easy and his dupes are manifold. Among those who are devoted to magnetism it is therefore important to know who are in earnest.
Among these, M. le Baron Du Potet must be placed in the front rank, and his conscientious work has already done much to advance the science of Mesmer. He has opened at Paris a practical school of magnetism, to which the public is admitted for instruction in the processes and verification of the phenomena obtained.
Baron Du Potet is of an exceptional and highly intuitive nature. Like all our contemporaries, including the most instructed, he knows nothing of the Kabalah and its mysteries, but magnetism has notwithstanding revealed to him the science of Magic, and as it is still dread in his eyes, he has concealed that which he has found, even while feeling it necessary to reveal it. The book which he has written on the subject is sold only to his adepts and then under the seal absolute of secrecy.[357] We have entered into no bond with M. Du Potet, but we shall reserve his secret out of respect for the convictions of a hierophant. It is sufficient to say that his work is the most remarkable of all products of pure intuition. We do not regard it as dangerous, because the writer indicates forces without being precise as to their use. He is aware that we can do good or evil, can destroy or save by means of magnetic processes, but the nature of these is not clearly and practically put forward, on which we offer him our felicitations, for the right of life and death presupposes a divine sovereignty, and we should regard its possessor as unworthy if he consented to sell it—in what manner soever.
M. Du Potet establishes triumphantly the existence of that universal light wherein lucids perceive all images and all reflections of thought. He assists the vital projection of this light by means of an absorbent apparatus which he calls the Magic Mirror; it is simply a circle or square covered with powdered charcoal, finely sifted. In this negative space, the combined light projected by the magnetic subject and the operator soon tinges and realises the forms corresponding to their nervous impressions. The somnambulist sees manifested therein all dreams of opium and hasheesh, and if he were not distracted from the spectacle convulsions would follow.
The phenomena are analogous to those of hydromancy as practised by Cagliostro; the process of staring at water dazzles and troubles the sight; the fatigue of the eye, in its turn, favours hallucinations of the brain. Cagliostro sought to secure for his experiments virgin subjects in a state of perfect innocence, so as to set aside interference due to nervous divagations occasioned by erotic reminiscences. Du Potet’s Magic Mirror is perhaps more fatiguing for the nervous system as a whole, but the dazzlements of hydromancy would have a more dangerous effect upon the brain.[358]
M. Du Potet is one of those deeply convinced men who suffer bravely the disdain of science and the prejudgment of opinion, repeating beneath his breath the profession of secret faith cherished by Galileo: E pur si muove. It has been discovered quite recently that the tables turn, as the earth itself turns, and that human magnetisation imparts to portable articles, made subject to the influence of mediums, a specific movement of rotation. Objects of extraordinary weight can be lifted and transported through space by this force, for weight exists only by reason of equilibrium between the two forces of the Astral Light. Augment the action of one of them and the other will give way immediately. Now, if the nervous apparatus indraws and expels this light, rendering it positive or negative according to the personal super-excitation of the subject, all inert bodies submitted to its action and impregnated with its life will become lighter or heavier, following the flux and reflux of the light which—in the new equilibrium of its movement—draws porous bodies and non-conductors about a living centre, as planets in space are drawn, balanced and gravitate about their sun.