"Céleste, I am shocked at you. You ought to know better," said Madame Villebois. "I am certain all this talk about spiritualism is very wicked. Father Pettavel told me so himself, and he attributes it all to the devil and his angels. The very thought that there may be spirits about, makes me positively afraid to go to sleep alone. Just suppose that they came and killed me in my bed, what would become of me then? I remember only the other night I heard strange, weird noises in my bedroom when I was in the dark, and saw gleaming eyes and dreadful forms prowl about. I called out to Adolphe to see what was the matter. Then a fearful spectral form with hollow eyes, and clothed in a sheet, came and stood over the end of my bed, and stretched out its thin, long, bony hands towards me, and bid me prepare to die. I was too afraid to call out, and had barely strength to cross myself and pray to the Blessed Virgin for aid. Thank heaven she heard me, and my prayer was answered, and the form slowly retreated and vanished, accompanied by the most fearful curses and groans. My confessor assured me that it was the Devil himself, and nothing but the efficacy of St. Geneviève's intercession to our Lady saved me."
Villebois burst into a loud laugh.
"Whatever are you laughing at?" said Madame, looking very shocked. "Was it not enough to frighten me to death?"
"Oh dear! Oh dear," said Villebois, almost choking with laughter. "My love, you saw nothing of the kind. I was at your side all the time, and you buried your head under the bedclothes and screamed with fright. I swear I saw nothing until I got up, when I found the whole cause of the disturbance was due to a strange black cat which had got locked up by accident in Madame's wardrobe. It sprang out as I opened it, snarled, and jumped out on our bed, and then bolted out of the room. This was the sole origin of your ghostly spectre and gleaming eyes, while the awful groans you thought you heard were the squeals which came from the little beast as I struck it with my cane when it fled."
Everyone roared with laughter, and Madame Villebois became very red and confused, and discreetly held her tongue.
A short silence ensued, and then Delapine awoke out of his reverie.
"The most astonishing thing about psychic phenomena," said Delapine, "is that nearly all men are profoundly ignorant of the very elements of the subject. The man in the street laughs at them, and the scientific man refuses to examine them, and yet the amount of literature which has been written on the subject is prodigious. These phenomena have been studied, examined, and recorded under strictly scientific conditions for upwards of fifty years, and every man who examines them carefully with an impartial mind, however sceptical he might be when he commenced his investigations, invariably becomes assured of their reality. But do not ask me to explain the phenomena. I confess I know nothing of their cause. As Fontanelle says 'It shows a great lack of intelligence to find answers to questions which are unanswerable.' I am like Faust who exclaims:—
"I've studied now Philosophy,
And Jurisprudence, Medicine,
And even—alas! Theology,
From end to end with labour keen;
And here, poor fool! with all my lore
I stand no wiser than before.
"Nevertheless I have convinced myself that these extraordinary phenomena are absolutely true, and by your leave, ladies and gentlemen, I will demonstrate a very few of them, and next time that we meet I trust I will show you some far more striking experiments, but that is only possible when I have convinced you sufficiently to have complete faith in me, otherwise the phenomena will not succeed. It is remarkable," he continued, "that whenever anybody makes a discovery, or an invention, everyone laughs him to scorn, and derides him either as an impostor or a madman. When Galileo looked through his telescope, and saw the mountains and valleys of the moon, all the people jeered at him. When he directed the instrument on to the planet Venus, and observed its phases, which demonstrated the fact that the planet revolved round the sun, the philosophers refused to look through his telescope. When in 1786 Jouffroy constructed a steamboat, he ascended the Saône from Lyons to the island of Barbe, he presented a petition to the Academy of Science, and requested the Minister of the Interior to take over his boat, but they all refused even to look at his invention. Seventeen years later Fulton ascended the Seine in his newly invented steamer and the Government officials condescended so far as to be present, but they paid no attention to it, and allowed the poor man to go away unnoticed and neglected. He went away almost heart-broken to the United States, and there made the fortune of thousands of people.
"Professor Graham Bell went all round New York in the vain endeavour to sell a half interest in his newly invented telephone for 2,000 dollars. Everyone thought that he was mad, and he could not find a single person in the whole city who would risk £400 on his invention. To-day the Bell Telephone Co. has a capital amounting to millions of dollars, and the half interest which he offered would have made the lucky purchaser one of the richest men in the world.