“I took a liqueur-glass, and put it on the mantelpiece in the dining-room. M. Meurice made some passes around the glass, then put his two hands together meeting them at the finger-tips; he drew his hands slowly away, the glass followed his hands by jerks.
“We then returned to the study. I sat down on the divan and prepared to resume my writing. M. Meurice was standing near the mantelpiece. In a few minutes I heard him say he was attracting the chessmen. I got up and watched carefully. His hands were in the position described above in connection with the liqueur-glass; he drew his hands slowly backwards, and the red king followed his hands; this tiny piece is about half an inch in height and a quarter of an inch in diameter. The movement was slow and gliding. M. Meurice tried to reproduce the phenomena but failed. He said he was tired and would rest a while. In a few minutes he renewed his efforts. I stood close beside him; again failure. After a few more minutes of rest, he tried again—I watching him closely all the while—and, this time, succeeded in attracting the same piece—the red king. The piece followed the direction of his fingers, as before, slowly and smoothly.
“M. Meurice again complained of feeling tired, and I urged him not to try for any more phenomena, but to lie down and rest. I went to my writing once more, but M. Meurice was restless, and told me he wanted to try to move an empty beer-bottle, which was standing on the mantelpiece.
“He took it from the mantelpiece and put it on the wooden stool. He knelt down in front of the stool, and made the same manœuvres with his hands as for the liqueur-glass and the chessman. I remained sitting on the divan, a distance of nearly seven feet from the stool. M. Meurice, after the above-mentioned manœuvres, i.e. passing his hands several times round the bottle, joined his hands together at the finger-tips, and drew them gently backwards as before. The bottle moved four times, each time from two to three inches.
“M. Meurice then said he felt sea-sick; and he was obliged to lie down for a while. He soon rose up, however, and said he wanted to make something else move. He took a piece of sealing-wax, tried several times, but failed to move it. Thereupon I persuaded him to cease making further attempts.”
“26th July.
“Phenomena of attraction similar to yesterday, occurred this afternoon. We were in M. Meurice’s bedroom. It was four o’clock, the window was open, the shutters were ajar; the light was excellent.
“The mantelpiece is covered with plush. On one corner there is a statuette in porcelain representing the Thorn; the child is seated on a chair, and is pulling a thorn out of his foot; the statuette is five inches high. M. Meurice told me that he was going to make this statuette move. I stood near him, with one hand on his back; I stooped down, and looked fixedly and narrowly at the statuette during the whole operation. M. Meurice proceeded exactly as in the preceding experiments, and when his hands—joined together at the finger-tips—were at a distance of six inches from the statuette, the latter swayed, bent slowly forward, and fell over. I affirm most positively, that there was no hair or thread or normal link of any kind whatsoever between the statuette and the medium’s hands. I passed my hand all round the statuette, before the movement, during the movement, and after the movement; I thus verified by touch, what my eyes were witnessing.
“Now, after M. Meurice had made some passes with his hands around the statuette (without touching it, be it remembered), and when, after putting his hands together at the finger-tips, he slowly withdrew them, I heard a slight noise, like the rubbing of a hair on the statuette; at the same time the latter swayed; this creaking sound did not continue, and only accompanied the first movements of the statuette. Again I affirm, that there was no hair or thread whatsoever connecting the medium’s hands with the statuette.
“After the production of this phenomenon, we decided to have a dark seance, for the purpose of trying to obtain luminous phenomena. I closed the shutters and pulled down a dark blind, especially constructed for dark seances. While I was doing this, M. Meurice continued trying to attract various articles on the chimney-piece. Seeing this I drew the dark blind away again and let in more light, in order to be able to see clearly. I took a stick of sealing-wax, broke off a piece and put it on a small mirror, which was lying on the mantelpiece. In this case M. Meurice did not make any preliminary passes as with the statuette, beer-bottle and liqueur-glass; he simply joined his hands together in front of the sealing-wax; the sealing-wax followed his hands several times, in fact every backward movement drew the wax after the hands; he finally drew the sealing-wax to the edge of the mantelpiece, when it fell to the floor.