Before proceeding to open the door, I waited for a second knock, but in vain. I was awakened, at the same hour on the following night, by a similar rap.
The nurse, sleeping with the children in the next room, hearing the knock, got frightened. I tried to reassure her by saying: ‘To-morrow a loaded gun will receive the individual who takes such a pleasure in arousing us.’
I underline these words, because further on we will have occasion of seeing them repeated in a surprising manner.
A few months later, and without any new incidents occurring in the meantime, our nurse was discharged, and replaced by a strong healthy girl from the Pyrenees.
The nocturnal visit had been quite forgotten, when on the 23rd January 1868, Madame Vergniat and the nurse, who were busy in my room, heard something like a rustling on the window-panes, and saw the statuette bow twice, as though saluting them. At first they thought an earthquake had happened, and when I entered they related the incident to me in scared tones.
The statuette was indeed displaced; but was that sufficient to convince me? No.
I laughed at the story, convinced that my wife and the nurse were victims of an illusion.
However, on the morrow and following days, the same phenomena occurring at the same hour, that is to say towards eleven o’clock in the morning, I determined to stay at home and verify de visu this marvellous fact.
I got what I wanted; for on that day, the statuette turned about now to the right, now to the left, twelve or fourteen times. Sometimes it advanced and balanced itself on the edge of the pedestal.
The evolution was so prompt and so unexpected, that the eye could scarcely follow the movement.