M. Sementrici also detected that the melted lead Leonetto employed was only Arcet’s metal, fusible at the temperature of boiling water. (For further details consult the historic notice of M. Julia de Fontenelle, in Roret’s Manuel des Sorciers, page 181.)
These explanations may appear sufficient to disprove the pretended incombustibility of the Aïssaoua; still, I will add a personal fact, whence the conclusion can be drawn that a man need not be inspired by Allah or Aïssa to play with red-hot metals.
Reading one day the Comus, a scientific review, I found a critique of a work called Study on Bodies in a Spheroidal Shape, by M. Boutigny (d’Evreux). The editor of the review, the Abbé Moigno, quotes several of the most interesting passages, among them being the following:
“We passed our fingers through jets of red-hot metal” (M. Boutigny is speaking). “We plunged our hands into moulds and crucibles filled with metal that had just run from a Wilkinson, and of which the radiation was insupportable, even at a long distance. We carried on these experiments for more than two hours, and Madame Coulet, who was present, allowed her daughter, a child of from eight to ten years, to put her hand in a crucible of red-hot metal, which caused not the slightest injury.”
Knowing the character of the learned abbé, as well as that of the celebrated naturalist and author of the work, it was not possible to doubt: still, I must say, this fact appeared to me so impossible, that my mind refused to accept it, and I wished to see, that I might believe.
I decided on calling on M. Boutigny, and expressed to him my wish to see so interesting an experiment, while carefully avoiding any expression of doubt on the subject.
This gentleman received me kindly, and proposed to repeat the experiment before me, when I might have an opportunity to wash my hands in molten metal.
The proposition was attractive, scientifically speaking; but, on the other hand, I had some fears, which the reader will appreciate, I think. In the event of a mistake I should reduce my hands to charcoal, and I was bound to take the greater care of them as they had been such precious instruments to me. Hence I hesitated with my reply.
“Do you not place confidence in me?” M. Boutigny asked.
“Oh, certainly, sir, I have plenty of confidence, but—“