"My investigations were commenced immediately after the first revelations made by M. Victorien Beaugrand. I collated all his statements. I analysed all his impressions. I seized upon all that Noël Dorgeroux had said. I went over the details of all his experiments. And in consequence of carefully weighing and examining all these things I did not come to the first performance at Meudon with my hands in my pockets, as a lover of sensations and a dabbler in mystery. On the contrary, I came with a well-considered plan and with a few working-implements, deliberately selected and concealed under my own clothing and that of some of my friends who were good enough to assist me.
"First of all, a camera. This was a matter of some difficulty. M. Théodore Massignac had his misgivings and had prohibited the introduction of so much as the smallest Kodak. Nevertheless I succeeded. I had to. I had to provide a definite answer to a first question, which might be called the critical question: are the Meudon apparitions due to individual or collective suggestions, possessing no reality outside those who experience them, or have they a real and external cause? That answer may certainly be deduced from the absolute identity of the impressions received by all the spectators. But to-day I am adducing a direct proof which I consider to be unassailable. The camera refuses any sort of suggestion. The camera is not a brain in which the picture can create itself, in which an hallucination is formed out of internal data. It is a witness that does not lie and is not mistaken. Well, this witness has spoken. The sensitive plate certifies the phenomena to be real. I hold at the disposal of the Academy seven negatives of the screen thus obtained by instantaneous exposures. Two of them, representing Rheims Cathedral on fire, are remarkably clear.
"Here then the first point is settled: the screen is the seat of an emanation of light-rays.
"While I was obtaining the proofs of this emanation, I submitted it to the means of investigation which physics places at our disposal. I was not, unfortunately, able to make as many or as accurate experiments as I should have wished. The distance of the wall, the local arrangements and the inadequacy of the light emitted by the screen were against me. Nevertheless, by using the spectroscope and the polarimeter, I ascertained that this light did not appear to differ perceptibly from the natural light diffused by a white surface.
"But a more tangible result and one to which I attach the greatest importance was obtained by examining the screen by means of a revolving mirror. It is well known that, if our ordinary cinematographic pictures projected on a screen be viewed in a mirror to which we impart a rapid rotary movement, the successive pictures are dislocated and yield images in the field of the mirror. A similar effect can be obtained, though less distinctly, by turning one's head quickly so as to project the successive pictures upon different points of the retina. It was therefore indicated that I should apply this method of analysis to the animated projections produced at Meudon. I was thus able to prove positively that these projections, like those of the ordinary cinematograph, break up into separate and successive images, but with a rapidity which is notably greater than in the operations to which we are accustomed, for I found that they average 28 to the second. On the other hand, these images are not emitted at regular intervals. I observed rhythmical alterations of acceleration and retardation and I am inclined to believe that the rhythmical variations are not unconnected with the extraordinary impression of steroscopic relief which all the spectators at Meudon received.
"The foregoing observations led up to a scientific certainty and naturally guided my investigations into a definite channel: the Meudon pictures are genuine cinematographic projections thrown upon the screen and perceived by the spectators in the ordinary manner. But where is the projecting-apparatus? How does it work? This is where the gravest difficulty lies, for hitherto no trace of an apparatus has been discovered, nor even the least clue to the existence of any apparatus whatever.
"Is it allowable to suppose, as I did not fail to do, that the projections may proceed from within the screen, by means of an underground device which it is not impossible to imagine? This last theory would obviously greatly relieve our minds, by attributing the visions to some clever trick. But it was not without good reason that first M. Victorien Beaugrand and afterwards the audience itself refused to accept it. The visions bear a stamp of authenticity and unexpectedness which strikes all who see them, without any exception. Moreover, the specialists in cinematographic "faking," when questioned, frankly proclaim that their expert knowledge is at a loss and their technique at fault. It may even be declared that the exhibitor of these images possesses no power beyond that of receiving them on a suitable screen and that he himself does not know what is about to appear on the screen. Lastly, it may be added that the preparation of such films as that would be a long and complicated operation, necessitating an extensive equipment and a numerous staff of actors; and it is really impossible that these preparations can have been effected in absolute secrecy.
"This is exactly the point to which my enquiries had led me on the night before the last, after the first performance. I will not presume to say that I knew more than any chance member of the public about that which constitutes the fundamental nature of the problem. Nevertheless, when I took my seat at the second performance, I was in a better condition mentally than any of the other onlookers. I was standing on solid ground. I was self controlled, free of feverish excitement or any other factor that might diminish the intensity of my attention. I was hampered by no preconceived ideas; and no new idea, no new fact could come within my grasp without my immediately perceiving it.
"This was what happened. The new fact was the bewildering and mystifying spectacle of the grotesque Shapes. I did not at once draw the conclusion which this spectacle entailed, or at least I was not aware of so doing. But my perceptions were aroused. Those beings equipped with three arms became connected in my mind with the initial riddle of the Three Eyes. If I did not yet understand, at least I had a presentiment of the truth; if I did not know, at least I suspected that I was about to know. The door was opening. The light was beginning to dawn.
"A few minutes later, as will be remembered, came the gruesome picture of a cart conveying two gendarmes, a priest and a king who was being led to his death. It was a confused, fragmentary, mutilated picture, continually broken up and pieced together again. Why? For, after all, the thing was not normal. Until then, as we know and as M. Victorien Beaugrand had told us, until then the pictures were always admirably distinct. And suddenly we beheld a flickering, defective image, confused, dim and at moments almost invisible. Why?