The fifth seance led me, moreover, to think that the phenomena take place (at least a certain number) when the hands of Eusapia are closely held by two controllers, that it is not generally with her hands that she acts, in spite of certain possible trickeries; for it would be necessary to admit (an abominable heresy!) that a third hand could be formed in organic connection with her body!
Before every seance Eusapia was undressed and dressed again in the presence of two ladies charged with seeing that she did not hide any tricking apparatus under her clothes.
It would be a little long to go thoroughly into the details of these eight sittings, and it would be partly to go over what has already been described and commented upon in the first chapter, as well as in the preceding pages. But it will not be uninteresting to give here the estimate of several of the sitters, by reproducing some of the reports.
I will begin with that of M. Arthur Levy, because he describes very fully the installation, the impression produced upon him by a medium, and the greater part of the facts observed.
Report of M. Arthur Levy
(_Seance of November 16_)
That which I am going to relate I saw yesterday at your house. I saw it with distrust, closely observing all that might have resembled trickery; and, after I had seen it, I found it so far beyond the things that we are accustomed to conceive that I still ask myself if I really saw it. Yet I must confess that I have not been dreaming.
When I arrived at your salon, I found the furniture and all the other arrangements as usual. On entering, only a single change could be remarked at the left, where two thick curtains of gray and green rep concealed a little corner. Eusapia was to perform her wonders before this kind of alcove. This was the mysterious corner: I examined it very minutely. It had in it a little round uncovered table, a tambourine, a violin, an accordion, castanets, and one or two cushions. After this precautionary visit, I was certain that in this place at least there was no preparation, and that no communication with the outside was possible.
I hasten to say that from this moment up to the end of the experiments we did not leave the room for a single minute, and that, so to speak, we had our eyes constantly fixed upon this corner, the curtains of which, however, were always partly open.
Some moments after my examination of the cabinet Eusapia arrives,--the famous Eusapia. As almost always happens, she looks quite different from what I had antic.i.p.ated. Where I had expected to see--I do not well know why, indeed--a tall thin woman with a fixed look, piercing eyes, with bony hands, and abrupt movements, agitated by nerves incessantly trembling under perpetual tension, I find a woman in the forties, rather plump, with a tranquil air, soft hand, simple in her manners, and slightly shrinking. Altogether, she has the air of an excellent woman of the people. Yet two things arrest the attention when you look at her. First, her large eyes, filled with strange fire, sparkle in their orbits, or, again, seem filled with swift gleams of phosph.o.r.escent fire, sometimes bluish, sometimes golden. If I did not fear that the metaphor was too easy when it concerns a Neapolitan woman, I should say that her eyes appear like the glowing lava fires of Vesuvius, seen from a distance in a dark night.
The other peculiarity is a mouth with strange contours. We do not know whether it expresses amus.e.m.e.nt, suffering, or scorn. These peculiarities impress themselves on the mind almost simultaneously, without our knowing on which one to fix the attention. Perhaps we should find in these features of her face an indication of forces which are acting in her, and of which she is not altogether the mistress.
She takes a seat, enters into all the commonplaces of the conversation, speaking in a gentle, melodious voice, like many women of her country. She uses a language difficult for herself and not less difficult for others, for it is neither French nor Italian. She makes painful efforts to make herself understood, and sometimes does this by mimicry (or sign-language) and by willing to obtain that which she wants. However, a persistent irritation of the throat, like a pressure of blood returning at short intervals, forces her to cough, to ask for water. I confess that these paroxysms, in which her face became deeply flushed, caused me great anxiety. Were we going to have the inevitable indisposition of the rare tenor, on the day when he was to be heard on the stage? Happily, nothing of the kind took place. It was rather a sign of the contrary, and seemed like a forerunner of the extreme excitement which was going to take possession of her on that evening.
In fact, it is very remarkable that from the moment when she put herself--how shall I say it?--in condition for work, the cough, the irritation of the throat, completely disappeared.
When her fingers were placed on black wool,--to be frank, upon the trousers cloth of one of the company,--Eusapia called our attention to the kind of diaphanous marks made upon them (the fingers), a distorted, elongated second contour. She tells us that that is a sign that she is going to be given great power to-day.
While we are talking some one puts a letter-weigher on the table.
Putting her hands down on each side of the letter-weigher, and at a distance of four inches, she causes the needle to move to No. 35 engraved on the dial plate of the weigher. Eusapia herself asked us to convince ourselves, by inspection, that she did _not_ have a hair leading from one hand to the other, and with which she could fraudulently press upon the tray of the letter-weigher. This little by-play took place when all the lamps of the salon were fully lighted.
Then commenced the main series of experiments.
We sit around a rectangular table of white wood, the common kitchen table. There are six of us. Close to the curtains, at one of the narrow ends of the table, sits Eusapia; at her left, also near the curtains, is M. Georges Mathieu, an agricultural engineer at the observatory in Juvisy; next comes my wife; M. Flammarion is at the other end, facing Eusapia; then Mme. Flammarion; finally myself. I am thus placed at the right hand of Eusapia, and also against the curtain. M. Mathieu and myself each hold a hand of the medium resting upon his knee, and, furthermore, Eusapia places one of her feet upon ours. Consequently, no movements of her legs or arms can escape our attention. Note well, therefore, that this woman has the use only of her head and of her bust, which latter is of course without the use of the arms, and is in absolute contact with our shoulders.
We rest our hands on the table. In a few moments it begins to oscillate, stands on one foot, strikes the floor, rears up, rises wholly into the air,--sometimes twelve inches, sometimes eight inches, from the ground. Eusapia utters a sharp cry, resembling a cry of joy, of deliverance; the curtain behind her swells out, and, all inflated as it is, comes forward upon the table. Other raps are heard in the table, and simultaneously in the floor at a distance of about ten feet from us. All this in full light.
Already excited, Eusapia asks in a supplicating voice and broken words that we lessen the lights. She cannot endure the dazzling glare in her eyes. She affirms that she is tortured, wants us to hurry; "for," she adds, "you shall see fine things." After one of us has placed the lamp on the floor behind the piano, in the corner opposite the place where we are (at a distance of about twenty-three feet), Eusapia no longer sees the light and is satisfied; but we can distinguish faces and hands. Let it not be forgotten that M. Mathieu and I each have a foot of the medium on ours, and that we are holding her hands and knees, that we are pressing against her shoulders.
The table is always shaking and makes sudden jolts. Eusapia calls to us to look. Above her head appears a hand. It is a small hand, like that of a little girl of fifteen years, the palm forward, the fingers joined, the thumb projecting. The color of this hand is livid; its form is not rigid, nor is it fluid; one would say rather that it is the hand of a big doll stuffed with bran.
When the hand moves back from the brighter light, as it disappears,--is it an optical illusion?--it seems to lose its shape, as if the fingers were being broken, beginning with the thumb.
M. Mathieu is violently pushed by a force acting from behind the curtain. A strong hand presses against him, he says. His chair is also pushed. Something pulls his hair. While he is complaining of the violence used upon him, we hear the sound of the tambourine, which is then quickly thrown upon the table. Next the violin arrives in the same manner, and we hear its strings sound. I seize the tambourine and ask the Invisible if he wishes to take it. I feel a hand grasping the instrument. I am not willing to let it go. A struggle now ensues between myself and a force which I judge to be considerable. In the tussle a violent effort pushes the tambourine into my hand, and the cymbals penetrate the flesh. I feel a sharp pang, and a good deal of blood flows. I let go of the handle. I just now ascertain, by the light, that I have a deep gash under the right thumb nearly an inch long. The table continues to shake, to strike the floor with redoubled strokes, and the accordion is thrown upon the table. I seize it by its lower half and ask the Invisible if he can pull it out by the other end so as to make it play. The curtain comes forward, and the bellows of the accordion is methodically moved back and forth, its keys are touched, and several different notes are heard.
Eusapia utters repeated cries, a kind of rattling in the throat. She writhes nervously, and, as if she were calling for help, cries, "_La catena! la catena!_" ("The chain! the chain!"). We thereupon form the chain by taking hold of hands. Then, just as if she was defying some monster, she turns, with inflamed looks, toward an enormous divan, which thereupon _marches up to us_. She looks at it with a satanic smile. Finally she blows upon the divan, which goes immediately back to its place.
Eusapia, faint and depressed, remains relatively calm. Yet she is dejected; her breast heaves violently; she lays her head on my shoulder.
M. Mathieu, tired of the blows which he is constantly receiving, asks to change places with some one. I agree to this. He changes with Mme.
F., who then sits at the right of Eusapia, while I am at her left.
Mme. F. and I never cease to hold the feet, hands, and knees of the medium. M. F. sets a water bottle and a gla.s.s in the middle of the table. The latter"s brisk, jolting movements overturn the water bottle, and the water is spilled over its surface. The medium imperatively requires that the liquid be wiped up; the water upon the table blinds her, tortures, paralyzes her, she says. M. F. asks the Invisible if he can pour water into the gla.s.s. After some moments the curtain advances, the carafe is grasped, and the gla.s.s seems to be half full. That takes place several different times.
Mme. F., being no longer able to endure the blows given her through the curtain, exchanges seats with her husband.
I put my repeating watch upon the table. I ask the Invisible if he can sound the alarm. (The mechanism of the alarm is very difficult to understand, delicate to operate, even for me, doing it every day. It is formed by a little tube cut in two, one half of which glides smoothly over the other. In reality, there is only a projection of one-fiftieth of an inch of thickness of tube, upon which it is necessary to press with the finger-nail and give quite a push in order to start up the alarm.) In a moment the watch is taken by the "spirit." We hear the stem-winder turning. The watch comes back upon the table without having been sounded.
Another request is made for the alarm to sound. The watch is again taken; the case is heard to open and shut. (Now I cannot open this case with my hands: I have to pry it open with a tool like a lever.) The watch comes back once more without having sounded.
I confess that I experienced a disenchantment. I felt that I was going to doubt the extent of the occult power, which had, nevertheless, manifested itself very clearly. Why could it not sound the alarm of this watch? In making my request, had I overstepped the limits of its powers? Was I going to be the cause of all the well-proved phenomena of which we have had testimony losing the half of their value? I said aloud:
"Am I to show how the alarm is operated?"
"No, no!" Eusapia warmly replies, "it will do it."
I will note here that at the moment when I proposed to point out the mechanism, there pa.s.sed through my mind the method of pressing upon the little tube. Immediately the watch was brought back to the table; and, very distinctly, three separate times, we heard it sound a quarter to eleven.
Eusapia was evidently very tired; her burning hands seemed to contract or shrivel; she gasped aloud with heaving breast, her foot kept quitting mine every moment, sc.r.a.ping the floor and tediously rubbing along it back and forth. She uttered hoa.r.s.e panting cries, shrugging up her shoulders and sneering; the sofa came forward when she looked at it, then recoiled before her breath; all the instruments were thrown pell-mell upon the table; the tambourine rose almost to the height of the ceiling; the cushions took part in the sport, overturning everything on the table; M. M. was thrown from his chair.
This chair--a heavy dining-room chair of black walnut, with stuffed seat--rose into the air, came up on the table with a great clatter, then was pushed off.
Eusapia seems shrunken together and is very much affected. We pity her. We ask her to stop. "No, no!" she cries. She rises, we with her; the table leaves the floor, rises to a height of twenty-four inches, then comes clattering down.
Eusapia sinks prostrated into a chair. We sit there troubled, amazed, in consternation, with a tense and constricted feeling in the head, as if the atmosphere were charged with electricity.
With many precautions, M. F. succeeds in calming the agitation of Eusapia. After about a quarter of an hour she returns to herself. When the lamps are again lighted, she is seen to be very much changed, her eye dull, her face apparently diminished to half its usual size. In her trembling hands she feels the p.r.i.c.king of needles which she asks us to pull out. Little by little she completely recovers her senses.
She appears to remember nothing, not to comprehend at all our expressions of wonder. All that is as foreign to her as if she had not been present at the sitting. She isn"t interested in it. So far as she is concerned, it would seem as if we were speaking of things of which she had not the faintest idea.
What have we seen? mystery of mysteries!
We took every precaution not to be the dupes of complicity, of fraud.
Superhuman forces acting near us, so near that we heard the very breathing of a living being,--if living being it were,--such are the things our eyes took cognizance of for two mortal hours.
And when, on looking back, doubts begin to creep into the mind, we must conclude that, given the conditions in which we were, the chicanery necessary to produce such effects would be at least as phenomenal as the effects themselves.
How shall we name the mystery?
So much for the report of M. Arthur Levy. I have no commentary to make at present upon these reports of my fellow-experimenters. The essential thing, it seems to me, is to leave to every one his own exposition and his personal judgment. I shall proceed in the same way with the other reports which are to follow. I shall reproduce the princ.i.p.al ones. In spite of some inevitable repet.i.tions, they will surely be read with extreme interest, especially when we take into consideration the high intellectual standing of the observers.
Report of M. Adolphe Brisson.
(_Seance of November 10_)
(There were present at this seance, besides the hosts of the occasion, M. Prof. Richet, M. and Mme. Ad. Brisson, Mme. Fourton, M. Andre Bloch, M. Georges Mathieu.)
The following are occurrences which I personally observed with the greatest care. I did not once cease to hold in my right hand the left hand of Eusapia or fail to feel that we were in contact. The contact was only interrupted twice,--at the moment when Dr. Richet felt a p.r.i.c.king in his arm. Eusapia"s hand, making violent movements, escaped from my grasp; but I seized it again after two or three seconds.
1. After this sitting had begun,--that is, at the end of about ten minutes,--the table was lifted up away from Eusapia, two of its legs leaving the floor simultaneously.
2. Five minutes later the curtain swelled out as if it had been inflated by a strong breeze. My hand, never letting go of that of Eusapia, pressed gently against the curtain, and I experienced a resistance, just as if I had pressed against the sail of a ship bellied out by the wind.
[Ill.u.s.tration]