CHAPTER III

Mesmerism--Experiment during a trance--I submit to being mesmerised--My observation upon it--I myself start to mesmerise--Experiment made in a diligence--Another experiment in the house of the _procureur de la République_ of Joigny--Little Marie D---- --Her political predictions--I cure her of fear

Between the representation of my play and Casimir Delavigne's, the scientific world was much taken up with an important event which established the power of magnetism, that had been under dispute since Mesmer's day.

One of the cleverest surgeons of the time, Jules Cloquet, had just performed an operation on Madame Pl--- for cancer in the breast, without her feeling the least pain, she having been put into a trance by mesmerism.

One word about mesmerism. Let us leave actualities and turn to abstractions.

Madame Pl---, upon whom this strange experiment had just been made, was between sixty-four and sixty-five years of age; she had been a widow ten years and had suffered for two or three years from glandular swellings on the right breast. Doctor Chap---- was her medical adviser; he had practised magnetism for some time and found himself apt at it. He attempted to apply it to the cure of Madame Pl---, but the disorder had gone too far, and he decided to try if it might be possible to lessen her pain while the operation was being performed. Jules Cloquet was consulted, and it was proposed that he should operate on the sleeping patient. He consented, welcoming the opportunity of seeing for himself a phenomenon concerning which he was sceptical, and also, at the same time, glad to be able to spare the patient the suffering inevitably connected with one of the most painful of surgical operations. Doctor Chap---- magnetised Madame Pl--- and rendered the whole of her right side completely insensible to pain. The ablation of the breast began by an incision eleven inches long, followed by another nine inches long. By means of these two incisions they could get at several glands under the armpit, which were carefully dissected. During the operation, which lasted ten minutes, the patient gave no signs of sensibility. To use the surgeon's own words--

"It seemed as though he were _operating on a dead body_; save that, when the operation was over and the patient's wound was being bathed with a sponge, she twice cried out, without coming out of her state of trance, 'Be quick and finish, and do not tickle me like that!'"

When the operation was over, Madame Pl--- was brought out of her trance: she did not remember anything, had not felt any pain and showed profound astonishment that the operation was over. The dressing was done in the usual way, and the wound showed every symptom of quick healing. At the end of a week's time Madame Pl--- drove out in a carriage. The suppuration was decreased and the wound was making rapid progress towards healing, when, about the evening of the fifteenth day, the patient complained of feeling great oppression, and swellings began to show in the lower extremities.

All this is nothing but the simple truth: now comes in the marvellous. Madame Pl--- had a daughter who came from the country to nurse her mother. Dr. Chap----, having seen that she had a very clear mind, put her into a magnetic sleep and consulted her about her mother's condition. At the first attempt she made to see, her face grew troubled and tears rose to her eyes.

Then she announced that the peaceful but inevitable death of her mother would take place the next morning. When questioned upon the internal state of her mother's chest, she said that the right lung was quite dead, that it was empty, suppurating on the side nearest the lower portion of the spine and bathed in serous fluid; that the left lung was sound and alone supported life. As for the abdominal viscera, the liver, according to her, was whitish and wrinkled; but the intestines were sound.

These depositions were taken down in the presence of witnesses.

The next day, at the given hour, Madame Pl--- died. The autopsy was made in the presence of deputies from the Académie, and the state of the body was found to conform precisely with the description given by the mesmerised girl.

This was what was reported in the papers, stated in the official return, related to me and confirmed by Jules Cloquet himself, one day when we were talking together--before the discovery of chloroform--of the great mysteries of nature which baffle human intelligence. Later, when I was preparing my book _Joseph Balsamo_, being interested to fathom the often debated question of the power or impotence of magnetism, I decided to make some personal experiments, not relying upon those produced by foreigners interested in accrediting magnetism. So I studied magnetism first hand, and the result of my investigations was as follows:--

I was endowed with great magnetic powers, and this power, as a rule, took effect on two out of every three persons upon whom I experimented. Let me hasten to state that I never practised it except upon young girls or women. This power in connection with physical phenomena is incontestable. A woman who has once submitted to magnetic sleep is the slave of the man who sent her to sleep. Even after she has waked she remembers or forgets what passed during her sleep, according to the will of the magnetiser. She could be made to kill someone during her sleep and, if he willed that she should be totally ignorant of having committed her crime, she would never know anything about it. The mesmeriser can make his victim feel pain of any kind in any part; he has only to touch the place with the tip of his finger, the end of a stick, or the end of an iron rod. He can cause a sensation of warmth with ice, a sensation of cold with fire; he can cause drunkenness with a glass of water, or even with an empty glass. He can put an arm, a leg or the whole body into a state of catalepsy, and make it hard and rigid as a bar of iron or as soft and supple as a scarf. He can cause insensibility to the prick of a needle, to the blade of a bistoury or the smart of cautery.

I believe all these things come under the domain of physical phenomena. Even the brain can be impelled to such a pitch of excitement as to make an ordinary being a poet, a child of twelve possess the ideas, feelings and manner of expressing them of a person of twenty or twenty-five.

In 1848, I made a tour in Burgundy. My daughter and I were in the same coach with a very charming lady of thirty to thirty-two; we only exchanged a few words; it was eleven o'clock at night; and one of the things she had told me was that she never slept when she was travelling. Ten minutes later, she was not only asleep, but asleep with her head on my shoulder. I waked her up; she was extremely surprised to find she had fallen asleep, and fallen asleep in the position in which she found herself. I renewed the experiment two or three times during the night, and my strength of will was sufficient, without my needing to touch my neighbour, to be successful in every instance.

When the coach stopped at the posting-house and horses were being changed, I woke her abruptly and asked her what time it was; she opened her eyes and tried to pull out her watch.

"Never mind that," I said to her; "tell me the time by your watch without looking at it."

"Three minutes to three o'clock," she replied immediately

We called the postillion, and by the light of his lantern we verified that it was exactly three minutes to three.

These were nearly all the experiments I tried upon that lady; they yielded the results I have just related, and, with the exception of the time being told without looking at the watch, they all appertain to the order of physical phenomena.

At Joigny, I made an official call on M. Lorin, the _procureur de la République_, whom I had never met before. It was just about the time of the publication of _Balsamo_, which had made magnetism quite the rage. I rarely entered a salon at that period without being questioned about this great mystery. At Joigny I replied, as I always did--

"Magnetic power exists; it can be practised, but its scientific basis is not yet known. It is in a similar condition to that of air balloons: we can send them up, but no means of directing them have yet been devised."

Doubts were then expressed by persons present, and especially by women. I asked one of these ladies, Madame B----, if she would allow me to put her to sleep; she refused in such a manner as to convince me that she would not be overweeningly angry if I did it without her leave. Nevertheless, I assumed an attitude of submission to her; but, five minutes later, having got up as though to look at an engraving hanging above her arm-chair, I summoned to my aid all my magnetic power and for five minutes I persistently willed her to go to sleep; at the end of that five minutes she was asleep. Then I began a series of extremely curious experiments on this lady, who was a total stranger to me, in a house which I had never entered before or have since re-entered. Madame B----, in spite of her will, obeyed both my expressed mandates and also my mute wishes. Every ordinary sensation in her was reversed: fire felt like ice, ice like fire. She complained of a bad headache: I bound her forehead with an imaginary bandage which I told her contained snow, and she immediately experienced a delicious sensation of coolness; then, a moment later, she wiped away from her forehead the water from the imaginary bandage, as though the heat of her head were melting the supposititious snow; but, soon, her handkerchief was not enough for the operation; she borrowed a friend's; finally, the demand for a handkerchief was followed by that for a serviette; then, her dress and the rest of her clothes being damp, she asked to be allowed to go to a room to change everything. I let her feel this sensation of cold till she shivered; then, suddenly, I gave the order for her clothes to dry themselves, and they dried themselves. The whole thing, of course, was in the imagination of the lady mesmerised. She had an extremely fine voice, of a fairly wide range, but which stopped short at the Ionic _si._ I ordered her to sing as high as _re;_ she sang, and gave the two last notes perfectly--an impossible feat for her in her ordinary state, and one which she tried in vain when I had wakened her from her magnetic sleep. A woman was working in the next room. I put a paper-knife in the somnambulist's hands and made her think it was a real knife. Then I ordered her to go and stab the workwoman. Thereupon what free will she had left in her revolted; she refused, writhed, hung back on the furniture, but I had only to will and to point in the direction I wished her to take, and she obeyed and went up to the workwoman, utterly stupefied, the knife raised.

Her eyes were open and her face, which was a very lovely one, assumed an admirable stage expression, as beautiful as that of Miss Faucit when she is acting the sleep-walking scene in _Hamlet._ The _procureur de la République_ was terrified at the thought of such a power, which could urge a person to a crime, in spite of herself. When I had willed Madame B---- back to calmness, I tried to make her see things at a distance. When Colonel S. M----, who was a friend of mine, had been staying in Joigny with his regiment, she had made his acquaintance, so I asked where the colonel was at that hour, and what he was doing.

She replied that Colonel S. M---- was in garrison at Lyons and at that moment, at the officers' café, where he was standing talking with the lieutenant-colonel, near the billiard-table. Then, suddenly, she saw the colonel grow pale, totter and sit down on a bench. He had just been seized with rheumatics in his knee. I touched her on the knee and willed that she should feel the same pain herself: she uttered a cry, grew rigid and shed many tears. We were so alarmed by this fictitious grief, which showed every symptom of real trouble, that I woke her up. As soon as she was awakened, she remembered what I wished her to remember, and forgot the things I commanded her to forget.

Then began another series of experiments on the woman when she was awake.

I enclosed her within an imaginary circle, which I drew with a stick, and I left the room, forbidding her to quit the circle. In five minutes' time I came back, and found her seated in the centre of the salon, waiting my permission to regain her liberty. She sat in one corner of the room, and I placed myself at the opposite end; I told her to do her utmost to resist coming over to me, and at the same time I commanded her to come to me. She clung tight to her arm-chair, but, drawn by an irresistible force, she was obliged to release her hold; then she sat down on the floor to resist the attraction, but the precaution was useless: she came, dragging herself along. When she was at my feet, I only had to stretch out my hand to her head and slowly lift my hand; she rose obediently, and in spite of her efforts, she stood before me. She asked for a glass of water; she tasted it, and it was really water; then, before she had put the glass down, or it had left her hands, I told her the water was Kirsch: she knew perfectly well it was not, and yet, at the first draught she swallowed, she cried out that it was burning her mouth. Poor woman! She was a charming young creature, who has since experienced an even profounder mystery--that of death! I wonder whether she remembers or has forgotten what happened when she was on the earth?

I have not yet done with the subject of magnetism; on the contrary, I have another most extraordinary incident of this kind to relate which took place in the presence of twelve to fifteen people. What follows is a simple recital, drawn up in the form of a legal report by two of the witnesses and signed at the time by us all.

During my stay at Auxerre, I was received into the house of M. D----. He had two children, a boy of six and a girl of eleven years of age. Marie was the name of the daughter, and she was a lovely child, like an angel, for her cheeks were pale and her eyes were black and almost austere. She was an exquisitely delicate creature, but, of course, she only possessed the intelligence and qualities usual to a child of her age, and I had, accordingly, paid very little attention to her, beyond remarking to my daughter that she was very pretty. And my daughter, who agreed with me, made a portrait of the child awake. One day we were dining in a room which opened out on the garden. We had reached dessert; the two children had left the table and were playing amidst the shrubs and flowers. We were discussing the everlasting question of magnetism, a subject the constant recurrence of which bored me the more because the usual doubts were expressed which I could only confront with facts; now, as these facts had nearly always taken place in a different locality from that in which the discussion was being held, I was obliged to choose from among those present a subject whom I guessed might be easily hypnotised, and, whether willing or not, to operate on this subject. Now, anyone who has ever practised the hypnotic art knows that the exercise is as fatiguing to the hypnotiser as to the hypnotised. I related several of the incidents I have just recorded in the preceding chapter, but they were received with the utmost incredulity.

"I should not believe in mesmerism," Madame D---- said to me, "unless, for instance (and she tried to think of the most unlikely subject she could find),--unless you could send my daughter Marie into a trance."

"Call Mademoiselle Marie and let her sit down to her usual place at the table; give her a biscuit and some fruit, and while she is eating I will try and put her into a trance."

"There is no danger, is there?"

"Of what?"

"It will not injure my daughter's health?"

"Not in the least."

"Marie!"

They called the child, and she ran up; they put some greengages and a biscuit on her plate and told her to eat them, where she was. Her seat was near me, on my left. While everyone continued talking, as though nothing were going on, I stretched out my hand behind the child's head and was the only one to keep silence, my will being concentrated on making the child go to sleep. In half a minute, she had stopped every movement, and seemed absorbed in the contemplation of a greengage which she was just going to put into her mouth.

"What is the matter, Marie?" asked her mother.

The child did not reply: she was asleep.

The thing had come about so rapidly that I could hardly believe it myself. I made her lean her head against the back of the chair without touching her, just by my power of attraction; her face looked the picture of perfect peace. I made some passes with my hand, up and down in front of her eyes, to make her open them. She opened her eyes, her eyeballs lifted skywards, a light iridescent film appearing beneath them,--the child was in a state of trance. When in this condition the eyelids do not flinch, and objects can be brought quite close to the pupil without causing the slightest movement. My daughter drew her portrait, while she was in this trance, as a companion to the other. There was such a striking likeness in the second portrait to that of an angel, that she added wings to it, and the drawing looked like a study after Giotto's or Perugino's lovely angel-heads. The child was in a trance: it now remained to find out if she could speak. A simple touch of my hand on hers gave her her voice: a simple invitation to get up and walk about endowed her with movement. But her voice was plaintive and toneless; her movements were more like those of an automaton than of a living creature. Whether her eyes were closed or open, whether she walked forward or backward, she moved with the same ease and sense of safety. I began by isolating her from others, so that she only heard me and only replied to me. The voices of her father and mother ceased to reach her; a simple wish on my part I expressed by a sign, changed her state of isolation and put the child again in touch with whatsoever person I chose to select as her interrogator. I transmitted several questions to her, to which she responded so accurately, so intelligently and so concisely that the idea suddenly came into her uncle's head to say to me--

"Question her upon political subjects."

The child, let me repeat, was eleven years old. All political questions were therefore perfectly unknown to her; she was equally ignorant of politics and of political personages.

I will put down an exact account of the proceedings of that strange cross-examination, without putting the least faith in any of the predictions the child uttered; they were predictions, I confess, which I should be extremely sorry to see fulfilled, and I can only attribute them to the feverish state into which the hypnotic sleep had thrown her brain.

I will devote the following pages to the dialogue and give the exact terms in which it was conducted.

"In what social State are we at the present time, my child?"

"We are a Republic, monsieur."

"Can you explain to me what a Republic is?"

"It is the sharing of rights equally between every class of people of which the nation is composed, without distinction of rank or birth or circumstances."

We all stared at one another, amazed at this beginning; the answers had come without any hesitation and as though she had learnt them beforehand. I turned to her mother.

"Shall we proceed any further, madame?" I asked.

She was almost struck dumb with astonishment.

"Oh! Heavens!" she said, "I am afraid it will exhaust the poor child too much to answer such questions as those; they are far beyond the range of her age and understanding. The way she answers them," added the mother, "terrifies me."

I turned again to the child.

"Does the hypnotic sleep tire you, Marie?"

"Not in the slightest, monsieur."

"You think, then, that you can answer my questions easily?"

"Certainly."

"Yet they are not the usual questions that are addressed to a child of your age."

"God is willing that I should understand them."

We again looked at each other.

"Continue," said the mother.

"Go on," all the rest of the company exclaimed, in eager curiosity.

"Will the present form of government continue?"

"Yes, monsieur; it will last for several years."

"Will Lamartine or Ledru-Rollin be its bulwark?"

"Neither the one nor the other."

"Then we shall have a president?"

"Yes."

"And after this president whom shall we have?"

"Henri V."

"Henri V.?... But you know quite well, my child, that he is in exile!"

"Yes, but he will return to France."

"How will he return to France? By force?"

"No; by the consent of the French people."

"And where will he re-enter France?"

"At Grenoble."

"Will he have to fight to gain an entry?"

"No; he will come by way of Italy; from Italy he will enter Dauphiné, and one morning it will be reported, 'Henri V. is in the citadel of Grenoble.'"

"So there is a citadel at Grenoble?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"Can you see it?"

"Yes, on a height."

"And the town?"

"The town is low down, in the valley."

"Is there a river in the town?"

"There are two."

"Are their waters of the same colour?"

"No; one is white and the other is green."

We looked at each other in still greater astonishment than at first. Marie had never been to Grenoble and they did not think she even knew the name of the capital of Dauphiné when she was in her ordinary senses.

"But are you quite sure that the Duc de Bordeaux will be at Grenoble?"

"As sure as though his name were written here"; and she pointed to her forehead.

"What does he look like? Come, give us a description of him."

"He is of medium height, rather stout; he is auburn; his eyes are blue and his hair is fashioned in the same way as that of the angels drawn by Mademoiselle Marie Dumas."

"Well, as he passes before your eyes, do you notice anything peculiar about his gait?"

"He limps."

"And where will he go from Grenoble?"

"To Lyons."

"Will they not oppose his entrance at Lyons?"

"They will try to do so at first, but I can see a number of workpeople going before him, leading him in."

"Are there no shots fired?"

"Oh yes, monsieur, several; but not much harm is done."

"Where are those shots fired?"

"On the road from Lyons to Paris."

"By which suburb will he enter Paris?"

"By Saint-Martin."

"But, my child, what will be the good of Henri V. becoming King of France, since he has no children...." I added hesitatingly, "and they say that he cannot have any?"

"Oh! that is not his fault, monsieur; it is his wife's."

"It comes to the same thing, my dear Marie, since divorce is not permitted."

"Oh yes! but something will happen that is now only known to God and myself."

"What is it?"

"His wife will die of consumption."

"And whom will he marry? Some Russian or German princess, I suppose?"

"No; he will say, 'I have returned by the will of the French people, so I will marry a daughter of the People.'"

We laughed: divination was beginning to intermingle with prophecy.

"And where will he find this daughter of the People, my child?"

"He will say, 'Seek the young girl I saw at No. 42 in the faubourg Saint-Martin, where she had climbed up on a street-post ; she was clad in a white dress and was waving a green bough in her hand.'"

"Well, will they go to the faubourg Saint-Martin?"

"Certainly."

"Will they find the young girl?"

"Yes, at No. 42."

"To what family does she belong?"

"Her father is a joiner."

"Do you know the name of this future queen?"

"Léontine."

"And the prince will marry this young girl?"

"Yes."

"He will have a son by her?"

"He will have two."

"What will the eldest be called--Henri or Charles?"

"Neither. Henri V. will say that these two names have brought too much misfortune to those who have borne them: they will call the boy Léon."

"How long will Henri V. reign?"

"Between ten and eleven years."

"How will he meet his death?"

"He will die of pleurisy, contracted from drinking cold water from a fountain, one day, when he is out hunting in the forest of Saint-Germain."

"But remember, my child, that you are making this prophecy before twelve to fifteen people: one of us here may warn the prince and then, if he is told that he will die if he drinks cold water, he will refrain from drinking it."

"He will be warned, but he will drink it, all the same; for he will say he has eaten many an ice when he was hot, so he can surely drink cold water."

"Who will warn him?"

"Your son, who will be one of his intimate friends."

"What! my son one of the intimate friends of the prince?"

"Yes, you are well aware that your son's opinions differ from yours."

My daughter and I exchanged glances and burst out laughing, for Alexandre and I are eternally squabbling over politics.

"And when Henri V. is dead Léon I. will succeed to the throne?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"What will happen during his reign?"

"I cannot see any further: wake me."

I made haste to awake her, but she did not remember anything when she was awakened; I asked her a few questions about Lamartine, Ledru-Rollin, Grenoble, Henri V. and Léon I., and she burst out laughing. I passed two thumbs across her forehead to will her to remember, and she remembered instantly; I begged her to begin the story over again, and she repeated it faithfully, in exactly the same terms, so that the person who had written down my questions and her answers while she uttered them was able to correct the first narration by the second.

I have since, upon several occasions, carried out other experiments on this child; there seemed to be no limits to the power which mesmerism had in or, rather, upon her; I could make her dumb, blind, or deaf at will; and, by a word, I could give her back all her faculties and excite them to a degree of perfection which seemed to exceed the limits of mortal knowledge. For instance, if I sent her to the piano--asleep or awake, it mattered little--she would begin a sonata; some person present would hum in a low voice to me an air that the child was desired to play, instead of the sonata; the sonata would instantly cease, and directly I stretched out my hand towards her the child would play the required tune. We tried this experiment a score of times before the most incredulous people, and she never failed.

Marie's father's house was built on the site of an old cemetery; several burial inscriptions could be deciphered even on the stones of the garden wall; and, because of these, when night fell, the poor child dared not stir out, but trembled with fear. The night I left, Madame D---- spoke to me of this terror, and so great was my influence over the child, that she asked me if I could not do anything in the matter. I was so accustomed to working miracles that I replied that nothing could be easier and that we would at once make the experiment. So I called the child, and, putting both my hands on her head, willing that all fear should be taken away from her, I said--

"Marie, your mother has just given me some peaches for my journey; go and fetch me a few vine leaves from the garden to wrap them in."

It was nine o'clock at night, and very dark. The child went out and returned singing; she brought back the vine leaves which she had gathered from the very spot where the tombstones were which caused her such terror by day. From that hour, she showed no hesitation in going into the garden or to any other part of the house, at any time of the night and even without a light.

I returned to Auxerre three months later; I had not announced my journey to anyone. Two days before my arrival, they wanted little Marie to have a tooth drawn.

"No, mother dear," she said, "wait; M. Dumas will be here the day after to-morrow: he will take hold of my little finger, while they take out my tooth, and then I shall not feel the pain."

I came on the day she said; I held the child's hand in mine during the operation, which was accomplished without her feeling the least pang of pain.

If I am asked for an explanation of the phenomena I have just related I cannot give any. I simply state what has happened. I am not an advocate of magnetism, I only use it when people compel me to do so, and it always fatigues me excessively. I believe a dishonourable person might put magnetism to evil uses, and I doubt whether a well-intentioned person does the least good by the practice of it. Magnetism is a pastime, it has not yet become a science.