The fact that the mediums themselves either coquetted in a most equivocal manner with the possibility of associated immaterial processes, or else introduced the absurd doctrines of spiritualism for the explanation of the phenomena occurring at their séances, did not discourage Lombroso from the continually renewed study of thought-readers, calculating wonders, telepathists, and teleurgists (persons who claimed the power of giving rise to mechanical changes in remote objects), for he believed in the genuineness of different forms of “trance”; and his honourable capacity for belief, his disinclination to explain anything that was new as the result of deception merely because it was an unusual experience, frequently delivered him over to the devices of cheats. I can explain here that, from my own experience, his most important medium, Eusapia Palladino, whom, in April, 1894, in association with Lombroso, Enrico Ferri, the psychologist Luigi Ferri, the physiologist Richet, the anthropologist Sergi, and the painter Siemiradzki, I observed in several séances, was, indeed, a “miracle”—_i.e._, a miracle of adroitness, false bonhomie, well-simulated candour, naïveté, and artistic command of all the symptoms of hystero-epilepsy. In Rome, where the séances were held, she had at her disposal certain extremely adroit male mediums, who were associated in all her tricks. These mediums behaved irreproachably. During the séances, in consequence of emotional excitement and superstitious terror, they suffered publicly from hysterical paroxysms; and they were clever enough to charm Siemiradzki by arranging that “from the fourth dimension” a sheet of writing-paper should fall into his lap, upon which was inscribed in isolated Polish words[51] a prophecy of the speedy restoration of the kingdom of Poland. I took an exact transcript of this manifestation, and must repeat to-day what I said sixteen years ago, that if (as the mediums asserted, though I do not myself believe it) the spirit of Kosciuszko really wrote these hopeful words—instead of prophesying _finis Poloniæ_—then “in the fourth dimension” the spelling and grammar of the Polish language must have been very badly preserved. (Charles Dickens made the same observation in respect to English spelling as exhibited by “spirits.”)