Before the commissioners had completed their examination, the aspect of animal magnetism was, in the hands of a French nobleman, undergoing an entire change. The Marquis A. M. J. Chastenet de Puységur, born in 1752, came of a distinguished family, and himself took an important part in the Revolution; his death was the result of a romantic but imprudent act of devotion to the royalist cause, on the occasion of the coronation of Charles X. in 1825. He was one of Mesmer's select pupils, and himself a good subject at the baquet; and likewise remained a firm supporter of the doctrines of animal magnetism. He had constructed a baquet at his estate at Buzancy, and was applying the "Mesmeric" practices among his dependents. It happened on the fourth of May, 1784, that he had magnetized his subject, Victor, in the usual way, when (to continue with his own words) "what was my surprise to see at the end of a quarter of an hour this man sleeping peaceably in my arms without convulsion or pain.... He spoke and seemed occupied with his own thoughts.... I perceived that these were affecting him unpleasantly, and I stopped them and suggested pleasanter ones, which indeed was not difficult. Soon I saw that he was happy, imagining that he had drawn a prize or was dancing at a fête, etc.; these ideas I fostered, and thus forced him to move about on his chair as if dancing to a melody, which I made him repeat aloud, by humming it myself." Upon awakening, Victor remembered nothing of what had happened. In this observation there are clearly recognizable an altered mental condition, a sleep-like unconscious state, loss of memory upon awakening, and suggestibility of sensations, ideas, and movements,--all important characteristics of a true hypnosis. Indeed, this may be considered as the first clearly recorded and uncomplicated production of the condition which made possible the study of hypnotism.