impression was over and all was spoilt. The third disappointment came much later, at first sight of Rome, and does not belong here. To return to my story. In one of my uncle’s letters from America, he told us of his visit to a house, where the guests were all amusing themselves by setting a table in motion by simply letting their hands rest lightly on it, as they stood round. It had interested him, but he had not been able to induce my father to take any part in the proceedings, the latter declining even to countenance such nonsense, declaring himself the enemy of every sort of humbug. At home, on the contrary, curiosity was immediately aroused, our former experience with the magnetiser and the discovery of my uncle’s marvellous powers, having to a certain extent initiated us into the mysteries of the occult. Young and old, children and grown-up people, we were all pressed into the service, and were soon all standing in a ring round a very big table, our hands resting on it, so that one’s little finger touched that of one’s neighbour on either side. Thus we stood and waited, with some impatience, and a good deal of inward merriment, to see what would occur. Just as we were getting thoroughly disheartened and tired out, a tiny tremor was felt in the table, which then, in spite of its great weight, actually began to move from the spot. Naturally, each one accused the other of pushing, but that explanation would have been neither satisfactory nor admissible, standing as we were with our hands in full view of one another, so that no attempt at cheating could have passed unperceived. And our astonishment was increased when we observed how when my mother was wheeled into the room, she had but to lay her finger ever so lightly on the table, for it at once to begin to move quicker, even setting off to rush about in all directions, so that she had to be pushed after it in her chair. We all followed, with peals of laughter at the strange sight, the ungainly movements of this new sort of dancing-bear, and so much amusement did this afford, that we set to work at once to experiment on all sorts of other inanimate objects. We soon found that all were not in the same degree susceptible of locomotion, nor were all human beings equally endowed with the latent force by which automatic movement could be imparted to things usually inert. Count Oriola proved to be the possessor of a quite exceptional degree of this psychic or magnetic force; he had only to stretch out his hand within a few paces of a small table, and it immediately came marching towards him, apparently with great glee, to our inexpressible delight, but to the unspeakable horror of my governess, from whose sitting-room the table had been borrowed, and who energetically refused to receive such an impish piece of furniture back again!