The severe rebuke received by the _Journal des Débats_ from M. de Gasparin, was read by all civilized Europe.[182] After that gentleman had minutely described numerous manifestations that he had witnessed himself, this journal very impertinently proposed to the authorities in France to send all those who, after having read the _fine_ analysis of the “spiritual hallucinations” published by Faraday, should insist on crediting this delusion, to the lunatic asylum for _Incurables_. “Take care,” wrote de Gasparin in answer, “the representatives of the exact sciences are on their way to become ... the _Inquisitors_ of our days.... Facts are stronger than Academies. Rejected, denied, mocked, they nevertheless are facts, and _do_ exist.”[183] The following affirmations of physical phenomena, as witnessed by himself and Professor Thury, may be found in de Gasparin’s voluminous work. “The experimenters have often seen the legs of the table _glued_, so to say, to the floor, and, notwithstanding the excitement of those present, refuse to be moved from their place. On other occasions they have seen the tables levitated in quite an energetic way. They {100} heard, with their own ears, loud as well as gentle raps, the former threatening to shatter the table to pieces on account of their violence, the latter so soft as to become hardly perceptible.... As to LEVITATIONS WITHOUT CONTACT, we found means to produce them easily, and with success.... And such levitations do not pertain to isolated results. We have reproduced them over THIRTY times.[184] ... One day the table will turn, and lift its legs successively, its weight being augmented by a man weighing eighty-seven _kilogrammes_ seated on it; another time it will remain motionless and _immovable_, notwithstanding that the person placed on it weighs but sixty.[185] ... On one occasion we willed it to turn upside down, and it turned over, with its legs in the air, notwithstanding that our fingers _never touched it once_.”[186] “It is certain,” remarks de Mirville, “that a man who had repeatedly witnessed such a phenomenon, could not accept the _fine_ analysis of the English physicist.”[187] Since 1850, des Mousseaux and de Mirville, uncompromising Roman Catholics, have published many volumes whose titles are cleverly contrived to attract public attention. They betray on the part of the authors a very serious alarm, which, moreover, they take no pains to conceal. Were it possible to consider the phenomena spurious, the church of Rome would never have gone so much out of her way to repress them.