“Now,” asks de Mirville, “what are we to believe of the Americans, and their _thousands of mediums_ who produce the same raps before millions of witnesses?” “_Ventriloquism_, to be sure,” answers Babinet. “But how can you explain such an impossibility?” The easiest thing in the world; listen only: “All that was necessary to produce the first manifestation in the _first house_ in America was, a street-boy knocking at the door of a mystified citizen, perhaps with a leaden ball attached to a {106} string, and if Mr. Weekman (the first believer in America) (?)[200] when he watched for the third time, heard no shouts of laughter in the street, it is because of the essential difference which exists between a French street-Arab, and an English or Trans-Atlantic one, the latter being amply provided with what we call a _sad merriment_, ”_gaité triste_.”[201] Truly says de Mirville in his famous reply to the attacks of de Gasparin, Babinet, and other scientists: “and thus according to our great physicist, _the tables turn_ very quickly, very energetically, resist likewise, and, as M. de Gasparin has proved, they _levitate without contact_. Said a minister: ‘With three words of a man’s handwriting, I take upon myself to have him hung.’ With the above three lines, we take upon ourselves, in our turn, to throw into the greatest confusion the physicists of all the globe, or rather to revolutionize the world—if at least, M. de Babinet had taken the precaution of suggesting, like M. de Gasparin, some yet unknown law or force. For this would cover the whole ground.”[C] But it is in the notes embracing the “facts and physical theories,” that we find the acme of the consistency and logic of Babinet as an expert investigator on the field of Spiritualism. It would appear, that M. de Mirville in his narrative of the wonders manifested at the _Presbytere de Cideville_,[202] was much struck by the marvellousness of some facts. Though authenticated before the inquest and magistrates, they were of so miraculous a nature as to force the demonological author himself to shrink from the responsibility of publishing them. These facts were as follows: “At the precise moment _predicted_ by a _sorcerer_” a case of revenge—“a violent clap of thunder was heard above one of the chimneys of the presbytery, after which the _fluid_ descended with a formidable noise through that passage, threw down believers as well as skeptics (as to the power of the sorcerer) who were warming themselves by the fire; and, having filled the room with a multitude of _fantastic animals_, returned to the chimney, and having reascended it, disappeared, after producing the same terrible noise.” “As,” adds de Mirville, “we were already but too rich in facts, we recoiled before this new enormity added to so many others.”[203]