But Babinet, who in common with his learned colleagues had made such fun of the two writers on demonology, and who was determined, moreover, to prove the absurdity of all like stories, felt himself obliged to {107} discredit the above-mentioned fact of the Cideville phenomena, by presenting one still more incredible. We yield the floor to M. Babinet, himself. The following circumstance which he gave to the Academy of Sciences, on July 5, 1852, can be found _without further commentary_, and merely as an instance of a _sphere-like lightning_, in the “Œuvres de F. Arago,” vol. i. p. 52. We offer it _verbatim_. “After a strong clap of thunder,” says M. Babinet, “but not immediately following it, a tailor apprentice, living in the Rue St. Jacques, was just finishing his dinner, when he saw the paper-screen which shut the fireplace fall down as if pushed out of its place by a moderate gust of wind. Immediately after that he perceived a globe of fire, as large as the head of a child, come out _quietly_ and _softly_ from within the grate and slowly move about the room, without touching the bricks of the floor. The aspect of this fire-globe was that of a _young cat_, of middle size ... moving itself without the use of its paws. The fire-globe was rather brilliant and luminous than hot or inflamed, and the tailor had no sensation of warmth. This globe approached his feet like a young cat which wishes to play and rub itself against the legs, as is habitual to these animals; but the apprentice withdrew his feet from it, and moving with great caution, avoided contact with the _meteor_. The latter remained for a few seconds moving about his legs, the tailor examining it with great curiosity and bending over it. After having tried several excursions in opposite directions, but without leaving the centre of the room, the fire-globe elevated itself vertically to the level of the man’s head, who to avoid its contact with his face, threw himself backward on his chair. Arrived at about a yard from the floor the fire-globe slightly lengthened, took an oblique direction toward a hole in the wall over the fireplace, at about the height of a _metre_ above the mantelpiece.” This hole had been made for the purpose of admitting the pipe of a stove in winter; but, according to the expression of the tailor, “_the thunder could not see it_, for it was papered over like the rest of the wall. The fire-globe went directly to that hole, _unglued the paper without damaging it_, and reascended the chimney ... when it arrived at the top, which it did very slowly ... at least sixty feet above ground ... it produced a most frightful explosion, which partly destroyed the chimney, ...” etc. “It seems,” remarks de Mirville in his review, “that we could apply to M. Babinet the following remark made by a very witty woman to Raynal, ‘If you are not a Christian, it is not for lack of faith.’”[204]