It was not alone believers who wondered at the credulity displayed by {108} M. Babinet, in persisting to call the manifestation a _meteor_; for Dr. Boudin mentions it very seriously in a work on _lightning_ he was just then publishing. “If these details are exact,” says the doctor, “as they seem to be, since they are admitted by MM. Babinet and Arago, it appears very difficult for the phenomenon to retain its appellation of _sphere-shaped lightning_. However, we leave it to others to explain, if they can, the _essence of a fire-globe emitting no sensation of heat, having the aspect of a cat, slowly promenading in a room, which finds means to escape by reascending the chimney through an aperture in the wall covered over with a paper which it unglues without damaging it_!”[205] “We are of the same opinion,” adds the marquis, “as the learned doctor, on the difficulty of an exact definition, and we do not see why we should not have in future lightning in the shape of a dog, of a monkey, etc., etc. One shudders at the bare idea of a whole meteorological _menagerie_, which, thanks to _thunder_, might come down to our rooms to promenade themselves at will.” Says de Gasparin, in his monster volume of refutations: “In questions of testimony, certitude must absolutely cease the moment we cross the borders of the supernatural.”[206] The line of demarcation not being sufficiently fixed and determined, which of the opponents is best fitted to take upon himself the difficult task? Which of the two is better entitled to become the public arbiter? Is it the party of superstition, which is supported in its testimony by the evidence of many thousands of people? For nearly two years they crowded the country where were daily manifested the unprecedented miracles of Cideville, now nearly forgotten among other countless spiritual phenomena; shall we believe them, or shall we bow to science, represented by Babinet, who, on the testimony of _one_ man (the tailor), accepts the manifestation of the fire-globe, or the _meteor-cat_, and henceforth claims for it a place among the established facts of _natural_ phenomena? Mr. Crookes, in his first article in the _Quarterly Journal of Science_, October 1, 1871, mentions de Gasparin and his work _Science_ v. _Spiritualism_. He remarks that “the author finally arrived at the conclusion that all these phenomena are to be accounted for by the action of natural causes, and do not require the supposition of miracles, nor the intervention of spirits and diabolical influences! Gasparin considers it as a fact fully established by his experiments, that _the will, in certain states of organism, can act at a distance {109} on inert matter_, and most of his work is devoted to ascertaining the laws and conditions under which this action manifests itself.”[207]