During the sitting an event took place which deserves to be mentioned as a proof, or at least as an indication, of the _intelligent_ character of the force in question. Being face to face with Mme. Paladino, at a point in the table the most removed from her, I complained that I had not been touched as had the four other persons who formed the company. No sooner had I said this than I saw the heavy curtain sweep out and come and hit me in the face with its lower edge, at the same time that I felt a light blow upon the knuckles of my fingers, as if from a very fragile and light piece of wood. Next a formidable blow, like the stroke of the fist of an athlete, is struck in the middle of the table. The person seated at the right of the medium feels that he is grasped in the side; the chair in which he was seated is taken away and placed upon the table, from which it then returns to its place without having been touched by anybody. The experimenter in question, who has remained standing, is able to take his seat in the chair again. The control of this phenomenon left nothing to desire. The blows are now redoubled, and are so terrific that it seems as if they would split the table. We begin to perceive hands lifting and inflating the curtains and advancing so far as to touch first one, then the other, of the company, caressing them, pressing their hands, daintily pulling their ears or clapping hands merrily in the air above their heads. It seems to me very singular and perhaps intentional,--this contrast between the touches (sometimes nervous and energetic, and again delicate and gentle, but always friendly) and the deafening, violent, brutal blows struck upon the table. A single one of these fist-blows, planted in the back, would suffice to break the vertebral column. The hands that perform these feats are the strong and brawny hands of a man, the daintier hands are those of a woman, the very small hands those of children. The darkness is rendered a little less dense, and at once the chair of No. 5 (Professor Morselli), which had already made a jump to one side, is slipped from under him, while a hand is placed on his back and on his shoulder. The chair gets up on the table, comes down again to the floor, and, after different horizontal and vertical oscillations, soars up and rests upon the head of the professor, who has remained standing. It remains there for some minutes in a state of very unstable equilibrium. The loud blows and the delicate touches of hands, large and small, succeed each other uninterruptedly in such a way that, without our being able mathematically to prove the simultaneousness of different phenomena, it is yet almost certain in several cases.