Mrs. Williams, an American medium, who for a long while was a centre of spiritistic attention at Paris, used to materialize a venerable doctor with a flowing beard who was sometimes accompanied by a young girl dressed in white. At one circle Mons. Paul Leymaric gave a prearranged signal. He and a friend each laid hold of one of the apparitions; a third spectator seized Mrs. Williams’ assistant; and a fourth turned on the lights. Mons. Leymaric was seen to be struggling with the medium, who had donned a grey wig and a long property beard; the young girl was a mask from which were draped folds of fine white muslin and which she manipulated with her left hand. Miller, a Californian medium, was more than suspected of producing spirits from gauze and nun’s veiling.[107] From one of the mediums of Mons. de Rochas, Valentine, there emanated mysterious lights, which moved quickly hither and thither during the séances. Colonel de Rochas, when this manifestation was once at its height, suddenly switched on a powerful electric torch and Valentine was seen to have slipped off his socks and to be waving in the air his feet, which were covered with some preparation of phosphorus.[108] As early as June, 1875, a photographer named Buguet was convicted of selling faked photographs of spirits by which he netted a very pretty sum.[109] It is notorious that in Spiritistic séances and circles charlatanry and swindling of every kind are rife; that again and again mediums have been convicted of fraud; that not infrequently all kinds of properties, stuffed gloves, gauzes, yards of diaphanous muslin, invisible wires, hooks, beards, wigs, have been discovered; that the use of luminous paint is very effective and far from uncommon; that a sliding trap or panel may on occasion prove of inestimable service; that we must allow for self-deception, delusions, suggestion, hypnotism even; but when all has been said, when we candidly acknowledge the imposture, the adroit legerdemain, the conjurer’s clever tricks, the significant _mise en scène_, the verbal wit and quibbling, the deliberate and subtle cozenage contrived by shrewd minds and the full play of dramatic instinct and energy, nevertheless there yet remain numbers of instances when it has been repeatedly proven that acute and trained observers have witnessed phenomena which could not by any possibility whatsoever have been fraudulently produced; that clear-headed, cold-hearted, suspicious, hard men of science with every sense keenly alert at that very moment have conversed with, inspected, nay, actually handled, materialized forms and figures no personation could have devised and manifested.