"However, I am ready to grant that some of the good old rules were justified. As you have seen in my own experiments, I have proceeded cautiously, for if you suppose mediumship to be a psycho-dynamic adjustment of the organisms in the circle--a subtle physical relationship--there is all the more reason to be careful. I did not find it necessary to mistreat Mrs. Smiley in order to test her powers. But _Eusapia has set a new pace for mediums_. She has gone into the lion's den alone and unarmed--not once, but a hundred times. She entered Lombroso's study, a room previously unexplored by her, and there placed herself before a cabinet that she was not permitted to examine--a cabinet filled with machines for dividing the true from the false. In Morselli's presence she submitted to tests the like of which not even Crookes was permitted to apply, and all sacred rules and regulations, all ideas of religion or questions of morality, vanished when she entered the cold, clear air of Bottazzi's physiological laboratory." "This begins to sound like the grapple of a cuttlefish and a mermaid. Was the woman crushed?" "No; she more than sustained her great reputation. She conquered the remorseless scientist and performed the impossible." I had the strained attention of my audience now. Time was forgotten, and cries of "Tell us!" "Tell us all!" arose. "It is an exciting story, an incredible story--" "So much the better!" exclaimed Miss Brush. "I am full of enthusiasm for Bottazzi," I resumed. "His was the kind of investigation I should like to put through myself. It appeals to me as no spiritualistic performance has ever done. In a sense the facts he has demonstrated make all material tests inoperative. Matter is all we have to cling to when it comes to physical tests. A nail driven down through the sleeve of the medium's dress _seems_ to increase our control of her, and a metronome or a Morse telegraphic sounder does add value to our testimony, and yet Zoellner seems nearer right than Miller: matter seems only a condition of force, and subject to change at the will of the psychic. "Up to the beginning of last year Bottazzi confesses that he had read little or nothing on the subject, and, like our friend Miller here, considered it beneath the dignity of a scientist to be present at spiritualist circles. It is highly instructive to note that Paladino, the most renowned medium of her time, was in Naples at his very door; but that doesn't matter--a scientist is blind to what he does not wish to see. In this case Bottazzi's eyes were opened by a young friend, Professor Charles Foa, of Turin, who sent him an account of what he and Dr. Herlitzka had witnessed in Eusapia's presence." "They really seem to be taking the phenomena seriously over there," said Harris.