"Yes, I know all about it, Palladino, Slade, Home, the Daniels, and the rest, with their cabinets and masks, and rubber hands daubed all over with luminous paint. Besides they perform all their tricks in the dark, lest people should see through their frauds. What I want to know is why they cannot do their supernatural performances in a private house which is unprovided with trap doors, and other nicknacks and apparatus." "Still the same unbeliever I see: your five years stay abroad has not altered you much in that respect. But if you will allow me to introduce you to my friend the professor I think you will alter your opinion." "But where is this prodigy to be found?" "When you cease that mocking tone, I'll tell you." "Proceed, mon cher Villebois: I will be as serious as a clown at the pantomime." "Well, you remember Delapine?" "What, that youthful professor who gave such a wonderful course of lectures on physics in the laboratory at the Sorbonne?" "The same," answered Villebois. "He is staying for some time with us at Passy, and is giving us the most wonderful exhibitions of his powers. Talk about a genius, the recitals of his experiences, his inventions, and his discoveries fairly dazzles one; and, in addition, he declares that he possesses such extraordinary mediumistic powers that he can call up spirits at will." "But I thought that you did not believe in these extraordinary psychic forces, that you were too well grounded in natural science to believe in any phenomena which are incapable of being treated mathematically, or which could not be subjected to the rigid tests of the laboratory." "That is so," answered Villebois. "If I had not witnessed these phenomena with my own eyes, and subjected them to my own tests I should have felt disposed to put them down to charlatanism. At first, I was inclined to think that he was 'off his head,' but when you hear him talk with such brilliancy and logic, and when you see him with your own eyes perform the things which I have seen him do, you will agree that there is not a saner man to-day in the whole of our beloved Paris. At times again, his brain appears to be too big for him, and he is apt to go off into fainting fits--or trances, as he calls them--and on occasions he remains for hours in that state: you could almost swear that he was dead, and yet he wakes up as fresh as the proverbial daisy, to amaze us all with the recital of experiences during the trance." "How extraordinary; forgive my previous mockery, my dear Villebois. I assure you I am as anxious now as I was indifferent before about meeting your friend. Perhaps he may have some recollection of me."