[3] This is a fact--as is also the whole succeeding account of what took place at this extraordinary séance. The anachronism observable is purposely made.--ED. “On this occasion I had played and conquered at both chess and écarte, no word being spoken, the games simultaneous, and the players in three separate rooms. There was present, also, an Italian gentleman with an unpronounceable name; a Russian Count Tsovinski, and a Madame Dablin--a mesmerist and operatic singer. After awhile his majesty asked the empress, and the general (Pellisier), who afterwards became the Duke de Malakoff, if they would submit to a trial of mesmerism by either of the three professors of the art, named. They declined; whereupon the Emperor, speaking aloud, asked ‘if any of the company were willing to test, in their own persons, the vaunted powers of his excellency, the Italian Count?’ whose methods of inducing his magnetic marvels differed altogether from those usually adopted; inasmuch as he, like Boucicault, the actor, in his famous play--‘The Phantom’--makes no passes, scarcely glances for an instant at his subjects, and invariably looks _away_ from, not toward, them. Now, it is a well-known fact that everybody believes everybody else, save themselves, subject to mesmeric influence, as is often demonstrated at the weekly séances of the Magnetic Society, held in the Rue Grenelle St. Honore. “At the date of this Imperial Séance, spiritualism had not yet made public pretensions in France, and although the Scotch trickster, Daniel Hume, had crossed the Atlantic, and was at that time living at Cox’s, in Jermyn street, Picadilly, London--yet he had not then obtained the notoriety that subsequently became his, nor had half Europe ran after those in whose presence tables tipped by heel, toe, and genuine spirit power. Of course, then, spiritual phenomena, so called, being then under bann, it could not be, and was not depended on as a means of explaining what there and then took place. “‘With great pleasure,’ said the Count, in reply to a request to exhibit his power. ‘With great pleasure, your majesty,’ and forthwith he turned and looked straight into a massive mirror that occupied the entire space between two windows of the saloon. As he spoke it struck me that, somewhere, at some time, I had met this Italian Rosicrucian, but where, for the life of me, I could not tell; yet I was certain that I had heard that voice, and still more certain that I had beheld that strange, sweet smile.