Mysterious Psychic Forces: An Account of the Author's Investigations in Psychical Research, Together with Those of Other European Savants
John Stuart Mill · en
She bows three times, and shows her dark profile against the window. A
moment after we hear sounds from M. and Mme. Pallotti. They are covering
with kisses the face of a being invisible to us, saying to her with
passionate affection, "Rosa, Rosa, my dear, my Rosalie," etc. They say
they felt between their hands the face and the hair of their daughter.
My impression was that there was really there a fluidic being. I did not
touch it. The grief of the parents, revived and consoled at the same time,
seemed to me so worthy of respect that I did not approach them. But, as to
the identity of the spectral being, I believed it to be a sentimental
illusion of theirs.
I come now to the strangest circumstances of all, the most
incomprehensible, the most incredible, of any that we experienced in our
seances.
On November 21 M. Jules Bois presents a book before the curtain at about
the height of a man standing upright. The salon is dimly lighted by a
little lamp with a shade, set pretty well to one side. Yet objects are
seen with distinctness.
An invisible hand behind the curtain seizes the book. Then all the
observers see it disappear as if it had passed through the curtain. It is
not seen to fall before the curtain. It is an octavo, rather slender,
bound in red, which I have just taken from my library.
Now Mme. Flammarion, almost as sceptical as M. Baschet about these
phenomena, had glided past the window to the rear of the curtain, in order
to observe carefully what was passing. She hoped to detect a movement of
the medium's arm, and to unmask her, in spite of the courtesy she owed her
as her hostess. She saw very plainly Eusapia's head, motionless before the
mirror which reflected the light.
Suddenly the book appears to her, it having passed through the
curtain,--upheld in the air, without hands or arms, for a space of one or
two seconds. Then she sees it fall down. She cries, "Oh! the book: it has
just passed through the curtain!" and, pale and stupefied with wonder, she
abruptly retires among the observers.
The entire hither side of the curtain was plainly visible, because the
left portion of the left-hand curtain had been loosened from its rod by
the weight of a person who had sat down on the sofa where the lower part
of the curtain had been accidentally placed; and because a large opening
had been made fronting the mirror which filled the entire wall of the
farther end of the salon,--a mirror that reflected the light of the little
lamp.
If such an event had really taken place, we should be forced to admit that
the book went through the curtain without any opening, for the tissue of
the fabric is wholly intact; and we cannot suppose for a single moment
that it passed through at the side, the book having been held out about
the middle,--that is to say, about twenty-four inches from each side of
the curtain, the breadth of which is four feet.