Now, at a certain moment, Eusapia took between her hands a hand of the professor and commenced to separate his fingers one from another and bring them together again, as may be seen in the accompanying cut. The harmonica was at that moment playing at a distance in tones that perfectly synchronized the movements made by Eusapia. The instrument was isolated in the room. We made sure that there were no threads connecting it with the medium. Still less could anybody fear accomplices, for the light would easily have betrayed their intervention. This performance was analogous to that which occurred in my presence on the 27th of July, 1897. (see above p. 72.) The following is a typical example of "sympathetic" movements, taken from a report by Dr. Dariex. The matter in hand was to make a key spring out from a lock. The light was strong enough for us to perfectly distinguish Eusapia's every movement. All at once, the key of the chest is heard to rattle in its lock; but, caught in some unknown way, it refuses to budge. Eusapia grasps with her right hand the left of M. Sabatier, and, at the same time, curls the fingers of her other hand around his index finger. Then she begins to make alternate movements of rotation back and forth around his finger. We at once hear synchronous rattlings of the key which turns in its lock just as the fingers of the medium are doing.[45] Let us suppose that the chest, instead of being at a distance from the medium, had been within her reach; let us still further suppose that the light, instead of being abundant, had been feeble and uncertain: the sitters would not have failed to confound this kind of synchronous automatism with conscious and impudent fraud on the part of Eusapia. And they would have been deceived. Without excusing fraud, which is abominable, shameful, and despicable in each and every case, it can undoubtedly be explained in a very human way by admitting the reality of the phenomena. In the first place the real phenomena exhaust the medium, and only take place at the cost of an enormous expenditure of vital force. She is frequently ill on the following day, sometimes even on the second day following, and is incapable of taking any nourishment without immediately vomiting. One can readily conceive, then, that when she is able to perform certain wonders without any expenditure of force and merely by a more or less skilful piece of deception, she prefers the second procedure to the first. It does not exhaust her at all, and may even amuse her. Let me remark, in the next place, that, during these experiments, she is generally in a half-awake condition which is somewhat similar to the hypnotic or somnambulistic sleep. Her fixed idea is to produce phenomena; and she produces them, no matter how. It is, then, urgent, indispensable, to be constantly on the alert and to control all her actions and gestures with the greatest care.