"What, I repeat, can you expect unphilosophical minds to make of so astonishing an affair as this? How account for the choice, the discernment, and the mysterious preference for some words over others. Which shall we consider the privileged words--those taken or those left? What is one to think of the extraordinary way in which the figure of the Saviour was left hanging? And of that strange imprint of the cross? How resist all the thousand delusions and uncertainties and fears the entire thing calls forth? "I wonder whether the unfortunate Balthasar, when his eyes beheld the terrible sight of the unknown hand inscribing upon the walls of his banqueting-room the announcement of his doom, can have been a prey to a greater variety of fears and tremors than those who witnessed or who even heard of the effects of the lightning at Lagny. For no doubt was felt that they were the outcome of supernatural forces--spirits alone could have worked these marvels; it was a question only whether they were the work of evil spirits or good. Some believed them to be the work of good spirits, deducing this from the omission of the words, _Hoc est Corpus_, etc., which they set down to a spirit of reverence for the sacred mystery. "Others believed them to be the work of evil spirits, but here again there were different theories. Some held that bad spirits had perpetrated these things out of sheer wickedness, wilfully profaning the holy objects and suppressing out of contempt, or some other evil design, the words so essential to the mystery; others held that mere imps had been at work, actuated more by mischief than sinfulness, and wishing only to give amusement to themselves and others by the quaintness of their pranks. I myself do not share any of those theories." Lamy's narrative proceeds to an examination of all the effects recorded, which he explains in the simplest way in the world, without having to have recourse to any occult causes. He comes, finally, to the last of all and the most extraordinary. "Not wishing to put trust in anything but my own eyes, I went to the church myself, and the effects of the lightning I saw there repaid me for the trouble. "I examined carefully the new imprint on the cloth. I found it very clear and fine, the letters well finished, but the ink a little indistinct, perhaps I should say faded. As M. le Curé de Saint-Sauveur (who was kind enough to show me everything) assured me that at the moment of the lightning the three-leaved card which contains the canon of the Mass lay between the altar-cloth and the small mat upon the stone on which the consecration takes place, folded in such a way that the printed side was next to the altar-cloth, I compared the characters printed by the lightning with the original lettering, and found that they corresponded exactly, except that they went from right to left, backwards, so that they had to be read with the help of a mirror, or else through the cloth from behind.