PLANCHETTE.
1S4
whom he takes more or less interest, as if himself in somnam¬
bulism and himself awake were two different persons.”
M. Deleuze finishes by urging M. Billot to publish his experi¬
ences, but with his habitual caution counsels him to suppress the
most astounding facts. Billot heroically determines to victimize
himself for the truth, to brave the sarcasms of the learned;
“ For,” he observes, u to talk of spirits in France, where the
majority of the magnetists hold fast by their accepted theory, of
merely material agencies, is to become an object of contemptuous
pity.”
He was also aware of another difficulty, — the uncertainty of
securing successful séances; which, whilst the causes affecting
them are but partially understood, so often fail in the presence
of the determinedly skeptical.
Such was the correspondence of the two celebrated magnetists,
at a time when Spiritualism in its present phase was yet unheard
of. The great facts of spiritual life thus bursting upon them in
pursuance of their scientific experiments in magnetism, and in
opposition to all their prejudices, as well as most contrary to
their expectations, must be regarded as one of the most curious
and most interesting events in the annals of Spiritualism. Be¬
sides the transport of material objects by invisible agents, the
spirits which appeared to them were solid to the touch, as they
have so often made themselves since. Living persons were ele¬
vated in the air in their séances. Dr. Schmidt, of Vienna, and Dr?ï
Charpjgnon, of Orleans, also give some striking cases of deli¬
cious odors, or cadaverous effluvia issuing from pure or impure
spirits which presented themselves : the most startling comma-*
nications of facts otherwise unknown were made; and they had
cases of obsession and possession as well as of successful exor*
cism.
After all the confessions of M. Deleuze, he afterwards was
greatly tempted, like Sir David Brewster, to recover favor with,
his scientific and incredulous contemporaries. Becoming one of
the chiefs of magnetic initiation, he endeavored to weaken or
neutralize the force of his avowals. A gentleman well instructed