y which was treated as madness at the moment when it was
made.... Who knows whether my friends and I who laugh at spiritualism
are not in error, just like hypnotized persons, or like lunatics; being
in the dark as regards the truth, we laugh at those who are not in the
same condition._'"

"True enough," said Fowler. "The man who has made no study of these
phenomena is like one color-blind: he has never seen a landscape."

"It was this candid statement by Lombroso that moved Professor Chiaia, a
friend of Eusapia's, to write the great alienist a letter which was in
effect a challenge. After recounting a score or two of the wonderful
doings of Paladino, whom he had studied carefully, he ended in this
amusing fashion: 'Now you see my challenge. If you have not written the
paragraph cited above simply for the fun of writing it, if you have the
true love for science, if you are without prejudices--you, the first
alienist of Italy--please take the field. When you can afford a week's
vacation, indicate a place where we can meet. Four gentlemen will be our
seconds: you will choose two, and I will bring the other two.... If the
experiment does not succeed, you will consider me but as a man suffering
from hallucination, who longs to be cured of his extravagances.... If
success crowns our efforts, your loyalty ... will attest the reality of
these mysterious phenomena and promise to investigate their causes.'"

"I hope Lombroso was man enough to accept the challenge," said Cameron.
"Nothing could be fairer than the spook-man's offer."

"He did not at once take up the gage. It was not, in fact, till
February, 1891, that he was able to go to Naples to meet Eusapia, who
had begun to interest some of his trusted scientific friends. He found
the great psychic quite normal in appearance and rather attractive in
manner. She was of medium size, with a broad and rather serious face lit
with brilliant dark eyes. The most notable thing about her physical self
was a depression in her skull caused by a fall in her infancy. This scar
figures largely in nearly all the reports of her."

"Why?" asked Harris.

"Because they all agree that a singular sort of current of force, like a
cool breeze, seems to come and go through this spot."

Harris groaned, and Howard said: "Oh, rubbish!"

"Rubbish or not, they all speak of this scar and its singular effects.
At the time when Lombroso saw her first, Eusapia was just beginning to
be known to scienti