sehold of the
Marquis Sale.

In the evening, Negretti would seat himself in a chair in the anteroom,
when he commonly fell asleep, and would sleep quietly for a quarter of
an hour. He then righted himself in his chair, so as to sit up. [This
was the moment of transition from ordinary sleep into trance.] Then he
sat some time without motion, as if he saw something. Then he rose and
walked about the room. On one occasion, he drew out his snuff-box and
would have taken a pinch, but there was little in it; whereupon he
walked up to an empty chair, and addressing by name a cavalier whom he
supposed to be sitting in it, asked him for a pinch. One of those who
were watching the scene, here held towards him an open box, from which
he took snuff. Afterwards he fell into the posture of a person who
listens; he seemed to think that he heard an order, and thereupon
hastened with a wax-candle in his hand, to a spot where a light usually
stood. As soon as he imagined that he had lit the candle, he walked with
it in the proper manner, through the _salle_, down the steps, turning
and waiting from time to time, as if he had been lighting some one down.
Arrived at the door, he placed himself sideways, so as to let the
imaginary persons pass, and he bowed as he let them out. He then
extinguished the light, returned up the stairs, and sat himself down
again in his place, to play the same farce over again once or twice the
same evening. When in this condition, he would lay the tablecloth, place
the chairs, which he sometimes brought from a distant room, and opening
and shutting the doors as he went, with exactness; would take decanters
from the _beauffet_, fill them with water at the spring, put them on a
waiter, and so on. All the objects _that were concerned in these
operations_, he distinguished where they were before him with the same
precision and certainty as if he had been in the full use of his senses.
Otherwise he seemed to observe nothing--so, on one occasion, in passing
a table, he upset a waiter with two decanters upon it, which fell and
broke, without exciting his attention. The dominant idea had entire
possession of him. He would prepare a salad with correctness, and sit
down and eat it. Then, if they changed it, the trick passed without his
notice. In this manner he would go on eating cabbage, or even pieces of
cake, seemingly without observing the difference. The taste he enjoyed
was imaginary; the sense was shut. On another