heir traces
there. It is known that animals which prowl by night have a piercing
sight, to enable them to discern their prey and carry it off; that the
animal spirit which is in the eye, and which may be shed from it, is
of the nature of fire, and consequently lucid. It may happen that the
eyes being closed during sleep, this spirit heated by the eyelids
becomes inflamed, and sets some faculty in motion, as the imagination.
For, does it not happen that wood of different kinds, and fish bones,
produce some light when their heat is excited by putrefaction? Why
then may not the heat excited in this confined spirit produce some
light? He proves afterwards that imagination alone may do it.

The Count d'Alais having returned to Marseilles, and being lodged in
the same apartment, the same spectre appeared to him again. Neure
wrote to Gassendi that they had observed that this spectre penetrated
into the chamber by the wainscot; which obliged Gassendi to write to
the count to examine the thing more attentively; and notwithstanding
this discovery, he dare not yet decide upon it. He contents himself
with encouraging the count, and telling him that if this apparition is
from God, he will not allow him to remain long in expectation, and
will soon make known his will to him; and also, if this vision does
not come from him, he will not permit it to continue, and will soon
discover that it proceeds from a natural cause. Nothing more is said
of this spectre any where.

Three years afterwards, the Countess d'Alais avowed ingenuously to the
count that she herself had caused this farce to be played by one of
her women, because she did not like to reside at Marseilles; that her
woman was under the bed, and that she from time to time caused a
phosphoric light to appear. The Count d'Alais related this himself to
M. Puger of Lyons, who told it, about thirty-five years ago, to M.
Falconet, a medical doctor of the Royal Academy of Belle-Lettres, from
whom I learnt it. Gassendi, when consulted seriously by the count,
answered like a man who had no doubt of the truth of this apparition;
so true it is that the greater number of these extraordinary facts
require to be very carefully examined before any opinion can be passed
upon them.

Footnotes:

[308] Vie de Gassendi, tom. i. p. 258.

[309] Alais is a town in Lower Languedoc, the lords of which bear the
title of prince, since this town has passed into the House of
Angouleme and De Conty.