in occasionally to heighten the
magnetic effect. The vessel was then covered with an iron cover,
pierced through with many holes, and was called the _baquet_. From each
hole issued a long movable rod of iron, which the patients were to apply
to such parts of their bodies as were afflicted. Around this _baquet_ the
patients were directed to sit, holding each other by the hand, and
pressing their knees together as closely as possible, to facilitate the
passage of the magnetic fluid from one to the other.

Then came in the assistant magnetisers, generally strong, handsome young
men, to pour into the patient from their finger-tips fresh streams of the
wondrous fluid. They embraced the patient between the knees, rubbed them
gently down the spine and the course of the nerves, using gentle pressure
upon the breasts of the ladies, and staring them out of countenance to
magnetise them by the eye! All this time the most rigorous silence was
maintained, with the exception of a few wild notes on the harmonica or the
piano-forte, or the melodious voice of a hidden opera-singer swelling
softly at long intervals. Gradually the cheeks of the ladies began to
glow, their imaginations to become inflamed; and off they went, one after
the other, in convulsive fits. Some of them sobbed and tore their hair,
others laughed till the tears ran from their eyes, while others shrieked
and screamed and yelled till they became insensible altogether.

This was the crisis of the delirium. In the midst of it, the chief actor
made his appearance, waving his wand, like Prospero, to work new wonders.
Dressed in a long robe of lilac-coloured silk richly embroidered with gold
flowers, bearing in his hand a white magnetic rod, and with a look of
dignity which would have sat well on an eastern caliph, he marched with
solemn strides into the room. He awed the still sensible by his eye, and
the violence of their symptoms diminished. He stroked the insensible with
his hands upon the eye-brows and down the spine; traced figures upon their
breast and abdomen with his long white wand, and they were restored to
consciousness. They became calm, acknowledged his power, and said they
felt streams of cold or burning vapour passing through their frames,
according as he waved his wand or his fingers before them.

"It is impossible," says M. Dupotet, "to conceive the sensation which
Mesmer's experiments created in Paris. No theological controversy, in the
earlier ages of t