ree. To-day I have
repeated the experiment on him, and with the same success. I own to you
that my head turns round with pleasure to think of the good I do. Madame
de Puysegur, the friends she has with her, my servants, and, in fact, all
who are near me, feel an amazement, mingled with admiration, which cannot
be described; but they do not experience the half of my sensations.
Without my tree, which gives me rest, and which will give me still more, I
should be in a state of agitation, inconsistent, I believe, with my
health. I exist too much, if I may be allowed to use the expression."

In another letter, he descants still more poetically upon his gardener
with the enlarged soul. He says, "It is from this simple man, this tall
and stout rustic, twenty-three years of age, enfeebled by disease, or
rather by sorrow, and therefore the more predisposed to be affected by any
great natural agent,--it is from this man, I repeat, that I derive
instruction and knowledge. When in the magnetic state, he is no longer a
peasant who can hardly utter a single sentence; he is a being, to describe
whom I cannot find a name. I need not speak; _I have only to think before
him, when he instantly understands and answers me_. Should any body come
into the room, he sees him, if I desire it (but not else), and addresses
him, and says what I wish to say; not indeed exactly as I dictate to him,
but as truth requires. When he wants to add more than I deem it prudent
strangers should hear, I stop the flow of his ideas, and of his
conversation in the middle of a word, and give it quite a different turn!"

Among other persons attracted to Busancy by the report of these
extraordinary occurrences was M. Cloquet, the Receiver of Finance. His
appetite for the marvellous being somewhat insatiable, he readily believed
all that was told him by M. de Puysegur. He also has left a record of what
he saw, and what he credited, which throws a still clearer light upon the
progress of the delusion.[73] He says that the patients he saw in the
magnetic state had an appearance of deep sleep, during which all
the physical faculties were suspended, to the advantage of the
intellectual faculties. The eyes of the patients were closed, the sense of
hearing was abolished; and they awoke only at the voice of their
magnetiser. "If any one touched a patient during a crisis, or even the
chair on which he was seated," says M. Cloquet, "it would cause him much
pain and suffering,