looked at me
fixedly, and from time to time let go my hands, and placed the
points of his fingers in a straight line opposite my eyes, at an
inch, I should think, from my pupils; then, describing a kind of
ellipse, he brought his hands down again upon mine. After he had
moved his hands thus alternately from my eyes to my knees for ten
minutes, I felt an irresistible desire to close my eyelids. I
continued, nevertheless, to hear his voice, and that of my sister,
who was in the same room. Whenever they put questions to me, I
always answered him correctly; but the whole of my muscular system
was in a state of peculiar weakness, and of almost perfect
disobedience to my will; and, consequently, the pronunciation of
the words with which I wished to answer had become extremely
difficult.

"Whilst I experienced to a certain point the effects of sleep, not
only was I not a stranger to all that was passing around me, but I
even took more than usual interest in it. All my conceptions were
more rapid; I experienced nervous startings to which I am not
accustomed; in short, my whole nervous system was in a state of
perfect exaltation, and appeared to have acquired all the
superabundance of power which the muscular system had lost.

"The following are the principal phenomena which I was able to feel
distinctly. Mr Townshend did not fail to ask me occasionally if I
could see him or my sister without opening my eyelids; but this was
always impossible, and all that I could say I had seen was a
glimmering of light, interrupted by the black and confused images
of the objects presented to me; a light which appeared to me a
little less clear than that which we commonly see when we shut the
eyelids opposite the sun or a candle.

"Mr Townshend at last determined to demesmerise me. He began to
make elliptical movements with his hands, the reverse of those
which he had made at the commencement; I could now open my eyes
without any kind of effort, my whole muscular system became
perfectly obedient to my will; I was able to get up, and was
perfectly awake; but I remained nearly an hour in a kind of
stupefaction very similar to that which sometimes attacks me in the
mornings, if I rise two or three hours later than usual."--(P. 388
to 390.)

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