took a handsome copy-book of white paper and
dipped my pen into the ink and wrote in big letters, under the watchful
observation of my new friend:

"_The Misadventures of a one-eyed Porter?_."

Thereupon, without ceasing to look at Porou, I wrote all day long in
the most prodigious haste a story of such astonishing adventures, so
charming and so varied that I was myself vastly entertained. My one-eyed
porter mixed up all his parcels and committed the most absurd mistakes.
Lovers in critical situations received from him, and quite without his
knowledge, the most unexpected aid. He transported wardrobes in which
men were concealed, and he placed them in other houses, frightening old
ladies almost to death. But how describe so merry a story! While writing
I burst out laughing at least twenty times. If Porou did not laugh, his
solemn silence was quite as amusing as the most uproarious hilarity. It
was already seven o'clock in the evening when I wrote the final line
of this delightful story. During the last hour the room had only been
lighted by Porou's phosphorescent eyes. And yet I had written with
as much ease in the darkness as by the light of a good lamp. My story
finished, I proceeded to dress. I put on my evening clothes and my white
tie, and, taking leave of Porou, I hurried downstairs into the street. I
had hardly gone twenty steps when I felt some one pull at my sleeve.

"Where are you running to, uncle, just like a somnambulist?"

It was my nephew Marcel who hailed me in this fashion. He is an honest,
intelligent young man, and a house-surgeon at the Salpetriere. People
say that he has a successful medical career before him. And indeed he
would be clever enough if he would only be more on his guard against his
whimsical imagination.

"Why, I am on my way to Miss Morgan, to take her a story I have just
written."

"What, uncle! You write stories, and you know Miss Morgan? She is
very pretty. And do you also know Dr. Daoud who follows her about
everywhere?"

"A quack, a charlatan!"

"Possibly, uncle, and yet, unquestionably a most extraordinary
experimentalist. Neither Bernheim nor Liegeois, not even Charcot
himself, has obtained the phenomena he produces at will. He induces
the hypnotic condition and control by suggestion without contact, and
without any direct agency, through the intervention of an animal. He
commonly makes use of little short-haired cats for his experiments.

"This is how he goes to wor