e things: it is what it pretends
to be, an unexplained and as yet incomprehensible physical influence; it
is delusion, or it is absolute fraud.

A young countryman of ours, having made the acquaintance of M. C----,
professionally, and being full of the subject, I have so far listened to
his entreaties as to inquire personally into the facts, a step I might
not have otherwise been induced to take.

I shall now proceed to the history of my own experience in this
inexplicable mystery. We found M. C---- buried in the heart of Paris, in
one of those vast old hotels, which give to this town the air of
generations of houses, commencing with the quaint and noble of the
sixteenth century, and ending with the more fashionable pavilion of our
own times. His cabinet looked upon a small garden, a pleasant transition
from the animal within to the vegetable without. But one meets with
gardens, with their verdure and shrubbery and trees, in the most
unexpected manner, in this crowded town.

M. C---- received us politely, and we found with him one of his
_somnambules_; but as she had just come out of a trance, we were told
she could not be put asleep again that morning. Our first visit,
therefore, went no farther than some discourse on the subject of "animal
magnetism," and a little practical by-play, that shall be related in its
place.

M. C---- did not attempt ascending to first principles, in his
explanations. Animal magnetism was animal magnetism--it was a fact, and
not a theory. Its effects were not to be doubted; they depended on
testimony of sufficient validity to dispose of any mere question of
authenticity. All that he attempted was hypothesis, which he invited us
to controvert. He might as well have desired me to demonstrate that the
sun is not a carbuncle. On the _modus operandi_, and the powers of his
art, the doctor was more explicit. There were a great many gradations in
quality in his _somnambules_, some being better and some worse; and
there was also a good deal of difference in the _intensity_ of the
_magnetiser's_. It appears to be settled that the best _somnambules_ are
females, and the best _magnetisers_ males, though the law is not
absolute. I was flattered with being, by nature, a first-rate
magnetiser, and the doctor had not the smallest doubt of his ability to
put me to sleep; and ability, so far as his theory went, I thought it
was likely enough he might possess, though I greatly questioned his
physical mea