n was in perfect order, everything working well and in its
proper place. This was a little contrary to my own experience, it is
true, but as I had no means of seeing the interior clock-work of my own
frame, like the _somnambule_, had I ventured to raise a doubt, it would
have been overturned by the evidence of one who had ocular proofs of
what she said, and should, beyond question, have incurred the ridicule
of being accounted a _malade imaginaire_.

Modesty must prevent my recording all that this obliging _somnambule_
testified to, on the subject of my _morale_. Her account of the matter
was highly satisfactory, and I must have been made of stone, not to
credit her and her mysticisms. M. C---- looked at me again and again,
with an air of triumph, as much as to say, "What do you think of all
that now?--are you not _really_ the noble, honest, virtuous,
disinterested, brave creature, she has described you to be?" I can
assure you, it required no little self-denial to abstain from becoming a
convert to the whole system. As it is very unusual to find a man with a
good head, who has not a secret inclination to believe in phrenology, so
does he, who is thus purified by the scrutiny of animal magnetism, feel
disposed to credit its mysterious influence. Certainly, I might have
gaped, in my turn, and commenced the moral and physical dissection of
the _somnambule_, whose hand I held, and no one could have given me the
lie, for nothing is easier than to speak _ex cathedra_, when one has a
monopoly of knowledge.

Encouraged by this flattering account of my own condition, I begged hard
for some more indisputable evidence of the truth of the theory. I
carried a stop-watch, and as I had taken an opportunity to push the stop
on entering the room, I was particularly desirous that the _somnambule_
should tell me the time indicated by its hands, a common test of their
powers, I had been told; but to this M. C---- objected, referring
everything of this tangible nature to future occasions. In fine, I could
get nothing during three or four visits, but pretty positive assertions,
expressions of wonder that I should affect to doubt what had been so
often and so triumphantly proved to others, accounts physical and moral,
like the one of which I had been the subject myself, and which did not
admit of either confirmation or refutation, and often-repeated
declarations, that the time was not distant when, in my own unworthy
person, I was to become