fixedly at a pale lady hanging opposite to him, who has evidently undergone several magnetic crises. There are some verses framed and hanging very near the ceiling, surrounded by a thick wreath of yellow immortelles, but I have not yet been able to decipher their meaning. On the seats lining the walls about fifty persons assemble. It is an original assembly always, though it seems to be constantly changing. There was a lady with a small hole in her cheek, a child with a crooked neck, and the painter to the King of Sweden, with very light eyes and hair and great impressibility, with his companion who laughs and says, 'Oui, monsieur,' to every question addressed to him; and the son of the English Consul to Sicily, who displays a large amount of good clothes, good flesh, a little peaked moustache, and an immense amount of enthusiasm. But it would be difficult to give all the varieties of structure and expression in this group of believing heretics, some looking very fierce, some very sheepish, some with features turned up, some with them turned down, and some with them turned every way. The folding-doors of this room open into a small cabinet which is always opened on these occasions to receive Madame Dupotet and all the impressible ladies who form a circle inside, and go through many sympathetic manœuvres during the magnetising in the larger room: that is to say, the impressible ladies perform various antics, for Madame Dupotet, who is fat, fair, and forty, seems in no way affected, but looks on with smiling health and assists the nervous ladies. There was one remarkably fat dame, seated just within the folding-doors, who had powerful fits of nervous twitching, which gave her a singular appearance of pale, tremulous red jelly.
It would be impossible to describe the ornaments of M. Dupotet's study cabinet—the mystic symbols and black-letter books of the Black Art; but there is a little
