the demand was prompted by an agent of the police, who for some cause had a spite against Robertson. In any case the affair made such a noise that the next day the exhibition was prohibited by those in authority, and seals were placed upon the optician's boxes and papers. The exhibition was, however, afterwards allowed to be continued, and was so successful that it had to be transferred to the old Capuchin convent near the Place Vendôme.
The whole of Paris rang with eulogiums upon Robertson's wonderful exhibition at the Capuchin Convent. He had purposely chosen the abandoned chapel, which was in the middle of a vast cloister crowded with tombs and funereal tablets. It was approached by a series of dark passages, decorated with weird and mysterious paintings, and the very door was covered with hieroglyphics. The chapel itself was hung with black, and was feebly illuminated by a single sepulchral lamp. The whole assembly involuntarily remained grave and silent, and it was only when the first preparations for the exhibition were made, that the audience broke into a low murmur. Robertson commenced with an address on sorcery, magicians, witches, ghosts, and phantoms, and, having worked the spectators up to the proper pitch, he suddenly extinguished the single antique lamp already mentioned, plunging the assembly into perfect darkness. Then there arose a storm of rain, wind, thunder, and lightning. The bells tolled lugubriously as if summoning the dead from their tombs beneath the feet of those present; the wind whistled mournfully, the rain fell in torrents, the thunder rolled, and the lightnings flashed. But suddenly above all this confusion were heard the sweet notes of a harmonium, and in the far-off distance the sky was seen clearing gradually. A luminous point then made its appearance in the midst of the clouds, which gradually became the figure of a man, increasing
