laughing most heartily; and Vincent, delighted, cried, 'See how I've
conquered your headache in a moment!' Unfortunately I was compelled to
answer that the headache was just as bad as ever. But Vincent said I
was only feeling a sort of after-echo of the former pain. After-echo or
not, it lasted for several days. I take this opportunity of declaring
to my respected Serapion Brethren that I have not the slightest belief
in the curative effects of Mesmerism; the most careful and ingenious
researches on this subject seem to me to be much like the theorisings
of the Royal Society of England on the question proposed to them by the
King: why a vessel of water with a ten-pound fish in it should not
weigh more than a similar vessel containing water alone? Several of the
philosophers had solved the problem successfully, and were about to lay
the results of their wisdom before the King, when one, a little more
practical than the others, suggested that the experiment should be
tried. When this was done, the fish weighed down the balance, as it
could not but do. The basis of all the ingenious reasoning did not
exist."

"Ah ha!" said Lothair, "incredulous, prosaic Schismatic! how was it,
since you don't believe in Mesmerism,--how was it--but I must tell you,
Cyprian and Theodore, this little story at full length, so that the
shame of the contemptuous unbelief which Lothair has just avowed may
return upon his head. You have probably heard that Lothair had an
illness some time ago, the principal seat of which was in his nervous
system. It came upon him in an indescribable manner; destroyed all his
fine spirits and good temper, and spoilt all his enjoyment of life. I
went one day to see him, all compassion and sympathy. I found him
sitting in an arm-chair, with a cap drawn over his ears; pale, worn-out
by a sleepless night, with his eyes closed. In front of him (whom
Heaven has not endowed with the most gigantic dimensions in the world),
sat a personage almost as diminutive as himself, breathing upon him,
drawing the tips of his fingers along his spine, laying his hand on his
epigastrium, and asking him, in a soft, whispering voice:

"'How do you feel now, Lothair?'

"And Lothair opened his eyes, smiled pathetically, and sighed out:

"'Better, doctor; much better.'

"In short, Lothair, who has no faith in the curative effects of
Mesmerism; who says Mesmerism is all nonsense; who laughs the
whole thing to scorn, and considers it a