by a magnetized patient to the magnetizer have been scrupulously
performed on waking. The will of one had become the will of the other."

"Every kind of action?"

"Yes."

"Even a criminal act?"

"Even a crime."

"If it were not from you, I would not listen to such a thing."

"I will make you witness it," said Bianchon.

"Hm, hm," muttered the lawyer. "But supposing that this so-called
possession fell under this class of facts, it would be difficult to
prove it as legal evidence."

"If this woman Jeanrenaud is so hideously old and ugly, I do not see
what other means of fascination she can have used," observed Bianchon.

"But," observed the lawyer, "in 1814, the time at which this fascination
is supposed to have taken place, this woman was fourteen years younger;
if she had been connected with M. d'Espard ten years before that, these
calculations take us back four-and-twenty years, to a time when the lady
may have been young and pretty, and have won for herself and her son a
power over M. d'Espard which some men do not know how to evade. Though
the source of this power is reprehensible in the sight of justice, it
is justifiable in the eye of nature. Madame Jeanrenaud may have been
aggrieved by the marriage, contracted probably at about that time,
between the Marquis d'Espard and Mademoiselle de Blamont-Chauvry, and at
the bottom of all this there may be nothing more than the rivalry of
two women, since the Marquis had for a long time lived apart from Mme.
d'Espard."

"But her repulsive ugliness, uncle?"

"Power of fascination is in direct proportion to ugliness," said the
lawyer; "that is the old story. And then think of the smallpox, doctor.
But to proceed.

"'That so long ago as in 1815, in order to supply the sums of money
required by these two persons, the Marquis d'Espard went with his two
children to live in the Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevieve, in
rooms quite unworthy of his name and rank'--well, we may live as
we please--'that he keeps his two children there, the Comte Clement
d'Espard and Vicomte Camille d'Espard, in a style of living quite
unsuited to their future prospects, their name and fortune; that he
often wants money, to such a point, that not long since the landlord,
one Mariast, put in an execution on the furniture in the rooms; that
when this execution was carried out in his presence, the Marquis
d'Espard helped the bailiff, whom he treated like a man of rank, paying
him all the mark