phatic little nods of a man who is sure of his facts.

The two physicians entered a suite of rooms that were more than modest.
Bouvard went alone into a bedroom which adjoined the salon where he left
Minoret, whose distrust was instantly awakened; but Bouvard returned
at once and took him into the bedroom, where he saw the mysterious
Swedenborgian, and also a woman sitting in an armchair. The woman did
not rise, and seemed not to notice the entrance of the two old men.

"What! no tub?" cried Minoret, smiling.

"Nothing but the power of God," answered the Swedenborgian gravely. He
seemed to Minoret to be about fifty years of age.

The three men sat down and the mysterious stranger talked of the rain
and the coming fine weather, to the great astonishment of Minoret, who
thought he was being hoaxed. The Swedenborgian soon began, however, to
question his visitor on his scientific opinions, and seemed evidently to
be taking time to examine him.

"You have come here solely from curiosity, monsieur," he said at
last. "It is not my habit to prostitute a power which, according to my
conviction, emanates from God; if I made a frivolous or unworthy use
of it, it would be taken from me. Nevertheless, there is some hope,
Monsieur Bouvard tells me, of changing the opinions of one who has
opposed us, of enlightening a scientific man whose mind is candid;
I have therefore determined to satisfy you. That woman whom you see
there," he continued, pointing to her, "is now in a somnambulic sleep.
The statements and manifestations of somnambulists declare that this
state is a delightful other life, during which the inner being, freed
from the trammels laid upon the exercise of our faculties by the visible
world, moves in a world which we mistakenly term invisible. Sight and
hearing are then exercised in a manner far more perfect than any we know
of here, possibly without the help of the organs we now employ, which
are the scabbard of the luminous blades called sight and hearing. To a
person in that state, distance and material obstacles do not exist, or
they can be traversed by a life within us for which our body is a
mere receptacle, a necessary shelter, a casing. Terms fail to describe
effects that have lately been rediscovered, for to-day the words
imponderable, intangible, invisible have no meaning to the fluid whose
action is demonstrated by magnetism. Light is ponderable by its heat,
which, by penetrating bodies, increases their vo