e ourselves to the nature of the fact, not insist
that it should accommodate itself to us."

For myself, I do not pretend to offer any positive opinion as to what
was ultimately the real state of the case. I do not assume to determine
whether the attractive and repulsive phenomena, after continuing for
upwards of a month, happened to be about to cease at the very time the
committee began to observe them,--or whether the harsh suspicious and
terror-inspiring tests of these gentlemen so wrought on the nervous
system of an easily daunted and superstitious girl, that some of her
abnormal powers, already on the wane, presently disappeared,--or whether
the poor child, it may be at the instigation of her parents, left
without the means of support,[20] really did at last simulate phenomena
that once were real, manufacture a counterfeit of what was originally
genuine. I do not take upon myself to decide between these various
hypotheses. I but express my conviction, that, for the first few weeks
at least, the phenomena actually occurred,--and that, had not the
gentlemen of the Academy been very unfortunate or very injudicious,
they could not have failed to perceive their reality. And I seek in vain
some apology for the conduct of these learned Academicians, called upon
to deal with a case so fraught with interest to science, when I find
them, merely because they do not at once succeed in personally verifying
sufficient to convince them of the existence of certain novel phenomena,
not only neglecting to seek evidence elsewhere, but even rejecting that
which a candid observer had placed within their reach.

This appears to have been the judgment of the medical public of Paris.
The "Gazette des Hopitaux," in its issue of March 17, 1846, protests
against the committee's mode of ignoring the matter, declaring that it
satisfied nobody. "Not received!" said the editor (alluding to the words
of the report); "that would be very convenient, if it were only
possible!"[21]

And the "Gazette Medicale" very justly remarks,--"The non-appearance of
the phenomena at such or such a given moment proves nothing in itself.
It is but a negative fact, and, as such, cannot disprove the positive
fact of their appearance at another moment, if that be otherwise
satisfactorily attested." And the "Gazette" goes on to argue, from the
nature of the facts, that it is in the highest degree improbable that
they should have been the result of premeditated impost