ly result they obtained was sudden and
violent movements of chairs on which the child was seated. They add,
"Serious suspicions having arisen as to the manner in which these
movements were produced, the committee decided to submit them to a
strict examination, declaring, in plain terms, that they would endeavor
to discover what part certain adroit and concealed manoeuvres of the
hands and feet had in their production. From that moment we were
informed that the young girl had lost her attractive and repulsive
powers, and that we should be notified when they reappeared. Many days
have elapsed; no notice has been sent us; yet we learn that Mademoiselle
Cottin daily exhibits her experiments in private circles." And they
conclude by recommending "that the communications addressed to them in
her case be considered _as not received_" ("_comme non avenues_"). In a
word, they officially branded the poor girl as an impostor.

That, without any inquiry into the antecedents of the patient, without
the slightest attempt to obtain from those medical men who had followed
up the case from its commencement what they had observed, and that, in
advance of the strict examination which it was their duty to make, they
should insult the unfortunate girl by declaring that they intended to
find out the tricks with which she had been attempting to deceive
them,--all this is not the less lamentable because it is common among
those, who sit in the high places of science.

If these Academicians had been moved by a simple love of truth, not
urged by a self-complacent eagerness to display their own sagacity, they
might have found a more probable explanation of the cessation, after
their first session, of some of Angelique's chief powers.

Such an explanation is furnished to us by Dr. Tanchon, who was present,
by invitation, at the sittings of the committee.

He informs us that, at their first sitting, held at the Jardin des
Plantes, on the seventeenth of February, after the committee had
witnessed, twice repeated, the violent displacement of a chair held with
all his strength by one of their number, (M. Rayet,) instead of
following up similar experiments and patiently waiting to observe the
phenomena as they presented themselves, they proceeded at once to
satisfy their own preconceptions. They brought Angelique into contact
with a voltaic battery. Then they placed on the bare arm of the child a
dead frog, anatomically prepared after the manner of