sting out devils, and healing the sick by merely laying hands upon
them. At his approach, delicate girls fell into convulsions, and
hypochondriacs fancied themselves cured. His house was daily besieged by
the lame, the blind, and the hysteric. Mesmer at once acknowledged the
efficacy of his cures, and declared that they were the obvious result of
his own newly-discovered power of magnetism. A few of the father's
patients were forthwith subjected to the manipulations of Mesmer, and the
same symptoms were induced. He then tried his hand upon some paupers in
the hospitals of Berne and Zurich, and succeeded, according to his own
account, but no other person's, in curing an opththalmia and a gutta
serena. With memorials of these achievements he returned to Vienna, in the
hope of silencing his enemies, or at least forcing them to respect his
newly-acquired reputation, and to examine his system more attentively.

His second appearance in that capital was not more auspicious than the
first. He undertook to cure a Mademoiselle Paradis, who was quite blind,
and subject to convulsions. He magnetised her several times, and then
declared that she was cured; at least, if she was not, it was her fault
and not his. An eminent oculist of that day, named Barth, went to visit
her, and declared that she was as blind as ever; while her family said she
was as much subject to convulsions as before. Mesmer persisted that she
was cured. Like the French philosopher, he would not allow facts to
interfere with his theory.[71] He declared that there was a conspiracy
against him; and that Mademoiselle Paradis, at the instigation of her
family, feigned blindness in order to injure his reputation!

[71] An enthusiastic philosopher, of whose name we are not
informed, had constructed a very satisfactory theory on some
subject or other, and was not a little proud of it. "But the
facts, my dear fellow," said his friend, "the facts do not
agree with your theory."--"Don't they?" replied the
philosopher, shrugging his shoulders, "then, _tant pis pour
les faits_;"--so much the worse for the facts!

The consequences of this pretended cure taught Mesmer that Vienna
was not the sphere for him. Paris, the idle, the debauched, the
pleasure-hunting, the novelty-loving, was the scene for a philosopher like
him, and thither he repaired accordingly. He arrived at Paris in 1778, and
began modestly by making him