VENTRILOQUISM OF M. ST. GILLE. 237 



own magic circle. The ventriloquist, on the contrary, 

 has the supernatural always at his command. In the 

 open fields, as well as in the crowded city, in the private 

 apartment, as well as in the public hall, he can summon 

 up innumerable spirits ; and though the persons . of his 

 fictitious dialogue are not visible to the eye, yet they 

 are as unequivocally present to the imagination of his 

 auditors as if they had been shadowed forth in the silence 

 of a spectral form. In order to convey some idea of the 

 influence of this illusion, I shall mention a few well- 

 authenticated cases of successful ventriloquism. 



M. St. Gille, a grocer of St. Germain-en-Laye, whose 

 performances have been recorded by the Abbe de la 

 Chapelle, had occasion to shelter himself from a storm in 

 a neighbouring convent, where the monks were in deep 

 mourning for a much-esteemed member of their community 

 who had been recently buried. While lamenting over 

 the tomb of their deceased brother the slight honours 

 which had been paid to his memory, a voice was suddenly 

 heard to issue from the roof of the choir, bewailing the 

 condition of the deceased in purgatory, and reproving the 

 brotherhood for their want of zeal. The tidings of this 

 supernatural event brought the whole brotherhood to the 

 church. The voice from above repeated its lamentations 

 and reproaches, and the whole convent fell upon their 

 faces, and vowed to make a reparation of their error. 

 They accordingly chanted in full choir a De Profundis, 

 during the intervals of which the spirit of the departed 

 monk expressed his satisfaction at their pious exercises. 

 The prior afterwards inveighed against modern scepticism 

 on the subject of apparitions, and M. St. Gille had great 

 difficulty in convincing the fraternity that the whole was 

 a deception. 



On another occasion, a commission of the Royal 

 Academy of Sciences at Paris, attended by several 



