i) 
130 BAILLY. 
who, with receipt in hand, put the weak in intellect under 
contribution. 
The magnetizers had had the address to intimate that 
the mesmeric crises manifested themselves only in per- 
sons endowed with a certain sensitiveness. From that 
moment, in order not to be ranged among the insensible, 
both men and women, when near the rod, assumed the 
appearance of epileptics. 
Was not Father Hervier really in one of those parox- 
ysms of the disease when he wrote, “If Mesmer had 
lived contemporary with Descartes and Newton, he 
would have saved them much labour: those great men 
suspected the existence of the universal fluid; Mesmer 
has discovered the laws of its action ” ? 
Count de Gébelin showed himself stranger still. The 
new doctrine would naturally seduce him by its connec- 
tion with some of the mysterious practices of ancient 
times; but the author of The Primitive World did not 
content himself with writing in favour of Mesmerism 
with the enthusiasm of an apostle. Frightful pain, 
violent griefs, rendered life insupportable to him; Gé- 
belin saw death approaching with satisfaction, so from 
that moment he begged earnestly that he might not be 
carried to Mesmer’s, where assuredly “he could not die.” 
We must just mention, however, that his request was not 
attended to; he was carried to Mesmer’s, and died while 
he was being magnetized. 
Painting, sculpture, and engraving were constantly re- 
peating the features of this Thaumaturgus. Poets wrote 
verses to be inscribed on the pedestals of the busts, or 
below the portraits. Those by Palisot deserve to be 
quoted, as one of the most curious examples of poetic 
licences :— 
