146 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



multitudes were similarly afflicted. Both religious parties made 

 the most of these cases. In vain did such great authorities in medi- 

 cal science as Hecquet and Lorry attribute the whole to natural 

 causes ; the theologians on both sides declared them supernatural 

 — the Jansenists attributing them to God, the Jesuits to Satan. 



Of late years such cases have been treated in France with 

 much shrewdness. When, about the middle of the present cent- 

 ury, the Arab priests in Algiers tried to arouse fanaticism against 

 the French Christians by performing miracles, the French Gov- 

 ernment, instead of persecuting the priests, sent Robert Houdin, 

 the most renowed juggler of his time, to Algiers, and for every 

 Arab miracle Houdin performed two; did an Arab marabout 

 turn a rod into a serpent, Houdin turned his rod into two ser- 

 pents, and afterward showed the people how this was done. 



So, too, at the last International Exposition, the French Gov- 

 ernment, observing the evil effects produced by the mania for 

 table turning and tipping, took occasion, when a great number of 

 French schoolmasters and teachers were visiting the Exposition, 

 to have public lectures given in which all the business of dark 

 closets, hand-tying, materialization of spirits, presenting the faces 

 of the departed, and ghostly portraiture, was fully performed by 

 professional mountebanks, and afterward as fully explained by 

 them. 



So in this case. The Government simply ordered the gate of 

 the cemetery to be locked, and, when the crowd could no longer 

 approach the tomb, the miracles ceased. A little Parisian ridicule 

 helped to end the matter. A wag wrote up over the gate of the 



cemetery : 



" De par le Roi, defense a Dieu 

 De faire des miracles dans ce lieu " — 



which, being translated from doggerel French into doggerel Eng- 

 lish, is — 



" By order of the king, the Lord must forhear 



To work any more of his miracles bere." 



But the theological spirit remained powerful. The French 

 Revolution had not then intervened to bring it under healthy 

 limits. The agitation was maintained, and, though the miracles 

 and cases of possession were stopped in the cemetery, it spread. 

 Again full course was given to myth-making and the retailing of 

 wonders. It was said that men had allowed themselves to be 

 roasted before slow fires, and had been afterward found unin- 

 jured ; that some had enormous weights piled upon them, but had 

 supernatural powers of resistance given them ; and that, in one 

 case, a voluntary crucifixion had taken place. 



This agitation was long, troublesome, and no doubt robbed 



