THE REVIVAL OF WITCHCRAFT. 217 



c'est trop," she murmured, apparently thinking that I was taking 

 too much hair for the money. I need not say that I did not affix 

 it to the head of the doll, although I went through the motions of 

 doing so. I have now, and shall preserve, the two little doll "wit- 

 nesses " and the valuable tress of hair as mementos of this inter- 

 esting performance. It may take its place by the side of the fa- 

 mous tress cut from the locks of the spirit form of Katie King. 

 We then produced, with the aid of the untouched doll, just un- 

 rolled from the tissue paper of the toy shop, all the phenomena of 

 the envoutement of the sorcerers, of which so much has been heard 

 lately and which have figured so largely in the pages of the great 

 newspapers of England and France. She felt acutely when its 

 imaginary lock was touched and pulled, whether by myself or by 

 Dr. Sajous, by M. Cremiere, or by any one else in the room. She 

 greatly resented its being pricked ; she felt all sorts of indescriba- 

 ble and generalized heats and pains when the doll was touched in 

 places of which she could not well make out the locality owing to 

 our backs being turned to her, and she was duly suffocated when 

 we pretended to sit down on the doll. I am ashamed to say that 

 the real doll was lying there all the time, cruelly stabbed by me 

 to the heart with a stout pin, of which she was unconscious. Its 

 maltreatment, which ought theoretically to have been fatal to her, 

 produced no visible effect. These performances she went through 

 three times. On the third occasion Colonel de Rochas was him- 

 self present, and assisted to put her into a complete state of 

 hypnosis, for by this time I had become a little indifferent to the 

 stages of preliminary mummery, and, as there were three subjects 

 on hand at the final sitting, I rather abbreviated the proceeding. 

 Colonel de Rochas was a little astonished when I produced my 

 toy-shop doll, clothed in woolen trousers and jacket, for demon- 

 strating the envoutement ; but he explained that he was not so 

 surprised as he should have been at an earlier date, for he had 

 only that week observed that in a classic author, where these 

 magical proceedings were described, it was noted that woolen 

 stuff was a very good conductor ; and he quoted a passage from 

 a Latin author — of which I am sorry that I do not retain the ex- 

 act recollection — in evidence of the fact that the woolen dress 

 might prove an effective medium; otherwise, he observed, he 

 should have been doubtful of securing good results, as the doll 

 was of composition and not of wax. It did prove a very good con- 

 ductor. In the course of the experiment, however, he skeptically 

 tweaked the nose of the little composition doll face (of the doll 

 which had not been " sensitivized "), and we had all of us the sat- 

 isfaction of observing that the material made no difference to 

 Madame Vix, and that the result was as perfectly satisfactory as 

 if it had been made of real wax, for she immediately exclaimed 



