Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/536

face upturned as toward a vision of beauty, and she exclaimed in low and broken tones of rapturous emotion: "She comes, she comes; she is all in white!" and as this sacred vision died away her head dropped in solemn resignation, and after a short interval of resignation and grief the play was over, and she was brought back once more to her chair in a state of well-simulated lethargy. This same performance she repeated under similar conditions at the final séance at Dr. Sajous's rooms, where I organized a continued representation before a number of spectators by Jeanne, by Madame Vix, and Clarice, in all cases with tubes containing anything else but valerians. Clarice was a third subject who figures largely in the writings of Dr. Luys, and whom I met at his clinique. She also was for a long time a patient; she is a thorough hysteric and trained hypnotic, and she goes through some of these performances with even better grace and more seductive accomplishment than Madame Jeanne. We repeated with her twice all these performances, and also some others. For Clarice is now also a "professional"; she is younger and prettier, and charges a higher fee than that of the others; she has hypnotic specialties of her own. She requested that for the final séance she might be permitted to bring "her pianiste" for she told us that what she was particularly celebrated for were the beauty and grace of her attitudes passionnelles, which were best performed when the person who hypnotized her could play to her appropriate music, gay or melancholy. Accordingly, on the final occasion, she came with a pianist, who duly made a few customary passes, to put her into the somnambulistic state, then put her in the middle of the room and began playing suitable music. He supplied her with castanets, and she danced a gay and lively measure; he rose from the piano and took them from her, and then sad music threw her into attitudes of picturesque despair and delicately acted grief. We had no time to go through the whole performance, or I have no doubt it would have-been well worth the money. I need not go through the entire category of proceedings. Prof. Luys told us that he had had as many as three of these people at once engaged in their cat performance, licking their paws, mewing, jumping, and scratching about the place; as he said, "un véritable Sabbat"—a true witches' Sabbath. He dwelt upon the importance of these manifestations (which he takes quite seriously) as opening up new realms of psychological inquiry. I quote from my notes:

Here (be said) is a new domain for psychical researches. It will enable us, at any rate, to catch glimpses of the animal mind, and perhaps to learn what they feel and think. I had a patient who in the somnambulistic stage was transformed into a cock and entered into the cock nature. I tried to make him remember when he awoke what he had been thinking of when he was thus trans-