The blows are now redoubled, and are so terrific that it seems as if they would split the table. We begin to perceive hands lifting and inflating the curtains and advancing so far as to touch first one, then the other, of the company, caressing them, pressing their hands, daintily pulling their ears or clapping hands merrily in the air above their heads.
It seems to me very singular and perhaps intentional,--this contrast between the touches (sometimes nervous and energetic, and again delicate and gentle, but always friendly) and the deafening, violent, brutal blows struck upon the table.
A single one of these fist-blows, planted in the back, would suffice to break the vertebral column.
The hands that perform these feats are the strong and brawny hands of a man, the daintier hands are those of a woman, the very small hands those of children.
The darkness is rendered a little less dense, and at once the chair of No. 5 (Professor Morselli), which had already made a jump to one side, is slipped from under him, while a hand is placed on his back and on his shoulder. The chair gets up on the table, comes down again to the floor, and, after different horizontal and vertical oscillations, soars up and rests upon the head of the professor, who has remained standing. It remains there for some minutes in a state of very unstable equilibrium.
The loud blows and the delicate touches of hands, large and small, succeed each other uninterruptedly in such a way that, without our being able mathematically to prove the simultaneousness of different phenomena, it is yet almost certain in several cases.
While our opportunities for obtaining so valuable a subject of demonstration increase, the simultaneity which we ask for is at last granted; for the table raps, the bell sounds, and the tambourine is carried tinkling over our heads all about the room, rests for a moment on the table, and then resumes its flight in the air....
A bouquet of flowers, placed in a carafe on the larger table, comes over onto ours, preceded by an agreeable perfume. Stems of flowers are placed in the mouth of No. 5; and No. 8 is hit by a rubber ball, which rebounds upon the table. The carafe comes over to join the flowers on our table; it is then immediately lifted and put to the mouth of the medium, and she is made to drink from it twice; between the two times it sinks down to the table and stands there for a moment right side up. We distinctly hear the swallowing of the water, after which Mme. Paladino asks some one to wipe her mouth with a handkerchief. Finally, the carafe returns to the large table.