His line of argument is that the Greek and Latin texts are misunderstood, but that, if the Greeks did turn tables, that is no proof that tables do not turn, but rather the reverse.  A favourite text is taken from Ammianus Marcellinus, lib. xxix. ch. i.  M. de Gasparin does not appear to have read the passage carefully.  About 371 A.D. one Hilarius was tortured on a charge of magical operations against the Emperor Valens.  He confessed.  A little table, made of Delphic laurel, was produced in court.  ‘We made it,’ he said, ’that confounded little table, under strange rites and imprecations, and we set it in movement, thus:  it was placed in a room charged with perfumes, above a round plate fashioned of various metals.  The edge of the plate was marked with the letters of the alphabet separated by certain spaces.  A priest, linen clad, bowed himself over the table, balancing a ring tied to a thin thread.  The ring, bounding from letter to letter, picks out letters forming hexameters, like those of Delphi.’  This is confusing.  Probably the movements of the table, communicated to the thread, caused the bounds of the ring, otherwise there was no use in the table moving.  At all events the ring touched THEO (which is not a word that could begin a hexameter) when they asked who was to succeed Valens.  Some one called out ‘Theodore’ and they pursued the experiment no farther.  A number of Theodores and Theophiles were put to death, but when Theodosius was joined with Gratian in the Empire, the believers held that the table had been well inspired.  Here there was no chaine, or circle, the table is not said to lever le pied legerement, as the song advises, therefore M. de Gasparin rules the case out of court.  The object, however, really was analogous to planchette, Ouija, and other modern modes of automatic divination.  The experiment of Hilarius with the ‘confounded little table’ led to a massacre of Neoplatonists, martyrs of Psychical Research!  In Hilarius’s confession we omit a set of ritual invocations; as unessential as the mystic rites used by savages in making curari.

The spiritus percutiens, ‘rapping spirit’ (?) conjured away by old Catholic formulae at the benediction of churches, was brought forward by some of M. de Gasparin’s critics.  As his tables did not rap, he had nothing to do with the spiritus percutiens, who proves, however, that the Church was acquainted with raps, and explained them by the spiritualistic hypothesis. {317}

A text in Tertullian’s Apologetic was also cited.  Here tabulae and capae, ‘tables and she-goats,’ are said to divine.  What have she-goats to do in the matter?  De Morgan wished to read tabulae et crepae, which he construes ‘tables and raps,’ but he only finds crepae in Festus, who says, that goats are called crepae, quod cruribus crepent, ‘because they rattle with their legs’.  De Morgan’s guess is ingenious, but lacks confirmation.  We are not, so far, aware of communication with spirits by raps before 856 A.D.