Count de Gebelin showed himself stranger still.  The new doctrine would naturally seduce him by its connection with some of the mysterious practices of ancient times; but the author of The Primitive World did not content himself with writing in favour of Mesmerism with the enthusiasm of an apostle.  Frightful pain, violent griefs, rendered life insupportable to him; Gebelin saw death approaching with satisfaction, so from that moment he begged earnestly that he might not be carried to Mesmer’s, where assuredly “he could not die.”  We must just mention, however, that his request was not attended to; he was carried to Mesmer’s, and died while he was being magnetized.

Painting, sculpture, and engraving were constantly repeating the features of this Thaumaturgus.  Poets wrote verses to be inscribed on the pedestals of the busts, or below the portraits.  Those by Palisot deserve to be quoted, as one of the most curious examples of poetic licences:—­

     “Behold that man—­the glory of his age! 
     Whose art can all Pandora’s ills assuage. 
     In skill and tact no rival pow’r is known—­
     E’en Greece, in him, would Esculapius own."[7]

Enthusiasm having thus gone to the last limits in verse, enthusiasm had but one way left to become remarkable in prose:  that is, violence.  Is it not thus that we must characterize the words of Bergasse?—­“The adversaries of animal magnetism are men who must one day be doomed to the execration of all time, and to the punishment of the avenging contempt of posterity.”

It is rare for violent words not to be followed by violent acts.  Here every thing proceeded according to the natural course of human events.  We know, indeed, that some furious admirers of Mesmer attempted to suffocate Berthollet in the corner of one of the rooms of the Palais Royal, for having honestly said that the scenes he had witnessed did not appear to him demonstrative.  We have this anecdote from Berthollet himself.

The pretensions of the German doctor increased with the number of his adherents.  To induce him to permit only three learned men to attend his meetings, M. de Maurepas offered him, in the name of the king, 20,000 francs a year for life, and 10,000 annually for house-rent.  Yet Mesmer did not accept this offer, but demanded, as a national recompense, one of the most beautiful chateaux in the environs of Paris, together with all its territorial dependencies.

Irritated at finding his claims repulsed, Mesmer quitted France, angrily vowing her to the deluge of maladies from which it would have been in his power to save her.  In a letter written to Marie Antoinette, the Thaumaturgus declared that he had refused the government offers through austerity.

Through austerity!!!  Are we then to believe that, as it was then pretended, Mesmer was entirely ignorant of the French language; that in this respect his meditations had been exclusively centered on the celebrated verse—­