Among the arts ascribed to Home was that called levitation, in practising which he was raised in the air by an unseen and unknown force, and remained suspended there; this being, so to say, the first step towards human flying without the assistance of any biplane, monoplane, or other mechanical contrivance. The first occasion on which Home is said to have displayed this power was in the late fifties, when he was at a château near Bordeaux as the guest of the widow of Théodore Ducos, the nephew of Bonaparte's colleague in the Consulate. In the works put forward on Home's behalf--one of them, called "Incidents in my Life," was chiefly written, it appears, by his friend and solicitor, a Mr. W.M. Wilkinson--it is also asserted that his power of levitation was attested in later years by Lord Lindsay, subsequently Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, and by the present Earl of Dunraven. We are told, indeed, that on one occasion the last-named actually saw Home float out of a room by one window, and into it again by another one. I do not know whether Home also favoured Professor Crookes with any exhibition of this kind, but the latter certainly expressed an opinion that some of Home's feats were genuine.
When my father and I first met him at Versailles he was constantly in the company of Lord Adare. He claimed to be acting as the correspondent of a Californian journal, but his chief occupation appeared to be the giving of _séances_ for the entertainment of all the German princes and princelets staying at the Hôtel des Réservoirs. Most of these highnesses and mightinesses formed part of what the Germans themselves sarcastically called their "Ornamental Staff," and as Moltke seldom allowed them any real share in the military operations, they doubtless found in Home's performances some relief from the _taedium vitae_ which overtook them during their long wait for the capitulation of Paris. Now that Metz had fallen, that was the chief question which occupied the minds of all the Germans assembled at Versailles, [Note] and Home was called upon to foretell when it would take place. On certain occasions, I believe, he evoked the spirits of Frederick the Great, Napoleon, Blücher, and others, in order to obtain from them an accurate forecast. At another time he endeavoured to peer into the future by means of crystal-gazing, in which he required the help of a little child. "My experiments have not succeeded," he said one day, while we were sitting with him at the café near the Hôtel des Réservoirs; "but that is not my fault. I need an absolutely pure-minded child, and can find none here, for this French race is corrupt from its very infancy." He was fasting at this time, taking apparently nothing but a little _eau sucrée_ for several days at a stretch. "The spirits will not move me unless I do this," he said. "To bring them to me, I have to contend against the material part of my nature."