Then you took the violin and held it out at such a distance from the two curtains that it was wholly visible to the company; and you invited the occult agent to take it.
This was done, the mysterious agent taking it back with him into the dark closet, with as much good will as he had shown in bringing it on.
The violin then fell upon the floor behind the curtains, or portières. One of these which was nearest to me resumed its vertical position, and for a time I heard upon my right upon the floor behind the curtains a kind of scrimmage between the violin and the tambourine, which were displaced, pulled about, and lifted, clashing and resounding at a great rate; and yet it was impossible to attribute any of these manifestations to Eusapia, whose foot never moved, but remained firmly pressed against my own.
A little after, I felt against my right leg, behind the curtain, the rubbing of a hard body which was trying to climb upon me, and I thought it was the violin. And so it was, in fact; and, after an unsuccessful effort to climb higher than my knee, this apparently living creature fell with a bang upon the floor.
Almost immediately I felt a new pressure upon my right hip, and mentioned the circumstance. You disengaged your left hand from the chain, and, turning toward me, twice made in the air the gesture of the director of an orchestra moving his bâton to and fro. And each time, with perfect precision, I felt upon my side the repercussion of a blow exactly tallying your gesture, which reached me after the delay of a second more or less, and which seemed to me to correspond exactly to the time necessary for the transference of a billiard ball or a tennis ball from you to me.
Some one, Dr. Richet, I believe, having spoken at that time of strokes upon the shoulders of the sitters in which the action and shape of a human hand was very marked, I will mention as a proof of his remark that I received in succession three blows upon the left shoulder (that is to say, the one most distant from the curtain and from the medium), more violent than the preceding ones; and this time the heavy pressure of the five fingers was very evident. Then a last blow with the flat of the hand, applied in the small of the back, without hurting me at all, was strong enough to make me lean forward, in spite of myself, toward the table.