Page:Devil-Worship in France 1896.djvu/139

 his performance by suspension in mid-air.

The fifth temple was consecrated to the Pelican and was used by an English officer to deliver a short discourse on Masonic charity, which the doctor regarded as vulnerable from a moral point of view and suggestive of easy virtue.

The sixth temple was that of the Future and was devoted to divinations, the oracles being given by a Vestal in a hypnotic condition, seated over a burning brazier. The doctor was accommodated with a test, but another inquirer who had the temerity to be curious as to what was being done in the Vatican received a severe rebuff; in vain did the spirit of the Clairvoyante strive to penetrate the “draughty and malarious” palace of the Roman Pontiff, and Phileas Walder, mortified and maddened, began to curse and to swear like the first Pope. The experiment disillusionized the assembly and they thoughtfully repaired to the seventh temple, which, being sacred to Fire, was equipped with a vast central furnace surmounted by a chimney