Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/119

 invisible. Sight and hearing then exercise themselves more perfectly than in the condition called waking, and possibly without the aid of those organs which are the sheaths for those luminous swords called sight and hearing! For a man put into this condition, distances and material objects do not exist, or are traversed by a life that is within us, and for which our body is a reservoir, a necessary prop, an envelope. Terms are wanting for such freshly recovered effects; for nowadays the words imponderable, intangible, invisible, have no meaning relative to the fluid whose action is demonstrated by magnetism. Light is weighable by its heat, which, by penetrating bodies, increases their volume, and electricity is certainly only too tangible. We have condemned things instead of accusing the imperfection of our agents.”

“Is she asleep?” said Minoret, examining the woman, who seemed to him to belong to the inferior class.

“Her body is in some degree annihilated,” replied the Swedenborgian. “Ignorant people take this condition for sleep. But she will prove to you that there exists a spiritual universe and that the soul does not recognize the laws of the material universe. I will send her to any region that you wish, twenty leagues away or to China; she will tell you what is happening there.”

“Send her to my home only, at Nemours,” Minoret requested.

“I will have nothing to do with it,” replied the