This entertainment, which has met with much success, was devised by
Mr. Melies, director of the establishment, which was founded many
years ago by the celebrated prestidigitator whose popular name (Robert
Houdin) it still bears. This performance carries instruction with it,
for it shows how easily the most surprising phenomena of the
pathologic state can be imitated. To this effect, several exhibitions
are given every evening.
Mr. Harmington, a convinced disciple of Mesmer, asks for a subject,
and finds one in the hall. A young artist named Marius presents
himself. Mr. Harmington makes him perform all sorts of extravagant
acts, accompanied with a continuous round of pantomimes that are
rendered the more striking by the supposed state of somnipathy of the
subject. At the moment at which Marius is finishing his most
extraordinary exercises, a policeman suddenly breaks in upon the stage
in order to execute the recent orders relative to hypnotism. But he
himself is subjugated by Mr. Harmington and thrown down by the
vibrations of which the encephalus of this terrible magnetizer is the
center. When the curtain falls, the representative of authority is
struggling against the catalepsy that is overcoming him.
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