pages: practicalmagicia00harr.pdf, 82
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practicalmagicia00harr.pdf | 82 | 72 THE PRACTICAL MAGICIAN. usury, and extortion, and was haunted by remorse of conscience. After some conversation on demons and spectres, the pains of pur gatory, &c., during an interval of silence, a voice is heard, like that of the banker's deceased father, complaining of his dreadful situation in purgatory, and calling upon him to rescue him from thence, by putting into the hands of Louis Brabant, then with him, a large sum for the redemption of Christians in slavery with the Turks ; threatening him at the same time with eternal damna- tion if he did not thus expiate his own sins. Upon a second in- terview, in which his ears were saluted with the complaints and groans of his father, and of all his deceased relations, imploring him, for the love of God, and in the name of every saint in the calendar, to have mercy on his own soul and others, Cornu obeyed the heavenly voice, and gave Louis 10,000 crowns, with which hc returned to Paris, and married his mistress. The works of M. L'Abbe La Chapelle, issued 1772, and be- fore alluded to, contain descriptions of the ventriloquial achieve- ments of Baron Mengen at Vienna ; and those of M. St. Gille, near Paris, are equally interesting and astonishing. The former ingeniously constructed a doll with moveable lips, which he could readily control by a movement of the fingers under the dress ; and with this automaton he was accustomed to hold hu- morous and satirical dialogues. He ascribed proficiency in his art to the frequent gratification of a propensity for counterfeiting the cries of the lower animals, and the voices of persons with whom he was brought in contact. So expert, indeed, had prac- tice rendered him in this way, that the sounds uttered by him did not seem to issue from his own mouth. La Chapelle, having heard many surprising circumstances related concerning one M. St. Gille, a grocer at St. Germainen-Laye, near Paris, whose powers as a ventriloquist had given occasion to many singular and divert- ing scenes, formed the resolution of seeing him. Being seated with him on the opposite side of a fire, in a parlor on the ground floor, and very attentively observing him, the Abbe, after half an hour's conversation with M. St. Gille, heard himself called, on a sudden, by his name and title, in a voice that seemed to come from the roof of a house at a distance ; and whilst he was pointing to the house from which the voice had appeared to him to proceed, he was yet more surprised at hearing the words, "it was not from that quarter, " apparently in the same kind of voice as be- fore, but which now seemed to issue from under the earth at one of the corners of the room. In short, this factitious voice played, as it were, everywhere about him, and seemed to proceed from any quarter or distance from which the operator chose to trans- mit it to him. To the Abbe, though conscious that the voice pro- ceeded from the mouth of M. St. Gille, he appeared absolutely mute while bre was exercising his talent ; nor could any change |