According to the picture which accompanies this delicious narrative, the apparition had the wings of a bat and a tail of the bovine class.

It was Beffabuc, the familiar of the magician, who begged him to enlighten the sceptic, but the latter, according to the apparition, was protected by a higher power and would never be persuaded to believe in him.

Signor Margiotta gives the names of all who were present at the evocation--twelve members of the 33rd degree, to say nothing of Misraim dignities.

I submit, however, that the episode of the bottle would split the rock of Peter, that the absence of Signor Pessina for twenty minutes previous to the performance, eked out with a little ventriloquism, and some Pepper accessories would explain much, and that there is also another hypothesis which I will leave to the discernment of my readers, and to which I lean personally.
Our witness, in any case, would not be a _persona grata_ to the Society for Psychical Research.

As he is violent in his enmities, so is he gullible in marvels.