The patient falls into a sort of stupefaction
from which he often revives considerably calmed,
the action of a narcotic on his nervous system
being mistaken for an action of stinks on the
olfactories of the demon. The old superstition
of hanging odoriferous plants over the door of
the house of one "possessed" points to the same
belief that odours drive away demons.

In this rapid survey of a wide subject we
hope the reader has been able to see that magic,
which was the Science of the ancients—and the
only science they could have for a long while—is
wilful Nescience in moderns who have ample
means at hand for ascertaining the fundamental
fact that the order of Nature is not capricious
but constant, and is not to be altered by
incantations, even by those powerful incantations
which take place in the "most respectable
drawing-rooms" somewhat darkened. The
ancient thaumaturge was to a great extent his
own dupe; if he did practise certain tricks, he
had profound belief that there was an art to
which he pretended. But the modern thaumaturge
is generally an impostor; and those who
believe in him, and his miracles, ought to be
consistent, and believe in all the grossest
superstitions of the early ages. For if the order of
Nature is not constant, as we suppose, there is
no assignable limit to the power of Magic.

THE KING OF YVETOT.

BÉRANGER has immortalised the King of
Yvetot in one of his best songs. He describes
him as a king little known in history, who, late
to rise and early to bed, slept very well without
any glory, and crowned by Jeanneton with a
nightcap, was a good little king. The poet says
he made four repasts a day in his thatched
palace, travelled through his kingdom on an
ass, and, fearing no harm, had a dog for his
only guard, and was a good little king. Never
trying to enlarge his kingdom, he proved a
pleasant neighbour, and making pleasure his
code, was a model potentate; and it was only
when he died and was buried that the people
wept, saying he was a good little king.
Béranger adds that the portrait of this good and
worthy prince is still preserved as the signboard
of a famous inn in his province, where very often
the people exclaim while drinking before it:

       Oh! oh! oh! oh! ah! ah! ah! ahl
       Quel bon petit roi c'était là!
                               La, la!

We learn from Béranger's Memoirs, that he
sang his little king, as Chamisso wrote his Peter
Schlemihl, or Shadowless Man, as a satire upon
the vast and unsolid ambition of the First
Bonaparte, who was then (1813) seen tottering
towards his fall, after his disastrous Russian
campaign.

Yvetot is a little French village containing
about a thousand inhabitants, situated on the
railway between Paris and Havre. The name
Yvetot is composed of two words: "Yve," or
"Yvo" (probably the same as Ives), a common
German name, and "tot," the Celtic word for a
house or dwelling-place. Gaguin, a French
hisorian of the sixteenth century, says the origin
of the kingdom of Yvetot was contemporaneous
with that of the French monarchy; that is to
say, it was founded in the reign of the
Merovingian king, Clotaire the First. The following
is the story told by Gaguin:

A certain lord of Yvetot, named Gaulthier,
having incurred the wrath of King Clotaire,
"went to foreign parts, where he made war
against the enemies of the faith." After ten
years of voluntary exile, believing the king's
wrath to be somewhat appeased, and having
obtained a letter from the Pope recommending
him to mercy, Gaulthier ventured back to France.
Arriving at Soissons on a Good Friday, and
hearing that the king was at church, he hastened
there, and, throwing himself at his feet, implored
his pardon. "But Clotaire, being a savage
prince, drawing his sword, ran it through his
body." On hearing of this murder, perpetrated
in a church on such a day, the Pope threatened
the murderer with his spiritual thunders if he
did not immediately make some atonement for
his crime. The terrified Clotaire, therefore,
consented to erect the manor of Yvetot into a
kingdom for the benefit of the heirs of his victim.
Gaguin adds, that "he finds from an exact and
indubitable authority that this extraordinary
event took place in the year of grace 536."

Great doubts, however, have been cast upon
the "indubitable authority" of Robert Gaguin,
by reason that no mention of the king or
kingdom of Yvetot is to be found in the annals
of France prior to 1392, although there are
allusions to the fief of Yvetot as far back as the
eleventh century. Among the Norman lords
who fought at the battle of Hastings under
William the Conqueror, the name of the Sire Jean
d'Yvetot occurs, and about a century later, Gaulthier
d' Yvetot accompanied his suzerain, Henry
the Second, to the Crusades. During the reign of
Philippe-Auguste, in 1204, after the reunion of
Normandy to France, the name of Robert
d'Yvetot figures among the Norman lords
possessing noble and military fiefs, and who are
requested to furnish "the third part of a man-at-
arms" (Robertus de Yvetot tertiam partem
militis): meaning, thereby, that he has to pay
one-third of the expense of his own equipment.

The first king of Yvetot recognised by the
authorities of Normandy was Jean the Fourth,
who reigned towards the end of the fourteenth
century. He received letters patent from Charles
the Sixth and Louis the Eleventh of France,
forbidding any of their subjects from meddling
with him, and acknowledging his rights and
privileges. Nevertheless, when on one occasion
Louis the Eleventh (who never allowed himself
to be called a king) happened to be at Yvetot,
he somewhat alarmed Jean the Fourth by
turning towards his attendants and saying,
"Gentlemen, there are no longer any kings in France."
However, after a good deal of teasing, Jean the
Fourth was permitted to reign and die, king of
Yvetot.

The kings of Yvetot possessed all the