Thus far, however, the knowledge gained as to Lucie 3 was not direct but inferential. The nature of the commands which she could execute showed her to be capable of attention and memory; but there was no way of learning her own conception of herself, if such existed, nor of determining her relation to other phenomena of the trance. And here it is that automatic writing was successfully invoked. M. Janet began by the following simple command: " When I clap my hands you will write Bonjour." This was done in the usual loose and scrawling script of automatism, and Lucie, though fully awake, was not aware that she had written anything at all. She was next ordered to write a letter, which she did in a commonplace style, and signed "Lucie." But Lucie was unconscious of the letter-writing, and when the epistle was shown to her she pronounced it a forgery. The unconscious hand was again bidden to write a letter; it wrote word for word the same letter as before, as if it were a musical-box wound up to repeat a particular tune.

By means of a simple artifice, however, it was found possible to do more than this. M. Janet simply ordered the entranced girl to write answers to all questions of his after her awakening. The command thus given had a persistent effect, and while Lucie 1 continued to chatter as usual with other persons, Lucie 3 wrote brief and scrawling responses to M. Janet's questions. This was the moment at which in many cases a new and separate invading personality is assumed; and if Lucie had believed in possession by devils - as so many similarly-constituted subjects in old times believed - we can hardly doubt that the energy now writing through her hand would have assumed the style and title of a " familiar spirit." Or if, again, she had been a modern Spiritualist, it is probable that the signature of some deceased friend would have appeared at the foot of these communications. But here the "communicating intelligence " was of so obviously artificial a kind that it could scarcely venture to pretend to be either a devil or Lucie's grandmother.

A singular conversation gave to this limited creation, this statutory intelligence., an identity sufficient for practical convenience. "Do you hear me?" asked Professor Janet. Answer (by writing), "No." "But in order to answer one must hear?" "Certainly." "Then how do you manage?" "I don't know." "There must be somebody who hears me?" "Yes." "Who is it?" "Not Lucie." "Oh, some one else? Shall we call her Blanche?" "Yes, Blanche." "Well then, Blanche, do you hear me?" "Yes." This name, however, had to be changed, for the following reason: - The name Blanche happened to 'have very disagreeable associations in Lucie's mind; and when Lucie was shown the paper with the name Blanche, which she had unconsciously written, she was angry, and wanted to tear it up. Another name had to be chosen. "What name will you have?" "No name." "You must - it will be more convenient." "Well then, Adrienne." Never, perhaps, has a personality had less spontaneity about it.

Yet Adrienne (Lucie 3) was in some respects deeper down than Lucie 1. She could get at the genesis of certain psychical manifestations of which Lucie 1 experienced only the results. A striking instance of this was afforded by the phenomena of the hystero-epileptic attacks to which this patient was subject.

In cases of this sort it often happens that the patient's imagination during the attack is excited by the reminiscence of some scene of terror which perhaps first set on foot this nervous disturbance. On a smaller scale this recurrence to a still dominant moment of past fear may be familiar to some of my readers. I know a lady who was much frightened in childhood by a large dog which sprang out on her; and who still, in moments of alarm or agitation, seems to see the creature spring at her again. Well, Lucie's special terror, which recurred in wild exclamation in her hysterical fits, was somehow connected with hidden men. She could not, however, recollect the incident to which her cries referred; she only knew that she had had a severe fright at seven years old, and an illness in consequence. Now during these "crises " Lucie (except, presumably, in the periods of unconsciousness which form a pretty constant element in such attacks) could hear what Professor Janet said to her. Adrienne, on the contrary, was hard to get at, could no longer obey orders, and if she wrote, wrote only, J'aipeur, j'ai peur.

M. Janet, however, waited till the attack was over, and then questioned Adrienne as to the true meaning of the agitated scene. Adrienne was able to describe to him the terrifying incident in her childish life which had originated the confused hallucinations which recurred during the attack. She could not explain the recrudescence of the hallucinations; but she knew what Lucie saw and why she saw it: nay, indeed, it was Adrienne rather than Lucie to whom the hallucinations were directly visible.

Adrienne thus appeared to be in a sense more deeply involved than Lucie 1 and 2 in the hysterical attacks. But it must not be therefore supposed that Adrienne represented a necessarily morbid aspect of the complex identity. And the experiments showed that her plane of existence lay beneath some of the superficial evils from which Lucie 1 suffered.

Lucie 1 was a hysterical patient, very seriously amiss. One conspicuous symptom was an almost absolute defect of sensibility, whether to pain, to heat, or to contact, which persisted both when she was awake and when entranced. There was, as already mentioned, an entire defect of the muscular sense also, so that when her eyes were shut she did not know the position of her limbs. Nevertheless, it was remarked as an anomaly that when she was thrown into the cataleptic state (Lucie 3), not only did the movements impressed on her continue to be made, but the corresponding or complementary movements, the corresponding facial expression, followed just as they usually follow in such experiments. Thus, if M. Janet clenched her fist in the cataleptic stage, her arm began to deal blows, and her face assumed a look of anger. The suggestion given through the so-called muscular sense had operated on a subject in whom the muscular sense, as tested in other ways, had seemed to be wholly lacking. As soon as Adrienne could be communicated with, it was possible to get somewhat nearer to a solution of this puzzle.