Brun’s theory of intention.  Malebranche replied, in effect, that he had only heard of the turning of the wand over water and minerals; that it then turned (if turn it did) by virtue of some such force as electricity; that, if such force existed, the wand would turn over open water.  But it does not so turn; and, as physical causes are constant, it follows that the turning of the rod cannot be the result of a physical cause.  The only other explanation is an intelligent cause—­either the will of an impostor, or the action of a spirit.  Good spirits would not meddle with such matters; therefore either the Devil or an impostor causes the motion of the rod, if it does move at all.  This logic of Malebranche’s is not agreeable to believers in the twig; but there the controversy stood, till, in 1692, Jacques Aymar, a peasant of Dauphine, by the use of the twig discovered one of the Lyons murderers.

Though the story of this singular event is pretty well known, it must here be briefly repeated.  No affair can be better authenticated, and our version is abridged from the ‘Relations’ of ’Monsieur le Procureur du Roi, Monsieur l’Abbe de la Garde, Monsieur Panthot, Doyen des Medecins de Lyon, et Monsieur Aubert, Avocat celebre.’

On July 5, 1692, a vintner and his wife were found dead in the cellar of their shop at Lyons.  They had been killed by blows from a hedging-knife, and their money had been stolen.  The culprits could not be discovered, and a neighbour took upon him to bring to Lyons a peasant out of Dauphine, named Jacques Aymar, a man noted for his skill with the divining rod.  The Lieutenant-Criminel and the Procureur du Roi took Aymar into the cellar, furnishing him with a rod of the first wood that came to hand.  According to the Procureur du Roi, the rod did not move till Aymar reached the very spot where the crime had been committed.  His pulse then rose, and the wand twisted rapidly.  ’Guided by the wand or by some internal sensation,’ Aymar now pursued the track of the assassins, entered the court of the Archbishop’s palace, left the town by the bridge over the Rhone, and followed the right bank of the river.  He reached a gardener’s house, which he declared the men had entered, and some children confessed that three men (whom they described) had come into the house one Sunday morning.  Aymar followed the track up the river, pointed out all the places where the men had landed, and, to make a long story short, stopped at last at the door of the prison of Beaucaire.  He was admitted, looked at the prisoners, and picked out as the murderer a little hunchback (had the children described a hunchback?) who had just been brought in for a small theft.  The hunchback was taken to Lyons, and he was recognised, on the way, by the people at all the stages where he had stopped.  At Lyons he was examined in the usual manner, and confessed that he had been an accomplice in the crime, and had guarded the door.  Aymar