Enthusiasm having thus gone to the last limits in verse, enthusiasm had
but one way left to become remarkable in prose: that is, violence. Is it
not thus that we must characterize the words of Bergasse?--"The
adversaries of animal magnetism are men who must one day be doomed to
the execration of all time, and to the punishment of the avenging
contempt of posterity."

It is rare for violent words not to be followed by violent acts. Here
every thing proceeded according to the natural course of human events.
We know, indeed, that some furious admirers of Mesmer attempted to
suffocate Berthollet in the corner of one of the rooms of the Palais
Royal, for having honestly said that the scenes he had witnessed did not
appear to him demonstrative. We have this anecdote from Berthollet
himself.

The pretensions of the German doctor increased with the number of his
adherents. To induce him to permit only three learned men to attend his
meetings, M. de Maurepas offered him, in the name of the king, 20,000
francs a year for life, and 10,000 annually for house-rent. Yet Mesmer
did not accept this offer, but demanded, as a national recompense, one
of the most beautiful châteaux in the environs of Paris, together with
all its territorial dependencies.

Irritated at finding his claims repulsed, Mesmer quitted France,
angrily vowing her to the deluge of maladies from which it would have
been in his power to save her. In a letter written to Marie Antoinette,
the Thaumaturgus declared that he had refused the government offers
through austerity.