Copy of a letter addressed to M. Franklin by M. Mesmer, May 14, 1784.

You are at the head of the committee which the government sent to M. d'Eslon's house, in order to witness the evidence of my discovery, and to judge its efficacy.

When Mr. d'Eslon approached me and when I saw fit to let him glimpse a few elements of the system of my knowledge, I made him give his word of honor that he would never make public, without first having obtained my permission, the small number of new ideas that I might confide in him.

M. d'Eslon has since signed a statement in which he recognizes that animal magnetism is my property, and that to make use of it without my consent is to be guilty of an offense as odious as it is punishable.

However, in spite of his oaths and the statement which he signed, M. d'Eslon has not only dared to use my property for himself, but he has found men who were not afraid to share the spoils of my discoveries with him. Thirty-six doctors, from what I have been told, came to him looking for a system of knowledge about which he should be silent, and which he could not impart to them without breaking a code of honor.

But Mr. d'Eslon has done still more: he has dared to ask the government for a committee to come verify at his home a discovery which is not his own, a discovery which he stole from its inventor, and which, whatever anyone says, he could only use in an illicit manner.

The government doubtless believed that it was M. d'Eslon who discovered animal magnetism and that he possesses the relevant body of knowledge in its entirety.

The committee members whom the government chose in order to go learn the science of animal magnetism from M. d'Eslon, surely believed the same thing.

For I must not presume, and I do not presume that, if the government, and the committee members whom it chose, had thought that animal magnetism was an illegitimate possession in the hands of M. d'Eslon and something that he understood in only an absolutely imperfect way, they would have chosen to listen to him. It is not in the principles of the government to legitimate an attack on propriety, and none of the committee members would want to be accomplices to such treachery. Moreover, the government and the committee would have certainly understood that in making a public report of what they had been taught, or of what they had seen at M. d'Eslon's house, they would be putting themselves in the position of making either an inaccurate report, or an incomplete one, and they would have refrained from an activity that would necessarily expose them to some blame.

I must therefore inform you, Monsieur, and through you I inform the entire committee chosen by the government, what kind of a man M. d'Eslon is, of what abuses of my trust he is guilty, and how feeble and imperfect is the knowledge that he stole from me. I must inform you of this, because it is in my interest not to be judged according to what M. d'Eslon might say and also because I must unmask this liar. After having become the public object of his calumnies, after having been betrayed by him in the most odious manner, I do not wish for him to control the destiny of a doctrine which belongs to me, the importance and extent of which, I dare say, I am the only one to know, and the development of which, imprudently carried out, could be as dangerous as it can be beneficial if I am at last heard.

Consequently, Monsieur, I beg you to read with the greatest care the memoir enclosed with this letter; you will learn in it a number of offenses with which I charge M. d'Eslon and you will not be long in discovering how these may become embarrassing for the government and for yourself. With the sole intention of ruining me, he has artfully established relations between the government and you on the one hand, and himself and his correspondents on the other.

This memoir was to be published sometime in last January, and it was to become the principal evidence in a suit which I was planning to bring against M. d'Eslon, being unable to make him publicly account for his behavior, and defend myself against the calumnious accusations with which he has dared to attack me. The trial has not been undertaken because I have been dissuaded from it, as I have been persuaded that the moment will come when truth will reclaim its empire, and when M. d'Eslon will quite naturally be placed in that class of men who are always found next to those who have done great things, in order to steal from them, if they can, the glory which belongs to the latter, and to profit from their success.

The memoir I am sending you has been entrusted to a notary in Paris; it has also been entrusted to a public servant in London, and I have just sent a copy to Vienna. I hope that this last copy will be put immediately into the hands of the Emperor.

My discovery interests all nations, and it is for all nations that I wish to tell my story and make my defense. Therefore, as has been done up until now, my voice can be stifled here; this will only make my claim more imposing and terrible elsewhere.

Like you, Monsieur, I am among those men who, because they have accomplished great things, are empowered to shame others, just as powerful men have authority at their disposal no matter what one dares attempt. Like you, Monsieur, the world is my judge; and if the good that I have done can be forgotten, and the good that I wish to do can be obstructed, then I will have posterity to avenge me.

I am, etc.