“”It seems”, remarks de Mirville in his review, “that we could apply to M. Babinet the following remark made by a very witty woman to Raynal, ‘if you are not a Christian, it is not for lack of faith.'”
It was not alone believers who wondered at the credulity displayed by M. Babinet, in persisting to call the manifestation a meteor; for Dr. Boudin mentions it very seriously in a work on lightning he was just then publishing.
“If these details are exact”, says the doctor, “as they seem to be, since they are admitted by M. Babinet and Arago, it appears very difficult for the phenomenon to retain its appellation of sphere-shaped lightning.
However we leave it to the others to explain, if they can, the essence of a fire-globe emitting no sensation of heat, having the aspect of a cat, slowly promenading in a room, which finds means to escape by reascending the chimney through an aperture in the wall covered over with a paper which it unglues without damaging!”
“We are of the same opinion”, adds the marquis, “as the learned doctor, on the difficulty of an exact definition, and we do not see why we should not have in future lightning in the shape of a dog, of a monkey, etc., etc.
One shudders at the bare idea of a whole meteorological menagerie, which, thanks to thunder, might come down to our rooms to promenade themselves at will.””
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 