“Now the golden chair wherein Juno was compelled to sit, by the artifice of Vulcan, means that the earth is the mother of riches, and with it that part of the air which cannot leave the earth, Juno being air.”—Natalis Comitis: Mythologia, lib. ii., 79 (1616).

“Thou wolt algates wete how we be shape!
Thou shalt hereafterward, my brother dere,
Come wher thee needeth not of me to lere,
For thou shalt by thine own experience
Conne in a chaiere rede of this sentence
Better than Virgile while he was on live
Or Dante also.”

Chaucer: The Frere’s Tale.

There once lived in Rome a very great, rich, and beautiful Princess, but she was as bad at heart as could be, and her life was of the wickedest. However, she kept up a good appearance, and was really at last in love with a fine young man, who returned her affections.

But Virgil, knowing all, and pitying the youth, said to him that the woman would certainly be the cause of his ruin, as she had been of many others, and told him so many terrible things of her, that he ceased to visit the Princess.

And she, first suspecting and then learning what Virgil had done, fell into bitter hatred, and swore that she would be revenged on him.

So one evening she invited the Emperor and many nobles, among them Virgil, to a splendid supper.

And being petty and spiteful by nature, the Princess had devised a mean trick to annoy Virgil. For she had prepared with great craft a chair, the seat of which was of paper, but which seemed to be of solid wood. It appeared to be a handsome seat of great honour.

But when the great man sat on it, there was a great crash, and he went down, indeed, but with his legs high in the air. So there was a peal of laughter, in which he joined so heartily and said so many droll things over it, that one would have thought he had contrived the jest himself, at which the lady was more angry than ever, since she had hoped to see him angry and ashamed. And Virgil, taking all the blame of the accident on himself, promised to send her in return a chair to pay for it. And he requested leave to take the proper measure for it, so that she might be fitly taken in.

Which she was. For, having returned to his home, Virgil went to work and had a splendid chair made—con molto artifizio. With great art he made it, with much gold inlaid with pearls, studded with gems. It was all artificial. [72]

And having finished it, Virgil begged the Emperor to send it to the Princess as a gift.

The Emperor did so at the proper time, but there was in it a more cunning trick than in the one which she had devised. For there were concealed therein several fine nets, or snares, so that whoever sat in it could not rise.

Then the Princess, overjoyed at this magnificent gift, at once sent an invitation to her friends to come to a supper where she could display it; nor did she suspect any trick, having no idea that she had any enemy.

And all came to pass as Virgil planned. For the lady, having seated herself in great state, found herself caught, and could not rise.

Then there was great laughter, and it was proposed that everyone present should kiss her. And as one beginning leads to strange ending, the end thereof was that they treated her senza vergogna, saying that when a bird is once caught in a snare, everybody who pleases may pluck a feather.

The classical scholar will find in this tale a probable reminiscence of the chair made by Vulcan wherein to entrap Juno, in which he succeeded, so that she was made to appear ridiculous to all the gods. It is worth noting in this connection that such chairs are made even to the present day, and that without invisible nets or any magic. One is mentioned in a book entitled “The Life of Dr. Jennings the Poisoner” (Philadelphia, T. B. Peterson, Bros.). If any person sat in it, he or she fell back, and certain clasps closed over the victim, holding him or her down perfectly helpless, rendering robbery or violence easy. Since writing the foregoing, I have in a recent French novel read a description of such a chair, with the additional information that such seats were originally invented for and used by physicians to confine lunatic patients. A friend of mine told me that he had seen one in a house of ill-fame in New York.

The legend of the Lady and the Chair suggests a very curious subject of investigation. It is very probably known to the reader that, to make a mesmerized or hypnotized subject remain seated, whether he or she will or not, is one of the common experiments of the modern magicians. It is thus described by M. Debay in his work “Les MystÈres du Sommeil et Magnetisme.”

The operator asks the subject, “Are you asleep?”

“No.”

“Rise from your chair.” (He rises.) “Tell all present that you are not asleep.”

“No. I am wide awake.”

The operator takes the subject by the hand, leads him to different persons present with whom he is acquainted, and asks him if he knows them. He replies:

“Certainly I know them.”

“Name them.”

He does so.

“All right. Now sit down.” (The subject obeys.) “And now I forbid you to rise. It is for you impossible—you cannot move!”

The subject makes ineffectual efforts to rise, but remains attached to the chair as if held fast by an invisible power.

The operator then says:

“Now you may rise. I permit you to do so. Rise—I order it!”

The subject rises from the chair without an effort.

I have frequently had occasion to observe that, in all of these legends which I have received from witches, the story, unlike the common fairy tale or novella of any kind, is only, as it were, a painted casket in which is enclosed the jewel of some secret in sorcery, generally with an incantation. Was not this the case with many of the old myths? Do they not all, in fact, really set forth, so far as their makers understood them, the mysteries of Nature, and possibly in some cases those of the wonder-works or miracles of the priests and magicians? There was a German—I forget his name—who wrote a book to prove that Jupiter, Juno, and all the rest, were the elements as known to us now, and all the wonders told of all the gods, with the “Metamorphoses” of Ovid, only a marvellous poetic allegory of chemical combinations and changes. That hypnotism was known to Egyptians of old is perfectly established—at least to his own satisfaction—by Louis Figuier in his “Histoire du Merveilleux dans les Temps Modernes,” Paris, 1861; and it is extremely possible. Therefore it may be that Juno in the chair is but the prototype of a Mademoiselle AdÈle, or Angelique Cottin, or Marie Raynard, or some other of the “little Foxes,” who, by the way, are alluded to in the Old Testament.