The Witch of Prague by F. Marion Crawford

[*] The deeds here recounted are not imaginary. Not very long ago the sacrilege which Unorna attempted was actually committed at night in a Catholic church in London, under circumstances that clearly proved the intention of some person or persons to defile the consecrated wafers. A case of hypnotic suggestion to the committal of a crime in a convent occurred in Hungary not many years since, with a different object, namely, a daring robbery, but precisely as here described. A complete account of the case will be found, with authority and evidence, in a pamphlet entitled _Eine experimentale Studie auf dem Gebiete des Hypnotismus_, by Dr. R. von Krafft-Ebing, Professor of Psychiatry and for nervous diseases, in the University of Gratz. Second Edition, Stuttgart, Ferdinand Enke, 1889. It is not possible, in a work of fiction, to quote learned authorities at every chapter, but it may be said here, and once for all, that all the most important situations have been taken from cases which have come under medical observation within the last few years.

Unorna was hardly conscious of what she had done. She had not had the intention of making Beatrice sleep, for she had no distinct intention whatever at that moment. Her words and her look had been but the natural results of overstrained passion, and she repeated what she had said again and again, and gazed long and fiercely into Beatrice's face before she realised that she had unintentionally thrown her rival and enemy into the intermediate state. It is rarely that the first stage of hypnotism produces the same consequences in two different individuals. In Beatrice it took the form of total unconsciousness, as though she had merely fainted away.