shes in regard to your son had been
granted. That good soul assured me twice that he had gone to heaven
that very morning, God be praised a thousand times!

"'Thus sir, I have done what I could for your consolation.

"'I have the honor to be, etc.

"'Sister Marie Becaud.'

"This letter was post marked at Oria, November 2d."

I should not venture to insult the intelligence of the reader with these
idiotic details but for the reasons stated, and additionally, that they
carry conviction with them to thousands of minds, honest doubtless, but
which are accustomed to grovel in superstition, and falsehood, which
they are unable to test by right standards.

A phase in Palma's spiritual pathology has been alluded to cursorily,
but has not yet been considered with the fulness proper in connection
with stigmatization, and that is the occurrence of haemorrhagic spots on
various parts of her body, and which she so managed as to convey the
idea that they were symbolical of various holy things. On the back of
her hand she convinced Dr. Imbert-Gourbeyre that she bled in the shape
of the cross, and he gives a wood-cut representing a cross on the dorsum
of the hand, a little above the space between the first and second
fingers. This is surrounded by other rectilinear figures. On her breast
and back, other figures were obtained by placing handkerchiefs on the
parts. The doctor thus procured several mementoes of his visit, in the
shape of pieces of linen stained with spots of blood somewhat resembling
hearts, with flames coming out of them, suns, roses, crosses, etc. He
gives several plates in his book representing these figures, of the
reality of the miraculous formation of which he has not the slightest
doubt.

Another phenomenon has also been mentioned incidentally, and that is the
intense heat which Palma declared she felt, and which the doctor refers
to as the "divine fire." He had brought with him from Paris, a
thermometer to use in determining the extraordinary temperature of this
fire. He examined her with this instrument while she felt this divine
fire, but failed to find any abnormal increase; her pulse at the time
was 72. "I made this experiment," he says, "to satisfy my scientific
conscience, [God save the mark!] but I ought to say that I was ashamed
of myself for presuming to measure this divine fire by such an
instrument." He is right,