f the convulsionist informed her that the wound would have no
bad consequences, and could be cured by severe blows of a club on the
same spot; which, he declares, happened accordingly.[46]

Besides the incidents above related, and a hundred others of similar
character, which, if time and the reader's patience permitted, I might
cull from Montgeron's pages, the restless enthusiasm of the
convulsionists ultimately betrayed them into extravagances, in which it
is often hard to decide whether the grotesque or the horrible more
predominated. One convulsionist descended the long stairs of an
infirmary head-foremost, lying on her back; another caused herself to be
attached, by a rope round her neck, to a hook in the wall. A third
repeated her prayers while turning somersets. A fourth, suspended by the
feet, with the head hanging down, remained in that position
three-quarters of an hour. A fifth, lying down on a tomb, caused herself
to be covered to the neck with baked earth mixed with sand and saturated
with vinegar. A sixth made her bed, in winter, on billets of wood; a
seventh on bars of iron. The Sister Felicite was in the habit of causing
herself to be nailed to the cross, and of remaining there half an hour
at a time, gayly conversing with the pious who surrounded her.[47]
Another sister, named Scholastique, after long hesitation between
different modes of mortification, having one day remarked the manner in
which they constructed the pavement of the streets, had her dress
tightly fastened below the knee, and then ordered one of the assistants
to take her by the legs, and, with her head downward, to dash it
repeatedly against the tiled floor, after the fashion of paviors, when
using a rammer.

"If," says Calmeil, "the idea had chanced to suggest itself to one of
these theomaniacs, that disembowelling alive would be a sacrifice
pleasing to the Supreme Being, she would undoubtedly have insisted upon
being subjected to such a martyrdom."[48]

The mental and physiological phenomena connected with this epidemic
remain to be noticed, together with the theories and suggestions put
forth by medical and other contemporary writers, in explanation of what
has here been sketched, the substance of which is usually admitted by
these commentators, however incredible, when related at this distance of
time, it may appear. Next month the subject will be continued.

* * * * *

PRESENCE.

The wild, s