e kindest manner and was even permitted to enjoy
some appearance of liberty. Pinel himself originated the humane
treatment of the insane. Martin in the asylum was not forsaken by the
blessed Raphael. On Friday, the 15th, as the peasant was tying his
shoe laces, the Archangel in his frock-coat of a light colour, spoke
to him these words:

"Have faith in God. If France persists in her incredulity, the
misfortunes I have predicted will happen. Moreover, if they doubt the
truth of your visions, they have but to cause you to be examined by
doctors in theology."

These words Martin repeated to M. Legros; Director of the Royal
Institution of Charenton, and asked him what a doctor in theology was.
He did not know the meaning of the term. In the same manner, when he
was at Gallardon he had asked the priest, M. La Perruque, the meaning
of certain expressions the voice had used. For example, he did not
understand the wild frenzy of France [_le delvie de la France_] nor
the evils to which she would fall a victim [_elle serait en proie_].
But there is nothing that need puzzle us in such ignorance, if it
really existed. Martin may well have remembered the words he did not
understand and which he afterwards attributed to his Archangel still
without understanding them.

The visions recurred at brief intervals. On Sunday, March 31, the
Archangel appeared to him in the garden, took his hand, which he
pressed affectionately, opened his coat and displayed a bosom of so
dazzling a whiteness that Martin could not bear to gaze on it. Then he
took off his hat.

"Behold my forehead," he said, "and give heed that it beareth not the
mark of the beast whereby the fallen angels were sealed."

Louis XVIII expressed a desire to see Martin and to question him. The
King, like his favourite Minister, believed the visionary to be a tool
in the hands of the extreme party.

On Tuesday, April 2, Martin was taken to the Tuileries and brought
into the King's closet, where was also M. Decazes. As soon as the King
saw the farmer, he said to him: "Martin, I salute you."

Then he signed to his Minister to withdraw. Thereupon Martin,
according to his own telling, repeated to the King all that the
Archangel had revealed to him, and disclosed to Louis XVIII sundry
secret matters concerning the years he had spent in exile; finally he
made known to him certain plots which had been formed against his
person. Then the King, profoundly agitated and in tears, rai