rapier,
violently pushed against Gabrielle Moler's throat, sank to the depth of
four finger-breadths, and, when drawn back, seeming to attach itself to
the skin, drew it back also, causing a trifling injury,--yet others seem
to prove that there is little strictness in that analogy. The King's
Chaplain and the Advocate of Parliament, whose testimony I have cited,
both certify that the flesh occasionally reacted under the sword,
swelling up, so as to thrust back the weapons, and even push back the
assistants. There is no corresponding property in gum-elastic. And
Montgeron expressly tells us, that, at the close of a terrible succor
called for by Gabrielle Moler, when she caused four sharpened shovels,
placed, one above, one below, and one on each side, of one of her
breasts, to be pushed by the main force of four assistants, a committee
of ladies present "had the curiosity to examine her breast immediately
after this operation, and unanimously certified that they found it as
hard as a stone."[58] If this observation can be depended on, the
gum-elastic theory, even as an analogically approximating explanation of
this entire class of phenomena, is untenable.

It is further to be remarked, that one of the positions assumed by M. de
Gasparin, as the basis of his hypothesis, does not tally with some of
the facts detailed by Montgeron. It was _pushes_ with swords, the former
alleges, never _thrusts_, to which the convulsionists were exposed. I
have already stated that this was _usually_ the fact; but there seem to
have been striking exceptions. On the authority of a priest and of an
officer of the royal household, Montgeron gives us the details of a
symbolical combat of the most desperate character, with rapiers, between
Sisters Madeleine and Felicite, occurring in May, 1744, in the presence
of thirty persons. One of the witnesses says,--"I know not if I ever saw
enemies attack each other with more fury or less circumspection. They
fell upon one another without the slightest precaution, thrusting
against each other with the points of their rapiers at hap-hazard,
wherever the thrust happened to take effect. And this they did again and
again, and with all the force of which, in convulsion, they were
capable,--which, as all the world knows, is a force far greater than the
same persons possess in their ordinary state."

And the officer thus further certifies:--"After the combat, Madeleine
took two short swords, resembling daggers,