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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,
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