and, holding one in each
hand, dealt seven or eight blows, pushed home with all her strength, on
the breast of Felicite, raising her hands and then stabbing with the
utmost eagerness, just as an assassin who wished to murder some one
would plunge two daggers repeatedly into his breast. Felicite received
the strokes with perfect tranquillity, and without evincing the
slightest emotion. Then, taking two similar daggers, she did the very
same to Madeleine, who, with her arms crossed, received the thrusts as
tranquilly as the other had done. Immediately afterwards, these two
convulsionists attacked one another with daggers, as with the fury of
two maniacs, who, having resolved on mutual destruction, were solely
bent each on poniarding the other."[59]

It is added, that "neither the one nor the other received the least
appearance of a wound, nor did either seem at all fatigued by so long
and furious an exercise."

It is not stated, in this particular instance, as it is in others, that
these girls were examined by a committee of their sex, before or after
the combat, to ascertain that they had under their dresses no concealed
means of protection; so that the possibility of trickery must be
admitted. If, as the officer who certifies appears convinced, all was
fair, then M. de Gasparin's admission that a vigorous sword-thrust would
penetrate the gum-elastic envelope is fatal to the theory he propounds.

Yet, withal, we may reasonably assent to the probability that M. de
Gasparin, in seeking an explanation of these marvellous phenomena, may
have proceeded in the right direction. Modern physicians admit, that, at
times, during somnambulism, complete insensibility, resembling hysteric
coma, prevails.[60] But if, as is commonly believed, this insensibility
is caused by some modification or abnormal condition of the nervous
fluid, then to some other modification or changed condition of the same
fluid comparative invulnerability may be due. For there is connection,
to a certain extent, between insensibility and invulnerability. A
patient rendered unconscious of pain, by chloroform or otherwise,
throughout the duration of a severe and prolonged surgical operation,
escapes a perilous shock to the nervous system, and may survive an
ordeal which, if he had felt the agony usually induced, would have
proved fatal. Pain is not only a warning monitor, it becomes also,
sometimes, the agent of punishment, if the warning be disregarded.

B