er in each position immovably until
she was put into the next. Next came the demon Sabulon, who rolled her
through the chapel with horrible convulsions. Five or six times he carried
her left foot up higher than her shoulder; all the while her eyes were
fixed, wide open, without winking; after that he threw out her limbs till
she touched the ground, with her legs extended straight on either side,
and while in that posture, the exorcist compelled her to join her hands,
and with the trunk of the body in an erect posture, to adore the holy
sacrament." We seem to read the proceedings of an electro-biologist,
rather than of a pastor of the church: but the parallel is not yet at an
end. "The same nun," says Calmeil, "towards the close of her exorcism,
executed a command which the Duke imparted secretly to her exorcist." Then
follows this remarkable admission of the learned and cautious
physiologist:--"On hundreds of occasions one might believe, in effect, that
the Energumenes read the thoughts of the ecclesiastics who were charged
with the combating of their demons. It is certain that these young women
were endowed, during their excesses of hysteria or nervous exaltation,
with a penetration of mind altogether unique." The children of the
fanatics of the Cevennes, while in their supposed prophetic ecstacies,
spoke the purest dialect of French, and expressed themselves with singular
propriety. The same facility of speaking in a fluent and exalted style
while in the divinatory ecstacy, was remarked of old in the case of the
Pythian priestess. "Though it cannot be divined," says Plutarch, in his
"Inquiry," "why the Pythian priestess ceases to deliver her oracles in
verse; but that her parentage was virtuous and honest, and that she always
lived a sober and chaste life, yet her education was among poor, laboring
people, so that she was advanced to the oracular sect rude and unpolished,
void of all the advantages of art or experience. For, as it is the opinion
of Xenophon, that a virgin, ready to be espoused, ought to be carried to
the bridegroom's house before she has either seen or heard the least
communication, so the Pythian priestess ought to converse with Apollo
illiterate and ignorant almost of every thing, still approaching his
presence with a truly virgin soul."

We might here, without any stretch of imagination, suppose we are reading
a commentary on the birth and character of Joan of Arc, or of any of the
prophetesses of t