Because they thus appeal to the senses and seem to possess a certain material reality, hysterical hallucinations make a profound and ineffaceable impression on those who experience them. The subjects speak of them as being actual and very striking facts. When they become accusers, as so many women do who claim to have been the victims of imaginary assaults, they support their assertions in the most energetic fashion.
Not only does Jeanne see, hear, smell and touch her saints, she joins the procession of angels they bring in their train. With them she performs actual deeds, as if there were perfect unity between her life and her hallucinations.
"I was in my lodging, in the house of a good woman, near the château of Chinon, when the angel came. And then he and I went together to the King."
Q. "Was this angel alone?"
A. "This angel was with a goodly company of other angels.[1160] They were with him, but not every one saw them.... Some were very much alike; others were not, or at any rate not as I saw them. Some had wings. Certain even wore crowns, and in their company were Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret. With the angel aforesaid and with the other angels they went right into the King's chamber."
Q. "Tell us how the angel left you."
A. "He left me in a little chapel, and at his departure I was very sorrowful, and I even wept. Willingly would I have gone away with him; I mean my soul would have gone."[1161]
In all these hallucinations there is the same objective clearness, the same subjective certitude as in toxic hallucinations; and this clearness, this certitude, may in Jeanne's case suggest hysteria.
But if in certain respects Jeanne resembles hysterical subjects, in others she differs from them. She seems early to have acquired an independence of her visions and an authority over them.
Without ever doubting their reality, she resists them and sometimes disobeys them, when, for example, in defiance of Saint Catherine, she leaps from her prison of Beaurevoir: "Well nigh every day Saint Catherine told me not to leap and that God would come to my aid, and also would succour those of Compiègne. And I said to Saint Catherine: 'Since God is to help those of Compiègne, I want to be with them.'"[1162]