CHAPTER VII.
DUPE OR IMPOSTOR?
The official accredited story of this undoubtedly extraordinary and exceptional woman contains, as has been sufficiently seen, a large number of statements, which probably every reader of these pages will, without hesitation, pronounce to be false. Many of the events stated to have happened undoubtedly never did happen; but the question will still remain, how large a portion of the tale must be deemed fraudulent fiction by those who cannot believe things to have happened which contradict the known laws of nature. And when this shall have been answered as satisfactorily as may be under the difficult circumstances of the investigation, it will yet remain to be decided who is to be deemed to have been guilty of fraud.
Before entering on these questions; it may be just suggested to the reader,—as a caution to be borne in mind, not as a point intended to be dwelt on in considering the matter,—that we are perhaps not altogether so well aware what are the laws of nature in the case of persons afflicted as Catherine was, as some of us are apt to imagine.
Looking at the matter, however, from the most ordinary points of view, it may perhaps be found, that as regards Catherine herself, it is not so necessary to consider her an impostor, as it may at first sight of the matter appear.
Of the austerities, mortifications, and abstinences recounted, all perhaps may be admitted to have been possible,—especially bearing in mind that Catherine's life was neither a long nor a healthy one—except the fasting for years, and the sleeping only one quarter-of-an-hour per diem. As to the fasting, it is mentioned incidentally in another part of Father Raymond's book, that she was sustained only by the sacramental bread, which she seems to have been in the habit of taking daily. May it not be possible, that the idea of her living without food, may have been generated by some talk of hers, in quite her usual strain, of this Holy Eucharist being her only nourishment, etc., etc., meaning spiritual nourishment? But then was Father Raymond deceived by any such expressions? Did he really believe that she lived for years without taking food? For in his account, no mistake of meaning is possible. He, at all events, intends his readers to believe the simple fact in its naked absurdity.
As for the sleep, it maybe remarked that in the case of a person subject to daily trances and states of insensibility, it is very difficult to say how many hours are passed in sleep, and what is sleep, and what not.
In the next place, all the relations of visions seen in "extasy," and of conversations held, and sensations suffered during them, may—due consideration being given to what we know of the patient—be accepted as not only possible but exceedingly probable. And this category will comprise the greatest part of the whole budget of wonders. Even in those cases, in which an abiding evidence of what had happened to her in trance is said to have remained appreciable only by her own senses, as in the case of the marriage ring, and the pain after the infliction of the stigmata; those most able to form an opinion on such matters, will not think, probably, that it is attributing too much to the imagination of a cataleptic patient, living on raw vegetables, wholly without active occupation, and engrossed by a series of highly exciting thoughts on one ever-present subject of a mystical and transcendental nature, to suppose that she may have in all sincerity imagined herself to see and to feel as she described.
POSSIBLE EXPLANATION OF MIRACLES.