“The result was that I unfolded to the subject of this apparition my intention, with God’s help, and his own sanction, to cast out the spirit, according to the old rule and custom of Holy Church. Prior to this he made a full and frank confession of his whole life, and resolved by God’s help to amend. Having made an appointment, a fortnight hence, with him, and being resolved to consecrate my proposed act, by special deeds of fasting, self-denial, and prayer, I was alarmed to hear, by letter, of his most serious illness a few days later. His relations asserted that he was suffering from epilepsy, and that the fits were rapid and most severe.
“The following day, taking with me a book containing an authorized form of exorcism, I went to see the sick man. His sufferings seemed to be excruciating: his fits shocking to witness. At a half-lucid interval he saw me; and, starting from his bed, tried to throw himself out of the window. When he was calmer, I knelt down and prayed for him with his relations; making several times an act of Faith.
“Then signing him with the cross on forehead, mouth, and breast, I began the authorized form. During this, his fits returned; and his violence and ravings were terrible to witness. Throughout I felt sustained in my action by a Higher Power, and completed my task in the Name of the Adorable and Ever-Blessed Trinity. Here he sank into a deep sleep; and this sleep proved to be the beginning of a complete change for the better. The fits ceased, the body was no longer tortured with writhings; and, as I heard from him afterwards, the hideous vision or apparition vanished, and was never seen again. A few years afterwards he died, as I believe in grace; and, as I commended his soul to God, so I committed his body to the dust; and have always looked upon this remarkable event as a token, to myself most unworthy, of the Almighty’s power and Presence amongst us, as well as of His exceeding great mercy and goodness to this poor sufferer.”
Another remarkable instance of the active and energizing powers of the Church of God, unimpaired and uncrippled, may be gathered from the record which follows of the sudden and effectual cure of Françoise-Geneviève-Philippe, which took place in the church of the Carmelites of Pontoise on the 16th of July, 1784, upon the Festival of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. The record below is a literal translation of the formal act and deed of the person cured:—
“I, the undersigned Françoise-Geneviève-Philippe, called in religion ‘Sister Josephine-Mary of the Incarnation,’ aged thirty years, declare that my health being disordered at Pontoise, where I resided with the Ursuline Dames for eleven years, I was advised to make a change of air; I consequently withdrew to the Dames of the Congregation of Trouvelle-les-Vernon, where I entered on the 16th of February, 1782. My health continued bad in consequence of the frequent attacks of hæmorrhage to which I became subject.
“On the 29th of December following I was seized with a violent headache, beginning with a swoon, which lasted more than two hours, and with a frightful hæmorrhage. Suitable remedies were instantly administered to me by skilful physicians, but in vain; and after this I was attacked with convulsions, and the entire suspension of all motion in my body.
“Different consultations were held at Paris; MM. Fumé and Petit sent me prescriptions which produced no effect. This sickness continued until the 13th of May, 1783, when I was removed into the town of my uncle’s. All these facts have been attested by the physicians and surgeons of Vernon, by the testimony of M. Atadie, physician to his Serene Highness the Duke of Penthievre, and of M. le Noble, physician, who had employed magnetism, but without effect. These certificates, duly legalized by M. le Lieutenant-Général of the same town, attest that my disorder was deemed so violent and incurable to the period when I decided upon returning to Pontoise, hoping to recover my health by the means which it might please God to employ. I arrived there on the 5th of August, 1783; from that time my condition was precisely the same, namely habitual convulsions. I was deprived of the use of my limbs, particularly of my right arm, in which the convulsions were so violent that it was found necessary to fix and tie it with a bandage. The left was not much better, for on merely touching it, or on a change of weather, it experienced similar convulsions. Added to this I was attacked violently with gout, which I felt all over my body, but especially in my head and the extremities of my fingers. I was subject to pains in my breast and stomach, so severe as to occasion me to spit blood and to vomit up even the most liquid of my food. Sleep, of which I had in general but little till this period, now became, as it were, a stranger to me. My voice was for a month or six weeks almost extinct, and there was not a part of my body which was not in a state of suffering; the least noise became almost insupportable.
“It is moreover to be remarked, that I never discovered, although always valetudinary, what could be capable of occasioning such a malady. This is a testimony I offer to truth. The persons who could not be ignorant of what concerned their patient have made the same depositions.[46]
“Such was my condition when they were proceeding at Pontoise, by order of the Holy See, in the process of the beatification of the servant of God, Marie de l’Incarnation, whose name in the world was Madame Acarie, foundress of the Carmelites in France, who, having edified the World by the virtues which characterize great souls, and consecrated at Carmel three of her daughters, herself embraced this holy state under the humble quality of converse-sister in the Convent of Carmelites at Amiens, and died at that of Pontoise in the odour of sanctity on the 18th of April, 1618, aged fifty-two years.
“The fame of this process revived my faith. I made a Novena to her, in which the Carmelites, as well as many other pious persons, united. I not only, during this Novena, took no medicines, but I told my physician: ‘Perhaps, sir, you will smile at me when I tell you that I am performing a Novena to the venerable Sister Marie de l’Incarnation, and that I hope to-morrow to be taken to her tomb!’ ‘I commend your piety,’ said he, ‘to make a Novena to that blessed person, but I do not equally commend the step which you propose to take; I fear that none but bad consequences will result from it.’ I replied, as I had done to many other of my friends, ‘that I had the firmest confidence of a cure.’