The child's limbs, as in the previous example, were drawn up by violent convulsive movements, and the muscles became as it were knotted, causing extreme pain. The little creature urgently begged that they would draw her legs and arms. Moderate tension caused no diminution of the pain; violent tension, administered with fear and trembling, relieved her immediately. She complained also of acute pain in the breast, which swelled to an alarming extent. To remove this, nothing proved effectual but excessive pressure with the knee on the part affected.
After a time, however, some of the Anti-Succorist theologians persuaded the mother that the succors ought not to be administered,—and even raised doubts in her mind and in that of the Count, as to whether the Devil had not some agency in the affair. "Who knows," said the latter, "if the Arch-Enemy has no part in this?" So they intermitted the succors for some weeks. During this time the infant gradually sank from day to day, would scarcely eat or drink, seldom slept, and death seemed imminent.
The physician, being called in, declared that the only hope was in resuming the succors, terrible as they appeared, and that, too, promptly. To the father he said, "If you delay, it will be too late. While you are trying all your fine experiments with her, your child will die." They resumed the same violent remedies as before; and the child was gradually restored to perfect health.[15]
But these examples, whatever we may think of them, are but some of the most moderate, which Montgéron himself admits to be explicable on natural principles. He says: "During the first months that the succors commenced, the power of resistance offered by the convulsionists did not appear so surprising, and seemed, indeed, to be the effect of an excessive swelling which was observed in the muscles upon which the convulsionists requested the blows to be given, and of the violent agitation of the animal spirits; so that the succors demanded by the sufferers appeared, in a measure, the natural remedy for the state in which God had placed them. But when, every day, the violence of the blows increased, it became evident that the natural force of the muscles could not equal that of the tremendous strokes which the convulsionists demanded, in obedience, as they said, to the will of God. And here was manifested the miracle."[16]
I proceed to give, as an example of one of the more violent succors here spoken of as miraculous, a narrative, not only vouched for by Montgéron himself as a witness present, but put forth, in the first instance, by one of the most violent Anti-Succorists, the Abbé d'Asfeld, in his work already referred to,—and put forth by him in order to be condemned as a wicked tempting of Providence,[17] or, worse, an accepting of aid from the Prince of Darkness himself. It occurred in 1734.
"Here," says the Abbé, "is an example, all the more worthy of attention, inasmuch as persons of every station and condition, ecclesiastics, magistrates, ladies of rank, were among the spectators. Jeanne Moler, a young girl of twenty-two or twenty-three years of age, standing up with her back resting against a stone wall, an extremely robust man took an andiron,[18] weighing, as was said, from twenty-five to thirty pounds, and therewith gave her, with his whole force, numerous blows on the stomach. They counted upwards of a hundred at a time. One day a certain friar, after having given her sixty such blows, tried the same weapon against a wall; and it is said that at the twenty-fifth blow he broke an opening through it."[19]
Dom La Taste, the great opponent of Jansenism, alluding to the same circumstance, says, "I do not dispute the fact, that the andiron sunk so deeply that it appeared to penetrate to the very backbone."[20]
Montgéron, after quoting the above, adds his own testimony, as to this same occurrence, in these words:—
"As I am not ashamed to confess that I am one of those who have followed up most closely the work of the convulsions, I freely admit that I am the person to whom the author alludes, when he speaks of a certain friar who tried against a wall the effect of blows similar to those he had given the convulsionist. As this is an occurrence personal to myself, I trust the reader will perceive the propriety of my presenting to him the narrative in a more exact and detailed form than that in which it is given by the author of the 'Vains Efforts.'
"I had begun, as I usually do, by giving the convulsionist very moderate blows. But after a time, excited by her constant complaints, which left me no room to doubt that the oppression in the pit of the stomach of which she complained could be relieved only by violent blows, I gradually increased the force of mine, employing at last my whole strength; but in vain. The convulsionist continued to complain that the blows I gave her were so feeble that they procured her no relief; and she caused me to put the andiron into the hands of a large and stout man who happened to be one of the spectators. He kept within no bounds. Instructed by the trial he had seen me make that nothing could be too severe, he discharged such terrible blows, always on the pit of the stomach, as to shake the wall against which the convulsionist was leaning.