But while they were exerting themselves to prevent her from falling, she rose with a quick and joyful movement and looked around. Then she cried out with a voice of triumph:
"Let me go—quick! I am cured."
Those who were holding her withdrew their arms partially and with some hesitation. She immediately freed herself from them, and walked with as much confidence as if she had never been ill.
Some one, however, who still had some fear of the result, offered her a stick to lean on.
She looked at it with a smile; then took it and contemptuously threw it far away, as a thing which was no longer of use. And from that day, she employed herself as before in hard out-door work.
Some visitors, who came to see her and to convince themselves of the fact, asked her to walk in their presence.
"Walk, did you say? I will run for you!" And, true to her word, she began to run.
This occurred in the month of May. In the following July, the people pointed out the vigorous octogenarian as a curiosity, as she mowed the grain, and was by no means the last in the hard labors of the harvest.
Her physician, the excellent Dr. Poueymiroo, praised God for this evident miracle, and subsequently, with the examining commission, signed the procès-verbal on the extraordinary events which we have just related, in which he did not hesitate to recognize "the direct and evident action of divine power."[14]