continued their practices in private houses. The
influence of Deacon Paris, it was discovered,
was by no means necessarily circumscribed to
the vicinity of his bodily remains, but followed
his faithful devotees wherever they could find a
shelter from the perquisitions of the police. It
was now found that these fanatics had formed
themselves into a regularly organised sect. They
had their chiefs, their rules, a certain costume
which they wore when engaged in their
devotions, and, above all, patrons, who supplied
funds for their expenditure.  A certain
Count Daverne, we find, was sent to the
Bastille in 1735 for dissipating his property in
supporting the "convulsionnaires." One Guy,
a mercer, was condemned to the same
punishment for the same cause. The records of a vast
number of condemnations to imprisonment, to
exile, to the pillory, to confiscation of goods, are
still extant. One Carré Montgéron, a member
of the parliament, collected in a quarto volume
accounts of a great number of the so-called
miracles, together with a vast body of attestations
to their truth and genuineness, and was
mad enough to present this precious history to
the king. He was forthwith consigned to the
Bastille. But this did not prevent him from
adding two more bulky quarto volumes to his
work. And he was sent from one prison to
another till he died. The most distinguished
honours of persecution, however, were reserved
for an anonymous Life of the Blessed Deacon
Paris. This volume was sent to Rome to be
judged and condemned by the highest authority,
with all the pomp and circumstance by which
Rome seeks to work on the imagination of
mankind. A congregation of cardinals, on the 29th
of August, 1731, pronounced the greater
excommunication against all who should be guilty
of reading the work, and, not having the author
in their hands, condemned the volume to be
burned in a solemn auto da fe- to borrow a
phrase from the language most conversant with
such matters. A vast scaffolding was erected
in the open space in front of the convent of La
Minerva, on which the cardinals took their seats
in solemn state. And in front of this a huge
bonfire was prepared. The condemned criminal,
represented by his volume, was then brought
out, fettered and bound in chains, and was handed
to the dean of the sacred college, and by him
passed to the grand inquisitor, who, in turn,
handed it to the gaoler. The gaoler delivered
over the culprit to the provost for execution;
the provost consigned it to a soldier of the
guard, and he finally placed it in the hands of
the executioner. The latter, solemnly raising
the corpus delicti high in air, turned slowly
to the four points of the compass, then
unchained the victim, and tearing leaf from leaf,
dipped each severally in a boiling cauldron of
pitch, and cast it on the flames.

But neither this solemn farce, nor the utmost
efforts of Louis the Fifteenth's police, availed
aught towards putting down the "convulsionnaires,"
or quenching their insane enthusiasm.
On the contrary, from the time when they were
driven from the cemetery of Saint-Médard, and
when the police commenced a vigorous crusade
against them, their fanaticism took a more
violent and abominable form. The unhappy
victims, who "felt that the Lord's work was
being accomplished in them," who "were
convinced of sin," and were "seeking for peace,"
strove to outdo each other in the monstrosity of
the tortures to which they submitted
themselves; and the accounts which have been left
by many contemporary writers of the horrible
scenes enacted in the different meeting-houses
of the sect would be incredible if they were
not confirmed by a multiplicity of testimony.

Here is the statement of an eye-witness, who
visited one of the meetings in question, solely
from motives of curiosity. It is M. de la
Condamine, a man well known in the literary world
of that day, who writes; and his letter has
been preserved in that amusing mass of gossip
which goes under the name of Grimm's corre-
spondence.

"My eyes," says he, "have witnessed what
I desired to see. Sister François, aged fifty-
five, was in my presence nail'd with four nails
to a cross. She remained fixed to it more than
three hours. She suffer'd much, especially in
the right hand. I saw her shudder and gnash
her teeth with agony when the nails were drawn
out. Sister Marie, her proselyte, aged twenty-
two years, had much difficulty in making up her
mind to the task. She wept, and said naively
that she was afraid. At last she made up her
mind; but she could not bear the fourth nail,
which was not entirely driven home. In this
state she read the history of Christ's passion
aloud. But her strength fail'd her; she nearly
fainted; and cried out, "Take me down, quick!'
She remained fixed to the cross for twenty or
twenty-five minutes."

Some remained suspended by the feet with
the head hanging down; others caused their
breasts to be violently wrenched and torn with
pincers. This latter was a very favourite mode
of martyrdom. One case is recorded by a
medical witness, of a girl not twenty-three years
old, who received a hundred blows on the
stomach from a heavy bludgeon. Her face
beamed with joy the while, and she kept crying,
"Ah, how good it is! What delight it gives me!
My brother, redouble the force of your blows,
if you can."

Dr. Morand, physician to the royal army,
having obtained admission to a meeting of
"convulsionnaires" held in the Rue des Vertus,
in the Quartier Saint-Martin, has left an account
of what he saw, from which the following is
extracted:

Sister Felicité, a young woman of thirty-
five years of age, prepared herself in her turn
for crucifixion. She said she was about to
undergo it for the twenty-first time. Two planks
were nailed together in the form of a cross in a
horizontal position. She stretched herself upon
it. They drove into her hands aud her feet,
nails five inches long, which penetrated far into
the wood. In this condition she conversed with