d, 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 Montgeron
himself as a witness present, but put forth, in the first instance, by
one of the most violent Anti-Succorists, the Abbe 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 Abbe, "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]

Montgeron, 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 convuls