ecame a Catholic!

Gabriel Astier, who had been a young labourer, likewise from Dauphine,
went in the capacity of a preacher and prophet into the valley of
Bressac, in the Vivarais. He had infected his family: his father,
mother, elder brother, and sweetheart, followed his example, and took to
prophesying. Gabriel, before he preached, used to fall into a kind of
stupor in which he lay rigid. After delivering his sermon, he would
dismiss his auditors with a kiss, and the words: "My brother, or my
sister, I impart to you the Holy Ghost." Many believed that they had
thus received the Holy Ghost from Astier, being taken with the same
seizure. During the period of the discourse, first one, then another,
would fall down; some described themselves afterwards as having felt
first a weakness and trembling through the whole frame, and an impulse
to yawn and stretch their arms, then they fell convulsed and foaming at
the mouth. Others carried the contagion home with them, and first
experienced its effects, days, weeks, months afterwards. They
believed--nor is it wonderful they did so--that they had received the
Holy Ghost.

Not less curious were the seizures of the Convulsionnaires at the grave
of the Abbe Paris, in the year 1727. These Jansenist visionaries used to
collect in the church-yard of St Medard, round the grave of the deposed
and deceased Deacon, and before long the reputation of the place for
working miracles getting about, they fell in troops into convulsions.

Their state had more analogy to that of the Jerkers already described.
But it was different. They required, to gratify an internal impulse or
feeling, that the most violent blows should be inflicted upon them at
the pit of the stomach. Carre de Montgeron mentions, that being himself
an enthusiast in the matter, he had inflicted the blows required with an
iron instrument, weighing from twenty to thirty pounds, with a round
head. And as a convulsionary lady complained that he struck too lightly
to relieve the feeling of depression at her stomach, he gave her sixty
blows with all his force. It would not do, and she begged to have the
instrument used by a tall, strong man, who stood by in the crowd. The
spasmodic tension of her muscles must have been enormous; for she
received one hundred blows, delivered with such force that the wall
shook behind her. She thanked the man for his benevolent aid, and
contemptuously censured De Montgeron for his weakness, or want o