nce or second sight. Being now cured of her real
disorder, yet able to counterfeit the appearance of it, she could find no
difficulty in arranging in her own case a miracle of the established kind,
and so striking an incident would answer a further end. In the parish was a
chapel of the Virgin, which was a place of pilgrimage; the pilgrims added
something to the income of the priest; and if, by a fresh demonstration of
the Virgin's presence at the favoured spot, the number of these pilgrims
could be increased, they would add more. For both reasons, therefore, the
miracle was desired; and the priest and the monk were agreed that any means
were justifiable which would encourage the devotion of the people.[320]
Accordingly, the girl announced, in one of her trances, that "she would
never take health of her body till such time as she had visited the image
of our Lady" in that chapel. The Virgin had herself appeared to her, she
said, and had fixed a day for her appearance there, and had promised that
on her obedience she would present herself in person and take away her
disorder.[321] The day came; and as (under the circumstances) there was no
danger of failure, the holy fathers had collected a vast concourse of
people to witness the marvel. The girl was conducted to the chapel by a
procession of more than two thousand persons, headed by the monk, the
clergyman, and many other religious persons, the whole multitude "singing
the Litany and saying divers psalms and orations by the way."

"And when she was brought thither[322] and laid before the image of our
Lady, her face was wonderfully disfigured, her tongue hanging out, and her
eyes being in a manner plucked out and laid upon her cheeks, and so greatly
deformed. There was then heard a voice speaking within her belly, as it had
been in a tonne, her lips not greatly moving: she all that while continuing
by the space of three hours or more in a trance. The which voice, when it
told of anything of the joys of heaven, spake so sweetly and so heavenly,
that every man was ravished with the hearing thereof; and contrarywise,
when it told anything of hell, it spake so horribly and terribly, that it
put the hearers in a great fear. It spake also many things for the
confirmation of pilgrimages and trentals, hearing of masses and confession,
and many other such things. And after she had lyen there a long time, she
came to herself again, and was perfectly whole. So this miracle was
finis