cure.

Other women, stretched upon the floor in convulsions, were beaten with an oaken club on every part of the body, and with all the force of a strong man, to their great joy and lasting relief. A witness swears that he saw one poor woman receive, without harm, two thousand blows, any one of which would have felled an ox! Other witnesses testify that five strong men endeavored to thrust a sword into the body of one of the convulsed, but could not. Sometimes swords were thrust into the body, but the wound immediately healed without leaving a scar. One woman received, in one night, thirty thousand blows of the fist from relays of strong men; another was beaten for fifty-five minutes with a huge oaken club, at the rate of thirty blows a minute, without incurring the slightest harm. All of which is supported by a superabundance of sworn, positive, and detailed testimony.

The climax of this impious and disgusting folly was reached when they began to parody the crucifixion. The following account of one of these scenes rests upon an amount of evidence which would convict a man of murder before any of our courts. If the jury believed half the witnesses, they would be compelled to convict. A woman called Sister Francis, aged fifty-five, who had been subject to the convulsions for twenty-seven years, was crucified three times. On the last occasion, the ceremony began at seven o'clock in the morning by stretching her upon a cross in the ordinary form, laid upon the floor. A priest drove a nail through the palm of her left hand into the wood of the cross, and then let her alone for two minutes. Then, pouring a little water upon the right hand, he nailed that to the cross. The woman, who was in a convulsion, appeared to suffer severely, though she neither sighed nor groaned; her flushed face alone indicating anguish. Thus she remained for twenty-eight minutes (these chroniclers are very exact), at the end of which time they nailed her two feet to a shelf upon the cross. The nails, we are informed, were square in shape, and six inches long. No blood flowed from any of these wounds, except a very little from one of her feet.

Having thus completed the nailing, they let her remain fifteen minutes longer, and then gradually raised one end of the cross,

supporting it first upon a chair, and finally leaning it against the wall. Here it was allowed to remain for half an hour, during which they read a chapter from the gospel of St. John, which the woman appeared to understand and enjoy. Next, they placed upon her head a crown of sharp iron wires, to represent the crown of thorns. She was nailed to the cross for three hours, and then the nails were gradually drawn out, which appeared to cause her much suffering. "One of the nails," says the narrator, "I put in my pocket, and I have it now." The hands of the woman bled profusely; but, when they had been washed with a little water, she arose, warmly embraced one of her friends, and appeared to have undergone little injury. The wounds were rubbed with a small cross, which had been sanctified at the tomb of Deacon Paris, and they immediately closed. This story is related at such length, and is supported by such a number of affidavits, that it occupies nearly one hundred folio pages.

The delusion lasted from 1727 until 1755-twenty-seven years, and it was one of the many causes that led the educated portion of the people of Paris to reject all religion, as something false, ridiculous, and pernicious, as something fit only for the most ignorant of mankind. The writings of the "philosophers," so called, who looked up to Voltaire as their master, contain many allusions to the extravagant folly and outrageous falsehood perpetrated by the admirers of Deacon Paris.

BLAISE PASCAL.

PASCAL, in his life of thirty-nine years, did three remarkable things: 1. He produced a book, "The Thoughts of Pascal," which, after existing two hundred years, is as highly, though not as generally, esteemed as it was when it was first published; 2. He invented the arithmetical calculating machine, since improved by Babbage; 3. He originated the omnibus system, which has become a feature of all cities. Few persons are aware, that when they ride in an omnibus, they are enjoying the result of one of the "Thoughts of Pascal." It is as though Ralph Waldo Emerson should invent a patent nut-cracker; or as though Mr. Hoe should write a treatise upon the Evidences of Christianity. But when Heaven endows a man with an acute, ingenious mind, there is no telling what may not come from it.

Pascal, the only son of an able and distinguished lawyer, was born in Clermont, in France, in 1623. He had two sisters, who were women of singular beauty and intelligence, and the whole family father, mother, son, and daughters — were persons of eminent gifts of mind, heart, and person. Nevertheless, so deeply sunk in superstition was the France of that day, that even this family, among the most able and enlightened of their time, did not escape it, but were a prey to the most preposterous beliefs.

When the boy was a year old he was observed to resent, in the most violent manner, any caresses which his parents exchanged. Either of them might kiss him in welcome, but if they kissed one another, he cried, kicked, and made a terrible ado. He had also the peculiarity (not very rare among children) of making a great outcry whenever a basin of water was

brought near him. "Every one," writes an inmate and relative of the family," said the child was bewitched by an old woman who was in the habit of receiving alms from the house." For some time the father disregarded this explanation of the mystery, but, at length, he called the woman into his office, and charged her with the crime of bewitching the child, — a crime then punished with death upon the gallows, or at the stake. She denied the accusation; but, when the father, assuming a severe countenance, threatened to inform against her unless she confessed, the terrified woman, as might have been expected, fell upon her knees, and said that if her life was spared she would tell all. She then avowed, that in revenge for his having refused to advocate her cause in a lawsuit, she had laid his child under an infernal spell, and the devil, to whom she had sold herself, had engaged to kill it.

"What!" exclaimed the terror-stricken parent, "must my son die, then?"

No," said she, "there is a remedy. The sorcery can be transferred to another creature."

"Alas!" cried the father, "I would rather my son should die, than that another should die for him."

"But the spell can be transferred to a beast," said she.

"I will give you a horse for the purpose," rejoined the father.

"No," replied the woman, "that will be too expensive; a cat will do."

So he gave her a cat. Taking the cat in her arms she went downstairs, and met on the way two priests who were coming to console the family in their affliction. One of them said to

her:

"So you are going to commit another sorcery with that cat." Hearing these words, she threw the cat out of a window, and although the window was only six feet above the ground, the cat fell dead.

Here was another awful portent, which threw the family into new consternation. The father provided her with another cat, with which she went her way. What she did with the unfortunate animal does not appear, but she returned in the evening,

and said that at sunrise the next morning, she must have a child seven years old, who must gather nine leaves of three kinds of herbs, which must be steeped and laid upon the child's stomach; all of which was done by seven the next morning, and the father, relieved in mind, went to court and plead his causes as usual. Returning home to dinner at noon, he found the whole house in tears gathered round the child, who lay in his cradle as if dead. Overwhelmed with grief and rage, he turned to leave the room, and meeting the "witch" upon the threshold, he gave her such a tremendous box upon the ear as to knock her downstairs. When she got up she stammered out,

"I see you are angry, sir, because you think your son is dead; but I forgot to tell you in the morning that he will appear dead until midnight. Leave him in his cradle till that hour, and he will come to life again."

The child lay without pulse or any sign of life, watched with agonizing solicitude by his parents, until twenty minutes to one, when he began to yawn, and was soon taking nourishment in the usual way. In a few days he recovered his health, and one morning when his father returned from mass he was delighted to see the boy actually playing with the harmless fluid which he had formerly abhorred. Soon after, too, he would permit his parents to caress one another without showing any marks of displeasure.

All of this, reader, is related with the utmost fulness of detail, and with unquestionable sincerity; not by an ignorant person of ignorant persons, but by a highly educated lady of one of the most accomplished and learned families in France. Who will say the world has not advanced during the last two centuries?

This credulous and learned father, being released from the cares of business when the boy was eight years old, removed to Paris, and resolved to devote himself entirely to educating his son, who already exhibited all the usual signs of a superior understanding. His chief care was to keep the boy backward in his studies. His maxim was, that a pupil should be always beyond his work, not the work beyond the pupil. The immature mind, he thought, should never he required to struggle