Part 126 (2/2)

Because they thus appeal to the senses and seem to possess a certain material reality, hysterical hallucinations make a profound and ineffaceable impression on those who experience them. The subjects speak of them as being actual and very striking facts. When they become accusers, as so many women do who claim to have been the victims of imaginary a.s.saults, they support their a.s.sertions in the most energetic fas.h.i.+on.

Not only does Jeanne see, hear, smell and touch her saints, she joins the procession of angels they bring in their train. With them she performs actual deeds, as if there were perfect unity between her life and her hallucinations.

”I was in my lodging, in the house of a good woman, near the _chateau_ of Chinon, when the angel came. And then he and I went together to the King.”

_Q._ ”Was this angel alone?”

_A._ ”This angel was with a goodly company of other angels.[2758]

They were with him, but not every one saw them.... Some were very much alike; others were not, or at any rate not as I saw them. Some had wings. Certain even wore crowns, and in their company were Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret. With the angel aforesaid and with the other angels they went right into the King's chamber.”

[Footnote 2758: According to the evidence of Maitre Pierre Maurice, at the condemnation trial (vol. i. p. 480), Jeanne must have seen the angels ”in the form of certain infinitesimal things” (_sub specie quarumdam rerum minimarum_). This was also the character of the hallucinations experienced by Saint Rose of Lima (”Vie de Sainte Rose de Lima,” by P. Leonard Hansen, p. 179).]

_Q._ ”Tell us how the angel left you.”

_A._ ”He left me in a little chapel, and at his departure I was very sorrowful, and I even wept. Willingly would I have gone away with him; I mean my soul would have gone.”[2759]

[Footnote 2759: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 144.]

In all these hallucinations there is the same objective clearness, the same subjective cert.i.tude as in toxic hallucinations; and this clearness, this cert.i.tude, may in Jeanne's case suggest hysteria.

But if in certain respects Jeanne resembles hysterical subjects, in others she differs from them. She seems early to have acquired an independence of her visions and an authority over them.

Without ever doubting their reality, she resists them and sometimes disobeys them, when, for example, in defiance of Saint Catherine, she leaps from her prison of Beaurevoir: ”Well nigh every day Saint Catherine told me not to leap and that G.o.d would come to my aid, and also would succour those of Compiegne. And I said to Saint Catherine: 'Since G.o.d is to help those of Compiegne, I want to be with them.'”[2760]

[Footnote 2760: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 110.]

On another occasion she a.s.sumes such authority over her visions that she can make the two saints come at her bidding when they do not come of themselves.

_Q._ ”Do you call these saints, or do they come without being called?”

_A._ ”They often come without being called, and sometimes when they did not come I asked G.o.d to send them speedily.”[2761]

[Footnote 2761: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 279 and _pa.s.sim_.]

All this is not in the accepted manner of the hysterical, who are usually somewhat pa.s.sive with regard to their nervous fits and hallucinations. But Jeanne's dominance over her visions is a characteristic I have noted in many of the higher mystics and in those who have attained notoriety. This kind of subject, after having at first pa.s.sively submitted to his hysteria, afterwards uses it rather than submits to it, and finally by means of it attains in his ecstasy to that divine union after which he strives.

If Jeanne were hysterical, such a characteristic would help us to determine the part played by the neurotic side of her nature in the development of her character and in her life.

If there were any hysterical strain in her nature, then it was by means of this hysterical strain that the most secret sentiments of her heart took shape in the form of visions and celestial voices. Her hysteria became the open door by which the divine--or what Jeanne deemed the divine--entered into her life. It strengthened her faith and consecrated her mission; but in her intellect and in her will Jeanne remains healthy and normal. Nervous pathology can therefore cast but a feeble light on Jeanne's nature. It can reveal only one part of that spirit which your book resuscitates in its entirety. With the expression of my respectful admiration, believe me, my dear master,

DOCTOR G. DUMAS.

APPENDIX II

THE FARRIER OF SALON

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