Gabriel Astier, who had been a young labourer, likewise from Dauphiné, 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, or 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 Abbé Paris, in the year 1727. These Jansenist visionaries used to collect in the churchyard of St. Médard, 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. 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. Carré 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 of faith, and timidity. It was, indeed, time for issuing the mandate, which, as wit read it, ran— “De par le roi—Défense à Dieu, De faire miracle en ce lieu.” In the revivals of modern times, scenes parallel to the above have been renewed.