If, then, the problem at Bois d’Haine presented only one difficulty--the stigmatization or the ecstasy--it would be next to impossible to explain it on the supposition of fraud. But this difficulty is incomparably greater when we consider these two extraordinary facts in association. To suppose that both the ecstasy and stigmatization were fraudulent would involve the manifest contradiction of admitting that the hæmorrhage, which required a frequent movement to sustain it for ten, fifteen, or twenty hours, could be maintained during the prolonged immobility of the trance. No one, however dextrous, could play this double _rôle_ for eighteen months[53] without detection, although constantly examined by all kinds of people--many of them filled with scientific distrust, and among them more than one hundred physicians. As an example of the 182 uncertainty of her privacy, Dr. Lefebvre states (in a note) that, on the 11th February, 1870, he was unexpectedly passing through the neighborhood, and, as it chanced to be on Friday, he thought he would stop and see Louise. He knocked at the door--was at once admitted, and went straight to her little room without stopping to speak to the family. It was a quarter to four in the afternoon, and she was completely alone, lying prostrate on the floor, with her arms extended as described, and insensible to all that was passing around her. The bleeding limbs were wrapped in the usual cloths, of which he counted nine. The blood which trickled from her forehead was dried; and, lifting up her little white cap, he noticed the circle of bleeding points on her forehead, which presented the usual appearance. The feet had not been bleeding; on the right hand the flow was just stopping, while on the left the blood was still distinctly flowing from both stigmata. Having ascertained these points, he quietly left the cottage without her having been aware of his visit. As a general answer to the objection of insincerity, Dr. Lefebvre appeals to both moral and physical proofs. As the most convincing of the former class, he cites the general good repute of Louise, which was never doubted, even by those who most resolutely questioned the nature of the phenomena she presented: her brave and humble life, her contempt for presents or money, her simplicity and avoidance of all parade; her extreme anxiety to conceal the first evidence of the stigmata even from her own family. If, as occasionally happened, money or presents of any kind were offered to her mother or sisters, their wounded pride was unmistakable; and when the Archbishop of Malines, after a long examination of Louise, once asked the family if they had no request to make of him, they only entreated that they might be relieved of visitors and left undisturbed.