It must not be imagined that the sect of the convulsionaries consisted merely of poor and ignorant people. Such was not the case. Strange as the fact may appear, the sect included great numbers of pious, learned, and intellectual men. Very many rich individuals also belonged to it, and contributed to the maintenance of their less fortunate brethren. A Count Daverne was sent to the Bastile “for wasting his property in supporting the convulsionaries;” and the same crime brought a similar penalty on other individuals. That there were, however, numerous impostors, who pretended to espouse the doctrines of the sect in order to further their own purposes, admits of no doubt. There were men who gave regular lessons in the art of bringing on convulsions. A hot persecution was perseveringly carried on against this sect, and with the usual result; the sect throve in spite of it, or rather, perhaps, in consequence of it. For five-and-thirty years it mocked all attempts to exterminate it, and it did not begin to decline till it was left to the withering influence of ridicule and neglect. It is believed to have retained a few votaries even to a recent period. The Bastile and the other Parisian prisons were yearly crowded with convulsionaries. Of those who were confined in the Bastile, one of the earliest was Peter Vaillant, from whom the Vaillantistes derived their name. He had previously suffered there an imprisonment of three years, for his opposition to the bull Unigenitus. In 1734, he was again sent thither, and, after having been there for two-and-twenty years, he was transferred to Vincennes, where he died. Housset, his disciple; Darnaud, who called himself the prophet Enoch; the Abbé Blondel, author of Lives of the Saints; the Abbés Deffart, Planchon, and Deribat; Lequeux, prior of St. Yves, the learned editor of Bossuet’s works; and Carré de Montgeron, a counsellor of the parliament of Paris; were of the number of those who were sent to the Bastile. Montgeron was born in the French capital, in 1686, and we have his own word for it that, till he was suddenly converted in St. Médard’s church-yard, he was a thoroughly worthless unbeliever. By a natural transition, he became one of the most credulous and enthusiastic of dupes. In 1737, he printed a quarto volume, illustrated with twenty plates, “to demonstrate the truth of the miracles operated by the intercession of the beatified Paris.” This volume he presented to Louis XV. at Versailles, and the next day, by order of the monarch, he was conveyed to the Bastile. He was afterwards an inmate of various prisons, and died at last in the citadel of Valence. While he was in confinement, he added two more volumes to his rhapsody.