The most terrible obsessions now attacked her, and more than once she was driven to the verge of suicide and despair. “From 25 March, 1850, until March, 1868, Hélène was _only obsessed_. This obsession _lasted 18 years_. At the end of this time she was _both obsessed and possessed_ for 13 months. From this double agony of obsession and possession she was completely delivered by the exorcisms, which the Bishop had sanctioned, at Orleans, on 19 April, 1869. Four months’ peace followed, until with heroic generosity she voluntarily submitted to new inflictions. “At the end of August, 1869, she accepted from the hands of Our Lord the agony of a new obsession and possession in order to obtain the conversion of the famous general Ducrot. When he was converted, she was delivered from her torments at Lourdes on 3 September, 1875, the cure being effected by the prayers of 15,000 pilgrims who had assembled there. _The obsession and possession in their new form_ had lasted five years. During the forty years which passed before her death, she was never again subject to possession, but she was continually obsessed, the attacks now being of short duration, now long and severe. The sufferings of every kind which she endured as well she offered with the intention of the triumph and good estate of God’s priests. Why she was originally thus persecuted by the Devil for nineteen years, and with what intention she offered those torments from which she was delivered by the exorcisms directed by the Bishop, must always remain a secret.”[85] On Tuesday, 13 August, 1867, a supernormal impulse came over her to write a paper full of the most hideous blasphemies against Our Lord and His Blessed Mother, and, what is indeed significant, to draw blood from her arm and to sign therewith a deed giving herself over body and soul to Satan. This she happily resisted after a terrible struggle. Upon the following 28 August reliable witnesses saw her levitated from the ground on two distinct occasions. With this phenomenon we may compare the levitation of mediums at spiritistic séances. Sir William Crookes in _The Quarterly Journal of Science_, January, 1874, states that “There are at least a hundred recorded instances of Mr. Home’s rising from the ground.” Of the same medium he writes: “On three separate occasions have seen him raised completely from the floor of the room.”