Note 56 — CABINET CYCLOPÆDIA. (continued 5)

Madame Périer, in the life she has written of her brother, mentions the miraculous cure of her daughter: "This fistula," she says, "was of so bad a sort, that the cleverest surgeons of Paris considered it incurable. Nevertheless she was cured in a moment by the touch of the holy thorn; and this miracle was so authentic, that it is acknowledged by every body." Racine, in his fragment of a History of the Abbey of Port Royal, details the whole circumstance with elaborate faith in the most miraculous version of it. He says, that such was the simplicity of the nuns, that though the cure took place on the instant, they did not mention the miracle for several days, and some time elapsed before it was spread abroad. Voltaire says, that persons who had known mademoiselle Périer told him that her cure was very long. Still some circumstance must have made it appear short, or so universal a belief in a miracle, sufficient at the time to confound the jesuits, could not have been spread abroad; nor would her uncle, Pascal, the most upright and single-minded of men, have given it the support of his testimony.