1620-38.] CONFESSORS. 177 



Clearly, here is a case for the {jhysiologist as 

 well as the theologian ; and the " holy widow," 

 as her biographers call her, becomes an example, 

 and a lamentable one, of the tendency of the erotic 

 principle to ally itself with high religious excite- 

 ment. 



But the wings of imagination will the and droop, 

 the brightest dream-land of contemplative fancy 

 grow dim, and an abnormal tension of the faculties 

 find its inevitable reaction at last. From a condi- 

 tion of highest exaltation, a mystical heaven of 

 light and glory, the unhappy dreamer fell back to 

 a dreary earth, or rather to an abyss of darkness 

 and misery. Her biographers tell us that she 

 became a prey to dejection, and thoughts of infi- 

 delity, despak*, estrangement from God, aversion 

 to mankind, pride, vanity, impurity, and a supreme 

 disgust at the rites of religion. Exhaustion pro- 

 duced common-sense, and the dreams w^hich had 

 been her life now seemed a tissue of illusions. 

 Her confessor became a weariness to her, and his 

 words fell dead on her ear. Indeed, she conceived 

 a repugnance to the holy man. Her old and 



though they give but an inadequate idea of these strange extravagances. 

 What is most astonishing is, that a man of sense like Charlevoix, in his 

 Life of Marie de I'lncarnation, should extract them in full, as matter of 

 edification and evidence of saintship. Her recent biographer, the Abbe 

 Casgrain, refrains from quoting them, though he mentions them approv- 

 ingly as evincing fervor. The Abbe Racine, in his Discours a l' Occasion 

 du 192«'"« Anniversaire de I'heureuse Mort de la Ven. Mere de I'lncarnation, 

 delivered at Quebec in 1864, speaks of them as transcendent proofs of 

 the supreme favor of Heaven. — Some of the pupils of Marie de I'lncar- 

 nation also had mystical marriages with Christ; and the impassioned 

 rhapsodies of one of them being overheard, she nearly lost her character, 

 as it was thought that she was apostrophizing an earthly lover. 



