B573 <=> B575 [BTG XXXII Hypnotism, p. 574]

“Once during confession he tried by all possible means to evoke frankness in this nun, and he got to know among other things that this ‘nun-novice’ had had a ‘lover,’ who had once given her his portrait framed in a very beautiful frame, and that she permitted herself during periods of ‘resting’ from her prayers to admire this picture of her ‘sweetheart’ and that, as it seemed to her, the diabolical suggestion proceeded in her, just at these said periods of her ‘resting.’

“All this told frankly by the nun still further excited the interest of the abbot Pedrini and he decided at all costs to find out the cause of it, and with this aim in view he first of all asked the nun Ephrosinia to be sure to bring with her to the next confession the portrait of her sweetheart together with the frame.

“At the next confession the nun took with her this said portrait.

“There was nothing very special about it but the frame indeed was unusual, it being all encrusted with mother-of-pearl and various colored stones.

“While the abbot and the nun were together examining the portrait in the frame, the abbot suddenly noticed that something particular began to proceed with the nun.

“First she became pale and for a certain time she became, as it were, petrified, and then there began with her on the spot precisely in all details, the same manifestations which proceed there among the newly married at what is called the ‘first night.’

“After all this, the abbot Pedrini desired still more to make clear to himself all the causes of such an unusual manifestation.

“But as regards the nun, she recovered two hours after the beginning of this particular state of hers, and it was discovered that she knew and remembered nothing of what had happened to her.

“As the abbot Pedrini himself alone could not unravel this phenomenon, he turned for help to his acquaintance, a certain ‘Doctor Bambini.’