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An article in _le Libéral_ informed the town of… that it possessed a prophetess. This was Mademoiselle Claude Deniseau, daughter of a man who kept a registry for country servants. Up to the age of seventeen Mademoiselle Deniseau had not revealed to the closest observer any abnormality of mind or body. She was a fair, fat, short girl, neither pretty nor ugly, but pleasant and of a lively disposition. "She had received," said _le Libéral_, "a good middle-class education, and she was religious without bigotry." At the beginning of her eighteenth year, on the 3rd of February, 189–, at six o'clock in the evening, being engaged in laying the cloth on the table in the dining-room, she thought she heard her mother's voice saying, "Claudine, go to your room." She went there and between the bed and the door she perceived a bright light, and heard a voice which spoke from the light, saying: "Claudine, this country must do penance, for that will ward off great misfortunes.
I am Saint Radegonde, Queen of France." Mademoiselle Deniseau then descried in the splendour a luminous and, as it were, transparent face that wore a crown of gold and gems.