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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of La Sorcière: The Witch of the Middle Ages, by 
+Jules Michelet
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: La Sorcière: The Witch of the Middle Ages
+
+Author: Jules Michelet
+
+Translator: Lionel James Trotter
+
+Release Date: February 27, 2010 [EBook #31420]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LA SORCIÈRE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Irma Spehar and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+LA SORCIÈRE.
+
+J. MICHELET.
+
+LONDON:
+PRINTED BY WOODFALL AND KINDER,
+ANGEL COURT, SKINNER STREET.
+
+
+
+
+THE WITCH OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
+
+FROM THE FRENCH OF J. MICHELET.
+
+BY L. J. TROTTER.
+
+
+(_The only Authorized English Translation._)
+
+
+LONDON:
+SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, AND CO.,
+STATIONERS’ HALL COURT.
+MDCCCLXIII.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+In this translation of a work rich in the raciest beauties and defects
+of an author long since made known to the British public, the present
+writer has striven to recast the trenchant humour, the scornful
+eloquence, the epigrammatic dash of Mr. Michelet, in language not all
+unworthy of such a word-master. How far he has succeeded others may be
+left to judge. In one point only is he aware of having been less true
+to his original than in theory he was bound to be. He has slurred or
+slightly altered a few of those passages which French readers take as
+a thing of course, but English ones, because of their different
+training, are supposed to eschew. A Frenchman, in short, writes for
+men, an Englishman rather for drawing-room ladies, who tolerate
+grossness only in the theatres and the columns of the newspapers. Mr.
+Michelet’s subject, and his late researches, lead him into details,
+moral and physical, which among ourselves are seldom mixed up with
+themes of general talk. The coarsest of these have been pruned away,
+but enough perhaps remain to startle readers of especial prudery. The
+translator, however, felt that he had no choice between shocking
+these and sinning against his original. Readers of a larger culture
+will make allowance for such a strait, will not be so very frightened
+at an amount of plain-speaking, neither in itself immoral, nor, on the
+whole, impertinent. Had he docked his work of everything condemned by
+prudish theories, he might have made it more conventionally decent;
+but Michelet would have been puzzled to recognize himself in the poor
+maimed cripple that would then have borne his name.
+
+Nor will a reader of average shrewdness mistake the religious drift of
+a book suppressed by the Imperial underlings in the interests neither
+of religion nor of morals, but merely of Popery in its most outrageous
+form. If its attacks on Rome seem, now and then, to involve
+Christianity itself, we must allow something for excess of warmth, and
+something for the nature of inquiries which laid bare the rotten
+outgrowths of a religion in itself the purest known among men. In
+studying the so-called Ages of Faith, the author has only found them
+worthy of their truer and older title, the Ages of Darkness. It is
+against the tyranny, feudal and priestly, of those days, that he
+raises an outcry, warranted almost always by facts which a more
+mawkish philosophy refuses to see. If he is sometimes hasty and
+onesided; if the Church and the Feudal System of those days had their
+uses for the time being; it is still a gain to have the other side of
+the subject kept before us by way of counterpoise to the doctrines
+now in vogue. We need not be intolerant; but Rome is yet alive.
+
+Taken as a whole, Mr. Michelet’s book cannot be called unchristian.
+Like most thoughtful minds of the day, he yearns for some nobler and
+larger creed than that of the theologians; for a creed which,
+understanding Nature, shall reconcile it with Nature’s God. Nor may he
+fairly be called irreverent for talking, Frenchman like, of things
+spiritual with the same freedom as he would of things temporal.
+Perhaps in his heart of hearts he has nearly as much religious
+earnestness as they who call Dr. Colenso an infidel, and shake their
+heads at the doubtful theology of Frederic Robertson. At any rate, no
+translator who should cut or file away so special a feature of French
+feeling would be doing justice to so marked an original.
+
+For English readers who already know the concise and sober volumes of
+their countryman, Mr. Wright, the present work will offer mainly an
+interesting study of the author himself. It is a curious compound of
+rhapsody and sound reason, of history and romance, of coarse realism
+and touching poetry, such as, even in France, few save Mr. Michelet
+could have produced. Founded on truth and close inquiry, it still
+reads more like a poem than a sober history. As a beautiful
+speculation, which has nearly, but not quite, grasped the physical
+causes underlying the whole history of magic and illusion in all ages,
+it may be read with profit as well as pleasure in this age of vulgar
+spirit-rapping. But the true history of Witchcraft has yet to be
+written by some cooler hand.
+
+                                          L. T.
+
+  _May 11th, 1863._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+
+INTRODUCTION                                                        1
+  To One Wizard Ten Thousand Witches                                1
+  The Witch was the sole Physician of the People                    4
+  Terrorism of the Middle Ages                                      5
+  The Witch was the Offspring of Despair                            9
+  She in her Turn created Satan                                    12
+  Satan, Prince of the World, Physician, Innovator                 13
+  His School--of Witches, Shepherds, and Headsmen                  15
+  His Decline                                                      16
+
+
+BOOK I.
+
+CHAPTER I.--THE DEATH OF THE GODS                                  19
+  Christianity thought the World was Dying                         20
+  The World of Demons                                              24
+  The Bride of Corinth                                             26
+
+CHAPTER II.--WHY THE MIDDLE AGES FELL INTO DESPAIR                 30
+  The People make their own Legends                                31
+  But are forbidden to do so any more                              35
+  The People guard their Territory                                 38
+  But are made Serfs                                               40
+
+CHAPTER III.--THE LITTLE DEVIL OF THE FIRESIDE                     43
+  Ancient Communism of the _Villa_                                 43
+  The Hearth made independent                                      44
+  The Wife of the Serf                                             45
+  Her Loyalty to the Olden Gods                                    46
+  The Goblin                                                       53
+
+CHAPTER IV.--TEMPTATIONS                                           57
+  The Serf invokes the Spirit of Hidden Treasures                  58
+  Feudal Raids                                                     59
+  The Wife turns her Goblin into a Devil                           66
+
+CHAPTER V.--POSSESSION                                             69
+  The Advent of Gold in 1300                                       69
+  The Woman makes Terms with the Demon of Gold                     71
+  Impure Horrors of the Middle Ages                                75
+  The Village Lady                                                 78
+  Hatred of the Lady of the Castle                                 84
+
+CHAPTER VI.--THE COVENANT                                          88
+  The Woman-serf gives Herself up to the Devil                     90
+  The Moor and the Witch                                           93
+
+CHAPTER VII.--THE KING OF THE DEAD                                 96
+  The dear Dead are brought back to Earth                          97
+  The Idea of Satan is softened                                   103
+
+CHAPTER VIII.--THE PRINCE OF NATURE                               106
+  The Thaw in the Middle Ages                                     108
+  The Witch calls forth the East                                  109
+  She conceives Nature                                            112
+
+CHAPTER IX.--THE DEVIL A PHYSICIAN                                116
+  Diseases of the Middle Ages                                     116
+  The _Comforters_, or Solaneæ                                    121
+  The Middle Ages anti-natural                                    128
+
+CHAPTER X.--CHARMS AND PHILTRES                                   131
+  Blue-Beard and Griselda                                         133
+  The Witch consulted by the Castle                               137
+  Her Malice                                                      141
+
+CHAPTER XI.--THE REBELS’ COMMUNION--SABBATHS--THE BLACK MASS      143
+  The old Half-heathen Sabasies                                   144
+  The Four Acts of the Black Mass                                 150
+  Act I. The Introit, the Kiss, the Banquet                       151
+  Act II. The Offering: the Woman as Altar and Host               153
+
+CHAPTER XII.--THE SEQUEL--LOVE AND DEATH--SATAN DISAPPEARS        157
+  Act III. Love of near Kindred                                   158
+  Act IV. Death of Satan and the Witch                            165
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+CHAPTER I.--THE WITCH IN HER DECLINE--SATAN MULTIPLIED AND MADE
+    COMMON                                                        168
+  Witches and Wizards employed by the Great                       172
+  The Wolf-lady                                                   174
+  The last Philtre                                                179
+
+CHAPTER II.--PERSECUTIONS                                         180
+  The Hammer for Witches                                          181
+  Satan Master of the World                                       193
+
+CHAPTER III.--CENTURY OF TOLERATION IN FRANCE: REACTION           198
+  Spain begins when France stops short                            199
+  Reaction: French Lawyers burn as many as the Priests            203
+
+CHAPTER IV.--THE WITCHES OF THE BASQUE COUNTRY                    207
+  They give Instructions to their own Judges                      212
+
+CHAPTER V.--SATAN TURNS PRIEST                                    218
+  Jokes of the Modern Sabbath                                     221
+
+CHAPTER VI.--GAUFFRIDI: 1610                                      228
+  Wizard Priests prosecuted by Monks                              232
+  Jealousies of the Nuns                                          234
+
+CHAPTER VII.--THE DEMONIACS OF LOUDUN: URBAN GRANDIER             255
+  The Vicar a fine Speaker, and a Wizard                          263
+  Sickly Rages of the Nuns                                        264
+
+CHAPTER VIII.--THE DEMONIACS OF LOUVIERS--MADELINE BAVENT         277
+  Illuminism: the Devil a Quietist                                277
+  Fight between the Devil and the Doctor                          285
+
+CHAPTER IX.--THE DEVIL TRIUMPHS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY        294
+
+CHAPTER X.--FATHER GIRARD AND LA CADIÈRE                          303
+
+CHAPTER XI.--CADIÈRE IN THE CONVENT                               339
+
+CHAPTER XII.--TRIAL OF CADIÈRE                                    367
+
+EPILOGUE                                                          395
+  Can Satan and Jesus be reconciled?                              396
+  The Witch is dead, but the Fairy will live again                399
+  Oncoming of the Religious Revival                               399
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+It was said by Sprenger, before the year 1500, “_Heresy of witches_,
+not of wizards, must we call it, for these latter are of very small
+account.” And by another, in the time of Louis XIII.: “To one wizard,
+ten thousand witches.”
+
+“Witches they are by nature.” It is a gift peculiar to woman and her
+temperament. By birth a fay, by the regular recurrence of her ecstasy
+she becomes a sibyl. By her love she grows into an enchantress. By her
+subtlety, by a roguishness often whimsical and beneficent, she becomes
+a Witch; she works her spells; does at any rate lull our pains to rest
+and beguile them.
+
+All primitive races have the same beginning, as so many books of
+travel have shown. While the man is hunting and fighting, the woman
+works with her wits, with her imagination: she brings forth dreams and
+gods. On certain days she becomes a seeress, borne on boundless wings
+of reverie and desire. The better to reckon up the seasons, she
+watches the sky; but her heart belongs to earth none the less. Young
+and flower-like herself, she looks down toward the enamoured flowers,
+and forms with them a personal acquaintance. As a woman, she beseeches
+them to heal the objects of her love.
+
+In a way so simple and touching do all religion and all science begin.
+Ere long everything will get parcelled out; we shall mark the
+beginning of the professional man as juggler, astrologer, or prophet,
+necromancer, priest, physician. But at first the woman is everything.
+
+A religion so strong and hearty as that of Pagan Greece begins with
+the Sibyl to end in the Witch. The former, a lovely maiden in the
+broad daylight, rocked its cradle, endowed it with a charm and glory
+of its own. Presently it fell sick, lost itself in the darkness of the
+Middle Ages, and was hidden away by the Witch in woods and wilds:
+there, sustained by her compassionate daring, it was made to live
+anew. Thus, of every religion woman is the mother, the gentle
+guardian, the faithful nurse. With her the gods fare like men: they
+are born and die upon her bosom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Alas! her loyalty costs her dear. Ye magian queens of Persia;
+bewitching Circe; sublime Sibyl! Into what have ye grown, and how
+cruel the change that has come upon you! She who from her throne in
+the East taught men the virtues of plants and the courses of the
+stars; who, on her Delphic tripod beamed over with the god of light,
+as she gave forth her oracle to a world upon its knees;--she also it
+is whom, a thousand years later, people hunt down like a wild beast;
+following her into the public places, where she is dishonoured,
+worried, stoned, or set upon the burning coals!
+
+For this poor wretch the priesthood can never have done with their
+faggots, nor the people with their insults, nor the children with
+their stones. The poet, childlike, flings her one more stone, for a
+woman the cruellest of all. On no grounds whatever, he imagines her to
+have been always old and ugly. The word “witch” brings before us the
+frightful old women of _Macbeth_. But their cruel processes teach us
+the reverse of that. Numbers perished precisely for being young and
+beautiful.
+
+The Sibyl foretold a fortune, the Witch accomplishes one. Here is the
+great, the true difference between them. The latter calls forth a
+destiny, conjures it, works it out. Unlike the Cassandra of old, who
+awaited mournfully the future she foresaw so well, this woman herself
+creates the future. Even more than Circe, than Medea, does she bear in
+her hand the rod of natural miracle, with Nature herself as sister and
+helpmate. Already she wears the features of a modern Prometheus. With
+her industry begins, especially that queen-like industry which heals
+and restores mankind. As the Sibyl seemed to gaze upon the morning, so
+she, contrariwise, looks towards the west; but it is just that gloomy
+west, which long before dawn--as happens among the tops of the
+Alps--gives forth a flush anticipant of day.
+
+Well does the priest discern the danger, the bane, the alarming
+rivalry, involved in this priestess of nature whom he makes a show of
+despising. From the gods of yore she has conceived other gods. Close
+to the Satan of the Past we see dawning within her a Satan of the
+Future.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The only physician of the people for a thousand years was the Witch.
+The emperors, kings, popes, and richer barons had indeed their doctors
+of Salerno, their Moors and Jews; but the bulk of people in every
+state, the world as it might well be called, consulted none but the
+_Saga_, or wise-woman. When she could not cure them, she was insulted,
+was called a Witch. But generally, from a respect not unmixed with
+fear, she was called good lady or fair lady (_belle dame_--_bella
+donna_[1]), the very name we give to the fairies.
+
+    [1] Whence our old word _Beldam_, the more courteous meaning
+    of which is all but lost in its ironical one.--TRANS.
+
+Soon there came upon her the lot which still befalls her favourite
+plant, belladonna, and some other wholesome poisons which she employed
+as antidotes to the great plagues of the Middle Ages. Children and
+ignorant passers-by would curse those dismal flowers before they knew
+them. Affrighted by their questionable hues, they shrink back, keep
+far aloof from them. And yet among them are the _comforters_
+(Solaneæ) which, when discreetly employed, have cured so many, have
+lulled so many sufferings to sleep.
+
+You find them in ill-looking spots, growing all lonely and ill-famed
+amidst ruins and rubbish-heaps. Therein lies one other point of
+resemblance between these flowers and her who makes use of them. For
+where else than in waste wildernesses could live the poor wretch whom
+all men thus evilly entreated; the woman accursed and proscribed as a
+poisoner, even while she used to heal and save; as the betrothed of
+the Devil and of evil incarnate, for all the good which, according to
+the great physician of the Renaissance, she herself had done? When
+Paracelsus, at Basle, in 1527, threw all medicine into the fire,[2] he
+avowed that he knew nothing but what he had learnt from witches.
+
+    [2] Alluding to the bonfire which Paracelsus, as professor of
+    medicine, made of the works of Galen and Avicenna.--TRANS.
+
+This was worth a requital, and they got it. They were repaid with
+tortures, with the stake. For them new punishments, new pangs, were
+expressly devised. They were tried in a lump; they were condemned by a
+single word. Never had there been such wastefulness of human life. Not
+to speak of Spain, that classic land of the faggot, where Moor and Jew
+are always accompanied by the Witch, there were burnt at Trèves seven
+thousand, and I know not how many at Toulouse; five hundred at Geneva
+in three months of 1513; at Wurtzburg eight hundred, almost in one
+batch, and fifteen hundred at Bamberg; these two latter being very
+small bishoprics! Even Ferdinand II., the savage Emperor of the Thirty
+Years’ War, was driven, bigot as he was, to keep a watch on these
+worthy bishops, else they would have burned all their subjects. In the
+Wurtzburg list I find one Wizard a schoolboy, eleven years old; a
+Witch of fifteen: and at Bayonne two, infernally beautiful, of
+seventeen years.
+
+Mark how, at certain seasons, hatred wields this one word _Witch_, as
+a means of murdering whom she will. Woman’s jealousy, man’s greed,
+take ready hold of so handy a weapon. Is such a one wealthy? _She is a
+Witch._ Is that girl pretty? _She is a Witch._ You will even see the
+little beggar-woman, La Murgui, leave a death-mark with that fearful
+stone on the forehead of a great lady, the too beautiful dame of
+Lancinena.
+
+The accused, when they can, avert the torture by killing themselves.
+Remy, that excellent judge of Lorraine, who burned some eight hundred
+of them, crows over this very fear. “So well,” said he, “does my way
+of justice answer, that of those who were arrested the other day,
+sixteen, without further waiting, strangled themselves forthwith.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Over the long track of my History, during the thirty years which I
+have devoted to it, this frightful literature of witchcraft passed to
+and fro repeatedly through my hands. First I exhausted the manuals of
+the Inquisition, the asinine foolings of the Dominicans. (_Scourges_,
+_Hammers_, _Ant-hills_, _Floggings_, _Lanterns_, &c., are the titles
+of their books.) Next, I read the Parliamentarists, the lay judges who
+despised the monks they succeeded, but were every whit as foolish
+themselves. One word further would I say of them here: namely, this
+single remark, that, from 1300 to 1600, and yet later, but one kind of
+justice may be seen. Barring a small interlude in the Parliament of
+Paris, the same stupid savagery prevails everywhere, at all hours.
+Even great parts are of no use here. As soon as witchcraft comes into
+question, the fine-natured De Lancre, a Bordeaux magistrate and
+forward politician under Henry IV., sinks back to the level of a
+Nider, a Sprenger; of the monkish ninnies of the fifteenth century.
+
+It fills one with amazement to see these different ages, these men of
+diverse culture, fail in taking the least step forward. Soon, however,
+you begin clearly to understand how all were checked alike, or let us
+rather say blinded, made hopelessly drunk and savage, by the poison of
+their guiding principle. That principle lies in the statement of a
+radical injustice: “On account of one man all are lost; are not only
+punished but worthy of punishment; _depraved and perverted
+beforehand_, dead to God even before their birth. The very babe at the
+breast is damned.”
+
+Who says so? Everyone, even Bossuet himself. A leading doctor in Rome,
+Spina, a Master of the Holy Palace, formulates the question neatly:
+“Why does God suffer the innocent to die?--For very good reasons:
+even if they do not die on account of their own sins, they are always
+liable to death as guilty of the original sin.” (_De Strigibus_, ch.
+9.)
+
+From this atrocity spring two results, the one pertaining to justice,
+the other to logic. The judge is never at fault in his work: the
+person brought before him is certainly guilty, the more so if he makes
+a defence. Justice need never beat her head, or work herself into a
+heat, in order to distinguish the truth from the falsehood. Everyhow
+she starts from a foregone conclusion. Again, the logician, the
+schoolman, has only to analyse the soul, to take count of the shades
+it passes through, of its manifold nature, its inward strifes and
+battles. He had no need, as we have, to explain how that soul may grow
+wicked step by step. At all such niceties and groping efforts, how, if
+even he could understand them, would he laugh and wag his head! And,
+oh! how gracefully then would quiver those splendid ears which deck
+his empty skull!
+
+Especially in treating of the _compact with the Devil_, that awful
+covenant whereby, for the poor profit of one day, the spirit sells
+itself to everlasting torture, we of another school would seek to
+trace anew that road accursed, that frightful staircase of mishaps and
+crimes, which had brought it to a depth so low. Much, however, cares
+our fine fellow for all that! To him soul and Devil seem born for each
+other, insomuch that on the first temptation, for a whim, a desire, a
+passing fancy, the soul will throw itself at one stroke into so
+horrible an extremity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Neither do I find that the moderns have made much inquiry into the
+moral chronology of witchcraft. They cling too much to the connection
+between antiquity and the Middle Ages; connection real indeed, but
+slight, of small importance. Neither from the magician of old, nor the
+seeress of Celts and Germans, comes forth the true Witch. The harmless
+“Sabasies” (from Bacchus Sabasius), and the petty rural “Sabbath” of
+the Middle Ages, have nothing to do with the Black Mass of the
+fourteenth century, with the grand defiance then solemnly given to
+Jesus. This fearful conception never grew out of a long chain of
+tradition. It leapt forth from the horrors of the day.
+
+At what date, then, did the Witch first appear? I say unfalteringly,
+“In the age of despair:” of that deep despair which the gentry of the
+Church engendered. Unfalteringly do I say, “The Witch is a crime of
+their own achieving.”
+
+I am not to be taken up short by the excuses which their sugary
+explanations seem to furnish. “Weak was that creature, and giddy, and
+pliable under temptation. She was drawn towards evil by her lust.”
+Alas! in the wretchedness, the hunger of those days, nothing of that
+kind could have ruffled her even into a hellish rage. An amorous
+woman, jealous and forsaken, a child hunted out by her step-mother, a
+mother beaten by her son (old subjects these of story), if such as
+they were ever tempted to call upon the Evil Spirit, yet all this
+would make no Witch. These poor creatures may have called on Satan,
+but it does not follow that he accepted them. They are still far, ay,
+very far from being ripe for him. They have not yet learned to hate
+God.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For the better understanding of this point, you should read those
+hateful registers which remain to us of the Inquisition, not only in
+the extracts given by Llorente, by Lamothe-Langon, &c., but in what
+remains of the original registers of Toulouse. Read them in all their
+flatness, in all their dryness, so dismal, so terribly savage. At the
+end of a few pages you feel yourself stricken with a chill; a cruel
+shiver fastens upon you; death, death, death, is traceable in every
+line. Already you are in a bier, or else in a stone cell with mouldy
+walls. Happiest of all are the killed. The horror of horrors is the
+_In pace_. This phrase it is which comes back unceasingly, like an
+ill-omened bell sounding again and again the heart’s ruin of the
+living dead: always we have the same word, “Immured.”
+
+Frightful machinery for crushing and flattening; most cruel press for
+shattering the soul! One turn of the screw follows another, until, all
+breathless, and with a loud crack, it has burst forth from the machine
+and fallen into the unknown world.
+
+On her first appearance the Witch has neither father nor mother, nor
+son, nor husband, nor family. She is a marvel, an aerolith, alighted
+no one knows whence. Who, in Heaven’s name, would dare to draw near
+her?
+
+Her place of abode? It is in spots impracticable, in a forest of
+brambles, on a wild moor where thorn and thistle intertwining forbid
+approach. The night she passes under an old cromlech. If anyone finds
+her there, she is isolated by the common dread; she is surrounded, as
+it were, by a ring of fire.
+
+And yet--would you believe it?--she is a woman still. This very life
+of hers, dreadful though it be, tightens and braces her woman’s
+energy, her womanly electricity. Hence, you may see her endowed with
+two gifts. One is the _inspiration of lucid frenzy_, which in its
+several degrees, becomes poesy, second-sight, depth of insight,
+cunning simplicity of speech, the power especially of believing in
+yourself through all your delusions. Of such a gift the man, the
+wizard, knows nothing. On his side no beginning would have been made.
+
+From this gift flows that other, the sublime power of _unaided
+conception_, that parthenogenesis which our physiologists have come to
+recognise, as touching fruitfulness of the body in the females of
+several species; and which is not less a truth with regard to the
+conceptions of the spirit.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By herself did she conceive and bring forth--what? A second self, who
+resembles her in his self-delusions. The son of her hatred, conceived
+upon her love; for without love can nothing be created. For all the
+alarm this child gave her, she has become so well again, is so happily
+engrossed with this new idol, that she places it straightway upon her
+altar, to worship it, yield her life up to it, and offer herself up as
+a living and perfect sacrifice. Very often she will even say to her
+judge, “There is but one thing I fear; that I shall not suffer enough
+for him.”--(_Lancre._)
+
+Shall I tell you what the child’s first effort was? It was a fearful
+burst of laughter. Has he not cause for mirth on his broad prairie,
+far away from the Spanish dungeons and the “immured” of Toulouse? The
+whole world is his _In pace_. He comes, and goes, and walks to and
+fro. His is the boundless forest, his the desert with its far
+horizons, his the whole earth, in the fulness of its teeming girdle.
+The Witch in her tenderness calls him “_Robin mine_,” the name of that
+bold outlaw, the joyous Robin Hood, who lived under the green bowers.
+She delights too in calling him fondly by such names as _Little
+Green_, _Pretty-Wood_, _Greenwood_; after the little madcap’s
+favourite haunts. He had hardly seen a thicket when he took to playing
+the truant.[3]
+
+    [3] Here, as in some other passages, the play of words in the
+    original is necessarily lost.--TRANS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What astounds one most is, that at one stroke the Witch should have
+achieved an actual Being. He bears about him every token of reality.
+We have heard and seen him; anyone could draw his likeness.
+
+The Saints, those darling sons of the house, with their dreams and
+meditations make but little stir; _they look forward waitingly_, as
+men assured of their part in Elysium. What little energy they have is
+all centred in the narrow round of _Imitation_; a word which condenses
+the whole of the Middle Ages. He on the other hand--this accursed
+bastard whose only lot is the scourge--has no idea of waiting. He is
+always seeking and will never rest. He busies himself with all things
+between earth and heaven. He is exceedingly curious; will dig, dive,
+ferret, and poke his nose everywhere. At the _consummatum est_ he only
+laughs, the little scoffer! He is always saying “Further,” or
+“Forward.” Moreover, he is not hard to please. He takes every rebuff;
+picks up every windfall. For instance, when the Church throws out
+nature as impure and doubtworthy, Satan fastens on her for his own
+adornment. Nay, more; he employs her, and makes her useful to him as
+the fountain-head of the arts; thus accepting the awful name with
+which others would brand him; to wit, the _Prince of the World_.
+
+Some one rashly said, “Woe to those who laugh.” Thus from the first
+was Satan intrusted with too pretty a part; he had the sole right of
+laughing, and of declaring it an _amusement_--rather let us say _a
+necessity_; for laughing is essentially a natural function. Life
+would be unbearable if we could not laugh, at least in our
+afflictions.
+
+Looking on life as nothing but a trial, the Church is careful not to
+prolong it. Her medicine is resignation, the looking for and the hope
+of death. A broad field this for Satan! He becomes the physician, the
+healer of the living. Better still, he acts as comforter: he is good
+enough to shew us our dead, to call up the shades of our beloved.
+
+One more trifle the Church rejected, namely, logic or free reason.
+Here was a special dainty, to which _the other_ greedily helped
+himself. The Church had carefully builded up a small _In pace_,
+narrow, low-roofed, lighted by one dim opening, a mere cranny. That
+was called _The School_. Into it were turned loose a few shavelings,
+with this commandment, “Be free.” They all fell lame. In three or four
+centuries the paralysis was confirmed, and Ockham’s standpoint is the
+very same as Abélard’s.[4]
+
+    [4] Abélard flourished in the twelfth, William of Ockham
+    (pupil of Duns Scotus) in the fourteenth century.--TRANS.
+
+It is pleasant to track the Renaissance up to such a point. The
+Renaissance took place indeed, but how? Through the Satanic daring of
+those who pierced the vault, through the efforts of the damned who
+were bent on seeing the sky. And it took place yet more largely away
+from the schools and the men of letters, in the _School of the Bush_,
+where Satan had set up a class for the Witch and the shepherd.
+
+Perilous teaching it was, if so it happened; but the very dangers of
+it heightened the eager passion, the uncontrollable yearning to see
+and to know. Thus began those wicked sciences, physic debarred from
+poisoning, and that odious anatomy. There, along with his survey of
+the heavens, the shepherd who kept watch upon the stars applied also
+his shameful nostrums, made his essays upon the bodies of animals. The
+Witch would bring out a corpse stolen from the neighbouring cemetery;
+and, for the first time, at risk of being burned, you might gaze upon
+that heavenly wonder, “which men”--as M. Serres has well said--“are
+foolish enough to bury, instead of trying to understand.”
+
+Paracelsus, the only doctor whom Satan admitted there, saw yet a third
+worker, who, stealing at times into that dark assembly, displayed
+there his surgical art. This was the surgeon of those happy days, the
+headsman stout of hand, who could play patly enough with the fire,
+could break bones and set them again; who if he killed, would
+sometimes save, by hanging one only for a certain time.
+
+By the more sacrilegious of its essays this convict university of
+witches, shepherds, and headsmen, emboldened the other, obliged its
+rival to study. For everyone wanted to live. The Witch would have got
+hold of everything: people would for ever have turned their backs on
+the doctor. And so the Church was fain to suffer, to countenance these
+crimes. She avowed her belief in _good poisons_ (Grillandus). She
+found herself driven and constrained to allow of public dissections.
+In 1306 one woman, in 1315 another, was opened and dissected by the
+Italian Mondino. Here was a holy revelation, the discovery of a
+greater world than that of Christopher Columbus! Fools shuddered or
+howled; but wise men fell upon their knees.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With such conquests the Devil was like enough to live on. Never could
+the Church alone have put an end to him. The stake itself was useless,
+save for some political objects.
+
+Men had presently the wit to cleave Satan’s realm in twain. Against
+the Witch, his daughter, his bride, they armed his son, the doctor.
+Heartily, utterly as the Church loathed the latter, yet to extinguish
+the Witch, she established his monopoly nevertheless. In the
+fourteenth century she proclaimed, that any woman who dared to heal
+others _without having duly studied_, was a witch and should therefore
+die.
+
+But how was she to study in public? Fancy what a scene of mingled fun
+and horror would have occurred, if the poor savage had risked an
+entrance into the schools! What games and merry-makings there would
+have been! On Midsummer Day they used to chain cats together and burn
+them in the fire. But to tie up a Witch in that hell of caterwaulers,
+a Witch yelling and roasting, what fun it would have been for that
+precious crew of monklings and cowlbearers!
+
+In due time we shall see the decline of Satan. Sad to tell, we shall
+find him pacified, turned into _a good old fellow_. He will be robbed
+and plundered, until of the two masks he wore at the Sabbath, the
+dirtiest is taken by Tartuffe. His spirit is still everywhere, but of
+his bodily self, in losing the Witch he lost all. The wizards were
+only wearisome.
+
+Now that we have hurled him so far downwards, are we fully aware of
+what has happened? Was he not an important actor, an essential item in
+the great religious machine just now slightly out of gear? All
+organisms that work properly are twofold, twosided. Life can otherwise
+not go on at all. It is a kind of balance between two forces,
+opposite, symmetrical, but unequal; the lower answering to the other
+as its counterpoise. The higher chafes at it, seeks to put it down. So
+doing, it is all wrong.
+
+When Colbert, in 1672, got rid of Satan, with very little ceremony, by
+forbidding the judges to entertain pleas of witchcraft, the sturdy
+Parliament of Normandy with its sound Norman logic pointed out the
+dangerous drift of such a decision. The Devil is nothing less than a
+dogma holding on to all the rest. If you meddle with the Eternally
+Conquered, are you not meddling with the Conqueror likewise? To doubt
+the acts of the former, leads to doubting the acts of the second, the
+miracles he wrought for the very purpose of withstanding the Devil.
+The pillars of heaven are grounded in the Abyss. He who thoughtlessly
+removes that base infernal, may chance to split up Paradise itself.
+
+Colbert could not listen, having other business to mind. But the Devil
+perhaps gave heed and was comforted. Amidst such minor means of
+earning a livelihood as spirit-rapping or table-turning, he grows
+resigned, and believes at least that he will not die alone.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE DEATH OF THE GODS.
+
+
+Certain authors have declared that, shortly before the triumph of
+Christianity, a voice mysterious ran along the shores of the Ægean
+Sea, crying, “Great Pan is dead!” The old universal god of nature was
+no more; and great was the joy thereat. Men fancied that with the
+death of nature temptation itself was dead. After the troublings of so
+long a storm, the soul of man was at length to find rest.
+
+Was it merely a question touching the end of that old worship, its
+overthrow, and the eclipse of old religious rites? By no means.
+Consult the earliest Christian records, and in every line you may read
+the hope, that nature is about to vanish, life to be extinguished;
+that the end of the world, in short, is very near. It is all over with
+the gods of life, who have spun out its mockeries to such a length.
+Everything is falling, breaking up, rushing down headlong. The whole
+is becoming as nought: “Great Pan is dead!”
+
+It was nothing new that the gods must perish. Many an ancient worship
+was grounded in that very idea. Osiris, Adonis die indeed in order to
+rise again. On the stage itself, in plays which were only acted for
+the feast days of the gods, Æschylus expressly averred by the mouth of
+Prometheus, that some day they should suffer death: but how? As
+conquered and laid low by the Titans, the ancient powers of nature.
+
+Here, however, things are quite otherwise. Alike in generals and
+particulars, in the past and the future, would the early Christians
+have cursed Nature herself. So utterly did they condemn her, as to
+find the Devil incarnate in a flower. Swiftly may the angels come
+again, who erst overwhelmed the cities of the Dead Sea! Oh, that they
+may sweep off, may crumple up as a veil the hollow frame of this
+world; may at length deliver the saints from their long trial!
+
+The Evangelist said, “The day is coming:” the Fathers, “It is coming
+immediately.” From the breaking-up of the Empire and the invasion of
+the Barbarians, St. Augustin draws the hope that very soon no city
+would remain but the city of God.
+
+And yet, how hard of dying is the world; how stubbornly bent on
+living! Like Hezekiah, it begs a respite, one turn more of the dial.
+Well, then, be it so until the year one thousand. But thereafter, not
+one day.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Are we quite sure of what has been so often repeated, that the gods of
+old had come to an end, themselves wearied and sickened of living;
+that they were so disheartened as almost to send in their resignation;
+that Christianity had only to blow upon these empty shades?
+
+They point to the gods in Rome; they point out those in the Capitol,
+admitted there only by a kind of preliminary death, on the surrender,
+I might say, of all their local pith; as having disowned their
+country, as having ceased to be the representative spirits of the
+nations. In order to receive them, indeed, Rome had performed on them
+a cruel operation: they were enervated, bleached. Those great
+centralized deities became in their official life the mournful
+functionaries of the Roman Empire. But the decline of that Olympian
+aristocracy had in no wise drawn down the host of home-born gods, the
+mob of deities still keeping hold of the boundless country-sides, of
+the woods, the hills, the fountains; still intimately blended with the
+life of the country. These gods abiding in the heart of oaks, in
+waters deep and rushing, could not be driven therefrom.
+
+Who says so? The Church. She rudely gainsays her own words. Having
+proclaimed their death, she is indignant because they live. Time after
+time, by the threatening voice of her councils[5] she gives them
+notice of their death--and lo! they are living still.
+
+    [5] See Mansi, Baluze; Council of Arles, 442; of Tours, 567;
+    of Leptines, 743; the Capitularies, &c., and even Gerson,
+    about 1400.
+
+“They are devils.”--Then they must be alive. Failing to make an end of
+them, men suffer the simple folk to clothe, to disguise them. By the
+help of legends they come to be baptized, even to be foisted upon the
+Church. But at least they are converted? Not yet. We catch them
+stealthily subsisting in their own heathen character.
+
+Where are they? In the desert, on the moor, in the forest? Ay; but,
+above all, in the house. They are kept up by the most intimate
+household usages. The wife guards and hides them in her household
+things, even in her bed. With her they have the best place in the
+world, better than the temple,--the fireside.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Never was revolution so violent as that of Theodosius. Antiquity shows
+no trace of such proscription of any worship. The Persian
+fire-worshipper might, in the purity of his heroism, have insulted the
+visible deities, but he let them stand nevertheless. He greatly
+favoured the Jews, protecting and employing them. Greece, daughter of
+the light, made merry with the gods of darkness, the tunbellied
+Cabiri; but yet she bore with them, adopted them as workmen, even to
+shaping out of them her own Vulcan. Rome in her majesty welcomed not
+only Etruria, but even the rural gods of the old Italian labourer. She
+persecuted the Druids, but only as the centre of a dangerous national
+resistance.
+
+Christianity conquering sought and thought to slay the foe. It
+demolished the schools, by proscribing logic and uprooting the
+philosophers, whom Valens slaughtered. It razed or emptied the
+temples, shivered to pieces the symbols. The new legend would have
+been propitious to the family, had the father not been cancelled in
+Saint Joseph; had the mother been set up as an educatress, as having
+morally brought forth Jesus. A fruitful road there was, but abandoned
+at the very outset through the effort to attain a high but barren
+purity.
+
+So Christianity turned into that lonely path where the world was going
+of itself; the path of a celibacy in vain opposed by the laws of the
+emperors. Down this slope it was hurled headlong by the establishment
+of monkery.
+
+But in the desert was man alone? The Devil kept him company with all
+manner of temptations. He could not help himself, he was driven to
+create anew societies, nay whole cities of anchorites. We all know
+those dismal towns of monks which grew up in the Thebaid; how wild,
+unruly a spirit dwelt among them; how deadly were their descents on
+Alexandria. They talked of being troubled, beset by the Devil; and
+they told no lie.
+
+A huge gap was made in the world; and who was to fill it? The
+Christians said, The Devil, everywhere the Devil: _ubique dæmon_.[6]
+
+    [6] See the Lives of the Desert Fathers, and the authors
+    quoted by A. Maurie, _Magie_, 317. In the fourth century, the
+    Messalians, thinking themselves full of devils, spat and blew
+    their noses without ceasing; made incredible efforts to spit
+    them forth.
+
+Greece, like all other nations, had her _energumens_, who were sore
+tried, possessed by spirits. The relation there is quite external; the
+seeming likeness is really none at all. Here we have no spirits of any
+kind: they are but black children of the Abyss, the ideal of
+waywardness. Thenceforth we see them everywhere, those poor
+melancholics, loathing, shuddering at their own selves. Think what it
+must be to fancy yourself double, to believe in that _other_, that
+cruel host who goes and comes and wanders within you, making you roam
+at his pleasure among deserts, over precipices! You waste and weaken
+more and more; and the weaker grows your wretched body, the more is it
+worried by the devil. In woman especially these tyrants dwell, making
+her blown and swollen. They fill her with an infernal _wind_, they
+brew in her storms and tempests, play with her as the whim seizes
+them, drive her to wickedness, to despair.
+
+And not ourselves only, but all nature, alas! becomes demoniac. If
+there is a devil in the flower, how much more in the gloomy forest!
+The light we think so pure teems with children of the night. The
+heavens themselves--O blasphemy!--are full of hell. That divine
+morning star, whose glorious beams not seldom lightened a Socrates, an
+Archimedes, a Plato, what is it now become? A devil, the archfiend
+Lucifer. In the eventime again it is the devil Venus who draws me into
+temptation by her light so soft and mild.
+
+That such a society should wax wroth and terrible is not surprising.
+Indignant at feeling itself so weak against devils, it persecutes them
+everywhere, in the temples, at the altars once of the ancient worship,
+then of the heathen martyrs. Let there be more feasts?--they will
+likely be so many gatherings of idolaters. The Family itself becomes
+suspected: for custom might bring it together round the ancient Lares.
+And why should there be a family?--the empire is an empire of monks.
+
+But the individual man himself, thus dumb and isolated though he be,
+still watches the sky, still honours his ancient gods whom he finds
+anew in the stars. “This is he,” said the Emperor Theodosius, “who
+causes famines and all the plagues of the empire.” Those terrible
+words turned the blind rage of the people loose upon the harmless
+Pagan. Blindly the law unchained all its furies against the law.
+
+Ye gods of Eld, depart into your tombs! Get ye extinguished, gods of
+Love, of Life, of Light! Put on the monk’s cowl. Maidens, become nuns.
+Wives, forsake your husbands; or, if ye will look after the house, be
+unto them but cold sisters.
+
+But is all this possible? What man’s breath shall be strong enough to
+put out at one effort the burning lamp of God? These rash endeavours
+of an impious piety may evoke miracles strange and monstrous. Tremble,
+guilty that ye are!
+
+Often in the Middle Ages will recur the mournful tale of the Bride of
+Corinth. Told at a happy moment by Phlegon, Adrian’s freedman, it
+meets us again in the twelfth, and yet again in the sixteenth century,
+as the deep reproof, the invincible protest of nature herself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“A young man of Athens went to Corinth, to the house of one who had
+promised him his daughter. Himself being still a heathen, he knew not
+that the family which he thought to enter had just turned Christian.
+It is very late when he arrives. They are all gone to rest, except the
+mother, who serves up for him the hospitable repast and then leaves
+him to sleep. Dead tired, he drops down. Scarce was he fallen asleep,
+when a figure entered the room: ’tis a girl all clothed and veiled in
+white; on her forehead a fillet of black and gold. She sees him. In
+amazement she lifts her white hand: ‘Am I, then, such a stranger in
+the house already? Alas, poor recluse!... But I am ashamed, and
+withdraw. Sleep on.’
+
+“‘Stay, fair maiden! Here are Bacchus, Ceres, and with thee comes
+Love. Fear not, look not so pale!’
+
+“‘Ah! Away from me, young man! I have nothing more to do with
+happiness. By a vow my mother made in her sickness my youth and my
+life are bound for ever. The gods have fled, and human victims now are
+our only sacrifices.’
+
+“‘Ha! can it be thou, thou, my darling betrothed, who wast given me
+from my childhood? The oath of our fathers bound us for evermore under
+the blessing of heaven. Maiden, be mine!’
+
+“‘No, my friend, not I. Thou shalt have my younger sister. If I moan
+in my chilly dungeon, do thou in her arms think of me, of me wasting
+away and thinking only of thee; of me whom the earth is about to cover
+again.’
+
+“‘Nay, I swear by this flame, the torch of Hymen, thou shalt come home
+with me to my father. Rest thee, my own beloved.’
+
+“As a wedding-gift he offers her a cup of gold. She gives him her
+chain, but instead of the cup desires a curl of his hair.
+
+“It is the hour of spirits; her pale lip drinks up the dark blood-red
+wine. He too drinks greedily after her. He calls on the god of Love.
+She still resisted, though her poor heart was dying thereat. But he
+grows desperate, and falls weeping on the couch. Anon she throws
+herself by his side.
+
+“‘Oh! how ill thy sorrow makes me! Yet, if thou wast to touch me----
+Oh, horror!--white as the snow, and cold as ice, such, ah me! is thy
+bride.’
+
+“‘I will warm thee again: come to me, wert thou come from the very
+grave.’
+
+“Sighs and kisses many do they exchange.
+
+“‘Dost thou feel how warm I am?’
+
+“Love twines and holds them fast. Tears mingle with their joy. She
+changes with the fire she drinks from his mouth: her icy blood is
+aglow with passion; but the heart in her bosom will not beat.
+
+“But the mother was there listening. Soft vows, cries of wailing and
+of pleasure.
+
+“‘Hush, the cock is crowing: to-morrow night!’ Then with kiss on kiss
+they say farewell.
+
+“In wrath the mother enters; sees what? Her daughter. He would have
+hidden her, covered her up. But freeing herself from him, she grew
+from the couch up to the roof.
+
+“‘O mother, mother, you grudge me a pleasant night; you would drive me
+from this cosy spot! Was it not enough to have wrapped me in my
+winding-sheet and borne me to the grave? A greater power has lifted up
+the stone. In vain did your priests drone over the trench they dug for
+me. Of what use are salt and water, where burns the fire of youth? The
+earth cannot freeze up love. You made a promise; I have just reclaimed
+my own.
+
+“‘Alas, dear friend, thou must die: thou wouldst but pine and dry up
+here. I have thy hair; it will be white to-morrow.... Mother, one last
+prayer! Open my dark dungeon, set up a stake, and let the loving one
+find rest in the flames. Let the sparks fly upward and the ashes
+redden. We will go to our olden gods.’”[7]
+
+    [7] Here I have suppressed a shocking phrase. Goethe, so
+    noble in the form, is not so in the spirit of his poem. He
+    spoils the marvel of the legend by sullying the Greek
+    conception with a horrible Slavish idea. As they are weeping,
+    he turns the maiden into a vampire. She comes because she
+    thirsts for blood, that she may suck the blood from his
+    heart. And he makes her coldly say this impious and unclean
+    thing: “When I have done with him, I will pass on to others:
+    the young blood shall fall a prey to my fury.”
+
+    In the Middle Ages this story put on a grotesque garb, by way
+    of frightening us with the _Devil Venus_. On the finger of
+    her statue a young man imprudently places a ring, which she
+    clasps tight, guarding it like a bride, and going in the
+    night to his couch, to assert her rights. He cannot rid
+    himself of his infernal spouse without an exorcism. The same
+    tale, foolishly applied to the Virgin, is found in the
+    _Fabliaux_. If my memory does not mislead me, Luther also, in
+    his “Table Talk,” takes up the old story in a very coarse
+    way, till you quite smell the body. The Spanish Del Rio
+    shifts the scene of it to Brabant. The bride dies shortly
+    before her marriage; the death-bells are rung. The bridegroom
+    rushed wildly over the country. He hears a wail. It is she
+    herself wandering about the heath. “Seest thou not”--she
+    says--“who leads me?” But he catches her up and bears her
+    home. At this point the story threatened to become too
+    moving; but the hard inquisitor, Del Rio, cuts the thread.
+    “On lifting her veil,” says he, “they found only a log of
+    wood covered with the skin of a corpse.” The Judge le Loyer,
+    silly though he be, has restored the older version.
+
+    Thenceforth these gloomy taletellers come to an end. The
+    story is useless when our own age begins; for then the bride
+    has triumphed. Nature comes back from the grave, not by
+    stealth, but as mistress of the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+WHY THE MIDDLE AGES FELL INTO DESPAIR.
+
+
+“Be ye as newborn babes (_quasi modo geniti infantes_); be thoroughly
+childlike in the innocence of your hearts; peaceful, forgetting all
+disputes, calmly resting under the hand of Christ.” Such is the kindly
+counsel tendered by the Church to this stormy world on the morning
+after the great fall. In other words: “Volcanoes, ruins, ashes, and
+lava, become green. Ye parched plains, get covered with flowers.”
+
+One thing indeed gave promise of the peace that reneweth: the schools
+were all shut up, the way of logic forsaken. A method infinitely
+simple for the doing away with argument, offered all men a gentle
+slope, down which they had nothing to do but go. If the creed was
+doubtful, the life was all traced out in the pathway of the legend.
+From first to last but the one word _Imitation_.
+
+“Imitate, and all will go well. Rehearse and copy.” But is this the
+way to that true childhood which quickens the heart of man, which
+leads back to its fresh and fruitful springs? In this world that is to
+make us young and childlike, I see at first nothing but the tokens of
+age; only cunning, slavishness, want of power. What kind of
+literature is this, confronted with the glorious monuments of Greeks
+and Jews? We have just the same literary fall as happened in India
+from Brahminism to Buddhism; a twaddling flow of words after a noble
+inspiration. Books copy from books, churches from churches, until they
+cannot so much as copy. They pillage from each other: Aix-la-Chapelle
+is adorned with the marbles torn from Ravenna. It is the same with all
+the social life of those days. The bishop-king of a city, the savage
+king of a tribe, alike copy the Roman magistrates. Original as one
+might deem them, our monks in their monasteries simply restored their
+ancient _Villa_, as Chateaubriand well said. They had no notion either
+of forming a new society or of fertilizing the old. Copying from the
+monks of the East, they wanted their servants at first to be
+themselves a barren race of monkling workmen. It was in spite of them
+that the family in renewing itself renewed the world.
+
+Seeing how fast these oldsters keep on oldening; how in one age we
+fall from the wise monk St. Benedict down to the pedantic Benedict of
+Aniane;[8] we feel that such gentry were wholly guiltless of that
+great popular creation which bloomed amidst ruins; namely, the Lives
+of the Saints. If the monks wrote, it was the people made them. This
+young growth might throw out some leaves and flowers from the crannies
+of an old Roman ruin turned into a convent: but most assuredly not
+thence did it first arise. Its roots go deep into the ground: sown by
+the people and cultivated by the family, it takes help from every
+hand, from men, from women, from children. The precarious, troubled
+life of those days of violence, made these poor folk imaginative,
+prone to believe in their own dreams, as being to them full of
+comfort: strange dreams withal, rich in marvels, in fooleries; absurd,
+but charming.
+
+    [8] Benedict founded a convent at Aniane in Languedoc, in the
+    reign of Charlemagne.
+
+These families, isolated in forests and mountains, as we still see
+them in the Tyrol or the Higher Alps, and coming down thence but once
+a week, never wanted for illusions in the desert. One child had seen
+this, some woman had dreamed that. A new saint began to rise. The
+story went abroad in the shape of a ballad with doggrel rhymes. They
+sang and danced to it of an evening at the oak by the fountain. The
+priest, when he came on Sunday to perform service in the woodland
+chapel, found the legendary chant already in every mouth. He said to
+himself, “After all, history is good, is edifying.... It does honour
+to the Church. _Vox populi, vox Dei!_--But how did they light upon
+it?” He could be shown the true, the irrefragable proofs of it in some
+tree or stone which had witnessed the apparition, had marked the
+miracle. What can he say to that?
+
+Brought back to the abbey, the tale will find a monk good for nothing,
+who can only write; who is curious, believes everything, no matter
+how marvellous. It is written out, broidered with his dull rhetoric,
+and spoilt a little. But now it has come forth, confirmed and
+consecrated, to be read in the refectory, ere long in the church.
+Copied, loaded and overloaded with ornaments chiefly grotesque, it
+will go on from age to age, until at last it comes to take high rank
+in the Golden Legend.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When those fair stories are read again to us in these days, even as we
+listen to the simple, grave, artless airs into which those rural
+peoples threw all their young heart, we cannot help marking a great
+inspiration; and we are moved to pity as we reflect upon their fate.
+
+They had taken literally the touching advice of the Church: “Be ye as
+newborn babes.” But they gave to it a meaning, the very last that one
+would dream of finding in the original thought. As much as
+Christianity feared and hated Nature, even so much did these others
+cherish her, deeming her all guileless, hallowing her even in the
+legends wherewith they mingled her up.
+
+Those _hairy_ animals, as the Bible sharply calls them, animals
+mistrusted by the monks who fear to find devils among them, enter in
+the most touching way into these beautiful stories; as the hind, for
+instance, who refreshes and comforts Geneviève of Brabant.
+
+Even outside the life of legends, in the common everyday world, the
+humble friends of his hearth, the bold helpmates of his work, rise
+again in man’s esteem. They have their own laws,[9] their own
+festivals. If in God’s unbounded goodness there is room for the
+smallest creatures, if He seems to show them a pitying preference,
+“Wherefore,” says the countryman, “should my ass not have entered the
+church? Doubtless, he has his faults, wherein he only resembles me the
+more. He is a rough worker, but has a hard head; is intractable,
+stubborn, headstrong; in short, just like myself.”
+
+    [9] See J. Grimm, _Rechts Alterthümer_, and my _Origines du
+    Droit_.
+
+Thence come those wonderful feasts, the fairest of the Middle Ages;
+feasts of _Innocents_, of _Fools_, of the _Ass_. It is the people
+itself, moreover, which, in the shape of an ass, draws about its own
+image, presents itself before the altar, ugly, comical, abased.
+Verily, a touching sight! Led by Balaam, he enters solemnly between
+Virgil and the Sibyl;[10] enters that he may bear witness. If he
+kicked of yore against Balaam, it was that before him he beheld the
+sword of the ancient law. But here the law is ended, and the world of
+grace seems opening its two-leaved gate to the mean and to the simple.
+The people innocently believes it all. Thereon comes that lofty hymn,
+in which it says to the ass what it might have said to itself:--
+
+    “Down on knee and say _Amen_!
+    Grass and hay enough hast eaten.
+    Leave the bad old ways, and go!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    For the new expels the old:
+    Shadows fly before the noon:
+    Light hath hunted out the night.”
+
+    [10] According to the ritual of Rouen. See Ducange on the
+    words _Festum_ and _Kalendæ_: also Martène, iii. 110. The
+    Sibyl was crowned and followed by Jews and Gentiles, by
+    Moses, the Prophets, Nebuchadnezzar, &c. From a very early
+    time, and continually from the seventh to the seventeenth
+    century, the Church strove to proscribe the great people’s
+    feasts of the Ass, of Innocents, of Children, and of Fools.
+    It never succeeded until the advent of the modern spirit.
+
+How bold and coarse ye are! Was it this we asked of you, children rash
+and wayward, when we told you to be as children? We offered you milk;
+you are drinking wine. We led you softly, bridle in hand, along the
+narrow path. Mild and fearful, ye hesitated to go forward: and now,
+all at once, the bridle is broken; the course is cleared at a single
+bound. Ah! how foolish we were to let you make your own saints; to
+dress out the altar; to deck, to burden, to cover it up with flowers!
+Why, it is hardly distinguishable! And what we do see is the old
+heresy condemned of the Church, _the innocence of nature_: what am I
+saying?--a new heresy, not like to end to-morrow, _the independence of
+man_.
+
+Listen and obey!--You are forbidden to invent, to create. No more
+legends, no more new saints: we have had enough of them. You are
+forbidden to introduce new chants in your worship: inspiration is not
+allowed. The martyrs you would bring to light should stay modestly
+within their tombs, waiting to be recognised by the Church. The
+clergy, the monks are forbidden to grant the tonsure of civil freedom
+to husbandmen and serfs. Such is the narrow fearful spirit that fills
+the Church of the Carlovingian days.[11] She unsays her words, she
+gives herself the lie, she says to the children, “Be old!”
+
+    [11] See the Capitularies, _passim_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A fall indeed! But is this earnest? They had bidden us all be
+young.--Ah! but priest and people are no longer one. A divorce without
+end begins, a gulf unpassable divides them for ever. The priest
+himself, a lord and prince, will come out in his golden cope, and
+chant in the royal speech of that great empire which is no more. For
+ourselves, a mournful company, bereft of human speech, of the only
+speech that God would care to hear, what else can we do but low and
+bleat with the guileless friends who never scorn us, who, in
+winter-time will keep us warm in their stable, or cover us with their
+fleeces? We will live with dumb beasts, and be dumb ourselves.
+
+In sooth there is less need than before for our going to church. But
+the church will not hold us free: she insists on our returning to hear
+what we no longer understand. Thenceforth a mighty fog, a fog heavy
+and dun as lead, enwraps the world. For how long? For a whole
+millennium of horror. Throughout ten centuries, a languor unknown to
+all former times seizes upon the Middle Ages, even in part on those
+latter days that come midway betwixt sleep and waking, and holds them
+under the sway of a visitation most irksome, most unbearable; that
+convulsion, namely, of mental weariness, which men call a fit of
+yawning.
+
+When the tireless bell rings at the wonted hours, they yawn; while the
+nasal chant is singing in the old Latin words, they yawn. It is all
+foreseen, there is nothing to hope for in the world, everything will
+come round just the same as before. The certainty of being bored
+to-morrow sets one yawning from to-day; and the long vista of
+wearisome days, of wearisome years to come, weighs men down, sickens
+them from the first with living. From brain to stomach, from stomach
+to mouth, the fatal fit spreads of its own accord, and keeps on
+distending the jaws without end or remedy. An actual disease the pious
+Bretons call it, ascribing it, however, to the malice of the Devil. He
+keeps crouching in the woods, the peasants say: if anyone passes by
+tending his cattle, he sings to him vespers and other rites, until he
+is dead with yawning.[12]
+
+    [12] An illustrious Breton, the last man of the Middle Ages,
+    who had gone on a bootless errand to convert Rome, received
+    there some brilliant offers. “What do you want?” said the
+    Pope.--“Only one thing: to have done with the Breviary.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_To be old_ is to be weak. When the Saracens, when the Norsemen
+threaten us, what will come to us if the people remain old?
+Charlemagne weeps, and the Church weeps too. She owns that her relics
+fail to guard her altars from these Barbarian devils.[13] Had she not
+better call upon the arm of that wayward child whom she was going to
+bind fast, the arm of that young giant whom she wanted to paralyse?
+This movement in two opposite ways fills the whole ninth century. The
+people are held back, anon they are hurled forward: we fear them and
+we call on them for aid. With them and by means of them we throw up
+hasty barriers, defences that may check the Barbarians, while
+sheltering the priests and their saints escaped thither from their
+churches.
+
+    [13] The famous avowal made by Hincmar.
+
+In spite of the Bald Emperor’s[14] command not to build, there grows
+up a tower on the mountain. Thither comes the fugitive, crying, “In
+God’s name, take me in, at least my wife and children! Myself with my
+cattle will encamp in your outer enclosure.” The tower emboldens him
+and he feels himself a man. It gives him shade, and he in his turn
+defends, protects his protector.
+
+    [14] Charles the Bald.--TRANS.
+
+Formerly in their hunger the small folk yielded themselves to the
+great as serfs; but here how great the difference! He offers himself
+as a _vassal_, one who would be called brave and valiant.[15] He gives
+himself up, and keeps himself, and reserves to himself the right of
+going elsewhere. “I will go further: the earth is large: I, too, like
+the rest, can rear my tower yonder. If I have defended the outworks, I
+can surely look after myself within.”
+
+    [15] A difference too little felt by those who have spoken of
+    the _personal recommendation_, &c.
+
+Thus nobly, thus grandly arose the feudal world. The master of the
+tower received his vassals with some such words as these: “Thou shalt
+go when thou willest, and if need be with my help; at least, if thou
+shouldst sink in the mire, I myself will dismount to succour thee.”
+These are the very words of the old formula.[16]
+
+    [16] Grimm, _Rechts Alterthümer_, and my _Origines du Droit_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But, one day, what do I see? Can my sight be grown dim? The lord of
+the valley, as he rides about, sets up bounds that none may overleap;
+ay, and limits that you cannot see. “What is that? I don’t
+understand.” That means that the manor is shut in. “The lord keeps it
+all fast under gate and hinge, between heaven and earth.”
+
+Most horrible! By virtue of what law is this _vassus_ (or _valiant_
+one) held to his power? People will thereon have it, that _vassus_ may
+also mean _slave_. In like manner the word _servus_, meaning a
+_servant_, often indeed a proud one, even a Count or Prince of the
+Empire, comes in the case of the weak to signify a _serf_, a wretch
+whose life is hardly worth a halfpenny.
+
+In this damnable net are they caught. But down yonder, on his ground,
+is a man who avers that his land is free, a _freehold_, a _fief of the
+sun_. Seated on his boundary-stone, with hat pressed firmly down, he
+looks at Count or Emperor passing near. “Pass on, Emperor; go thy
+ways! If thou art firm on thy horse, yet more am I on my pillar. Thou
+mayest pass, but so will not I: for I am Freedom.”
+
+But I lack courage to say what becomes of this man. The air grows
+thick around him: he breathes less and less freely. He seems to be
+_under a spell_: he cannot move: he is as one paralysed. His very
+beasts grow thin, as if a charm had been thrown over them. His
+servants die of hunger. His land bears nothing now; spirits sweep it
+clean by night.
+
+Still he holds on: “The poor man is a king in his own house.” But he
+is not to be let alone. He gets summoned, must answer for himself in
+the Imperial Court. So he goes, like an old-world spectre, whom no one
+knows any more. “What is he?” ask the young. “Ah, he is neither a
+lord, nor a serf! Yet even then is he nothing?”
+
+“Who am I? I am he who built the first tower, he who succoured you, he
+who, leaving the tower, went boldly forth to meet the Norse heathens
+at the bridge. Yet more, I dammed the river, I tilled the meadow,
+creating the land itself by drawing it God-like out of the waters.
+From this land who shall drive me?”
+
+“No, my friend,” says a neighbour--“you shall not be driven away. You
+shall till this land, but in a way you little think for. Remember, my
+good fellow, how in your youth, some fifty years ago, you were rash
+enough to wed my father’s little serf, Jacqueline. Remember the
+proverb, ‘He who courts my hen is my cock.’ You belong to my
+fowl-yard. Ungird yourself; throw away your sword! From this day forth
+you are my serf.”
+
+There is no invention here. The dreadful tale recurs incessantly
+during the Middle Ages. Ah, it was a sharp sword that stabbed him. I
+have abridged and suppressed much, for as often as one returns to
+these times, the same steel, the same sharp point, pierces right
+through the heart.
+
+There was one among them who, under this gross insult, fell into so
+deep a rage that he could not bring up a single word. It was like
+Roland betrayed. His blood all rushed upwards into his throat. His
+flaming eyes, his mouth so dumb, yet so fearfully eloquent, turned all
+the assembly pale. They started back. He was dead: his veins had
+burst. His arteries spurted the red blood over the faces of his
+murderers.[17]
+
+    [17] This befell the Count of Avesnes when his freehold was
+    declared a mere fief, himself a mere vassal, a serf of the
+    Earl of Hainault. Read, too, the dreadful story of the Great
+    Chancellor of Flanders, the first magistrate of Bruges, who
+    also was claimed as a serf.--Gualterius, _Scriptores Rerum
+    Francicarum_, viii. 334.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The doubtful state of men’s affairs, the frightfully slippery descent
+by which the freeman becomes a vassal, the vassal a servant, and the
+servant a serf,--in these things lie the great terror of the Middle
+Ages, and the depth of their despair. There is no way of escape
+therefrom; for he who takes one step is lost. He is an _alien_, a
+_stray_, a _wild beast of the chase_. The ground grows slimy to catch
+his feet, roots him, as he passes, to the spot. The contagion in the
+air kills him; he becomes a thing _in mortmain_, a dead creature, a
+mere nothing, a beast, a soul worth twopence-halfpenny, whose murder
+can be atoned for by twopence-halfpenny.
+
+These are outwardly the two great leading traits in the wretchedness
+of the Middle Ages, through which they came to give themselves up to
+the Devil. Meanwhile let us look within, and sound the innermost
+depths of their moral life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE LITTLE DEVIL OF THE FIRESIDE.
+
+
+There is an air of dreaming about those earlier centuries of the
+Middle Ages, in which the legends were self-conceived. Among
+countryfolk so gently submissive, as these legends show them, to the
+Church, you would readily suppose that very great innocence might be
+found. This is surely the temple of God the Father. And yet the
+_penitentiaries_, wherein reference is made to ordinary sins, speak of
+strange defilements, of things afterwards rare enough under the rule
+of Satan.
+
+These sprang from two causes, from the utter ignorance of the times,
+and from the close intermingling of near kindred under one roof. They
+seem to have had but a slight acquaintance with our modern ethics.
+Those of their day, all counterpleas notwithstanding, resemble the
+ethics of the patriarchs, of that far antiquity which regarded
+marriage with a stranger as immoral, and allowed only of marriage
+amongst kinsfolk. The families thus joined together became as one. Not
+daring to scatter over the surrounding deserts, tilling only the
+outskirts of a Merovingian palace or a monastery, they took shelter
+every evening under the roof of a large homestead (_villa_). Thence
+arose unpleasant points of analogy with the ancient _ergastulum_,
+where the slaves of an estate were all crammed together. Many of these
+communities lasted through and even beyond the Middle Ages. About the
+results of such a system the lord would feel very little concern. To
+his eyes but one family was visible in all this tribe, this multitude
+of people “who rose and lay down together, ... who ate together of the
+same bread, and drank out of the same mug.”
+
+Amidst such confusion the woman was not much regarded. Her place was
+by no means lofty. If the virgin, the ideal woman, rose higher from
+age to age, the real woman was held of little worth among these
+boorish masses, in this medley of men and herds. Wretched was the doom
+of a condition which could only change with the growth of separate
+dwellings, when men at length took courage to live apart in hamlets,
+or to build them huts in far-off forest-clearings, amidst the fruitful
+fields they had gone out to cultivate. From the lonely hearth comes
+the true family. It is the nest that forms the bird. Thenceforth they
+were no more things, but men; for then also was the woman born.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a very touching moment, the day she entered _her own home_.
+Then at last the poor wretch might become pure and holy. There, as she
+sits spinning alone, while her goodman is in the forest, she may brood
+on some thought and dream away. Her damp, ill-fastened cabin, through
+which keeps whistling the winter wind, is still, by way of a
+recompense, calm and silent. In it are sundry dim corners where the
+housewife lodges her dreams.
+
+And by this time she has some property, something of her own. The
+_distaff_, the _bed_, and the _trunk_, are all she has, according to
+the old song.[18] We may add a table, a seat, perhaps two stools. A
+poor dwelling and very bare; but then it is furnished with a living
+soul! The fire cheers her, the blessed box-twigs guard her bed,
+accompanied now and again by a pretty bunch of vervein. Seated by her
+door, the lady of this palace spins and watches some sheep. We are not
+yet rich enough to keep a cow; but to that we may come in time, if
+Heaven will bless our house. The wood, a bit of pasture, and some bees
+about our ground--such is our way of life! But little corn is
+cultivated as yet, there being no assurance of a harvest so long of
+coming. Such a life, however needy, is anyhow less hard for the woman:
+she is not broken down and withered, as she will be in the days of
+large farming. And she has more leisure withal. You must never judge
+of her by the coarse literature of the Fabliaux and the Christmas
+Carols, by the foolish laughter and license of the filthy tales we
+have to put up with by and by. She is alone; without a neighbour. The
+bad, unwholesome life of the dark, little, walled towns, the mutual
+spyings, the wretched dangerous gossipings, have not yet begun. No old
+woman comes of an evening, when the narrow street is growing dark, to
+tempt the young maiden by saying how for the love of her somebody is
+dying. She has no friend but her own reflections; she converses only
+with her beasts or the tree in the forest.
+
+    [18]
+
+    “Trois pas du côté du banc,
+    Et trois pas du côté du lit;
+    Trois pas du côté du coffre,
+    Et trois pas---- Revenez ici.”
+
+    (_Old Song of the Dancing Master._)
+
+Such things speak to her, we know of what. They recall to her mind the
+saws once uttered by her mother and grandmother; ancient saws handed
+down for ages from woman to woman. They form a harmless reminder of
+the old country spirits, a touching family religion which doubtless
+had little power in the blustering hurly-burly of a great common
+dwellinghouse, but now comes back again to haunt the lonely cabin.
+
+It is a singular, a delicate world of fays and hobgoblins, made for a
+woman’s soul. When the great creation of the saintly Legend gets
+stopped and dried up, that other older, more poetic legend comes in
+for its share of welcome; reigns privily with gentle sway. It is the
+woman’s treasure; she worships and caresses it. The fay, too, is a
+woman, a fantastic mirror wherein she sees herself in a fairer guise.
+
+Who were these fays? Tradition says, that of yore some Gaulish queens,
+being proud and fanciful, did on the coming of Christ and His Apostles
+behave so insolently as to turn their backs upon them. In Brittany
+they were dancing at the moment, and never stopped dancing. Hence
+their hard doom; they are condemned to live until the Day of
+Judgment.[19] Many of them were turned into mice or rabbits; as the
+Kow-riggwans for instance, or Elves, who meeting at night round the
+old Druidic stones entangle you in their dances. The same fate befell
+the pretty Queen Mab, who made herself a royal chariot out of a
+walnut-shell. They are all rather whimsical, and sometimes
+ill-humoured. But can we be surprised at them, remembering their
+woeful lot? Tiny and odd as they are, they have a heart, a longing to
+be loved. They are good and they are bad and full of fancies. On the
+birth of a baby they come down the chimney, to endow it and order its
+future. They are fond of good spinning-women--they even spin divinely
+themselves. Do we not talk of _spinning like a fairy_?
+
+    [19] All passages bearing on this point have been gathered
+    together in two learned works by M. Maury (_Les Fées_, 1843;
+    and _La Magie_, 1860). See also Grimm.
+
+The fairy-tales, stripped of the absurd embellishments in which the
+latest compilers muffled them up, express the heart of the people
+itself. They mark a poetic interval between the gross communism of the
+primitive _villa_, and the looseness of the time when a growing
+burgess-class made our cynical Fabliaux.[20]
+
+    [20] A body of tales by the Trouvères of the twelfth and
+    thirteenth centuries.--TRANS.
+
+These tales have an historical side, reminding us, in the ogres, &c.,
+of the great famines. But commonly they soar higher than any history,
+on the _Blue Bird’s_ wing, in a realm of eternal poesy; telling us our
+wishes which never vary, the unchangeable history of the heart.
+
+The poor serf’s longing to breathe, to rest, to find a treasure that
+may end his sufferings, continually returns. More often, through a
+lofty aspiration, this treasure becomes a soul as well, a treasure of
+love asleep, as in _The Sleeping Beauty_: but not seldom the charming
+person finds herself by some fatal enchantment hidden under a mask.
+Hence that touching trilogy, that admirable _crescendo_ of _Riquet
+with the Tuft_, _Ass’s Skin_, and _Beauty and the Beast_. Love will
+not be discouraged. Through all that ugliness it follows after and
+gains the hidden beauty. In the last of these tales that feeling
+touches the sublime, and I think that no one has ever read it without
+weeping.
+
+A passion most real, most sincere, lurks beneath it--that unhappy,
+hopeless love, which unkind nature often sets between poor souls of
+very different ranks in life. On the one hand is the grief of the
+peasant maid at not being able to make herself fair enough to win the
+cavalier’s fancy; on the other the smothered sighs of the serf, when
+along his furrow he sees passing, on a white horse, too exquisite a
+glory, the beautiful, the majestic Lady of the Castle. So in the East
+arises the mournful idyll of the impossible loves of the Rose and the
+Nightingale. Nevertheless, there is one great difference: the bird and
+the flower are both beautiful; nay, are alike in their beauty. But
+here the humbler being, doomed to a place so far below, avows to
+himself that he is ugly and monstrous. But amidst his wailing he feels
+in himself a power greater than the East can know. With the will of a
+hero, through the very greatness of his desire, he breaks out of his
+idle coverings. He loves so much, this monster, that he is loved, and,
+in return, through that love grows beautiful.
+
+An infinite tenderness pervades it all. This soul enchanted thinks not
+of itself alone. It busies itself in saving all nature and all society
+as well. Victims of every kind, the child beaten by its step-mother,
+the youngest sister slighted, ill-used by her elders, are the surest
+objects of its liking. Even to the Lady of the Castle does its
+compassion extend; it mourns her fallen into the hands of so fierce a
+lord as Blue-Beard. It yearns with pity towards the beasts; it seeks
+to console them for being still in the shape of animals. Let them be
+patient, and their day will come. Some day their prisoned souls shall
+put on wings, shall be free, lovely, and beloved. This is the other
+side of _Ass’s Skin_ and such like stories. There especially we are
+sure of finding a woman’s heart. The rude labourer in the fields may
+be hard enough to his beasts, but to the woman they are no beasts. She
+regards them with the feeling of a child. To her fancy all is human,
+all is soul: the whole world becomes ennobled. It is a beautiful
+enchantment. Humble as she is, and ugly as she thinks herself, she
+has given all her beauty, all her grace to the surrounding universe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Is she, then, so ugly, this little peasant-wife, whose dreaming fancy
+feeds on things like these? I tell you she keeps house, she spins and
+minds the flock, she visits the forest to gather a little wood. As yet
+she has neither the hard work nor the ugly looks of the countrywoman
+as afterwards fashioned by the prevalent culture of grain crops. Nor
+is she like the fat townswife, heavy and slothful, about whom our
+fathers made such a number of fat stories. She has no sense of safety;
+she is meek and timid, and feels herself, as it were, in God’s hand.
+On yonder hill she can see the dark frowning castle, whence a thousand
+harms may come upon her. Her husband she holds in equal fear and
+honour. A serf elsewhere, by her side he is a king. For him she saves
+of her best, living herself on nothing. She is small and slender like
+the women-saints of the Church. The poor feeding of those days must
+needs make women fine-bred, but lacking also in vital strength. The
+children die off in vast numbers: those pale roses are all nerves.
+Hence, will presently burst forth the epileptic dances of the
+fourteenth century. Meanwhile, towards the twelfth century, there come
+to be two weaknesses attached to this state of half-grown youth: by
+night somnambulism; in the daytime seeing of visions, trance, and the
+gift of tears.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This woman, for all her innocence, still has a secret which the Church
+may never be told. Locked up in her heart she bears the pitying
+remembrance of those poor old gods who have fallen into the state of
+spirits;[21] and spirits, you must know, are not exempt from
+suffering. Dwelling in rocks, and in hearts of oak, they are very
+unhappy in winter; being particularly fond of warmth. They ramble
+about houses; they are sometimes seen in stables warming themselves
+beside the beasts. Bereft of incense and burnt-offerings, they
+sometimes take of the milk. The housewife being thrifty, will not
+stint her husband, but lessens her own share, and in the evening
+leaves a little cream.
+
+    [21] This loyalty of hers is very touching indeed. In the
+    fifth century the peasants braved persecution by parading the
+    gods of the old religion in the shape of small dolls made of
+    linen or flour. Still the same in the eighth century. The
+    _Capitularies_ threaten death in vain. In the twelfth
+    century, Burchard, of Worms, attests their inutility. In
+    1389, the Sorbonne inveighs against certain traces of
+    heathenism, while in 1400, Gerson talks of it as still a
+    lively superstition.
+
+Those spirits who only appear at night, regret their banishment from
+the day and are greedy of lamplight. By night the housewife starts on
+her perilous trip, bearing a small lantern, to the great oak where
+they dwell, or to the secret fountain whose mirror, as it multiplies
+the flame, may cheer up those sorrowful outlaws.
+
+But if anyone should know of it, good heavens! Her husband is canny
+and fears the Church: he would certainly give her a beating. The
+priest wages fierce war with the sprites, and hunts them out of every
+place. Yet he might leave them their dwelling in the oaks! What harm
+can they do in the forest? Alas! no: from council to council they are
+hunted down. On set days the priest will go even to the oak, and with
+prayers and holy water drive away the spirits.
+
+How would it be if no kind soul took pity on them? This woman,
+however, will take them under her care. She is an excellent Christian,
+but will keep for them one corner of her heart. To them alone can she
+entrust those little natural affairs, which, harmless as they are in a
+chaste wife’s dwelling, the Church at any rate would count as
+blameworthy. They are the confidants, the confessors of these touching
+womanly secrets. Of them she thinks, when she puts the holy log on the
+fire. It is Christmastide; but also is it the ancient festival of the
+Northern spirits, the _Feast of the Longest Night_. So, too, the Eve
+of May-day is the _Pervigilium of Maia_, when the tree is planted. So,
+too, with the Eve of St. John, the true feast-day of life, of flowers,
+and newly-awakened love. She who has no children makes it her especial
+duty to cherish these festivals, and to offer them a deep devotion. A
+vow to the Virgin would perhaps be of little avail, it being no
+concern of Mary’s. In a low whisper, she prefers addressing some
+ancient _genius_, worshipped in other days as a rustic deity, and
+afterwards by the kindness of some local church transformed into a
+saint.[22] And thus it happens that the bed, the cradle, all the
+sweetest mysteries on which the chaste and loving soul can brood,
+belong to the olden gods.
+
+    [22] A. Maury, _Magie_, 159.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nor are the sprites ungrateful. One day she awakes, and without having
+stirred a finger, finds all her housekeeping done. In her amazement
+she makes the sign of the cross and says nothing. When the good man
+goes she questions herself, but in vain. It must have been a spirit.
+“What can it be? How came it here? How I should like to see it! But I
+am afraid: they say it is death to see a spirit.”--Yet the cradle
+moves and swings of itself. She is clasped by some one, and a voice so
+soft, so low that she took it for her own, is heard saying, “Dearest
+mistress, I love to rock your babe, because I am myself a babe.” Her
+heart beats, and yet she takes courage a little. The innocence of the
+cradle gives this spirit also an innocent air, causing her to believe
+it good, gentle, suffered at least by God.
+
+From that day forth she is no longer alone. She readily feels its
+presence, and it is never far from her. It rubs her gown, and she
+hears the grazing. It rambles momently about her, and plainly cannot
+leave her side. If she goes to the stable, it is there; and she
+believes that the other day it was in the churn.[23]
+
+    [23] This is a favourite haunt of the little rogue’s. To this
+    day the Swiss, knowing his tastes, make him a present of some
+    milk. His name among them is _troll_ (_drôle_); among the
+    Germans _kobold_, _nix_. In France he is called _follet_,
+    _goblin_, _lutin_; in England, _Puck_, _Robin Goodfellow_.
+    Shakespeare says, he does sleepy servants the kindness to
+    pinch them black and blue, in order to rouse them.
+
+Pity she cannot take it up and look at it! Once, when she suddenly
+touched the brands, she fancied she saw the tricksy little thing
+tumbling about in the sparks; another time she missed catching it in a
+rose. Small as it is, it works, sweeps, arranges, saves her a thousand
+cares.
+
+It has its faults, however; is giddy, bold, and if she did not hold it
+fast, might perhaps shake itself free. It observes and listens too
+much. It repeats sometimes of a morning some little word she had
+whispered very, very softly on going to bed, when the light was put
+out. She knows it to be very indiscreet, exceedingly curious. She is
+irked with feeling herself always followed about, complains of it, and
+likes complaining. Sometimes, having threatened him and turned him
+off, she feels herself quite at ease. But just then she finds herself
+caressed by a light breathing, as it were a bird’s wing. He was under
+a leaf. He laughs: his gentle voice, free from mocking, declares the
+joy he felt in taking his chaste young mistress by surprise. On her
+making a show of great wrath, “No, my darling, my little pet,” says
+the monkey, “you are not a bit sorry to have me here.”
+
+She feels ashamed and dares say nothing more. But she guesses now that
+she loves him overmuch. She has scruples about it, and loves him yet
+more. All night she seems to feel him creeping up to her bed. In her
+fear she prays to God, and keeps close to her husband. What shall she
+do? She has not the strength to tell the Church. She tells her
+husband, who laughs at first incredulously. Then she owns to a little
+more,--what a madcap the goblin is, sometimes even overbold. “What
+matters? He is so small.” Thus he himself sets her mind at ease.
+
+Should we too feel reassured, we who can see more clearly? She is
+quite innocent still. She would shrink from copying the great lady up
+there who, in the face of her husband, has her court of lovers and her
+page. Let us own, however, that to that point the goblin has already
+smoothed the way. One could not have a more perilous page than he who
+hides himself under a rose; and, moreover, he smacks of the lover.
+More intrusive than anyone else, he is so tiny that he can creep
+anywhere.
+
+He glides even into the husband’s heart, paying him court and winning
+his good graces. He looks after his tools, works in his garden, and of
+an evening, by way of reward, curls himself up in the chimney, behind
+the babe and the cat. They hear his small voice, just like a
+cricket’s; but they never see much of him, save when a faint glimmer
+lights a certain cranny in which he loves to stay. Then they see, or
+think they see, a thin little face; and cry out, “Ah! little one, we
+have seen you at last!”
+
+In church they are told to mistrust the spirits, for even one that
+seems innocent, and glides about like a light breeze, may after all be
+a devil. They take good care not to believe it. His size begets a
+belief in his innocence. Whilst he is there, they thrive. The husband
+holds to him as much as the wife, and perhaps more. He sees that the
+tricksy little elf makes the fortune of the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+TEMPTATIONS.
+
+
+I have kept this picture clear of those dreadful shadows of the hour
+by which it would have been sadly overdarkened. I refer especially to
+the uncertainty attending the lot of these rural households, to their
+constant fear and foreboding of some casual outrage which might at any
+moment descend on them from the castle.
+
+There were just two things which made the feudal rule a hell: on one
+hand, its _exceeding steadfastness_, man being nailed, as it were, to
+the ground, and emigration made impossible; on the other, a very great
+degree of _uncertainty_ about his lot.
+
+The optimist historians who say so much about fixed rents, charters,
+buying of immunities, forget how slightly all this was guaranteed. So
+much you were bound to pay the lord, but all the rest he could take if
+he chose; and this was very fitly called the _right of seizure_. You
+may work and work away, my good fellow! But while you are in the
+fields, yon dreaded band from the castle will fall upon your house and
+carry off whatever they please “for their lord’s service.”
+
+Look again at that man standing with his head bowed gloomily over the
+furrow! And thus he is always found, his face clouded, his heart
+oppressed, as if he were expecting some evil news. Is he meditating
+some wrongful deed? No; but there are two ideas haunting him, two
+daggers piercing him in turn. The one is, “In what state shall I find
+my house this evening?” The other, “Would that the turning up of this
+sod might bring some treasure to light! O that the good spirit would
+help to buy us free!”
+
+We are assured that, after the fashion of the Etruscan spirit which
+one day started up from under the ploughshare in the form of a child,
+a dwarf or gnome of the tiniest stature would sometimes on such an
+appeal come forth from the ground, and, setting itself on the furrow,
+would say, “What wantest thou?” But in his amazement the poor man
+would ask for nothing; he would turn pale, cross himself, and
+presently go quite away.
+
+Did he never feel sorry afterwards? Said he never to himself, “Fool
+that you are, you will always be unlucky?” I readily believe he did;
+but I also think that a barrier of dread invincible stopped him short.
+I cannot believe with the monks who have told us all things concerning
+witchcraft, that the treaty with Satan was the light invention of a
+miser or a man in love. On the contrary, nature and good sense alike
+inform us that it was only the last resource of an overwhelming
+despair, under the weight of dreadful outrages and dreadful
+sufferings.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But those great sufferings, we are told, must have been greatly
+lightened about the time of St. Louis, who forbade private wars among
+the nobles. My own opinion is quite the reverse. During the fourscore
+or hundred years that elapsed between his prohibition and the wars
+with England (1240-1340), the great lords being debarred from the
+accustomed sport of burning and plundering their neighbours’ lands,
+became a terror to their own vassals. For the latter such a peace was
+simply war.
+
+The spiritual, the monkish lords, and others, as shown in the _Journal
+of Eudes Rigault_, lately published, make one shudder. It is a
+repulsive picture of profligacy at once savage and uncontrolled. The
+monkish lords especially assail the nunneries. The austere Rigault,
+Archbishop of Rouen, confessor of the holy king, conducts a personal
+inquiry into the state of Normandy. Every evening he comes to a
+monastery. In all of them he finds the monks leading the life of great
+feudal lords, wearing arms, getting drunk, fighting duels, keen
+huntsmen over all the cultivated land; the nuns living among them in
+wild confusion, and betraying everywhere the fruits of their shameless
+deeds.
+
+If things are so in the Church, what must the lay lords have been?
+What like was the inside of those dark towers which the folk below
+regarded with so much horror? Two tales, undoubtedly historical,
+namely, _Blue-Beard_ and _Griselda_, tell us something thereanent. To
+his vassals, his serfs, what indeed must have been this devotee of
+torture who treated his own family in such a way? He is known to us
+through the only man who was brought to trial for such deeds; and that
+not earlier than the fifteenth century,--Gilles de Retz, who kidnapped
+children.
+
+Sir Walter Scott’s Front de Bœuf, and the other lords of melodramas
+and romances, are but poor creatures in the face of these dreadful
+realities. The Templar also in _Ivanhoe_, is a weak artificial
+conception. The author durst not assay the foul reality of celibate
+life in the Temple, or within the castle walls. Few women were taken
+in there, being accounted not worth their keep. The romances of
+chivalry altogether belie the truth. It is remarkable, indeed, how
+often the literature of an age expresses the very opposite of its
+manners, as, for instance, the washy theatre of eclogues after
+Florian,[24] during the years of the Great Terror.
+
+    [24] A writer of eclogues, fables and dramas; in youth a
+    friend of Voltaire, afterwards imprisoned during the
+    Terror.--TRANS.
+
+The rooms in these castles, in such at least as may be seen to-day,
+speak more plainly than any books. Men-at-arms, pages, footmen,
+crammed together of nights under low-vaulted roofs, in the daytime
+kept on the battlements, on narrow terraces, in a state of most
+sickening weariness, lived only in their pranks down below; in feats
+no longer of arms on the neighbouring domains, but of hunting, ay, and
+hunting of men; insults, I may say, without number, outrages untold on
+families of serfs. The lord himself well knew that such an army of
+men, without women, could only be kept in order by letting them loose
+from time to time.
+
+The awful idea of a hell wherein God employs the very guiltiest of the
+wicked spirits to torture the less guilty delivered over to them for
+their sport,--this lovely dogma of the Middle Ages was exemplified to
+the last letter. Men felt that God was not among them. Each new raid
+betokened more and more clearly the kingdom of Satan, until men came
+to believe that thenceforth their prayers should be offered to him
+alone.
+
+Up in the castle there was laughing and joking. “The women-serfs were
+too ugly.” There is no question raised as to their beauty. The great
+pleasure lay in deeds of outrage, in striking and making them weep.
+Even in the seventeenth century the great ladies died with laughing,
+when the Duke of Lorraine told them how, in peaceful villages, his
+people went about harrying and torturing all the women, even to the
+old.
+
+These outrages fell most frequently, as we might suppose, on families
+well to do and comparatively distinguished among the serfs; the
+families, namely, of those serf-born mayors, who already in the
+twelfth century appear at the head of the village. By the nobles they
+were hated, jeered, cruelly plagued. Their newborn moral dignity was
+not to be forgiven. Their wives and daughters were not allowed to be
+good and wise: they had no right to be held in any respect. Their
+honour was not their own. _Serfs of the body_, such was the cruel
+phrase cast for ever in their teeth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In days to come people will be slow to believe, that the law among
+Christian nations went beyond anything decreed concerning the olden
+slavery; that it wrote down as an actual right the most grievous
+outrage that could ever wound man’s heart. The lord spiritual had this
+foul privilege no less than the lord temporal. In a parish outside
+Bourges, the parson, as being a lord, expressly claimed the
+firstfruits of the bride, but was willing to sell his rights to the
+husband.[25]
+
+    [25] Lauriere, ii. 100 (on the word _Marquette_). Michelet,
+    _Origines du Droit_, 264.
+
+It has been too readily believed that this wrong was formal, not real.
+But the price laid down in certain countries for getting a
+dispensation, exceeded the means of almost every peasant. In Scotland,
+for instance, the demand was for “several cows:” a price immense,
+impossible. So the poor young wife was at their mercy. Besides, the
+Courts of Béarn openly maintain that this right grew up naturally:
+“The eldest-born of the peasant is accounted the son of his lord, for
+he perchance it was who begat him.”[26]
+
+    [26] When I published my _Origines_ in 1837, I could not have
+    known this work, published in 1842.
+
+All feudal customs, even if we pass over this, compel the bride to go
+up to the castle, bearing thither the “wedding-dish.” Surely it was a
+cruel thing to make her trust herself amongst such a pack of celibate
+dogs, so shameless and so ungovernable.
+
+A shameful scene we may well imagine it to have been. As the young
+husband is leading his bride to the castle, fancy the laughter of
+cavaliers and footmen, the frolics of the pages around the wretched
+poor! But the presence of the great lady herself will check them? Not
+at all. The lady in whose delicate breeding the romances tell us to
+believe,[27] but who, in her husband’s absence, ruled his men,
+judging, chastising, ordaining penalties, to whom her husband himself
+was bound by the fiefs she brought him,--such a lady would be in no
+wise merciful, especially towards a girl-serf who happened also to be
+good-looking. Since, according to the custom of those days, she openly
+kept her gentleman and her page, she would not be sorry to sanction
+her own libertinism by that of her husband.
+
+    [27] This delicacy appears in the treatment these ladies
+    inflicted on their poet Jean de Meung, author of the _Roman
+    de la Rose_.
+
+Nothing will she do to hinder the fun, the sport they are making out
+of yon poor trembler who has come to redeem his bride. They begin by
+bargaining with him; they laugh at the pangs endured by “the miserly
+peasant;” they suck the very blood and marrow of him. Why all this
+fury? Because he is neatly clad; is honest, settled; is a man of mark
+in the village. Why, indeed? Because she is pious, chaste, and pure;
+because she loves him; because she is frightened and falls a-weeping.
+Her sweet eyes plead for pity.
+
+In vain does the poor wretch offer all he has, even to her dowry: it
+is all too little. Angered at such cruel injustice, he will say
+perhaps that “his neighbour paid nothing.” The insolent fellow! he
+would argue with us! Thereon they gather round him, a yelling mob:
+sticks and brooms pelt upon him like hail. They jostle him, they throw
+him down. “You jealous villain, you Lent-faced villain!” they cry; “no
+one takes your wife from you; you shall have her back to-night, and to
+enhance the honour done you ... your eldest child will be a baron!”
+Everyone looks out of window at the absurd figure of this dead man in
+wedding garments. He is followed by bursts of laughter, and the noisy
+rabble, down to the lowest scullion, give chase to the “cuckold.”[28]
+
+    [28] The old tales are very sportive, but rather monotonous.
+    They turn on three jokes only: the despair of the _cuckold_,
+    the cries of the _beaten_, the wry faces of the _hanged_. The
+    first is amusing, the second laughable, the third, as crown
+    of all, makes people split their sides. And the three have
+    one point in common: it is the weak and helpless who is
+    ill-used.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The poor fellow would have burst, had he nothing to hope for from the
+Devil. By himself he returns: is the house empty as well as desolate?
+No, there is company waiting for him there: by the fireside sits
+Satan.
+
+But soon his bride comes back, poor wretch, all pale and undone. Alas!
+alas! for her condition. At his feet she throws herself and craves
+forgiveness. Then, with a bursting heart, he flings his arms round her
+neck. He weeps, he sobs, he roars, till the house shakes again.
+
+But with her comes back God. For all her suffering, she is pure,
+innocent, holy still. Satan for that nonce will get no profit: the
+treaty is not yet ripe.
+
+Our silly Fabliaux, our absurd tales, assume with regard to this
+deadly outrage and all its further issues, that the woman sides with
+her oppressors against her husband; they would have us believe that
+her brutal treatment by the former makes her happy and transports her
+with delight. A likely thing indeed! Doubtless she might be seduced by
+rank, politeness, elegant manners. But no pains are ever taken to that
+end. Great would be the scoffing at anyone who made true-love’s wooing
+towards a serf. The whole gang of men, to the chaplain, the butler,
+even the footmen, would think they honoured her by deeds of outrage.
+The smallest page thought himself a great lord, if he only seasoned
+his love with insolence and blows.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One day, the poor woman, having just been ill-treated during her
+husband’s absence, begins weeping, and saying quite aloud, the while
+she is tying up her long hair, “Ah, those unhappy saints of the woods,
+what boots it to offer them my vows? Are they deaf, or have they grown
+too old? Why have I not some protecting spirit, strong and
+mighty--wicked even, if it need be? Some such I see in stone at the
+church-door; but what do they there? Why do they not go to their
+proper dwelling, the castle, to carry off and roast those sinners? Oh,
+who is there will give me power and might? I would gladly give myself
+in exchange. Ah, me, what is it I would give? What have I to give on
+my side? Nothing is left me. Out on this body, out on this soul, a
+mere cinder now! Why, instead of this useless goblin, have I not some
+spirit, great, strong, and mighty, to help me?”
+
+“My darling mistress! If I am small, it is your fault; and bigger I
+cannot grow. And besides, if I were very big, neither you nor your
+husband would have borne with me. You would have driven me away with
+your priests and your holy water. I can be strong, however, if you
+please. For, mistress mine, the spirits in themselves are neither
+great nor small, neither weak nor strong. For him who wishes it, the
+smallest can become a giant.”
+
+“In what way?”
+
+“Why, nothing can be simpler. To make him a giant, you must grant him
+only one gift.”
+
+“What is that?”
+
+“A lovely woman-soul.”
+
+“Ah, wicked one! What then art thou, and what wouldst thou have?”
+
+“Only what you give me every day.... Would you be better than the lady
+up yonder? She has pledged her soul to her husband and to her lover,
+and yet she yields it whole to her page. I am more than a page to you,
+more than a servant. In how many matters have I not been your little
+handmaid! Do not blush, nor be angry. Let me only say, that I am all
+about you, and already perhaps in you. Else, how could I know your
+thoughts, even those which you hide from yourself? Who am I, then?
+Your little soul, which speaks thus openly to the great one. We are
+inseparable. Do you know how long I have been with you? Some thousand
+years, for I belonged to your mother, to hers, to your ancestors. I am
+the Spirit of the Fireside.”
+
+“Tempter! What wilt thou do?”
+
+“Why, thy husband shall be rich, thyself mighty, and men shall fear
+thee.”
+
+“Where am I? Surely thou art the demon of hidden treasures!”
+
+“Why call me demon, if I do deeds of justice, of goodness, of piety?
+God cannot be everywhere--He cannot be always working. Sometimes He
+likes to rest, leaving us other spirits here to carry on the smaller
+husbandry, to remedy the ills which his providence passed over, which
+his justice forgot to handle.
+
+“Of this your husband is an example. Poor, deserving workman, he is
+killing himself and gaining nought in return. Heaven has had no time
+to look after him. But I, though rather jealous of him, still love my
+kind host. I pity him: his strength is going, he can bear up no
+longer. He will die, like your children, already dead of misery. This
+winter he was ill; what will become of him the next?”
+
+Thereon, her face in her hands, she wept two, three hours, and even
+more. And when she had poured out all her tears--her bosom still
+throbbing hard--the other said, “I ask nothing: only, I pray, save
+him.”
+
+She had promised nothing, but from that hour she became his.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+POSSESSION.
+
+
+A dreadful age was the age of gold; for thus do I call that hard time
+when gold first came into use. This was in the year 1300, during the
+reign of that Fair King[29] who never spake a word; the great king who
+seemed to have a dumb devil, but a devil with mighty arm, strong
+enough to burn the Temple, long enough to reach Rome, and with glove
+of iron to deal the first good blow at the Pope.
+
+    [29] Philip the Fair of France, who put down the Templar in
+    Paris, and first secured the liberties of the Gallican
+    Church.--TRANS.
+
+Gold thereupon becomes a great pope, a mighty god, and not without
+cause. The movement began in Europe with the Crusades: the only wealth
+men cared for was that which having wings could lend itself to their
+enterprise; the wealth, namely, of swift exchanges. To strike blows
+afar off the king wants nothing but gold. An army of gold, a fiscal
+army, spreads over all the land. The lord, who has brought back with
+him his dreams of the East, is always longing for its wonders, for
+damascened armour, carpets, spices, valuable steeds. For all such
+things he needs gold. He pushes away with his foot the serf who
+brings him corn. “That is not all; I want gold!”
+
+On that day the world was changed. Theretofore in the midst of much
+evil there had always been a harmless certainty about the tax.
+According as the year was good or bad, the rent followed the course of
+nature and the measure of the harvest. If the lord said, “This is
+little,” he was answered, “My lord, Heaven has granted us no more.”
+
+But the gold, alas! where shall we find it? We have no army to seize
+it in the towns of Flanders. Where shall we dig the ground to win him
+his treasure? Oh, that the spirit of hidden treasures would be our
+guide![30]
+
+    [30] The devils trouble the world all through the Middle
+    Ages; but not before the thirteenth century does Satan put on
+    a settled shape. “_Compacts_,” says M. Maury, “are very rare
+    before that epoch;” and I believe him. How could they treat
+    with one who as yet had no real existence? Neither of the
+    treating parties was yet ripe for the contract. Before the
+    will could be reduced to the dreadful pass of selling itself
+    for ever, it must be made thoroughly desperate. It is not the
+    unhappy who falls into despair, but the truly wretched, who
+    being quite conscious of his misery, and having yet more to
+    suffer, can find no escape therefrom. The wretched in this
+    way are the men of the fourteenth century, from whom they ask
+    a thing so impossible as payments in gold. In this and the
+    following chapter I have touched on the circumstances, the
+    feelings, the growing despair, which brought about the
+    enormity of _compacts_, and, worse still than these, the
+    dreadful character of the _Witch_. If the name was freely
+    used, the thing itself was then rare, being no less than a
+    marriage and a kind of priesthood. For ease of illustration,
+    I have joined together the details of so delicate a scrutiny
+    by a thread of fiction. The outward body of it matters
+    little. The essential point is to remember that such things
+    were not caused, as they try to persuade us, by _human
+    fickleness, by the inconstancy of our fallen nature, by the
+    chance persuasions of desire_. There was needed the deadly
+    pressure of an age of iron, of cruel needs: it was needful
+    that Hell itself should seem a shelter, an asylum, by
+    contrast with the hell below.
+
+While all are desperate, the woman with the goblin is already seated
+on her sacks of corn in the little neighbouring village. She is alone,
+the rest being still at their debate in the village.
+
+She sells at her own price. But even when the rest come up, everything
+favours her, some strange magical allurement working on her side. No
+one bargains with her. Her husband, before his time, brings his rent
+in good sounding coin to the feudal elm. “Amazing!” they all say, “but
+the Devil is in her!”
+
+They laugh, but she does not. She is sorrowful and afraid. In vain she
+tries to pray that night. Strange prickings disturb her slumber.
+Fantastic forms appear before her. The small gentle sprite seems to
+have grown imperious. He waxes bold. She is uneasy, indignant, eager
+to rise. In her sleep she groans, and feels herself dependent, saying,
+“No more do I belong to myself!”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“Here is a sensible countryman,” says the lord; “he pays beforehand!
+You charm me: do you know accounts?”--“A little.”--“Well then, you
+shall reckon with these folk. Every Saturday you shall sit under the
+elm and receive their money. On Sunday, before mass, you shall bring
+it up to the castle.”
+
+What a change in their condition! How the wife’s heart beats when of a
+Saturday she sees her poor workman, serf though he be, seated like a
+lordling under the baronial shades. At first he feels giddy, but in
+time accustoms himself to put on a grave air. It is no joking matter,
+indeed; for the lord commands them to show him due respect. When he
+has gone up to the castle, and the jealous ones look like laughing and
+designing to pay him off, “You see that battlement,” says the lord,
+“the rope you don’t see, but it is also ready. The first man who
+touches him shall be set up there high and quick.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This speech is repeated from one to another; until it has spread
+around these two as it were an atmosphere of terror. Everybody doffs
+his hat to them, bowing very low indeed. But when they pass by, folk
+stand aloof, and get out of the way. In order to shirk them they turn
+up cross roads, with backs bended, with eyes turned carefully down.
+Such a change makes them first savage, but afterwards sorrowful. They
+walk alone through all the district. The wife’s shrewdness marks the
+hostile scorn of the castle, the trembling hate of those below. She
+feels herself fearfully isolated between two perils. No one to defend
+her but her lord, or rather the money they pay him: but then to find
+that money, to spur on the peasant’s slowness, and overcome his
+sluggish antagonism, to snatch somewhat even from him who has nothing,
+what hard pressure, what threats, what cruelty, must be employed! This
+was never in the goodman’s line of business. The wife brings him to
+the mark by dint of much pushing: she says to him, “Be rough; at need
+be cruel. Strike hard. Otherwise you will fall short of your
+engagements; and then we are undone.”
+
+This suffering by day, however, is a trifle in comparison with the
+tortures of the night. She seems to have lost the power of sleeping.
+She gets up, walks to and fro, and roams about the house. All is
+still; and yet how the house is altered; its old innocence, its sweet
+security all for ever gone! “Of what is that cat by the hearth
+a-thinking, as she pretends to sleep, and ’tweenwhiles opens her green
+eyes upon me? The she-goat with her long beard, looking so discreet
+and ominous, knows more about it than she can tell. And yon cow which
+the moon reveals by glimpses in her stall, why does she give me such a
+sidelong look? All this is surely unnatural!”
+
+Shivering, she returns to her husband’s side. “Happy man, how deep his
+slumber! Mine is over; I cannot sleep, I never shall sleep again.” In
+time, however, she falls off. But oh, what suffering visits her then!
+The importunate guest is beside her, demanding and giving his orders.
+If one while she gets rid of him by praying or making the sign of the
+cross, anon he returns under another form. “Get back, devil! What
+durst thou? I am a Christian soul. No, thou shalt not touch me!”
+
+In revenge he puts on a hundred hideous forms; twining as an adder
+about her bosom, dancing as a frog upon her stomach, anon like a bat,
+sharp-snouted, covering her scared mouth with dreadful kisses. What is
+it he wants? To drive her into a corner, so that conquered and crushed
+at last, she may yield and utter the word “Yes.” Still she is resolute
+to say “No.” Still she is bent on braving the cruel struggles of every
+night, the endless martyrdom of that wasting strife.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“How far can a spirit make himself withal a body? What reality can
+there be in his efforts and approaches? Would she be sinning in the
+flesh, if she allowed the intrusions of one who was always roaming
+about her? Would that be sheer adultery?” Such was the sly roundabout
+way in which sometimes he stayed and weakened her resistance. “If I am
+only a breath, a smoke, a thin air, as so many doctors call me, why
+are you afraid, poor fearful soul, and how does it concern your
+husband?”
+
+It is the painful doom of the soul in these Middle Ages, that a number
+of questions which to us would seem idle, questions of pure
+scholastics, disturb, frighten, and torment it, taking the guise of
+visions, sometimes of devilish debatings, of cruel dialogues carried
+on within. The Devil, fierce as he shows himself in the demoniacs,
+remains always a spirit throughout the days of the Roman Empire, even
+in the time of St. Martin or the fifth century. With the Barbarian
+inroads he waxes barbarous, and takes to himself a body. So great a
+body does he become, that he amuses himself in breaking with stones
+the bell of the convent of St. Benedict. More and more fleshly is he
+made to appear, by way of frightening the plunderers of ecclesiastical
+goods. People are taught to believe that sinners will be tormented not
+in the spirit only, but even bodily in the flesh; that they will
+suffer material tortures, not those of ideal flames, but in very deed
+such exquisite pangs as burning coals, gridirons, and red-hot spits
+can awaken.
+
+This conception of the torturing devils inflicting material agonies on
+the souls of the dead, was a mine of gold to the Church. The living,
+pierced with grief and pity, asked themselves “if it were possible to
+redeem these poor souls from one world to another; if to these, too,
+might be applied such forms of expiation, by atonement and compromise,
+as were practised upon earth?” This bridge between two worlds was
+found in Cluny, which from its very birth, about 900, became at once
+among the wealthiest of the monastic orders.
+
+So long as God Himself dealt out his punishments, _making heavy his
+hand_, or striking _with the sword of the Angel_, according to the
+grand old phrase, there was much less of horror; if his hand was heavy
+as that of a judge, it was still the hand of a Father. The Angel who
+struck remained pure and clean as his own sword. Far otherwise is it
+when the execution is done by filthy demons, who resemble not the
+angel that burned up Sodom, but the angel that first went forth
+therefrom. In that place they stay, and their hell is a kind of Sodom,
+wherein these spirits, fouler than the sinners yielded into their
+charge, extract a horrible joy from the tortures they are inflicting.
+Such was the teaching to be found in the simple carvings hung out at
+the doors of churches. By these men learned the horrible lesson of the
+pleasures of pain. On pretence of punishing, the devils wreaked upon
+their victims the most outrageous whims. Truly an immoral and most
+shameful idea was this, of a sham justice that befriended the worse
+side, deepening its wickedness by the present of a plaything, and
+corrupting the Demon himself!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Cruel times indeed! Think how dark and low a heaven it was, how
+heavily it weighed on the head of man! Fancy the poor little children
+from their earliest years imbued with such awful ideas, and trembling
+within their cradles! Look at the pure innocent virgin believing
+herself damned for the pleasure infused in her by the spirit! And the
+wife in her marriage-bed tortured by his attacks, withstanding him,
+and yet again feeling him within her!--a fearful feeling known to
+those who have suffered from tænia. You feel in yourself a double
+life; you trace the monster’s movements, now boisterous, anon soft and
+waving, and therein the more troublesome, as making you fancy yourself
+on the sea. Then you rush off in wild dismay, terrified at yourself,
+longing to escape, to die.
+
+Even at such times as the demon was not raging against her, the woman
+into whom he had once forced his way would wander about as one
+burdened with gloom. For thenceforth she had no remedy. He had taken
+fast hold of her, like an impure steam. He is the Prince of the Air,
+of storms, and not least of the storms within. All this may be seen
+rudely but forcefully presented under the great doorway of Strasburg
+Cathedral. Heading the band of _Foolish Virgins_, the wicked woman who
+lures them on to destruction is filled, blown out by the Devil, who
+overflows ignobly and passes out from under her skirts in a dark
+stream of thick smoke.
+
+This blowing-out is a painful feature in the _possession_; at once her
+punishment and her pride. This proud woman of Strasburg bears her
+belly well before her, while her head is thrown far back. She triumphs
+in her size, delights in being a monster.
+
+To this, however, the woman we are following has not yet come. But
+already she is puffed up with him, and with her new and lofty lot.
+The earth has ceased to bear her. Plump and comely in these better
+days, she goes down the street with head upright, and merciless in her
+scorn. She is feared, hated, admired.
+
+In look and bearing our village lady says, “I ought to be the great
+lady herself. And what does she up yonder, the shameless sluggard,
+amidst all those men, in the absence of her lord?” And now the rivalry
+is set on foot. The village, while it loathes her, is proud thereat.
+“If the lady of the castle is a baroness, our woman is a queen; and
+more than a queen,--we dare not say what.” Her beauty is a dreadful, a
+fantastic beauty, killing in its pride and pain. The Demon himself is
+in her eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He has her and yet has her not. She is still _herself_, and preserves
+_herself_. She belongs neither to the Demon nor to God. The Demon may
+certainly invade her, may encompass her like a fine atmosphere. And
+yet he has gained nothing at all; for he has no will thereto. She is
+_possessed_, _bedevilled_, and she does not belong to the Devil.
+Sometimes he uses her with dreadful cruelty, and yet gains nothing
+thereby. He places a coal of fire on her breast, or within her bowels.
+She jumps and writhes, but still says, “No, butcher, I will stay as I
+am.”
+
+“Take care! I will lash you with so cruel a scourge of vipers, I will
+smite you with such a blow, that you will afterwards go weeping and
+rending the air with your cries.”
+
+The next night he will not come. In the morning--it was Sunday--her
+husband went up to the castle. He came back all undone. The lord had
+said: “A brook that flows drop by drop cannot turn the mill. You bring
+me a halfpenny at a time, which is good for nought. I must set off in
+a fortnight. The king marches towards Flanders, and I have not even a
+war-horse, my own being lame ever since the tourney. Get ready for
+business: I am in want of a hundred pounds.”
+
+“But, my lord, where shall I find them?”
+
+“You may sack the whole village, if you will; I am about to give you
+men enough. Tell your churls, if the money is not forthcoming they are
+lost men; yourself especially--you shall die. I have had enough of
+you: you have the heart of a woman; you are slack and sluggish. You
+shall die--you shall pay for your cowardice, your effeminacy. Stay; it
+makes but very small difference whether you go down now, or whether I
+keep you here. This is Sunday: right loudly would the folk yonder
+laugh to see you dangling your legs from my battlements.”
+
+All this the unhappy man tells again to his wife; and preparing
+hopelessly for death, commends his soul to God. She being just as
+frightened, can neither lie down nor sleep. What is to be done? How
+sorry she is now to have sent the spirit away! If he would but come
+back! In the morning, when her husband rises, she sinks crushed upon
+the bed. She has hardly done so, when she feels on her chest a heavy
+weight. Gasping for breath, she is like to choke. The weight falls
+lower till it presses on her stomach, and therewithal on her arms she
+feels the grasp as of two steel hands.
+
+“You wanted me, and here I am. So, at last, stubborn one, I have your
+soul--at last!”
+
+“But oh, sir, is it mine to give away? My poor husband! you used to
+love him--you said so: you promised----”
+
+“Your husband! You forget. Are you sure your thoughts were always kept
+upon him? Your soul! I ask for it as a favour; but it is already
+mine.”
+
+“No, sir,” she says--her pride once more returning to her, even in so
+dire a strait--“no, sir; that soul belongs to me, to my husband, to
+our marriage rites.”
+
+“Ah, incorrigible little fool! you would struggle still, even now that
+you are under the goad! I have seen your soul at all hours; I know it
+better than you yourself. Day by day did I mark your first
+reluctances, your pains, and your fits of despair. I saw how
+disheartened you were when, in a low tone, you said that no one could
+be held to an impossibility. And then I saw you growing more resigned.
+You were beaten a little, and you cried out not very loud. As for me,
+I ask for your soul simply because you have already lost it.
+Meanwhile, your husband is dying. What is to be done? I am sorry for
+you: I have you in my power; but I want something more. You must
+grant it frankly and of free will, or else he is a dead man.”
+
+She answered very low, in her sleep, “Ah me! my body and my miserable
+flesh, you may take them to save my husband; but my heart, never. No
+one has ever had it, and I cannot give it away.”
+
+So, all resignedly she waited there. And he flung at her two words:
+“Keep them, and they will save you.” Therewith she shuddered, felt
+within her a horrible thrill of fire, and, uttering a loud cry, awoke
+in the arms of her astonished husband, to drown him in a flood of
+tears.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She tore herself away by force, and got up, fearing lest she should
+forget those two important words. Her husband was alarmed; for,
+without looking even at him, she darted on the wall a glance as
+piercing as that of Medea. Never was she more handsome. In her dark
+eye and the yellowish white around it played such a glimmer as one
+durst not face--a glimmer like the sulphurous jet of a volcano.
+
+She walked straight to the town. The first word was “_Green_.” Hanging
+at a tradesman’s door she beheld a green gown--the colour of the
+Prince of the World--an old gown, which as she put it on became new
+and glossy. Then she walked, without asking anyone, straight to the
+door of a Jew, at which she knocked loudly. It was opened with great
+caution. The poor Jew was sitting on the ground, covered over with
+ashes. “My dear, I must have a hundred pounds.”
+
+“Oh, madam, how am I to get them? The Prince-bishop of the town has
+just had my teeth drawn to make me say where my gold lies.[31] Look at
+my bleeding mouth.”
+
+    [31] This was a common way of extracting help from the Jews.
+    King John Lackland often tried it.
+
+“I know, I know; but I come to obtain from you the very means of
+destroying your Bishop. When the Pope gets a cuffing, the Bishop will
+not hold out long.”
+
+“Who says so?”
+
+“_Toledo._”[32]
+
+    [32] Toledo seems to have been the holy city of Wizards, who
+    in Spain were numberless. These relations with the civilized
+    Moors, with the Jews so learned and paramount in Spain, as
+    managers of the royal revenues, had given them a very high
+    degree of culture, and in Toledo they formed a kind of
+    University. In the sixteenth century, it was christianised,
+    remodelled, reduced to mere _white magic_. See the
+    _Deposition of the Wizard Achard, Lord of Beaumont, a
+    Physician of Poitou_. Lancre, _Incredulité_, p. 781.
+
+He hung his head. She spoke and blew: within her was her own soul and
+the Devil to boot. A wondrous warmth filled the room: he himself was
+aware of a kind of fiery fountain. “Madam,” said he, looking at her
+from under his eyes, “poor and ruined as I am, I had some pence still
+in store to sustain my poor children.”
+
+“You will not repent of it, Jew. I will swear to you the _great oath_
+that kills whoso breaks it. What you are about to give me, you shall
+receive back in a week, at an early hour in the morning. This I swear
+by your _great oath_ and by mine, which is yet greater: ‘_Toledo_.’”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A year went by. She had grown round and plump; had made herself one
+mass of gold. Men were amazed at her power of charming. Every one
+admired and obeyed her. By some devilish miracle the Jew had grown so
+generous as to lend at the slightest signal. By herself she maintained
+the castle, both through her own credit in the town, and through the
+fear inspired in the village by her rough extortion. The all-powerful
+green gown floated to and fro, ever newer and more beautiful. Her own
+beauty grew, as it were, colossal with success and pride. Frightened
+at a result so natural, everyone said, “At her time of life how tall
+she grows!”
+
+Meanwhile we have some news: the lord is coming home. The lady, who
+for a long time had not dared to come forth, lest she might meet the
+face of this other woman down below, now mounted her white horse.
+Surrounded by all her people, she goes to meet her husband; she stops
+and salutes him.
+
+And, first of all, she says, “How long I have been looking for you!
+Why did you leave your faithful wife so long a languishing widow? And
+yet I will not take you in to-night, unless you grant me a boon.”
+
+“Ask it, ask it, fair lady,” says the gentleman laughing; “but make
+haste, for I am eager to embrace you. How beautiful you have grown!”
+
+She whispered in his ear, so that no one knew what she said. Before
+going up to the castle the worthy lord dismounts by the village
+church, and goes in. Under the porch, at the head of the chief people,
+he beholds a lady, to whom without knowing her he offers a low salute.
+With matchless pride she bears high over the men’s heads the towering
+horned bonnet (_hennin_[33]) of the period; the triumphal cap of the
+Devil, as it was often called, because of the two horns wherewith it
+was embellished. The real lady, blushing at her eclipse, went out
+looking very small. Anon she muttered, angrily, “There goes your serf.
+It is all over: everything has changed places: the ass insults the
+horse.”
+
+    [33] The absurd head-dress of the women, with its one and
+    often two horns sloping back from the head, in the fourteenth
+    century.--TRANS.
+
+As they are going off, a bold page, a pet of the lady’s, draws from
+his girdle a well-sharpened dagger, and with a single turn cleverly
+cuts the fine robe along her loins.[34] The crowd was astonished, but
+began to make it out when it saw the whole of the Baron’s household
+going off in pursuit of her. Swift and merciless about her whistled
+and fell the strokes of the whip. She flies, but slowly, being already
+grown somewhat heavy. She has hardly gone twenty paces when she
+stumbles; her best friend having put a stone in her way to trip her
+up. Amidst roars of laughter she sprawls yelling on the ground. But
+the ruthless pages flog her up again. The noble handsome greyhounds
+help in the chase and bite her in the tenderest places. At last, in
+sad disorder, amidst the terrible crowd, she reaches the door of her
+house. It is shut. There with hands and feet she beats away, crying,
+“Quick, quick, my love, open the door for me!” There hung she, like
+the hapless screech-owl whom they nail up on a farm-house door; and
+still as hard as ever rained the blows. Within the house all is deaf.
+Is the husband there? Or rather, being rich and frightened, does he
+dread the crowd, lest they should sack his house?
+
+    [34] Such cruel outrages were common in those days. By the
+    French and Anglo-Saxon laws, lewdness was thus punished.
+    Grimm, 679, 711. Sternhook, 19, 326. Ducange, iii. 52.
+    Michelet, _Origines_, 386, 389. By and by, the same rough
+    usage is dealt out to honest women, to citizen’s wives, whose
+    pride the nobles seek to abase. We know the kind of ambush
+    into which the tyrant Hagenbach drew the honourable ladies of
+    the chief burghers in Alsace, probably in scorn of their rich
+    and royal costume, all silks and gold. In my _Origines_ I
+    have also related the strange claim made by the Lord of Pacé,
+    in Anjou, on the pretty (and honest) women of the
+    neighbourhood. They were to bring to the castle fourpence and
+    a chaplet of flowers, and to dance with his officers: a
+    dangerous trip, in which they might well fear some such
+    affronts as those offered by Hagenbach. They were forced to
+    obey by the threat of being stripped and pricked with a goad
+    bearing the impress of the lord’s arms.
+
+And now she has borne such misery, such strokes, such sounding
+buffets, that she sinks down in a swoon. On the cold stone threshold
+she finds herself seated, naked, half-dead, her bleeding flesh covered
+with little else than the waves of her long hair. Some one from the
+castle says, “No more now! We do not want her to die.”
+
+They leave her alone, to hide herself. But in spirit she can see the
+merriment going on at the castle. The lord however, somewhat dazed,
+said that he was sorry for it. But the chaplain says, in his meek way,
+“If this woman is _bedevilled_, as they say, my lord, you owe it to
+your good vassals, you owe it to the whole country, to hand her over
+to Holy Church. Since all that business with the Templars and the
+Pope, what way the Demon is making! Nothing but fire will do for him.”
+Upon which a Dominican says, “Your reverence has spoken right well.
+This devilry is a heresy in the highest degree. The bedevilled, like
+the heretic, should be burnt. Some of our good fathers, however, do
+not trust themselves now even to the fire. Wisely they desire that,
+before all things, the soul may be slowly purged, tried, subdued by
+fastings; that it may not be burnt in its pride, that it shall not
+triumph at the stake. If you, madam, in the greatness of your piety,
+of your charity, would take the trouble to work upon this woman,
+putting her for some years _in pace_ in a safe cell, of which you
+only should have the key,--by thus keeping up the chastening process
+you might be doing good to her soul, shaming the Devil, and giving
+herself up meek and humble into the hands of the Church.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE COVENANT.
+
+
+Nothing was wanting but the victim. They knew that to bring this woman
+before her was the most charming present she could receive. Tenderly
+would she have acknowledged the devotion of anyone who would have
+given her so great a token of his love, by delivering that poor
+bleeding body into her hands.
+
+But the prey was aware of the hunters. A few minutes later and she
+would have been carried off, to be for ever sealed up beneath the
+stone. Wrapping herself in some rags found by chance in the stable,
+she took to herself wings of some kind, and before midnight gained
+some out-of-the-way spot on a lonely moor all covered with briars and
+thistles. It was on the skirts of a wood, where by the uncertain light
+she might gather a few acorns, to swallow them like a beast. Ages had
+elapsed since evening; she was utterly changed. Beauty and queen of
+the village no more, she seemed with the change in her spirit to have
+changed her postures also. Among her acorns she squatted like a boar
+or a monkey. Thoughts far from human circled within her as she heard,
+or seemed to hear the hooting of an owl, followed by a burst of
+shrill laughter. She felt afraid, but perhaps it was the merry
+mockbird mimicking all those sounds, according to its wonted fashion.
+
+But the laughter begins again: whence comes it? She can see nothing.
+Apparently it comes from an old oak. Distinctly, however, she hears
+these words: “So, here you are at last! You have come with an ill
+grace; nor would you have come now, if you had not tried the full
+depth of your last need. You were fain first to run the gauntlet of
+whips; to cry out and plead for mercy, haughty as you were; to be
+mocked, undone, forsaken, unsheltered even by your husband. Where
+would you have been this night, if I had not been charitable enough to
+show you the _in pace_ getting ready for you in the tower? Late, very
+late, you are in coming to me, and only after they have called you the
+_old woman_. In your youth you did not treat me well, when I was your
+wee goblin, so eager to serve you. Now take your turn, if so I wish
+it, to serve me and kiss my feet.
+
+“You were mine from birth through your inborn wickedness, through
+those devilish charms of yours. I was your lover, your husband. Your
+own has shut his door against you: I will not shut mine. I welcome you
+to my domains, my free prairies, my woods. How am I the gainer, you
+may say? Could I not long since have had you at any hour? Were you
+not invaded, possessed, filled with my flame? I changed your blood
+and renewed it: not a vein in your body where I do not flow. You know
+not yourself how utterly you are mine. But our wedding has yet to be
+celebrated with all the forms. I have some manners, and feel rather
+scrupulous. Let us be one for everlasting.”
+
+“Oh! sir, in my present state, what should I say? For a long, long
+while back have I felt, too truly felt, that you were all my fate.
+With evil intent you caressed me, loaded me with favours, and made me
+rich, in order at length to cast me down. Yesterday, when the black
+greyhound bit my poor naked flesh, its teeth scorched me, and I said,
+‘’Tis he!’ At night when that daughter of Herodias with her foul
+language scared the company, somebody put them up to the promising her
+my blood; and that was you!”
+
+“True; but ’twas I who saved you and brought you hither. I did
+everything, as you have guessed. I ruined you, and why? That I might
+have you all to myself. To speak frankly, I was tired of your husband.
+You took to haggling and pettifogging: far otherwise do I go to work;
+I want all or none. This is why I have moulded and drilled you,
+polished and ripened you, for my own behoof. Such, you see, is my
+delicacy of taste. I don’t take, as people imagine, those foolish
+souls who would give themselves up at once. I prefer the choicer
+spirits, who have reached a certain dainty stage of fury and despair.
+Stop: I must let you know how pleasant you look at this moment. You
+are a great beauty, a most desirable soul. I have loved you ever so
+long, but now I am hungering for you.
+
+“I will do things on a large scale, not being one of those husbands
+who reckon with their betrothed. If you wanted only riches, you should
+have them in a trice. If you wanted to be queen in the stead of Joan
+of Navarre, that too, though difficult, should be done, and the King
+would not lose much thereby in the matter of pride and haughtiness. My
+wife is greater than a queen. But, come, tell me what you wish.”
+
+“Sir, I ask only for the power of doing evil.”
+
+“A delightful answer, very delightful! Have I not cause to love you?
+In reality those words contain all the law and all the prophets. Since
+you have made so good a choice, all the rest shall be thrown in, over
+and above. You shall learn all my secrets. You shall see into the
+depths of the earth. The whole world shall come and pour out gold at
+thy feet. See here, my bride, I give you the true diamond,
+_Vengeance_. I know you, rogue; I know your most hidden desires. Ay,
+our hearts on that point understand each other well! Therein at least
+shall I have full possession of you. You shall behold your enemy on
+her knees at your feet, begging and praying for mercy, and only too
+happy to earn her release by doing whatever she has made you do. She
+will burst into tears; and you will graciously say, _No_: whereon she
+will cry, ‘Death and damnation!’ ... Come, I will make this my special
+business.”
+
+“Sir, I am at your service. I was thankless indeed, for you have
+always heaped favours on me. I am yours, my master, my god! None other
+do I desire. Sweet are your endearments, and very mild your service.”
+
+And so she worships him, tumbling on all-fours. At first she pays him,
+after the forms of the Temple, such homage as betokens the utter
+abandonment of the will. Her master, the Prince of this World, the
+Prince of the Winds, breathes upon her in his turn, like an eager
+spirit. She receives at once the three sacraments, in reverse
+order--baptism, priesthood, and marriage. In this new Church, the
+exact opposite of the other, everything must be done the wrong way.
+Meekly, patiently, she endures the cruel initiation,[35] borne up by
+that one word, “Vengeance!”
+
+    [35] This will be explained further on. We must guard against
+    the pedantic additions of the sixteenth century writers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Far from being crushed or weakened by the infernal thunderbolt, she
+arose with an awful vigour and flashing eyes. The moon, which for a
+moment had chastely covered herself, took flight on seeing her again.
+Blown out to an amazing degree by the hellish vapour, filled with
+fire, with fury, and with some new ineffable desire, she grew for a
+while enormous with excess of fulness, and displayed a terrible
+beauty. She looked around her, and all nature was changed. The trees
+had gotten a tongue, and told of things gone by. The herbs became
+simples. The plants which yesterday she trod upon as so much hay, were
+now as people discoursing on the art of medicine.
+
+She awoke on the morrow far, very far, from her enemies, in a state of
+thorough security. She had been sought after, but they had only found
+some scattered shreds of her unlucky green gown. Had she in her
+despair flung herself headlong into the torrent? Or had she been
+carried off alive by the Devil? No one could tell. Either way she was
+certainly damned, which greatly consoled the lady for having failed to
+find her.
+
+Had they seen her they would hardly have known her again, she was so
+changed. Only the eyes remained, not brilliant, but armed with a very
+strange and a rather deterring glimmer. She herself was afraid of
+frightening: she never lowered them, but looked sideways, so that the
+full force of their beams might be lost by slanting them. From the
+sudden browning of her hue people would have said that she had passed
+through the flame. But the more watchful felt that the flame was
+rather in herself, that she bore about her an impure and scorching
+heat. The fiery dart with which Satan had pierced her was still
+there, and, as through a baleful lamp, shot forth a wild, but
+fearfully witching sheen. Shrinking from her, you would yet stand
+still, with a strange trouble filling your every sense.
+
+She saw herself at the mouth of one of those troglodyte caves, such as
+you find without number in the hills of the Centre and the West of
+France. It was in the borderland, then wild, between the country of
+Merlin and the country of Melusina. Some moors stretching out of sight
+still bear witness to the ancient wars, the unceasing havoc, the many
+horrors, which prevented the country being peopled again. There the
+Devil was in his home. Of the few inhabitants most were his zealous
+worshippers. Whatever attractions he might have found in the rough
+brakes of Lorraine, the black pine-forests of the Jura, or the briny
+deserts of Burgos, his preferences lay, perhaps, in our western
+marches. There might be found not only the visionary shepherd, that
+Satanic union of the goat and the goatherd, but also a closer
+conspiracy with nature, a deeper insight into remedies and poisons, a
+mysterious connection, whose links we know not, with Toledo the
+learned, the University of the Devil.
+
+The winter was setting in: its breath having first stripped the trees,
+had heaped together the leaves and small boughs of dead wood. All this
+she found prepared for her at the mouth of her gloomy den. By a wood
+and moor, half a mile across, you came down within reach of some
+villages, which had grown up beside a watercourse. “Behold your
+kingdom!” said the voice within her. “To-day a beggar, to-morrow you
+shall be queen of the whole land.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE KING OF THE DEAD.
+
+
+At first she was not much affected by promises like these. A lonely
+hermitage without God, amidst the great monotonous breezes of the
+West, amidst memories all the more ruthless for that mighty solitude,
+of such heavy losses, such sharp affronts; a widowhood so hard and
+sudden, away from the husband who had left her to her shame--all this
+was enough to bow her down. Plaything of fate, she seemed like the
+wretched weed upon the moor, having no root, but tossed to and fro,
+lashed and cruelly cut by the north-east winds; or rather, perhaps,
+like the grey, many-cornered coral, which only sticks fast to get more
+easily broken. The children trampled on her; the people said, with a
+laugh, “She is the bride of the winds.”
+
+Wildly she laughed at herself when she thought on the comparison. But,
+from the depth of her dark cave, she heard,--
+
+“Ignorant and witless, you know not what you say. The plant thus
+tossing to and fro may well look down upon the rank and vulgar herbs.
+If it tosses, it is, at least, all self-contained--itself both flower
+and seed. Do thou be like it; be thine own root, and even in the
+whirlwind thou wilt still bear thy blossom: our own flowers for
+ourselves, as they come forth from the dust of tombs and the ashes of
+volcanoes.
+
+“To thee, first flower of Satan, do I this day grant the knowledge of
+my former name, my olden power. I was, I am, the _King of the Dead_.
+Ay, have I not been sadly slandered? ’Tis I who alone can make them
+reappear; a boon untold, for which I surely deserved an altar.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To pierce the future and to call up the past, to forestal and to live
+again the swift-flying moments, to enlarge the present with that which
+has been and that which will be--these are the two things forbidden to
+the Middle Ages; but forbidden in vain. Nature is invincible; nothing
+can be gained in such a quarter. He who thus errs is _a man_. It is
+not for him to be rooted to his furrow, with eyes cast down, looking
+nowhere beyond the steps he takes behind his oxen. No: we will go
+forward with head upraised, looking further and looking deeper! This
+earth that we measure out with so much care, we kick our feet upon
+withal, and keep ever saying to it, “What dost thou hold in thy
+bowels? What secrets lie therein? Thou givest us back the grain we
+entrust to thee; but not that human seed, those beloved dead, we have
+lent into thy charge. Our friends, our loves, that lie there, will
+they never bud again? Oh, that we might see them, if only for one
+hour, if only for one moment!
+
+“Some day we ourselves shall reach the unknown land, whither they have
+already gone. But shall we see them again there? Shall we dwell with
+them? Where are they, and what are they doing? They must be kept very
+close prisoners, these dear dead of mine, to give me not one token!
+And how can I make them hear me? My father, too, whose only hope I
+was, who loved me with so mighty a love, why comes he never to me? Ah,
+me! on either side is bondage, imprisonment, mutual ignorance; a
+dismal night, where we look in vain for one glimmer!”[36]
+
+    [36] The glimmer shines forth in Dumesnil’s _Immortalité_,
+    and _La Foi Nouvelle_, in the _Ciel et Terre_ of Reynaud,
+    Henry Martin, &c.
+
+These everlasting thoughts of Nature, from having in olden times been
+simply mournful, became in the Middle Ages painful, bitter, weakening,
+and the heart thereby grew smaller. It seems as if they had reckoned
+on flattening the soul, on pressing and squeezing it down to the
+compass of a bier. The burial of the serf between four deal boards was
+well suited to such an end: it haunted one with the notion of being
+smothered. A person thus enclosed, if ever he returned in one’s
+dreams, would no longer appear as a thin luminous shadow encircled by
+a halo of Elysium, but only as the wretched sport of some hellish
+griffin-cat. What a hateful and impious idea, that my good, kind
+father, my mother so revered by all, should become the plaything of
+such a beast! You may laugh now, but for a thousand years it was no
+laughing matter: they wept bitterly. And even now the heart swells
+with wrath, the very pen grates angrily upon the paper, as one writes
+down these blasphemous doings.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Moreover, it was surely a cruel device to transfer the Festival of the
+Dead from the Spring, where antiquity had placed it, to November. In
+May, where it fell at first, they were buried among the flowers. In
+March, wherein it was afterwards placed, it became the signal for
+labour and the lark. The dead and the seed of corn entered the earth
+together with the same hope. But in November, when all the work is
+done, the weather close and gloomy for many days to come; when the
+folk return to their homes; when a man, re-seating himself by the
+hearth, looks across on that place for evermore empty--ah, me! at such
+a time how great the sorrow grows! Clearly, in choosing a moment
+already in itself so funereal, for the obsequies of Nature, they
+feared that a man would not find cause enough of sorrow in himself!
+
+The coolest, the busiest of men, however taken up they be with life’s
+distracting cares, have, at least, their sadder moments. In the dark
+wintry morning, in the night that comes on so swift to swallow us up
+in its shadow, ten years, nay, twenty years hence, strange feeble
+voices will rise up in your heart: “Good morning, dear friend, ’tis
+we! You are alive, are working as hard as ever. So much the better!
+You do not feel our loss so heavily, and you have learned to do
+without us; but we cannot, we never can, do without you. The ranks are
+closed, the gap is all but filled. The house that was ours is full,
+and we have blessed it. All is well, is better than when your father
+carried you about; better than when your little girl said, in her
+turn, to you, ‘Papa, carry me.’ But, lo! you are in tears. Enough,
+till we meet again!”
+
+Alas, and are they gone? That wail was sweet and piercing: but was it
+just? No. Let me forget myself a thousand times rather than I should
+forget them! And yet, cost what it will to say so, say it we must,
+that certain traces are fading off, are already less clear to see;
+that certain features are not indeed effaced, but grown paler and more
+dim. A hard, a bitter, a humbling thought it is, to find oneself so
+weak and fleeting, wavering as unremembered water; to feel that in
+time one loses that treasure of grief which one had hoped to preserve
+for ever. Give it me back, I pray: I am too much bounden to so rich a
+fountain of tears. Trace me again, I implore you, those features I
+love so well. Could you not help me at least to dream of them by
+night?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+More than one such prayer is spoken in the month of November. And
+amidst the striking of the bells and the dropping of the leaves, they
+clear out of church, saying one to another in low tones: “I say,
+neighbour; up there lives a woman of whom folk speak well and ill.
+For myself, I dare say nothing; but she has power over the world
+below. She calls up the dead, and they come. Oh, if she might--without
+sin, you know, without angering God--make my friends come to me! I am
+alone, as you must know, and have lost everything in this world. But
+who knows what this woman is, whether of hell or heaven? I won’t go
+(he is dying of curiosity all the while); I won’t. I have no wish to
+endanger my soul: besides, the wood yonder is haunted. Many’s the time
+that things unfit to see have been found on the moor. Haven’t you
+heard about Jacqueline, who was there one evening looking for one of
+her sheep? Well, when she returned, she was crazy. I won’t go.”
+
+Thus unknown to each other, many of the men at least went thither. For
+as yet the women hardly dared so great a risk. They remark the dangers
+of the road, ask many questions of those who return therefrom. The new
+Pythoness is not like her of Endor, who raised up Samuel at the prayer
+of Saul. Instead of showing you the ghosts, she gives you cabalistic
+words and powerful potions to bring them back in your dreams. Ah, how
+many a sorrow has recourse to these! The grandmother herself,
+tottering with her eighty years, would behold her grandson again. By
+an unwonted effort, yet not without a pang of shame at sinning on the
+edge of the grave, she drags herself to the spot. She is troubled by
+the savage look of a place all rough with yews and thorns, by the
+rude, dark beauty of that relentless Proserpine. Prostrate,
+trembling, grovelling on the ground, the poor old woman weeps and
+prays. Answer there is none. But when she dares to lift herself up a
+little, she sees that Hell itself has been a-weeping.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is simply Nature recovering herself. Proserpine blushes
+self-indignantly thereat. “Degenerate soul!” she calls herself, “why
+this weakness? You came hither with the firm desire of doing nought
+but evil. Is this your master’s lesson? How he will laugh at you for
+this!”
+
+“Nay! Am I not the great shepherd of the shades, making them come and
+go, opening unto them the gate of dreams? Your Dante, when he drew my
+likeness, forgot my attributes. When he gave me that useless tail, he
+did not see that I held the shepherd’s staff of Osiris; that from
+Mercury I had inherited his caduceus. In vain have they thought to
+build up an insurmountable wall between the two worlds; I have wings
+to my heels, I have flown over. By a kindly rebellion of that
+slandered Spirit, of that ruthless monster, succour has been given to
+those who mourned; mothers, lovers, have found comfort. He has taken
+pity on them in defiance of their new god.”
+
+The scribes of the Middle Ages, being all of the priestly class, never
+cared to acknowledge the deep but silent changes of the popular mind.
+It is clear that from thenceforth compassion goes over to Satan’s
+side. The Virgin herself, ideal as she is of grace, makes no answer
+to such a want of the heart. Neither does the Church, who expressly
+forbids the calling up of the dead. While all books delight in keeping
+up either the swinish demon of earlier times, or the griffin butcher
+of the second period, Satan has changed his shape for those who cannot
+write. He retains somewhat of the ancient Pluto; but his pale nor
+wholly ruthless majesty, that permitted the dead to come back, the
+living once more to see the dead, passes ever more and more into the
+nature of his father, or his grandfather, Osiris, the shepherd of
+souls.
+
+Through this one change come many others. Men with their mouths
+acknowledge the hell official and the boiling caldrons; but in their
+hearts do they truly believe therein? Would it be so easy to win these
+infernal favours for hearts beset with hateful traditions of a hell of
+torments? The one idea neutralizes without wholly effacing the other,
+and between them grows up a vague mixed image, resembling more and
+more nearly the hell of Virgil. A mighty solace was here offered to
+the human heart. Blessed above all was the relief thus given to the
+poor women, whom that dreadful dogma about the punishment of their
+loved dead had kept drowned in tears and inconsolable. The whole of
+their lifetime had been but one long sigh.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Sibyl was musing over her master’s words, when a very light step
+became audible. The day has scarcely dawned: it is after Christmas,
+about the first day of the new year. Over the crisp and rimy grass
+approaches a small, fair woman, all a-trembling, who has no sooner
+reached the spot, than she swoons and loses her breath. Her black gown
+tells plainly of her widowhood. To the piercing gaze of Medea, without
+moving or speaking, she reveals all: there is no mystery about her
+shrinking figure. The other says to her with a loud voice: “You need
+not tell me, little dumb creature, for you would never get to the end
+of it. I will speak for you. Well, you are dying of love!” Recovering
+a little, she clasps her hands together, and sinking almost on her
+knees, tells everything, making a full confession. She had suffered,
+wept, prayed, and would have silently suffered on. But these winter
+feasts, these family re-unions, the ill-concealed happiness of other
+women who, without pity for her, showed off their lawful loves, had
+driven the burning arrow again into her heart. Alas, what could she
+do? If he might but return and comfort her for one moment! “Be it even
+at the cost of my life; let me die, but only let me see him once
+more!”
+
+“Go back to your house: shut the door carefully: put up the shutter
+even against any curious neighbour. Throw off your mourning, and put
+on your wedding-clothes; place a cover for him on the table; but yet
+he will not come. You will sing the song he made for you, and sang to
+you so often, but yet he will not come. Then you shall draw out of
+your box the last dress he wore, and, kissing it, say, ‘So much the
+worse for thee if thou wilt not come!’ And presently when you have
+drunk this wine, bitter, but very sleepful, you will lie down as a
+wedded bride. Then assuredly he will come to you.”
+
+The little creature would have been no woman, if next morning she had
+not shown her joy and tenderness by owning the miracle in whispers to
+her best friend. “Say nought of it, I beg. But he himself told me,
+that if I wore this gown and slept a deep sleep every Sunday, he would
+return.”
+
+A happiness not without some danger. Where would the rash woman be, if
+the Church learned that she was no longer a widow; that re-awakened by
+her love, the spirit came to console her?
+
+But strange to tell, the secret is kept. There is an understanding
+among them all, to hide so sweet a mystery. For who has no concern
+therein? Who has not lost and mourned? Who would not gladly see this
+bridge created between two worlds? “O thou beneficent Witch! Blessed
+be thou, spirit of the nether world!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE PRINCE OF NATURE.
+
+
+Hard is the long sad winter of the North-west. Even after its
+departure it renews its visits, like a drowsy sorrow which ever and
+again comes back and rages afresh. One morning everything wakes up
+decked with bright needles. In this cruel mocking splendour that makes
+one shiver through and through, the whole vegetable world seems turned
+mineral, loses its sweet diversity, and freezes into a mass of rough
+crystals.
+
+The poor Sibyl, as she sits benumbed by her hearth of leaves, scourged
+by the flaying north-east winds, feels at her heart a cruel pang, for
+she feels herself all alone. But that very thought again brings her
+relief. With returning pride returns a vigour that warms her heart and
+lights up her soul. Intent, quick, and sharp, her sight becomes as
+piercing as those needles; and the world, the cruel world that caused
+her suffering, is to her transparent as glass. Anon she rejoices over
+it, as over a conquest of her making.
+
+For is she not a queen, a queen with courtiers of her own? The crows
+have clearly some connection with her. In grave, dignified body they
+come like ancient augurs, to talk to her of passing things. The
+wolves passing by salute her timidly with sidelong glances. The bear,
+then oftener seen than now, would sometimes, in his heavily
+good-natured way, seat himself awkwardly at the threshold of her den,
+like a hermit calling on a fellow-hermit, just as we often see him in
+the Lives of the Desert Fathers.
+
+All those birds and beasts with whom men only made acquaintance in
+hunting or slaying them, were outlawed as much as she. With all these
+she comes to an understanding; for Satan as the chief outlaw, imparts
+to his own the pleasures of natural freedom, the wild delight of
+living in a world sufficient unto itself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rough freedom of loneliness, all hail! The whole earth seems still
+clothed in a white shroud, held in bondage by a load of ice, of
+pitiless crystals, so uniform, sharp, and agonizing. After the year
+1200 especially, the world is shut in like a transparent tomb, wherein
+all things look terribly motionless, hard, and stiff.
+
+The Gothic Church has been called a “crystallization;” and so it truly
+is. About 1300, architecture gave up all its old variety of form and
+living fancies, to repeat itself for evermore, to vie with the
+monotonous prisms of Spitzbergen, to become the true and awful
+likeness of that hard crystal city, in which a dreadful dogma thought
+to bury all life away.
+
+But for all the props, buttresses, flying-buttresses, that keep the
+monument up, one thing there is that makes it totter. There is no loud
+battering from without, but a certain softness in the very
+foundations, which attacks the crystal with an imperceptible thaw.
+What thing do I mean? The humble stream of warm tears shed by a whole
+world, until they have become a very sea of wailings. What do I call
+it? A breath of the future, a stirring of the natural life, which
+shall presently rise again in irresistible might. The fantastic
+building of which more than one side is already sinking, says, not
+without terror, to itself, “It is the breath of Satan.”
+
+Beneath this Hecla-glacier lies a volcano which has no need of
+bursting out; a mild, slow, gentle heat, which caresses it from below,
+and, calling it nearer, says in a whisper, “Come down.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Witch has something to laugh at, if from the gloom she can see how
+utterly Dante and St. Thomas,[37] in the bright light yonder, ignore
+the true position of things. They fancy that the Devil wins his way by
+cunning or by terror. They make him grotesque and coarse, as in his
+childhood, when Jesus could still send him into the herd of swine. Or
+else they make him subtle as a logician of the schools, or a
+fault-finding lawyer. If he had been no better than this compound of
+beast and disputant,--if he had only lived in the mire or on
+fine-drawn quibbles about nothing, he would very soon have died of
+hunger.
+
+    [37] St. Thomas Aquinas, the “Angelic Doctor,” who died in
+    1274.--TRANS.
+
+People were too ready to crow over him, when he was shewn by
+Bartolus[38] pleading against the woman--that is, the Virgin--who gets
+him nonsuited and condemned with costs. At that time, indeed, the very
+contrary was happening on earth. By a master-stroke of his he had won
+over the plaintiff herself, his fair antagonist, the Woman; had
+seduced her, not indeed by verbal pleadings, but by arguments not less
+real than they were charming and irresistible. He put into her hands
+the fruits of science and of nature.
+
+    [38] Bartolus or Bartoli, a lawyer and law-writer of the
+    fourteenth century.--TRANS.
+
+No need for controversies, for pleas of any kind: he simply shows
+himself. In the East, the new-found Paradise, he begins to work. From
+that Asian world, which men had thought to destroy, there springs
+forth a peerless day-dawn, whose beams travel afar until they pierce
+the deep winter of the West. There dawns on us a world of nature and
+of art, accursed of the ignorant indeed, but now at length come
+forward to vanquish its late victors in a pleasant war of love and
+motherly endearments. All are conquered, all rave about it; they will
+have nothing but Asia herself. With her hands full she comes to meet
+us. Her tissues, shawls, her carpets so agreeably soft, so wondrously
+harmonized, her bright and well-wrought blades, her richly damascened
+arms, make us aware of our own barbarism. Moreover, little as that may
+seem, these accursed lands of the “miscreant,” ruled by Satan, are
+visibly blessed with the fairest fruits of nature, that elixir of the
+powers of God; with _the first of vegetables_, coffee; with _the first
+of beasts_, the Arab horse. What am I saying?--with a whole world of
+treasures, silk, sugar, and a host of herbs all-powerful to relieve
+the heart, to soothe and lighten our sufferings.
+
+All this breaks upon our view about the year 1300. Spain herself,
+whose brain is wholly fashioned out of Moors and Jews, for all that
+she is again subdued by the barbarous children of the Goth, bears
+witness in behalf of those _miscreants_. Wherever the Mussulman
+children of the Devil are at work, all is prosperous, the springs well
+forth, the ground is covered with flowers. A right worthy and harmless
+travail decks it with those wondrous vineyards, through which men
+recruit themselves, drowning all care, and seeming to drink in
+draughts of very goodness and heavenly compassion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To whom does Satan bring the foaming cup of life? In this fasting
+world, which has so long been fasting from reason, what man was there
+strong enough to take all this in without growing giddy, without
+getting drunken and risking the loss of his wits?
+
+Is there yet a brain so far from being petrified or crystallized by
+the teaching of St. Thomas, as to remain open to the living world, to
+its vegetative forces? Three magicians, Albert the Great, Roger Bacon,
+Arnaud of Villeneuve,[39] by strong efforts make their way to Nature’s
+secrets; but those lusty intellects lack flexibility and popular
+power. Satan falls back on his own Eve. The woman is still the most
+natural thing in the world; still keeps her hold on those traits of
+roguish innocence one sees in a kitten or a child of very high spirit.
+Besides, she figures much better in that world-comedy, that mighty
+game wherewith the universal Proteus disports himself.
+
+    [39] Three eminent schoolmen of the thirteenth century, whose
+    scientific researches pointed the way to future
+    discoveries.--TRANS.
+
+But being light and changeful, she is all the less liable to be carked
+and hardened by pain! This woman, whom we have seen outlawed from the
+world, and rooted on her wild moor, affords a case in point. Have we
+yet to learn whether, bruised and soured as she is, with her heart
+full of hate, she will re-enter the natural world and the pleasant
+paths of life? Assuredly her return thither will not find her in good
+tune, will happen mainly through a round of ill. In the coming and
+going of the storm she is all the more scared and violent for being so
+very weak.
+
+When in the mild warmth of spring, from the air, the depths of the
+earth, from the flowers and their languages, a new revelation rises
+round her on every side, she is taken dizzy at the first. Her
+swelling bosom overflows. The Sibyl of science has her tortures, like
+her of Cumæ or of Delphi. The schoolmen find their fun in saying, “It
+is the wind and nought else that blows her out. Her lover, the Prince
+of the Air, fills her with dreams and delusions, with wind, with
+smoke, with emptiness.” Foolish irony! So far from this being the true
+cause of her drunkenness, it is nothing empty, it is a real, a
+substantial thing, which has loaded her bosom all too quickly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Have you ever seen the agave, that hard wild African shrub, so sharp,
+bitter, and tearing, with huge bristles instead of leaves? Ten years
+through it loves and dies. At length one day the amorous shoot, which
+has so long been gathering in the rough thing, goes off with a noise
+like gunfire, and darts skyward. And this shoot becomes a whole tree,
+not less than thirty feet high, and bristling with sad flowers.
+
+Some such analogy does the gloomy Sibyl feel, when one morning of a
+spring-time, late in coming, and therefore impetuous at the last,
+there takes place all around her a vast explosion of life.
+
+And all things look at her, and all things bloom for her. For every
+thing that has life says softly, “Whoso understands me, I am his.”
+
+What a contrast! Here is the wife of the desert and of despair, bred
+up in hate and vengeance, and lo! all these innocent things agree to
+smile upon her! The trees, soothed by the south wind, pay her gentle
+homage. Each herb of the field, with its own special virtue of scent,
+or remedy, or poison--very often the three things are one--offers
+itself to her, saying, “Gather me.”
+
+All things are clearly in love. “Are they not mocking me? I had been
+readier for hell than for this strange festival. O spirit, art thou
+indeed that spirit of dread whom once I knew, the traces of whose
+cruelty I bear about me--what am I saying, and where are my
+senses?--the wound of whose dealing scorches me still?
+
+“Ah, no! ’Tis not the spirit whom I hoped for in my rage; ‘_he who
+always says, No!_’ This other one utters a yes of love, of drunken
+dizziness. What ails him? Is he the mad, the dazed soul of life?
+
+“They spoke of the great Pan as dead. But here he is in the guise of
+Bacchus, of Priapus, eager with long-delayed desire, threatening,
+scorching, teeming. No, no! Be this cup far from me! Trouble only
+should I drink from it,--who knows? A despair yet sharper than my past
+despairs.”
+
+Meanwhile wherever the woman appears, she becomes the one great object
+of love. She is followed by all, and for her sake all despise their
+own proper kind. What they say about the black he-goat, her pretended
+favourite, may be applied to all. The horse neighs for her, breaking
+everything and putting her in danger. The awful king of the prairie,
+the black bull, bellows with grief, should she pass him by at a
+distance. And, behold, yon bird despondingly turns away from his hen,
+and with whirring wings hastes to convince the woman of his love!
+
+Such is the new tyranny of her master, who, by the funniest hap of
+all, foregoes the part accredited to him as king of the dead, to burst
+forth a very king of life.
+
+“No!” she says; “leave me to my hatred: I ask for nothing more. Let me
+be feared and fearful! The beauty I would have, is only that which
+dwells in these black serpents of my hair, in this countenance
+furrowed with grief, and the scars of thy thunderbolt.” But the Lord
+of Evil replies with cunning softness: “Oh, but you are only the more
+beautiful, the more impressible, for this fiery rage of yours! Ay,
+call out and curse on, beneath one and the same goad! ’Tis but one
+storm calling another. Swift and smooth is the passage from wrath to
+pleasure.”
+
+Neither her fury nor her pride would have saved her from such
+allurements. But she is saved by the boundlessness of her desire.
+There is nought will satisfy her. Each kind of life for her is all too
+bounded, wanting in power. Away from her, steed and bull and loving
+bird! Away, ye creatures all! for one who desires the Infinite, how
+weak ye are!
+
+She has a woman’s longing; but for what? Even for the whole, the great
+all-containing whole. Satan did not foresee that no one creature would
+content her.
+
+That which he could not do, is done for her in some ineffable way.
+Overcome by a desire so wide and deep, a longing boundless as the sea,
+she falls asleep. At such a moment, all else forgot, no touch of hate,
+no thought of vengeance left in her, she slumbers on the plain,
+innocent in her own despite, stretched out in easy luxuriance like a
+sheep or a dove.
+
+She sleeps, she dreams; a delightful dream! It seemed as if the
+wondrous might of universal life had been swallowed up within her; as
+if life and death and all things thenceforth lay fast in her bowels;
+as if in return for all her suffering, she was teeming at last with
+Nature herself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE DEVIL A PHYSICIAN.
+
+
+That still and dismal scene of the Bride of Corinth, is repeated
+literally from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. While it was
+yet night, just before the daybreak, the two lovers, Man and Nature,
+meet again, embrace with rapture, and, at that same moment--horrible
+to tell!--behold themselves attacked by fearful plagues. We seem still
+to hear the loved one saying to her lover, “It is all over: thy hair
+will be white to-morrow. I am dead, and thou too wilt die.”
+
+Three dreadful blows happen in these three centuries. In the first we
+have a loathsome changing of the outer man, diseases of the skin,
+above all, leprosy. In the second, the evil turns inwards, becomes a
+grotesque excitement of the nerves, a fit of epileptic dancing. Then
+all grows calm, but the blood is changed, and ulcers prepare the way
+for syphilis, the scourge of the fifteenth century.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Among the chief diseases of the Middle Ages, so far as one can look
+therein, to speak generally, had been hunger, weakness, poverty of
+blood, that kind of consumption which is visible in the sculptures of
+that time. The blood was like clear water, and scrofulous ailments
+were rife everywhere. Barring the well-paid doctors, Jew or Arab, of
+the kings, the art of medicine was practised only with, holy water at
+the church door. Thither on Sundays, after the service, would come a
+crowd of sick, to whom words like these were spoken: “You have sinned
+and God has afflicted you. Be thankful: so much the less will you
+suffer in the next world. Resign yourselves to suffer and to die. The
+Church has prayers for the dead.” Weak, languishing, hopeless, with no
+desire to live, they followed this counsel faithfully, and let life go
+its way.
+
+A fatal discouragement, a wretched state of things, that would have
+prolonged without end these ages of lead, and debarred them from all
+progress! Worst of all things is it to resign oneself so readily, to
+welcome death with so much docility, to have strength for nothing, to
+desire nothing. Of more worth was that new era, that close of the
+Middle Ages, which at the cost of cruel sufferings first enabled us to
+regain our former energy; namely, _the resurrection of desire_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Some Arab writers have asserted that the widespread eruption of
+skin-diseases which marks the thirteenth century, was caused by the
+taking of certain stimulants to re-awaken and renew the defaults of
+passion. Undoubtedly the burning spices brought over from the East,
+tended somewhat to such an issue. The invention of distilling and of
+divers fermented drinks may also have worked in the same direction.
+
+But a greater and far more general fermentation was going on. During
+the sharp inward struggle between two worlds and two spirits, a third
+surviving silenced both. As the fading faith and the newborn reason
+were disputing together, somebody stepping between them caught hold of
+man. You ask who? A spirit unclean and raging, the spirit of sour
+desires, bubbling painfully within.
+
+Debarred from all outlet, whether of bodily enjoyment, or the free
+flow of soul, the sap of life thus closely rammed together, was sure
+to corrupt itself. Bereft of light, of sound, of speech, it spoke
+through pains and ominous excrescences. Then happened a new and
+dreadful thing. The desire put off without being diminished, finds
+itself stopped short by a cruel enchantment, a shocking
+metamorphosis.[40] Love was advancing blindly with open arms. It
+recoils groaning; but in vain would it flee: the fire of the blood
+keeps raging; the flesh eats itself away in sharp titillations, and
+sharper within rages the coal of fire, made fiercer by despair.
+
+    [40] Leprosy has been traced to Asia and the Crusades; but
+    Europe had it in herself. The war declared by the Middle Ages
+    against the flesh and all cleanliness bore its fruits. More
+    than one saint boasted of having never washed even his hands.
+    And how much did the rest wash? To have stripped for a moment
+    would have been sinful. The worldlings carefully follow the
+    teaching of the monks. This subtle and refined society, which
+    sacrificed marriage and seemed inspired only with the poetry
+    of adultery, preserved a strange scruple on a point so
+    harmless. It dreaded all cleansing, as so much defilement.
+    There was no bathing for a thousand years!
+
+What remedy does Christian Europe find for this twofold ill? Death and
+captivity; nothing more. When the bitter celibacy, the hopeless love,
+the passion irritable and ever-goading, bring you into a morbid state;
+when your blood is decomposing, then you shall go down into an _In
+pace_, or build your hut in the desert. You must live with the
+handbell in your hand, that all may flee before you. “No human being
+must see you: no consolation may be yours. If you come near, ’tis
+death.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Leprosy is the last stage, the _apogee_ of this scourge; but a
+thousand other ills, less hideous but still cruel, raged everywhere.
+The purest and the most fair were stricken with sad eruptions, which
+men regarded as sin made visible, or the chastisement of God. Then
+people did what the love of life had never made them do: they forsook
+the old sacred medicine, the bootless holy water, and went off to the
+Witch. From habit and fear as well, they still repaired to church; but
+thenceforth their true church was with her, on the moor, in the
+forest, in the desert. To her they carried their vows.
+
+Prayers for healing, prayers for pleasure. On the first effervescing
+of their heated blood, folk went to the Sibyl, in great secrecy, at
+uncertain hours. “What shall I do? and what is this I feel within me?
+I burn: give me some lenitive. I burn: grant me that which causes my
+intolerable desire.”
+
+A bold, a blamable journey, for which they reproach themselves at
+night. Let this new fatality be never so urgent, this fire be never so
+torturing, the Saints themselves never so powerless; still, have not
+the indictment of the Templars and the proceedings of Pope Boniface
+unveiled the Sodom lying hid beneath the altar? But a wizard Pope, a
+friend of the Devil, who also carried him away, effects a change in
+all their ideas. Was it not with the Demon’s help that John XXII., the
+son of a shoemaker, a Pope no more of Rome, succeeded in amassing in
+his town of Avignon more gold than the Emperor and all the kings? As
+the Pope is, so is the bishop. Did not Guichard, Bishop of Troyes,
+procure from the Devil the death of the King’s daughters? No death we
+ask for--we; but pleasant things--for life, for health, for beauty,
+and for pleasure: the things of God which God refuses. What shall we
+do? Might we but win them through the grace of the _Prince of this
+World_!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the great and mighty doctor of the Renaissance, Paracelsus, cast
+all the wise books of ancient medicine into the fire, Latin, and
+Jewish, and Arabic, all at once, he declared that he had learned none
+but the popular medicine, that of the _good women_,[41] the
+_shepherds_, and the _headsmen_, the latter of whom made often good
+horse-doctors and clever surgeons, resetting bones broken or put out
+of joint.
+
+    [41] The name given in fear and politeness to the witches.
+
+I make no doubt but that his admirable and masterly work on _The
+Diseases of Women_--the first then written on a theme so large, so
+deep, so tender--came forth from his special experience of those women
+to whom others went for aid; of the witches, namely, who always acted
+as the midwives: for never in those days was a male physician admitted
+to the woman’s side, to win her trust in him, to listen to her
+secrets. The witches alone attended her, and became, especially for
+women, the chief and only physician.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What we know for surest with regard to their medicinal practice is,
+that for ends the most different, alike to stimulate and to soothe,
+they made use of one large family of doubtful and very dangerous
+plants, called, by reason of the services they rendered, _The
+Comforters_, or Solaneæ.[42]
+
+    [42] Man’s ingratitude is painful to see. A thousand other
+    plants have come into use: a hundred exotic vegetables have
+    become the fashion. But the good once done by these poor
+    _Comforters_ is clean forgotten!--Nay, who now remembers or
+    even acknowledges the old debt of humanity to harmless
+    nature? The _Asclepias acida_, _Sarcostemma_, or flesh-plant,
+    which for five thousand years was the _Holy Wafer_ of the
+    East, its very palpable God, eaten gladly by five hundred
+    millions of men,--this plant, in the Middle Ages called the
+    Poison-queller (_vince-venenum_), meets with not one word of
+    historical comment in our books of Botany. Perhaps two
+    thousand years hence they will forget the wheat. See Langlois
+    on the _Soma_ of India and the _Hom_ of Persia. _Mem. de
+    l’Académie des Inscriptions_, xix. 326.
+
+A vast and popular family, many kinds of which abound to excess under
+our feet, in the hedges, everywhere--a family so numerous that of one
+kind alone we have eight hundred varieties.[43] There is nothing
+easier, nothing more common, to find. But these plants are mostly
+dangerous in the using. It needs some boldness to measure out a dose,
+the boldness, perhaps, of genius.
+
+    [43] M. d’Orbigny’s _Dictionary of Natural History_, article
+    _Morelles_.
+
+Let us, step by step, mount the ladder of their powers.[44] The first
+are simply pot-herbs, good for food, such as the mad-apples and the
+tomatoes, miscalled “love-apples.” Other, of the harmless kinds, are
+sweetness and tranquillity itself, as the white mullens, or lady’s
+fox-gloves, so good for fomentations.
+
+    [44] I have found this ladder nowhere else. It is the more
+    important, because the witches who made these essays at the
+    risk of passing for poisoners, certainly began with the
+    weakest, and rose gradually to the strongest. Each step of
+    power thus gives its relative date, and helps us in this dark
+    subject to set up a kind of chronology. I shall complete it
+    in the following chapters, when I come to speak of the
+    Mandragora and the Datura. I have chiefly followed Pouchet’s
+    _Solanées_ and _Botanique Générale_.
+
+Going higher up, you come on a plant already suspicious, which many
+think a poison, a plant which at first seems like honey and afterwards
+tastes bitter, reminding one of Jonathan’s saying, “I have eaten a
+little honey, and therefore shall I die.” But this death is
+serviceable, a dying away of pain. The “bittersweet” should have been
+the first experiment of that bold homœopathy which rose, little by
+little, up to the most dangerous poisons. The slight irritation and
+the tingling which it causes might point it out as a remedy for the
+prevalent diseases of that time, those, namely, of the skin.
+
+The pretty maiden who found herself woefully adorned with uncouth red
+patches, with pimples, or with ringworm, would come crying for such
+relief. In the case of an elder woman the hurt would be yet more
+painful. The bosom, most delicate thing in nature, with its innermost
+vessels forming a matchless flower, becomes, through its injective and
+congestive tendencies, the most perfect instrument for causing pain.
+Sharp, ruthless, restless are the pains she suffers. Gladly would she
+accept all kinds of poison. Instead of bargaining with the Witch, she
+only puts her poor hard breast between her hands.
+
+From the bittersweet, too weak for such, we rise to the dark
+nightshades, which have rather more effect. For a few days the woman
+is soothed. Anon she comes back weeping. “Very well, to-night you may
+come again. I will fetch you something, as you wish me; but it will be
+a strong poison.”
+
+It was a heavy risk for the Witch. At that time they never thought
+that poisons could act as remedies, if applied outwardly or taken in
+very weak doses. The plants they compounded together under the name of
+_witches’ herbs_, seemed to be but ministers of death. Such as were
+found in her hands would have proved her, in their opinion, a poisoner
+or a dealer in accursed charms. A blind crowd, all the more cruel for
+its growing fears, might fell her with a shower of stones, or make her
+undergo the trial by water--the _noyade_. Or even--most dreadful doom
+of all!--they might drag her with a rope round her neck to the
+churchyard, where a pious festival was held and the people edified by
+seeing her thrown to the flames.
+
+However, she runs the risk, and fetches home the dreadful plant. The
+other woman comes back to her abode by night or morning, whenever she
+is least afraid of being met. But a young shepherd, who saw her there,
+told the village, “If you had seen her as I did, gliding among the
+rubbish of the ruined hut, looking about her on all sides, muttering I
+know not what! Oh, but she has frightened me very much! If she had
+seen me, I was a lost man. She would have changed me into a lizard, a
+toad, or a bat. She took a paltry herb--the paltriest I ever saw--of a
+pale sickly yellow, with red and black marks, like the flames, as they
+say, of hell. The horror of the thing is, that the whole stalk was
+hairy like a man, with long, black, sticky hairs. She plucked it
+roughly, with a grunt, and suddenly I saw her no more. She could not
+have run away so quick; she must have flown. What a dreadful thing
+that woman is! How dangerous to the whole country!”
+
+Certainly the plant inspires dread. It is the henbane, a cruel and
+dangerous poison, but a powerful emollient, a soft sedative poultice,
+which melts, unbends, lulls to sleep the pain, often taking it quite
+away.
+
+Another of these poisons--the Belladonna, so called, undoubtedly, in
+thankful acknowledgment, had great power in laying the convulsions
+that sometimes supervened in childbirth, and added a new danger, a new
+fear, to the danger and the fear of that most trying moment. A
+motherly hand instilled the gentle poison, casting the mother herself
+into a sleep, and smoothing the infant’s passage, after the manner of
+the modern chloroform, into the world.[45]
+
+    [45] Madame La Chapelle and M. Chaussier have renewed to good
+    purpose these practices of the older medicine. Pouchet,
+    _Solanées_.
+
+Belladonna cures the dancing-fits while making you dance. A daring
+homœopathy this, which at first must frighten: it is _medicine
+reversed_, contrary in most things to that which alone the Christians
+studied, which alone they valued, after the example of the Jews and
+Arabs.
+
+How did men come to this result? Undoubtedly by the simple effect of
+the great Satanic principle, that _everything must be done the wrong
+way_, the very opposite way to that followed by the holy people. These
+latter have a dread of poisons. Satan uses them and turns them into
+remedies. The Church thinks by spiritual means, by sacraments and
+prayers, to act even on the body. Satan, on the other hand, uses
+material means to act even upon the soul, making you drink of
+forgetfulness, love, reverie, and every passion. To the blessing of
+the priest he opposes the magnetic passes made by the soft hands of
+women, who cheat you of your pains.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By a change of system, and yet more of dress, as in the substitution
+of linen for wool, the skin-diseases lost their intensity. Leprosy
+abated, but seemed to go inwards and beget deeper ills. The fourteenth
+century wavered between three scourges--the epileptic dancings, the
+plague, and the sores which, according to Paracelsus, led the way to
+syphilis.
+
+The first danger was not the least. About 1350 it broke out in a
+frightful manner with the dance of St. Guy, and was singular
+especially in this, that it did not act upon each person separately.
+As if carried on by one same galvanic current, the sick caught each
+other by the hand, formed immense chains, and spun and spun round till
+they died. The spectators, who laughed at first, presently catching
+the contagion, let themselves go, fell into the mighty current,
+increased the terrible choir.
+
+What would have happened if the evil had held on as long as leprosy
+did even in its decline?
+
+It was the first step, as it were, towards epilepsy. If that
+generation of sufferers had not been cured, it would have begotten
+another decidedly epileptic. What a frightful prospect! Think of
+Europe covered with fools, with idiots, with raging madmen! We are not
+told how the evil was treated and checked. The remedy prescribed by
+most, the falling upon these jumpers with kicks and cuffings, was
+entirely fitted to increase the frenzy and turn it into downright
+epilepsy.[46] Doubtless there was some other remedy, of which people
+were loth to speak. At the time when witchcraft took its first great
+flight, the widespread use of the _Solaneæ_, above all, of belladonna,
+vulgarized the medicine which really checked those affections. At the
+great popular gatherings of the Sabbath, of which we shall presently
+speak, the _witches’ herb_, mixed with mead, beer, cider,[47] or perry
+(the strong drinks of the West), set the multitude dancing a dance
+luxurious indeed, but far from epileptic.
+
+    [46] We should think that few physicians would quite agree
+    with M. Michelet.--TRANS.
+
+    [47] Cider was first made in the twelfth century.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But the greatest revolution caused by the witches, the greatest step
+_the wrong way_ against the spirit of the Middle Ages, was what may be
+called the reënfeoffment of the stomach and the digestive organs. They
+had the boldness to say, “There is nothing foul or unclean.”
+Thenceforth the study of matter was free and boundless. Medicine
+became a possibility.
+
+That this principle was greatly abused, we do not deny; but the
+principle is none the less clear. There is nothing foul but moral
+evil. In the natural world all things are pure: nothing may be
+withheld from our studious regard, nothing be forbidden by an idle
+spiritualism, still less by a silly disgust.
+
+It was here especially that the Middle Ages showed themselves in their
+true light, as _anti-natural_, out of Nature’s oneness drawing
+distinctions of castes, of priestly orders. Not only do they count the
+spirit _noble_, and the body _ignoble_; but even parts of the body are
+called noble, while others are not, being evidently plebeian. In like
+manner heaven is noble, and hell is not; but why?--“Because heaven is
+high up.” But in truth it is neither high nor low, being above and
+beneath alike. And what is hell? Nothing at all. Equally foolish are
+they about the world at large and the smaller world of men.
+
+This world is all one piece: each thing in it is attached to all the
+rest. If the stomach is servant of the brain and feeds it, the brain
+also works none the less for the stomach, perpetually helping to
+prepare for it the digestive _sugar_.[48]
+
+    [48] This great discovery was made by Claude Bernard.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was no lack of injurious treatment. The witches were called
+filthy, indecent, shameless, immoral. Nevertheless, their first steps
+on that road may be accounted as a happy revolution in things most
+moral, in charity and kindness. With a monstrous perversion of ideas
+the Middle Ages viewed the flesh in its representative,
+woman,--accursed since the days of Eve--as a thing impure. The Virgin,
+exalted as _Virgin_ more than as _Our Lady_, far from lifting up the
+real woman, had caused her abasement, by setting men on the track of a
+mere scholastic puritanism, where they kept rising higher and higher
+in subtlety and falsehood.
+
+Woman herself ended by sharing in the hateful prejudice and deeming
+herself unclean. She hid herself at the hour of childbed. She blushed
+at loving and bestowing happiness on others. Sober as she mostly was
+in comparison with man, living as she mostly did on herbs and fruits,
+sharing through her diet of milk and vegetables the purity of the most
+innocent breeds, she almost besought forgiveness for being born, for
+living, for carrying out the conditions of her life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The medical art of the Middle Ages busied itself peculiarly about the
+man, a being noble and pure, who alone could become a priest, alone
+could make God at the altar. It also paid some attention to the
+beasts, beginning indeed with them; but of children it thought seldom:
+of women not at all.
+
+The romances, too, with their subtleties pourtray the converse of the
+world. Outside the courts and highborn adulterers, which form the
+chief topic of these romances, the woman is always a poor Griselda,
+born to drain the cup of suffering, to be often beaten, and never
+cared for.
+
+In order to mind the woman, to trample these usages under foot, and to
+care for her in spite of herself, nothing less would serve than the
+Devil, woman’s old ally, her trusty friend in Paradise, and the Witch,
+that monster who deals with everything the wrong way, exactly
+contrariwise to that of the holier people. The poor creature set such
+little store by herself. She would shrink back, blushing, and loth to
+say a word. The Witch being clever and evil-hearted, read her to the
+inmost depths. Ere long she won her to speak out, drew from her her
+little secret, overcame her refusals, her modest, humble hesitations.
+Rather than undergo the remedy, she was willing almost to die. But the
+cruel sorceress made her live.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+CHARMS AND PHILTRES.
+
+
+Let no one hastily conclude from the foregoing chapter that I attempt
+to whiten, to acquit entirely, the dismal bride of the Devil. If she
+often did good, she could also do no small amount of ill. There is no
+great power which is not abused. And this one had three centuries of
+actual reigning, in the interlude between two worlds, the older dying
+and the new struggling painfully to begin. The Church, which in the
+quarrels of the sixteenth century will regain some of her strength, at
+least for fighting, in the fourteenth is down in the mire. Look at the
+truthful picture drawn by Clémangis. The nobles, so proudly arrayed in
+their new armour, fall all the more heavily at Crécy, Poitiers,
+Agincourt. All who survive end by being prisoners in England. What a
+theme for ridicule! The citizens, the very peasants make merry and
+shrug their shoulders. This general absence of the lords gave, I
+fancy, no small encouragement to the Sabbath gatherings which had
+always taken place, but at this time might first have grown into vast
+popular festivals.
+
+How mighty the power thus wielded by Satan’s sweetheart, who cures,
+foretels, divines, calls up the souls of the dead; who can throw a
+spell upon you, turn you into a hare or wolf, enable you to find a
+treasure, and, best of all, ensure your being beloved! It is an awful
+power which combines all others. How could a stormy soul, a soul most
+commonly gangrened, and sometimes grown utterly wayward, have helped
+employing it to wreak her hate and revenge; sometimes even out of a
+mere delight in malice and uncleanness?
+
+All that once was told the confessor, is now imparted to her: not only
+the sins already done, but those also which folk purpose doing. She
+holds each by her shameful secret, by the avowal of her uncleanest
+desires. To her they entrust both their bodily and mental ills; the
+lustful heats of a blood inflamed and soured; the ceaseless prickings
+of some sharp, urgent, furious desire.
+
+To her they all come: with her there is no shame. In plain blunt words
+they beseech her for life, for death, for remedies, for poisons.
+Thither comes a young woman, to ask through her tears for the means of
+saving her from the fruits of her sin. Thither comes the
+step-mother--a common theme in the Middle Ages--to say that the child
+of a former marriage eats well and lives long. Thither comes the
+sorrowing wife whose children year by year are born only to die. And
+now, on the other hand, comes a youth to buy at any cost the burning
+draught that shall trouble the heart of some haughty dame, until,
+forgetful of the distance between them, she has stooped to look upon
+her little page.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In these days there are but two types, two forms of marriage, both of
+them extreme and outrageous.
+
+The scornful heiress of a fief, who brings her husband a crown or a
+broad estate, an Eleanor of Guyenne for instance, will, under her
+husband’s very eyes, hold her court of lovers, keeping herself under
+very slight control. Let us leave romances and poems, to look at the
+reality in its dread march onward to the unbridled rage of the
+daughters of Philip the Fair, of the cruel Isabella, who by the hands
+of her lovers impaled Edward II. The insolence of the feudal women
+breaks out diabolically in the triumphant two-horned bonnet and other
+brazen-faced fashions.
+
+But in this century, when classes are beginning to mingle slightly,
+the woman of a lower rank, when she marries a lord, has to fear the
+hardest trials. So says the truthful history of the humble, the meek,
+the patient Griselda. In a more popular form it becomes the tale of
+_Blue-Beard_, a tale which seems to me quite earnest and historical.
+The wife so often killed and replaced by him could only have been his
+vassal. He would have reckoned wholly otherwise with the daughter or
+sister of a baron, who might avenge her. If I am not misled by a
+specious conjecture, we must believe that this tale is of the
+fourteenth century, and not of those preceding, in which the lord
+would never have deigned to take a wife below himself.
+
+Specially remarkable in the moving tale of _Griselda_ is the fact,
+that throughout her heavy trials, she never seeks support in being
+devout or in loving another. She is evidently faithful, chaste, and
+pure. It never comes into her mind to love elsewhere.
+
+Of the two feudal women, the Heiress and Griselda, it is peculiarly
+the first who has her household of gentlemen, her courts of love, who
+shows favour to the humblest lovers, encouraging them, delivering, as
+Eleanor did, the famous sentence, soon to become quite classical:
+“There can be no love between married folk.”
+
+Thereupon a secret hope, but hot and violent withal, arises in more
+than one young heart. If he must give himself to the Devil, he will
+rush full tilt on this adventurous intrigue. Let the castle be never
+so surely closed, one fine opening is still left for Satan. In a game
+so perilous, what chance of success reveals itself? Wisdom answers,
+None. But what if Satan said, Yes?
+
+We must remember how great a distance feudal pride set between the
+nobles themselves. Words are misleading: one _cavalier_ might be far
+below another.
+
+The knight banneret, who brought a whole army of vassals to his king’s
+side, would look with utter scorn from one end of his long table on
+the poor _lackland_ knights seated at the other. How much greater his
+scorn for the simple varlets, grooms, pages, &c., fed upon his
+leavings! Seated at the lowermost end of the tables close to the door,
+they scraped the dishes sent down to them, often empty, from the
+personages seated above beside the hearth. It never would cross the
+great lord’s mind, that those below would dare to lift eyes of fancy
+towards their lovely mistress, the haughty heiress of a fief, sitting
+near her mother, “crowned by a chaplet of white roses.” Whilst he bore
+with wondrous patience the love of some stranger knight, appointed by
+his lady to bear her colours, he would have savagely punished the
+boldness of any servant who looked so high. Of this kind was the
+raging jealousy shown by the Lord of Fayel, who was stirred to deadly
+wrath, not because his wife had a lover, but because that lover was
+one of his household, the castellan or simple constable of his castle
+of Coucy.
+
+The deeper and less passable seemed the gulf between the great
+heiress, lady of the manor, and the groom or page who, barring his
+shirt, had nothing, not even his coat, but what belonged to his
+master, the stronger became love’s temptation to overleap that gulf.
+
+The youth was buoyed up by the very impossibility. At length, one day
+that he managed to get out of the tower, he ran off to the Witch and
+asked her advice. Would a philtre serve as a spell to win her? Or,
+failing that, must he make an express covenant? He never shrank at all
+from the dreadful idea of yielding himself to Satan. “We will take
+care for that, young man: but hie thee up again; you will find some
+change already.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The change, however, is in himself. He is stirred by some ineffable
+hope, that escapes in spite of him from a deep downcast eye, scored by
+an ever-darting flame. Somebody, we may guess who, having eyes for him
+alone, is moved to throw him, as she passes, a word of pity. Oh,
+rapture! Kind Satan! Charming, adorable Witch!
+
+He cannot eat nor drink until he has been to see the latter again.
+Respectfully kissing her hand, he almost falls at her feet. Whatever
+she may ask him, whatever she may bid him do, he will obey her. That
+moment, if she wishes it, he will give her his golden chain, will give
+her the ring upon his finger, though he had it from a dying mother.
+But the Witch, in her native malice, in her hatred of the Baron, feels
+an especial comfort in dealing him a secret blow.
+
+Already a vague anxiety disturbs the castle. A dumb tempest, without
+lightning or thunder, broods over it, like an electric vapour on a
+marsh. All is silence, deep silence; but the lady is troubled. She
+suspects that some supernatural power has been at work. For why indeed
+be thus drawn to this youth, more than to some one else, handsomer,
+nobler, renowned already for deeds of arms? There is something toward,
+down yonder! Has that woman cast a spell upon her, or worked some
+hidden charm? The more she asks herself these questions, the more her
+heart is troubled.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Witch has something to wreak her malice upon at last. In the
+village she was a queen; but now the castle comes to her, yields
+itself up to her on that side where its pride ran the greatest risk.
+For us this passion has a peculiar interest, as the rush of one soul
+towards its ideal against every social harrier, against the unjust
+decree of fate. To the Witch, on her side, it holds out the deep, keen
+delight of humbling the lady’s pride, and revenging perhaps her own
+wrongs; the delight of serving the lord as he served his vassals, of
+levying upon him, through the boldness of a mere child, the
+firstfruits of his outrageous wedding-rights. Undoubtedly, in these
+intrigues where the Witch had to play her part, she often acted from a
+depth of levelling hatred natural to a peasant.
+
+Already it was something gained to have made the lady stoop to love a
+menial. We should not be misled by such examples as John of Saintré
+and Cherubin. The serving-boy filled the lowest offices in the
+household. The footman proper did not then exist, while on the other
+hand, few, if any maidservants lived in military strongholds. Young
+hands did everything, and were not disgraced thereby. The service,
+specially the body-service of the lord and lady, honoured and raised
+them up. Nevertheless, it often placed the highborn page in situations
+sorrowful enough, prosaic, not to say ridiculous. The lord never
+distresses himself about that. And the lady must indeed be charmed by
+the Devil, not to see what every day she saw, her well-beloved
+employed in servile and unsuitable tasks.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the Middle Ages the very high and the very low are continually
+brought together. That which is hidden by the poems, we can catch a
+glimpse of otherwhere. With those ethereal passions, many gross things
+were clearly blended.
+
+All we know of the charms and philtres used by the witches is very
+fantastic, not seldom marked by malice, and recklessly mixed up with
+things that seem to us the least likely to have awakened love. By
+these methods they went a long way without the husband’s perceiving in
+his blindness the game they made of him.
+
+These philtres were of various kinds. Some were for exciting and
+troubling the senses, like the stimulants so much abused in the East.
+Others were dangerous, and often treacherous draughts to whose
+illusions the body would yield itself without the will. Others again
+were employed as tests when the passion was defied, when one wished to
+see how far the greediness of desire might derange the senses, making
+them receive as the highest and holiest of favours, the most
+disagreeable services done by the object of their love.
+
+The rude way in which a castle was constructed, with nothing in it but
+large halls, led to an utter sacrifice of the inner life. It was long
+enough before they took to building in one of the turrets a closet or
+recess for meditation and the saying of prayers. The lady was easily
+watched. On certain days set or waited for, the bold youth would
+attempt the stroke, recommended him by the Witch, of mingling a
+philtre with her drink.
+
+This, however, was a dangerous matter, not often tried. Less difficult
+was it to purloin from the lady things which escaped her notice, which
+she herself despised. He would treasure up the very smallest paring of
+a nail; he would gather up respectfully one or two beautiful hairs
+that might fall from her comb. These he would carry to the Witch, who
+often asked, as our modern sleep-wakers do, for something very
+personal and strongly redolent of the person, but obtained without her
+leave; as, for instance, some threads torn out of a garment long worn
+and soiled with the traces of perspiration. With much kissing, of
+course, and worshipping, the lover was fain reluctantly to throw these
+treasures into the fire, with a view to gathering up the ashes
+afterwards. By and by, when she came to look at her garment, the fine
+lady would remark the rent, but guessing at the cause, would only sigh
+and hold her tongue. The charm had already begun to work.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Even if she hesitated from regard for her marriage-vow, certain it is
+that life in a space so narrow, where they were always in each
+other’s sight, so near and yet so far, became a downright torment. And
+even when she had once shown her weakness, still before her husband
+and others equally jealous the moments of happiness would assuredly be
+rare. Hence sprang many a foolish outbreak of unsatisfied desire. The
+less they came together, the more deeply they longed to do so. A
+disordered fancy sought to attain that end by means grotesque,
+unnatural, utterly senseless. So by way of establishing a means of
+secret correspondence between the two, the Witch had the letters of
+the alphabet pricked on both their arms. If one of them wanted to send
+a thought to the other, he brightened and brought out by sucking the
+blood-red letters of the wished-for word. Immediately, so it is said,
+the corresponding letters bled on the other’s arm.
+
+Sometimes in these mad fits they would drink each of the other’s
+blood, so as to mingle their souls, it was said, in close communion.
+The devouring of Coucy’s heart, which the lady “found so good that she
+never ate again,” is the most tragical instance of these monstrous
+vows of loving cannibalism. But when the absent one did not die, but
+only the love within him, then the lady would seek counsel of the
+Witch, begging of her the means of holding him, of bringing him back.
+
+The incantations used by the sorceress of Theocritus and Virgil,
+though employed also in the Middle Ages, were seldom of much avail. An
+attempt was made to win back the lover by a spell seemingly copied
+from antiquity, by means of a cake, of a _confarreatio_[49] like that
+which, both in Asia and Europe, had always been the holiest pledge of
+love. But in this case it is not the soul only, it is the flesh also
+they seek to bind; there must be so true an identity established
+between the two, that, dead to all other women, he shall live only for
+her. It was a cruel ceremony on the woman’s side. “No haggling,
+madam,” says the Witch. Suddenly the proud dame grows obedient, even
+to letting herself be stripped bare: for thus indeed it must be.
+
+    [49] One form of wedding among the Romans, in which the
+    bride-cake was broken between the pair, in token of their
+    union.--TRANS.
+
+What a triumph for the Witch! And if this lady were the same as she
+who had once made her “run the gauntlet,” how meet the vengeance, how
+dread the requital now! But it is not enough to have stripped her thus
+naked. About her loins is fastened a little shelf, on which a small
+oven is set for the cooking of the cake. “Oh, my dear, I cannot bear
+it longer! Make haste, and relieve me.”
+
+“You must bear it, madam; you must feel the heat. When the cake is
+done, he will be warmed by you, by your flame.”
+
+It is over; and now we have the cake of antiquity, of the Indian and
+the Roman marriage, but spiced and warmed up by the lecherous spirit
+of the Devil. She does not say with Virgil’s wizard,[50]
+
+    “Ducite ab urbe domum, mea carmina, ducite Daphnin!”
+
+    [50] “Hither, ye spells of mine, bring Daphnis home from the
+    city!”--_Virgil_, Eclogue viii.
+
+But she takes him the cake, steeped, as it were, in the other’s
+suffering, and kept warm by her love. He has hardly bitten it when he
+is overtaken by an odd emotion, by a feeling of dizziness. Then as the
+blood rushes up to his heart he turns red and hot. Passion fastens
+anew on him, and inextinguishable desire.[51]
+
+    [51] I am wrong in saying inextinguishable. Fresh philtres
+    were often needed; and the blame of this must lie with the
+    lady, from whom the Witch in her mocking, malignant rage
+    exacted the most humiliating observances.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+THE REBELS’ COMMUNION--SABBATHS--THE BLACK MASS.
+
+
+We must now speak of the _Sabbaths_; a word which at different times
+clearly meant quite different things. Unhappily, we have no detailed
+accounts of these gatherings earlier than the reign of Henry IV.[52]
+By that time they were nothing more than a great lewd farce carried on
+under the cloak of witchcraft. But these very descriptions of a thing
+so greatly corrupted are marked by certain antique touches that tell
+of the successive periods and the different forms through which it had
+passed.
+
+    [52] The least bad of these is by Lancre, a man of some wit,
+    whose evident connection with some young witches gave him
+    something to say. The accounts of the Jesuit Del Rio and the
+    Dominican Michaëlis are the absurd productions of two
+    credulous and silly pedants.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We may set out with this firm idea that, for many centuries, the serf
+led the life of a wolf or a fox; that he was _an animal of the night_,
+moving about, I may say, as little as possible in the daytime, and
+truly living in the night alone.
+
+Still, up to the year 1000, so long as the people made their own
+saints and legends, their daily life was not to them uninteresting.
+Their nightly Sabbaths were only a slight relic of paganism. They
+held in fear and honour the Moon, so powerful over the good things of
+earth. Her chief worshippers, the old women, burn small candles to
+_Dianom_--the Diana of yore, whose other names were Luna and Hecate.
+The Lupercal (or wolf-man) is always following the women and children,
+disguised indeed under the dark face of ghost Hallequin (Harlequin).
+The Vigil of Venus was kept as a holiday precisely on the first of
+May. On Midsummer Day they kept the Sabaza by sacrificing the he-goat
+of Bacchus Sabasius. In all this there was no mockery; nothing but a
+harmless carnival of serfs.
+
+But about the year 1000 the church is well-nigh shut against the
+peasant through the difference between his language and hers. By 1100
+her services became quite unintelligible. Of the mysteries played at
+the church-doors, he has retained chiefly the comic side, the ox and
+the ass, &c. On these he makes Christmas carols, which grow ever more
+and more burlesque, forming a true Sabbatic literature.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Are we to suppose that the great and fearful risings of the twelfth
+century had no influence on these mysteries, on this night-life of the
+_wolf_, the _game bird_, the _wild quarry_. The great sacraments of
+rebellion among the serfs, when they drank of each other’s blood, or
+ate of the ground by way of solemn pledge,[53] may have been
+celebrated at the Sabbaths. The “Marseillaise” of that time, sung by
+night rather than day, was perhaps a Sabbatic chant:--
+
+    “Nous sommes hommes commes ils sont!
+    Tout aussi grand cœur nous avons!
+    Tout autant souffrir nous pouvons!”[54]
+
+    [53] At the battle of Courtray. See also Grimm and my
+    _Origines_.
+
+    [54]
+
+    “We are fashioned of one clay:
+    Big as theirs our hearts are aye:
+    We can bear as much as they.”--TRANS.
+
+But the tombstone falls again in 1200. Seated thereon the Pope and the
+King, with their enormous weight, have sealed up man. Has he now his
+old life by night? More than ever. The old pagan dances must by this
+time have waxed furious. Our negroes of the Antilles, after a dreadful
+day of heat and hard work, would go and dance away some four leagues
+off. So it was with the serf too. But with his dances there must have
+mingled a merriment born of revenge, satiric farces, burlesques and
+caricatures of the baron and the priest: a whole literature of the
+night indeed, that knew not one word of the literature of the day,
+that knew little even of the burgher Fabliaux.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of such a nature were the Sabbaths before 1300. Before they could take
+the startling form of open warfare against the God of those days, much
+more was needed still, and especially these two things: not only a
+descending into the very depths of despair, but also _an utter losing
+of respect for anything_.
+
+To this pass they do not come until the fourteenth century, under the
+Avignon popes, and during the Great Schism; when the Church with two
+heads seems no longer a church; when the king and all his nobles,
+being in shameful captivity to the English, are extorting the means of
+ransom from their oppressed and outraged people. Then do the Sabbaths
+take the grand and horrible form of the _Black Mass_, of a ritual
+upside down, in which Jesus is defied and bidden to thunder on the
+people if He can. In the thirteenth century this devilish drama was
+still impossible, through the horror it would have caused. And later
+again, in the fifteenth, when everything, even suffering itself, had
+become exhausted, so fierce an outburst could not have issued forth;
+so monstrous an invention no one would have essayed. It could only
+have belonged to the age of Dante.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It took place, I fancy, at one gush; an explosion as it were of genius
+raving, bringing impiety up to the height of a great popular
+passion-fit. To understand the nature of these bursts of rage, we must
+remember that, far from imagining the fixedness of God’s laws, a
+people brought up by their own clergy to believe and depend on
+miracles, had for ages past been hoping and waiting for nothing else
+than a miracle which never came. In vain they demanded one in the
+desperate hour of their last worst strait. Heaven thenceforth appeared
+to them as the ally of their savage tormentors, nay, as itself a
+tormentor too.
+
+Thereon began the _Black Mass_ and the _Jacquerie_.[55]
+
+    [55] The Peasants’ war which raged in France in 1364.
+
+In the elastic shell of the Black Mass, a thousand variations of
+detail may afterwards have been inserted; but the shell itself was
+strongly made and, in my opinion, all of one piece.
+
+This drama I succeeded in reproducing in my “History of France,” in
+the year 1857. There was small difficulty in casting it anew in its
+four acts. Only at that time I left in it too many of the grotesque
+adornments which clothed the Sabbath of a later period; nor did I
+clearly enough define what belonged to the older shell, so dark and
+dreadful.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Its date is strongly marked by certain savage tokens of an age
+accursed, and yet more by the ruling place therein assigned to woman,
+a fact most characteristic of the fourteenth century.
+
+It is strange to mark how, at that period, the woman who enjoys so
+little freedom still holds her royal sway in a hundred violent
+fashions. At this time she inherits fiefs, brings her kingdoms to the
+king. On the lower levels she has still her throne, and yet more in
+the skies. Mary has supplanted Jesus. St. Francis and St. Dominic have
+seen the three worlds in her bosom. By the immensity of her grace she
+washes away sin; ay, and sometimes helps the sinner,--as in the story
+of a nun whose place the Virgin took in the choir, while she herself
+was gone to meet her lover.
+
+Up high, and down very low, we see the woman. Beatrice reigns in
+heaven among the stars, while John of Meung in the _Romaunt of the
+Rose_ is preaching the community of women. Pure or sullied, the woman
+is everywhere. We might say of her what Raymond Lulle said of God:
+“What part has He in the world? The whole.”
+
+But alike in heaven and in poetry the true heroine is not the fruitful
+mother decked out with children; but the Virgin, or some barren
+Beatrice, who dies young.
+
+A fair English damsel passed over into France, it is said, about the
+year 1300, to preach the redemption of women. She looked on herself as
+their Messiah.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In its earliest phase the Black Mass seemed to betoken this redemption
+of Eve, so long accursed of Christianity. The woman fills every office
+in the Sabbath. She is priestess, altar, pledge of holy communion, by
+turns. Nay, at bottom, is she not herself as God?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Many popular traits may be found herein, and yet it comes not wholly
+from the people. The peasant who honoured strength alone, made small
+account of the woman; as we see but too clearly in our old laws and
+customs. From him the woman would not have received the high place she
+holds here. It is by her own self the place is won.
+
+I would gladly believe that the Sabbath in its then shape was woman’s
+work, the work of such a desperate woman as the Witch was then. In the
+fourteenth century she saw open before her a horrible career of
+torments lighted up for three or four hundred years by the stake.
+After 1300 her medical knowledge is condemned as baleful, her remedies
+are proscribed as if they were poisons. The harmless drawing of lots,
+by which lepers then thought to better their luck, brought on a
+massacre of those poor wretches. Pope John XXII. ordered the burning
+of a bishop suspected of Witchcraft. Under a system of such blind
+repression there was just the same risk in daring little as in daring
+much. Danger itself made people bolder; and the Witch was able to dare
+anything.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Human brotherhood, defiance of the Christian heaven, a distorted
+worship of nature herself as God--such was the purport of the Black
+Mass.
+
+They decked an altar to the arch-rebel of serfs, _to Him who had been
+so wronged_, the old outlaw, unfairly hunted out of heaven, “the
+Spirit by whom earth was made, the Master who ordained the budding of
+the plants.” Such were the names of honour given him by his
+worshippers, the _Luciferians_, and also, according to a very likely
+opinion, by the Knights of the Temple.
+
+The greatest miracle of those unhappy times is, the greater abundance
+found at the nightly communion of the brotherhood, than was to be
+found elsewhere by day. By incurring some little danger the Witch
+levied her contributions from those who were best off, and gathered
+their offerings into a common fund. Charity in a Satanic garb grew
+very powerful, as being a crime, a conspiracy, a form of rebellion.
+People would rob themselves of their food by day for the sake of the
+common meal at night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Figure to yourself, on a broad moor, and often near an old Celtic
+cromlech, at the edge of a wood, this twofold scene: on one side a
+well-lit moor and a great feast of the people; on the other, towards
+yon wood, the choir of that church whose dome is heaven. What I call
+the choir is a hill commanding somewhat the surrounding country.
+Between these are the yellow flames of torch-fires, and some red
+brasiers emitting a fantastic smoke. At the back of all is the Witch,
+dressing up her Satan, a great wooden devil, black and shaggy. By his
+horns, and the goatskin near him, he might be Bacchus; but his manly
+attributes make him a Pan or a Priapus. It is a darksome figure, seen
+differently by different eyes; to some suggesting only terror, while
+others are touched by the proud melancholy wherein the Eternally
+Banished seems absorbed.[56]
+
+    [56] This is taken from Del Rio, but is not, I think,
+    peculiar to Spain. It is an ancient trait, and marked by the
+    primitive inspiration.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Act First. The magnificent _In troit_ taken by Christendom from
+antiquity, that is, from those ceremonies where the people in long
+train streamed under the colonnades on their way to the sanctuary, is
+now taken back for himself by the elder god upon his return to power.
+The _Lavabo_, likewise borrowed from the heathen lustrations,
+reappears now. All this he claims back by right of age.
+
+His priestess is always called, by way of honour, the Elder; but she
+would sometimes have been young. Lancre tells of a witch of seventeen,
+pretty, and horribly savage.
+
+The Devil’s bride was not to be a child: she must be at least thirty
+years old, with the form of a Medea, with the beauty that comes of
+pain; an eye deep, tragic, lit up by a feverish fire, with great
+serpent tresses waving at their will: I refer to the torrent of her
+black untamable hair. On her head, perhaps, you may see the crown of
+vervein, the ivy of the tomb, the violets of death.
+
+When she has had the children taken off to their meal, the service
+begins: “I will come before thine altar; but save me, O Lord, from the
+faithless and violent man (from the priest and the baron).”
+
+Then come the denial of Jesus, the paying of homage to the new master,
+the feudal kiss, like the greetings of the Temple, when all was
+yielded without reserve, without shame, or dignity, or even purpose;
+the denial of an olden god being grossly aggravated by a seeming
+preference for Satan’s back.
+
+It is now his turn to consecrate his priestess. The wooden deity
+receives her in the manner of an olden Pan or Priapus. Following the
+old pagan form she sits a moment upon him in token of surrender, like
+the Delphian seeress on Apollo’s tripod. After receiving the breath of
+his spirit, the sacrament of his love, she purifies herself with like
+formal solemnity. Thenceforth she is a living altar.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Introit over, the service is interrupted for the feast. Contrary
+to the festive fashion of the nobles, who all sit with their swords
+beside them, here, in this feast of brethren, are no arms, not even a
+knife.
+
+As a keeper of the peace, each has a woman with him. Without a woman
+no one is admitted. Be she a kinswoman or none, a wife or none; be she
+old or young, a woman he must bring with him.
+
+What were the drinks passed round among them? Mead, or beer, or wine;
+strong cider or perry? The last two date from the twelfth century.
+
+The illusive drinks, with their dangerous admixture of belladonna, did
+they already appear at that board? Certainly not. There were children
+there. Besides, an excess of commotion would have prevented the
+dancing.
+
+This whirling dance, the famous _Sabbath-round_, was quite enough to
+complete the first stage of drunkenness. They turned back to back,
+their arms behind them, not seeing each other, but often touching each
+other’s back. Gradually no one knew himself, nor whom he had by his
+side. The old wife then was old no more. Satan had wrought a miracle.
+She was still a woman, desirable, after a confused fashion beloved.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Act Second. Just as the crowd, grown dizzy together, was led, both by
+the attraction of the women and by a certain vague feeling of
+brotherhood, to imagine itself one body, the service was resumed at
+the _Gloria_. The altar, the host, became visible. These were
+represented by the woman herself. Prostrate, in a posture of extreme
+abasement, her long black silky tresses lost in the dust; she, this
+haughty Proserpine, offered up herself. On her back a demon
+officiated, saying the _Credo_, and making the offering.[57]
+
+    [57] This important fact of the woman being her own altar, is
+    known to us by the trial of La Voisin, which M. Ravaisson,
+    Sen., is about to publish with the other _Papers of the
+    Bastille_.
+
+At a later period this scene came to be immodest. But at this time,
+amidst the calamities of the fourteenth century, in the terrible days
+of the Black Plague, and of so many a famine, in the days of the
+Jacquerie and those hateful brigands, the Free Lances,--on a people
+thus surrounded by danger, the effect was more than serious. The whole
+assembly had much cause to fear a surprise. The risk run by the Witch
+in this bold proceeding was very great, even tantamount to the
+forfeiting of her life. Nay, more; she braved a hell of suffering, of
+torments such as may hardly be described. Torn by pincers, and broken
+alive; her breasts torn out; her skin slowly singed, as in the case
+of the wizard bishop of Cahors; her body burned limb by limb on a
+small fire of red-hot coal, she was like to endure an eternity of
+agony.
+
+Certainly all were moved when the prayer was spoken, the
+harvest-offering made, upon this devoted creature who gave herself up
+so humbly. Some wheat was offered to the _Spirit of the Earth_, who
+made wheat to grow. A flight of birds, most likely from the woman’s
+bosom, bore to the _God of Freedom_ the sighs and prayers of the
+serfs. What did they ask? Only that we, their distant descendants,
+might become free.[58]
+
+    [58] This grateful offering of wheat and birds is peculiar to
+    France. In Lorraine, and no doubt in Germany, black beasts
+    were offered, as the black cat, the black goat, or the black
+    bull.
+
+What was the sacrament she divided among them? Not the ridiculous
+pledge we find later in the reign of Henry IV., but most likely that
+_confarreatio_ which we saw in the case of the philtres, the hallowed
+pledge of love, a cake baked on her own body, on the victim who,
+perhaps, to-morrow would herself be passing through the fire. It was
+her life, her death, they ate there. One sniffs already the scorching
+flesh.
+
+Last of all they set upon her two offerings, seemingly of flesh; two
+images, one of _the latest dead_, the other of the newest-born in the
+district. These shared in the special virtue assigned to her who acted
+as altar and Host in one, and on these the assembly made a show of
+receiving the communion. Their Host would thus be threefold, and
+always human. Under a shadowy likeness of the Devil the people
+worshipped none other than its own self.
+
+The true sacrifice was now over and done. The woman’s work was ended,
+when she gave herself up to be eaten by the multitude. Rising from her
+former posture, she would not withdraw from the spot until she had
+proudly stated, and, as it were, confirmed the lawfulness of her
+proceedings by an appeal to the thunderbolt, by an insolent defiance
+of the discrowned God.
+
+In mockery of the _Agnus Dei_, and the breaking of the Christian Host,
+she brought a toad dressed up, and pulled it to pieces. Then rolling
+her eyes about in a frightful way she raised them to heaven, and
+beheading the toad, uttered these strange words: “Ah, _Philip_,[59] if
+I had you here, you should be served in the same manner!”
+
+    [59] Lancre, 136. Why “Philip,” I cannot say. By Satan Jesus
+    is always called John or _Janicot_ (Jack). Was she speaking
+    of Philip of Valois, who brought on the wasting hundred
+    years’ war with England?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No answer being outwardly given to her challenge, no thunderbolt
+hurled upon her head, they imagine that she has triumphed over the
+Christ. The nimble band of demons seized their moment to astonish the
+people with various small wonders which amazed and overawed the more
+credulous. The toads, quite harmless in fact, but then accounted
+poisonous, were bitten and torn between their dainty teeth. They
+jumped over large fires and pans of live coal, to amuse the crowd and
+make them laugh at the fires of Hell.
+
+Did the people really laugh after a scene so tragical, so very bold? I
+know not. Assuredly there was no laughing on the part of her who first
+dared all this. To her these fires must have seemed like those of the
+nearest stake. Her business rather lay in forecasting the future of
+that devilish monarchy, in creating the Witch to be.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE SEQUEL--LOVE AND DEATH--SATAN DISAPPEARS.
+
+
+And now the multitude is made free, is of good cheer. For some hours
+the serf reigns in short-lived freedom. His time indeed is scant
+enough. Already the sky is changing, the stars are going down. Another
+moment, and the cruel dawn remits him to his slavery, brings him back
+again under hostile eyes, under the shadow of the castle, beneath the
+shadow of the church; back again to his monotonous toiling, to the old
+unending weariness of heart, governed as it were by two bells, whereof
+one keeps saying “Always,” the other “Never.” Anon they will be seen
+coming each out of his own house, heavily, humbly, with an air of calm
+composure.
+
+Let them at least enjoy the one short moment! Let each of these
+disinherited, for once fulfil his fancy, for once indulge his musings.
+What soul is there so all unhappy, so lost to all feeling, as never to
+have one good dream, one fond desire; never to say, “If this would
+only happen!”
+
+The only detailed accounts we have, as I said before, are modern,
+belonging to a time of peace and well-doing, when France was blooming
+afresh, in the latter years of Henry VI., years of thriving luxury,
+entirely different from that dark age when the Sabbath was first set
+going.
+
+No thanks to Mr. Lancre and others, if we refrain from pourtraying the
+Third Act as like the Church-Fair of Rubens, a very miscellaneous
+orgie, a great burlesque ball, which allowed of every kind of union,
+especially between near kindred. According to those authors, who would
+make us groan with horror, the main end of the Sabbath, the explicit
+doctrine taught by Satan, was incest; and in those great gatherings,
+sometimes of two thousand souls, the most startling deeds were done
+before the whole world.
+
+This is hard to believe; and the same writers tell of other things
+which seem quite opposed to a view so cynical. They say that people
+went to those meetings only in pairs, that they sat down to the feast
+by twos, that even if one person came alone, she was assigned a young
+demon, who took charge of her, and did the honours of the feast. They
+say, too, that jealous lovers were not afraid to go thither in company
+with the curious fair.
+
+We also find that the most of them came by families, children and all.
+The latter were sent off only during the first act, not during the
+feast, nor the services, nor yet while this third act was going on; a
+fact which proves that some decency was observed. Moreover, the scene
+was twofold. The household groups stayed on the moor in a blaze of
+light. It was only beyond the fantastic curtain of torch-smoke that
+the darker spaces, where people could roam in all directions, began.
+
+The judges, the inquisitors, for all their enmity, are fain to allow
+the existence here of a general spirit of peace and mildness. Of the
+three things that startle us in the feasts of nobles, there is not one
+here; no swords, no duels, no tables reeking blood. No faithless
+gallantries here bring dishonour on some intimate friend. Unknown,
+unneeded here, for all they say, is the unclean brotherhood of the
+Temple; in the Sabbath, woman is everything.
+
+The question of incest needs explaining. All alliances between
+kinsfolk, even those most allowable in the present day, were then
+regarded as a crime. The modern law, which is charity itself,
+understands the heart of man and the well-being of families.[60] It
+allows the widower to marry his wife’s sister, the best mother his
+children could have. Above all, it allows a man to wed his cousin,
+whom he knows and may trust fully, whom he has loved perhaps from
+childhood, his playfellow of old, regarded by his mother with special
+favour as already the adopted of her own heart. In the Middle Ages all
+this was incestuous.
+
+    [60] Of course the allusion here, as shown in the next
+    following sentence, is to French law in particular. As for
+    the marriage of cousins, there is much to say on both sides
+    of the question.--TRANS.
+
+The peasant being fondest of his own family was driven to despair. It
+was a monstrous thing for him to marry a cousin, even in the sixth
+degree. It was impossible for him to get married in his own village
+where the question of kinship stood so much in his way. He had to look
+for a wife elsewhere, afar off. But in those days there was not much
+intercourse or acquaintance between different places, and each hated
+its own neighbours. On feast days one village would fight another
+without knowing the reason why, as may sometimes still be seen in
+countries never so thinly peopled. No one durst go seek a wife in the
+very spot where men had been fighting together, where he himself would
+have been in great danger.
+
+There was another difficulty. The lord of the young serf forbade his
+marrying in the next lordship. Becoming the serf of his wife’s lord he
+would have been wholly lost to his own. Thus he was debarred by the
+priest from his cousin, by the lord from a stranger; and so it
+happened that many did not marry at all.
+
+The result was just what they pretended to avoid. In the Sabbath the
+natural sympathies sprang forth again. There the youth found again her
+whom he had known and loved at first, her whose “little husband” he
+had been called at ten years old. Preferring her as he certainly did,
+he paid but little heed to canonical hindrances.
+
+When we come to know the Mediæval Family better, we give up believing
+the declamatory assumptions of a general mingling together of the
+people forming so great a crowd. On the contrary, we feel that each
+small group is so closely joined together, as to be utterly barred to
+the entrance of a stranger.
+
+The serf was not jealous towards his own kin, but his poverty and
+wretchedness made him exceedingly afraid of worsening his lot by
+multiplying children whom he could not support. The priest and the
+lord on their part wished to increase the number of their
+serfs--wanted the woman to be always bearing; and the strangest
+sermons were often delivered on this head,[61] varied sometimes with
+threats and cruel reproaches. All the more resolute was the prudence
+of the man. The woman, poor creature, unable to bear children fit to
+live on such conditions, bearing them only to her sorrow, had a horror
+of being made big. She never would have ventured to one of these night
+festivals without being first assured, again and again, that no woman
+ever came away pregnant.[62]
+
+    [61] The ingenious M. Génin has very recently collected the
+    most curious information on this point.
+
+    [62] Boguet, Lancre, and other authors, are agreed on this
+    question.
+
+They were drawn thither by the banquet, the dancing, the lights, the
+amusements; in nowise by carnal pleasure. The last thing they cared
+for was to heighten their poverty, to bring one more wretch into the
+world, to give another serf to their lord.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Cruel indeed was the social system of those days. Authority bade men
+marry, but rendered marriage nearly impossible, at once by the
+excessive misery of most, and the senseless cruelty of the canonical
+prohibitions.
+
+The result was quite opposed to the purity thus preached. Under a show
+of Christianity existed the patriarchate of Asia alone.
+
+Only the firstborn married. The younger brothers and sisters worked
+under him and for him. In the lonely farms of the mountains of the
+South, far from all neighbours and every woman, brothers and sisters
+lived together, the latter serving and in all ways belonging to the
+former; a way of life analogous to that in Genesis, to the marriages
+of the Parsees, to the customs still obtaining in certain shepherd
+tribes of the Himalayas.
+
+The mother’s fate was still more revolting. She could not marry her
+son to a kinswoman, and thus secure to herself a kindly-affected
+daughter-in-law. Her son married, if he could, a girl from a distant
+village, an enemy often, whose entrance proved baneful either to the
+children of a former marriage, or to the poor mother, who was often
+driven away by the stranger wife. You may not think it, but the fact
+is certainly so. At the very least she was ill-used; banished from the
+fireside, from the very table.
+
+There is a Swiss law forbidding the removal of the mother from her
+place by the chimney-corner.
+
+She was exceedingly afraid of her son’s marrying. But her lot was
+little happier if he did not marry. None the less servant was she of
+the young master of the house, who succeeded to all his father’s
+rights, even to that of beating her. This impious custom I have seen
+still followed in the South: a son of five-and-twenty chastising his
+mother when she got drunk.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+How much greater her suffering in those days of savagery! Then it was
+rather he who came back from the feast half-drunken, hardly knowing
+what he was about. But one room, but one bed, was all they had between
+them. She was by no means free from fear. He had seen his friends
+married, and felt soured thereat. Thenceforth her way is marked by
+tears, by utter weakness, by a woful self-surrender. Threatened by her
+only God, her son, heart-broken at finding herself in a plight so
+unnatural, she falls desperate. She tries to drown all her memories in
+sleep. At length comes an issue for which neither of them can fairly
+account, an issue such as nowadays will often happen in the poorer
+quarters of large towns, where some poor woman is forced, frightened,
+perhaps beaten, into bearing every outrage. Thus conquered, and, spite
+of her scruples, far too resigned, she endured thenceforth a pitiable
+bondage; a life of shame and sorrow, and abundant anguish, growing
+with the yearly widening difference between their several ages. The
+woman of six-and-thirty might keep watch over a son of twenty years:
+but at fifty, alas! or still later, where would he be? From the great
+Sabbath where thronged the people of far villages, he would be
+bringing home a strange woman for his youthful mistress, a woman hard,
+heartless, devoid of ruth, who would rob her of her son, her seat by
+the fire, her bed, of the very house which she herself had made.
+
+To believe Lancre and others, Satan accounted the son for
+praiseworthy, if he kept faithful to his mother, thus making a virtue
+of a crime. If this be true, we must assume that the woman was
+protected by a woman, that the Witch sided with the mother, to defend
+her hearth against a daughter-in-law who, stick in hand, would have
+sent her forth to beg.
+
+Lancre further maintains that “never was good Witch, but she sprang
+from the love of a mother for her son.” In this way, indeed, was born
+the Persian soothsayer, the natural fruit, they say, of so hateful a
+mystery; and thus the secrets of the magical art were kept confined to
+one family which constantly renewed itself.
+
+An impious error led them to imitate the harmless mystery of the
+husbandman, the unceasing vegetable round whereby the corn resown in
+the furrow, brings forth its corn.
+
+The less monstrous unions of brother with sister, so common in the
+East, and in Greece, were cold and rarely fruitful. They were wisely
+abandoned; nor would people ever have returned to them, but for that
+rebellious spirit which, being aroused by absurd restrictions, flung
+itself foolishly into the opposite extreme. Thus from unnatural laws,
+hatred begot unnatural customs.
+
+A cruel, an accursed time, a time big with despair!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We have been long discoursing; but the dawn is well-nigh come. In a
+moment the hour will strike for the spirits to take themselves away.
+The Witch feels her dismal flowers already withering on her brow.
+Farewell, her royalty, perhaps her life! Where would they be, if the
+day still found her there?
+
+Of Satan, what shall she make? A flame, a cinder? He asks for nothing
+better; knowing well, in his craftiness, that the only way to live and
+to be born again, is first to die.
+
+And will he die, he who as the mighty summoner of the dead, granted to
+them that mourn their only joy on earth, the love they had lost, the
+dream they had cherished? Ah, no! he is very sure to live.
+
+Will he die, he that mighty spirit who, finding Creation accurst, and
+Nature lying cold upon the ground, flung thither like a dirty
+foster-child from off the Church’s garment, gathered her up and placed
+her on his bosom? In truth it cannot be.
+
+Will he die, he the one great physician of the Middle Ages, of a
+world that, falling sick, was saved by his poisons and bidden, poor
+fool, to live?
+
+As the gay rogue is sure of living, he dies wholly at his ease. He
+shuffles out of himself, cleverly burns up his fine goatskin, and
+disappears in a blaze of dawn.
+
+But _she_ who made Satan, who made all things, good or ill, whose
+countenance was given to so many forms of love, of devotion, and of
+crime,--to what end will she come? Behold her all lonely on her waste
+moorland.
+
+She is not, as they say, the dread of all. Many will bless her. More
+than one have found her beautiful, would sell their share in Paradise
+to dare be near her. But all around her is a wide gulf. They who
+admire, are none the less afraid of this all-powerful Medea, with her
+fair deep eyes, and the thrilling adders of her dark overflowing hair.
+
+To her thus lonely for ever, for evermore without love, what is there
+left? Nothing but the Demon who had suddenly disappeared.
+
+“’Tis well, good Devil, let us go. I am utterly loath to stay here any
+more. Hell itself is far preferable. Farewell to the world!”
+
+She must live but a very little longer, to play out the dreadful drama
+she had herself begun. Near her, ready saddled by the obedient Satan,
+stood a huge black horse, the fire darting from his eyes and nostrils.
+She sprang upon him with one bound.
+
+They follow her with their eyes. The good folk say with alarm, “What
+is to become of her?” With a frightful burst of laughter, she goes
+off, vanishing swift as an arrow. They would like much to know what
+becomes of the poor woman, but that they never will.[63]
+
+    [63] See the end of the Witch of Berkeley, as told by William
+    of Malmesbury.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE WITCH IN HER DECLINE--SATAN MULTIPLIED AND MADE COMMON.
+
+
+The Devil’s delicate fondling, the lesser Witch, begotten of the Black
+Mass after the greater one’s disappearance, came and bloomed in all
+her malignant cat-like grace. This woman is quite the reverse of the
+other: refined and sidelong in manner, sly and purring demurely, quick
+also at setting up her back. There is nothing of the Titan about her,
+to be sure. Far from that, she is naturally base; lewd from her cradle
+and full of evil daintinesses. Her whole life is the expression of
+those unclean thoughts which sometimes in a dream by night may assail
+him who would shrink with horror from any such by day.
+
+She who is born with such a secret in her blood, with such instinctive
+mastery of evil, she who has looked so far and so low down, will have
+no religion, no respect for anything or person in the world; none even
+for Satan, since he is a spirit still, while she has a particular
+relish for all things material.
+
+In her childhood she spoiled everything. Tall and pretty she startled
+all by her slovenly habits. With her Witchcraft becomes a mysterious
+cooking up of some mysterious chemistry. From an early date she
+delights to handle repulsive things, to-day a drug, to-morrow an
+intrigue. Among diseases and love-affairs she is in her element. She
+will make a clever go-between, a bold and skilful empiric. War will be
+made against her as a fancied murderer, as a woman who deals in
+poisons. And yet she has small taste for such things, is far from
+murderous in her desires. Devoid of goodness, she yet loves life,
+loves to work cures, to prolong others’ lives. She is dangerous in two
+ways: on the one hand by selling receipts for barrenness, and even for
+abortion; while on the other, her headlong libertine fancy leads her
+to compass a woman’s fall with her cursed potions, to triumph in the
+wicked deeds of love.
+
+Different, indeed, is this one from the other! She is a manufacturer:
+the other was the ungodly one, the demon, the great rebellion, the
+wife, we might almost say, the mother of Satan; for out of her and her
+inward strength he grew up. But this one is the Devil’s daughter
+notwithstanding. Two things she derives from him, her uncleanness, her
+love of handling life. These are her allotted walk, in these she is
+quite an artist; an artist already trading in her lore, and we are
+admitted into the business.
+
+It was said that she would perpetuate herself by the incest from which
+she sprang. But she has no need of that: numberless little ones will
+she beget without help from another. In less than fifty years, at the
+opening of the fifteenth century, under Charles VI., a mighty
+contagion was spread abroad. Whoever thought he had any secrets or any
+receipts, whoever fancied himself a seer, whoever dreamed and
+travelled in his dreams, would call himself a pet of Satan. Every
+moonstruck woman adopted the awful name of Witch!
+
+A perilous, profitable name, cast at her in their hatred by people who
+alternately insult and implore the unknown power. It is none the less
+accepted, nay, is often claimed. To the children who follow her, to
+the woman who, with threatening fists, hurl the name at her like a
+stone, she turns round, saying proudly, “’Tis true, you have said
+well!”
+
+The business improves, and men are mingled in it. Hence another fall
+for the art. Still the least of the witches retains somewhat of the
+Sibyl. Those other frowsy charlatans, those clownish jugglers,
+mole-catchers, ratkillers, who throw spells over beasts, who sell
+secrets which they have not, defiled these times with the stench of a
+dismal black smoke, of fear and foolery. Satan grows enormous, gets
+multiplied without end. ’Tis a poor triumph, however, for him. He
+grows dull and sick at heart. Still the people keep flowing towards
+him, bent on having no other God than he. Himself only is to himself
+untrue.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In spite of two or three great discoveries, the fifteenth century is,
+to my thinking, none the less a century tired out, a century of few
+ideas.
+
+It opened right worthily with the Sabbath Royal of St. Denis, the wild
+and woful ball given by Charles VI. in the abbey so named, to
+commemorate the burial of Du Guesclin, which had taken place so many
+years before. For three days and nights was Sodom wallowing among the
+graves. The foolish king, not yet grown quite an idiot, compelled his
+royal forefathers to share in the ball, by making their dry bones
+dance in their biers. Death, becoming a go-between whether he would or
+no, lent a sharp spur to the voluptuous revel. Then broke out those
+unclean fashions of an age when ladies made themselves taller by
+wearing the Devil’s horned-bonnet, and gloried in dressing as if they
+were all with child.[64] To this fashion they clung for the next forty
+years. The younger folk on their side, not to be behind in
+shamelessness, eclipsed them in the display of naked charms. The woman
+wore Satan on her forehead in the shape of a horned head-dress: on the
+feet of the bachelor and the page he was visible in the tapering
+scorpion-like tips of their shoes. Under the mask of animals they
+represented the lowest side of brute nature. The famous child stealer,
+Retz, here took his first flight in villany. The great feudal ladies,
+unbridled Jezebels, with less sense of shame in them than the men,
+scorned all disguise whatever; displayed themselves with face
+uncovered. In their sensual rages, in their mad parade of debauchery,
+the king, the whole company might see the bottomless pit itself
+yawning for the life, the feeling, the body, and the soul of each.
+
+    [64] Even in a very mystic theme, in a work of such genius as
+    the _Lamb_ of Van Eyck (says John of Bruges), all the Virgins
+    seem big. It was only the quaint fashion of the fifteenth
+    century.
+
+Out of such doings come forth the conquered of Agincourt, a poor
+generation of effete nobles, in whose miniatures you shiver to see the
+falling away of their sorry limbs, as shown through the treacherous
+tightness of their clothes.[65]
+
+    [65] This wasting away of a used-up, enervated race, mars the
+    effect of all those splendid miniatures of the Court of
+    Burgundy, the Duke of Berry, &c. No amount of clever handling
+    could make good works of art out of subjects so very
+    pitiable.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Much to be pitied is the Witch who, when the great lady came home from
+that royal feast, became her bosom-counsellor and agent charged with
+the doing of impossible things.
+
+In her own castle, indeed, the lady is almost, if not all alone,
+amidst a crowd of single men. To judge from romances you would think
+she delighted in girding herself with an array of fair girls. Far
+otherwise are we taught by history and common sense. Eleanor is not
+so silly as to match herself against Rosamond. With all their own
+rakishness, those queens and great ladies could be frightfully
+jealous; witness she who is said by Henry Martin to have caused the
+death of a girl admired by her husband, under the outrageous handling
+of his soldiery. The power wielded by the lady’s love depends, we
+repeat, on her being alone. Whatever her age and figure, she becomes
+the dream of all. The Witch takes mischievous delight in making her
+abuse her goddesship, in tempting her to make game of the men she
+humbles and befools. She goes to all lengths of boldness, even
+treating them like very beasts. Look at them being transformed! Down
+on all fours they tumble, like fawning monkeys, absurd bears, lewd
+dogs, or swine eager to follow their contemptuous Circé.
+
+Her pity rises thereat? Nay, but she grows sick of it all, and kicks
+those crawling beasts with her foot. The thing is impure, but not
+heinous enough. An absurd remedy is found for her complaint. These
+others being so nought, she is to have something yet more
+nought--namely, a little sweetheart. The advice is worthy of the
+Witch. Love’s spark shall be lighted before its time in some young
+innocent, sleeping the pure sleep of childhood! Here you have the ugly
+tale of little John of Saintré, pink of cherubim, and other paltry
+puppets of the Age of Decay.
+
+Through all those pedantic embellishments and sentimental
+moralizings, one clearly marks the vile cruelty that lies below. The
+fruit was killed in the flower. Here, in a manner, is the very “eating
+of children,” which was laid so often to the Witch’s charge. Anyhow,
+she drained their lives. The fair lady who caresses one in so tender
+and motherly a way, what is she but a vampire, draining the blood of
+the weak? The upshot of such atrocities we may gather from the tale
+itself. Saintré becomes a perfect knight, but so utterly frail and
+weak as to be dared and defied by the lout of a peasant priest, in
+whom the lady, become better advised, has seen something that will
+suit her best.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Such idle whimsies heighten the surfeit, the mad rage of an empty
+mind. Circé among her beasts grows so weary and heartsick that she
+would be a beast herself. She fancies herself wild, and locks herself
+up. From her tower she casts an evil eye towards the gloomy forest.
+She fancies herself a prisoner, and rages like a wolf chained fast.
+“Let the old woman come this moment: I want her. Run!” Two minutes
+later again: “What! is she not come yet?”
+
+At last she is come. “Hark you: I have a sore longing--invincible, as
+you know--to choke you, to drown you, or to give you up to the bishop,
+who already claims you. You have but one way of escape, that is, to
+satisfy another longing of mine by changing me into a wolf. I feel
+wretchedly bored, weary of keeping still. I want, by night at least,
+to run free about the forest. Away with stupid servants, with dogs
+that stun me with their noise, with clumsy horses that kick out and
+shy at a thicket.”
+
+“But if you were caught, my lady----”
+
+“Insolent woman! You would rather die, then?”
+
+“At least you have heard the story of the woman-wolf, whose paw was
+cut off.[66] But, oh! how sorry I should be.”
+
+    [66] Among the great ladies imprisoned in their castles, this
+    dreadful fancy was not rare. They hungered and thirsted for
+    freedom, for savage freedom. Boguet mentions how, among the
+    hills of Auvergne, a hunter one night drew his sword upon a
+    she-wolf, but missing her, cut off her paw. She fled away
+    limping. He came to a neighbouring castle to seek the
+    hospitality of him who dwelt there. The gentleman, on seeing
+    him, asked if he had had good sport. By way of answer he
+    thought to draw out of his pouch the she-wolf’s paw; but what
+    was his amazement to find instead of the paw a hand, and on
+    one of the fingers a ring, which the gentleman recognized as
+    belonging to his wife! Going at once in search of her, he
+    found her hurt and hiding her fore-arm. To the arm which had
+    lost its hand he fitted that which the hunter had brought
+    him, and the lady was fain to own that she it was, who in the
+    likeness of a wolf had attacked the hunter, and afterwards
+    saved herself by leaving a paw on the battle-field. The
+    husband had the cruelty to give her up to justice, and she
+    was burnt.
+
+“That is my concern. I will hear nothing more, I am in a hurry--have
+been barking already. What happiness, to hunt all by myself in the
+clear moonlight; by myself to fasten on the hind, or man likewise if
+he comes near me; to attack the tender children, and, above all, to
+set my teeth in the women; ay, the women, for I hate them all--not one
+like yourself. Don’t start, I won’t bite you--you are not to my taste,
+and besides, you have no blood in you! ’Tis blood I crave--blood!”
+
+She can no longer refuse. “Nothing easier, my lady. To-night, at nine
+o’clock, you will drink this. Lock yourself up, and then turning into
+a wolf, while they think you are still here, you can scour the
+forest.”
+
+It is done; and next morning the lady finds herself worn out and
+depressed. In one night she must have travelled some thirty leagues.
+She has been hunting and slaying until she is covered with blood. But
+the blood, perhaps, comes from her having torn herself among the
+brambles.
+
+A great triumph and danger also for her who has wrought this miracle.
+From the lady, however, whose command provoked it, she receives but a
+gloomy welcome. “Witch, ’tis a fearful power you have; I should never
+have guessed it. But now I fear and dread you. Good cause, indeed,
+they have to hate you. A happy day will it be when you are burnt. I
+can ruin you when I please. One word of mine about last night, and my
+peasants would this evening whet their scythes upon you. Out, you
+black-looking, hateful old hag!”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The great folk, her patrons, launch her into strange adventures. For
+what can she refuse to her terrible protectors, when nothing but the
+castle saves her from the priest, from the faggot? If the baron, on
+his return from a crusade, being bent on copying the manners of the
+Turks, sends for her, and orders her to steal him a few children, what
+can she do? Raids such as those grand ones in which two thousand pages
+were sometimes carried off from Greek ground to enter the seraglio,
+were by no means unknown to the Christians; were known from the tenth
+century to the barons of England, at a later date to the knights of
+Rhodes and Malta. The famous Giles of Retz, the only one brought to
+trial, was punished, not for having stolen his small serfs, a crime
+not then uncommon, but for having sacrificed them to Satan. She who
+actually stole them, and was ignorant, doubtless, of their future lot,
+found herself between two perils: on the one hand the peasant’s fork
+and scythe; on the other, those torments which awaited her, when
+recusant, within the tower. Retz’s terrible Italian would have made
+nothing of pounding her in a mortar.[67]
+
+    [67] See my _History of France_, and still more the learned
+    and careful account by the lamented Armand Guéraud: _Notice
+    sur Gilles de Rais_, Nantes, 1855. We there find that the
+    purveyors of that horrible child’s charnel-house were mostly
+    men.
+
+On all sides the perils and the profits went together. A position more
+frightfully corrupting could not have been found. The Witches
+themselves did not deny the absurd powers imputed to them by the
+people. They averred that by means of a doll stuck over with needles
+they could weave their spells around whomever they pleased, making him
+waste away until he died. They averred that mandragora, torn from
+beneath the gallows by the teeth of a dog, who invariably died
+therefrom, enabled them to pervert the understanding; to turn men into
+beasts, to give women over to idiotcy and madness. Still more dreadful
+was the furious frenzy caused by the Thorn-apple, or Datura, which
+made men dance themselves to death, and go through a thousand shameful
+antics, without their own knowledge or remembrance.[68]
+
+    [68] Pouchet, on the _Solaneæ and General Botany_. Nysten,
+    _Dictionary of Medicine_, article _Datura_. The robbers
+    employed these potions but too often. A butcher of Aix and
+    his wife, whom they wanted to rob of their money, were made
+    to drink of some such, and became so maddened thereby, that
+    they danced all one night naked in a cemetery.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hence there grew up against them a feeling of boundless hatred,
+mingled with as extreme a fear. Sprenger, who wrote the _Hammer for
+Witches_, relates with horror how, in a season of snow, when all the
+roads were broken up, he saw a wretched multitude, wild with terror,
+and spell-bound by evils all too real, fill up all the approaches to a
+little German town. “Never,” says he, “did you behold so mighty a
+pilgrimage to our Lady of Grace, or her of the wilderness. All these
+people, who hobbled, crawled, and stumbled among the quagmires, were
+on their way to the Witch, to beseech the grace of the Devil upon
+themselves. How proud and excited must the old woman have felt at
+seeing so large a concourse prostrate before her feet!”[69]
+
+    [69] The Witch delighted in causing the noble and the great
+    to undergo the most outrageous trials of their love. We know
+    that queens and ladies of rank (in Italy even to the last
+    century) held their court at times the most forbidding, and
+    exacted the most unpleasant services from their favourites.
+    There was nothing too mean, too repulsive, for the domestic
+    brute--the _cicisbeo_, the priest, the half-witted page--to
+    undergo, in the stupid belief that the power of a philtre
+    increased with its nastiness. This was sad enough when the
+    ladies were neither young, nor beautiful, nor witty. But what
+    of that other astounding fact, that a Witch, who was neither
+    a great lady, nor young, nor fair, but poor, and perhaps a
+    serf, clad only in dirty rags, could still by her malice, by
+    the strange power of her raging lewdness, by some
+    bewitchingly treacherous spell, stupefy the gravest
+    personages, and abase them to so low a depth? Some monks of a
+    monastery on the Rhine, wherein, as in many other German
+    convents, none but a noble of four hundred years’ standing
+    could gain admission, sorrowfully owned to Sprenger that they
+    had seen three of their brethren bewitched in turn, and a
+    fourth killed by a woman, who boldly said, “I did it, and
+    will do so again: they cannot escape me, for they have
+    eaten,” &c. (Sprenger, _Malleus maleficarum_, _quæstio_, vii.
+    p. 84.) “The worst of it is,” says Sprenger, “that we have no
+    means of punishing or examining her: _so she lives still_.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE HAMMER FOR WITCHES.
+
+
+The witches took small care to hide their game. Rather they boasted of
+it; and it was, indeed, from their own lips that Sprenger picked up
+the bulk of the tales that grace his handbook. It is a pedantic work,
+marked out into the absurd divisions and subdivisions employed by the
+followers of St. Thomas Aquinas; but a work sincere withal, and
+frank-spoken, written by a man so thoroughly frightened by this
+dreadful duel between God and the Devil, wherein God _generally_
+allows the Devil to win, that the only remedy he can discern is to
+pursue the latter fire in hand, and burn with all speed those bodies
+which he had chosen for his dwelling-place.
+
+Sprenger’s sole merit is the fact of his having written a complete
+book, which crowns a mighty system, a whole literature. To the old
+_Penitentiaries_, handbooks of confessors for the inquisition of sin,
+succeeded the _Directories_ for the inquisition of heresy, the
+greatest sin of all. But for Witchcraft, the greatest of all heresies,
+special handbooks or directories were appointed. Hammers for Witches,
+to wit. These handbooks, continually enriched by the zeal of the
+Dominicans, attained perfection in the _Malleus_ of Sprenger, the
+book by which he himself was guided during his great mission to
+Germany, and which for a century after served as a guide and light for
+the courts of the Inquisition.
+
+How was Sprenger led to the study of these things? He tells us that
+being in Rome, at a refectory where the monks were entertaining some
+pilgrims, he saw two from Bohemia; one a young priest, the other his
+father. The father sighing prayed for a successful journey. Touched
+with a kindly feeling Sprenger asked him why he sorrowed. Because his
+son was _possessed_: at great cost and with much trouble he had
+brought him to the tomb of the saints, at Rome.
+
+“Where is this son of yours?” said the monk.
+
+“By your side.”
+
+“At this answer I shrank back alarmed. I scanned the young priest’s
+figure, and was amazed to see him eat with so modest an air, and
+answer with so much gentleness. He informed me that, on speaking
+somewhat sharply to an old woman, she had laid him under a spell, and
+that spell was under a tree. What tree? The Witch steadily refused to
+say.”
+
+Sprenger’s charity led him to take the possessed from church to
+church, from relic to relic. At every halting-place there was an
+exorcism, followed by furious cries, contortions, jabbering in every
+language, and gambols without number: all this before the people, who
+followed the pair with shuddering admiration. The devils, so abundant
+in Germany, were scarcer among the Italians. For some days Rome talked
+of nothing else. The noise made by this affair doubtless brought the
+Dominican into public notice. He studied, collected all the _Mallei_,
+and other manuscript handbooks, and became a first-rate authority in
+the processes against demons. His _Malleus_ was most likely composed
+during the twenty years between this adventure and the important
+mission entrusted to Sprenger by Pope Innocent VIII., in 1484.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For that mission to Germany a clever man was specially needed; a man
+of wit and ability, who might overcome the dislike of honest German
+folk for the dark system it would be his care to introduce. In the Low
+Countries Rome had suffered a rude check, which brought the
+Inquisition into vogue there, and consequently closed France against
+it: Toulouse alone, as being the old Albigensian country, having
+endured the Inquisition. About the year 1460 a Penitentiary[70] of
+Rome, being made Dean of Arras, thought to strike an awe-inspiring
+blow at the _Chambers of Rhetoric_, literary clubs which had begun to
+handle religious questions. He had one of these Rhetoricians burnt for
+a wizard, and along with him some wealthy burgesses, and even a few
+knights. The nobles were angry at this near approach to themselves:
+the public voice was raised in violent outcry. The Inquisition was
+cursed and spat upon, especially in France. The Parliament of Paris
+roughly closed its doors upon it; and thus by her awkwardness did Rome
+lose her opportunity of establishing that Reign of Terror throughout
+the North.
+
+    [70] Officer charged with the absolution of
+    penitents.--TRANS.
+
+About 1484 the time seemed better chosen. The Inquisition had grown to
+so dreadful a height in Spain, setting itself even above the king,
+that it seemed already confirmed as a conquering institution, able to
+move forward alone, to make its way everywhere, and seize upon
+everything. In Germany, indeed, it was hindered by the jealous
+antagonism of the spiritual princes, who, having courts of their own,
+and holding inquisitions by themselves, would never agree to accept
+that of Rome. But the position of these princes towards the popular
+movements by which they were then so greatly disquieted, soon rendered
+them more manageable. All along the Rhine, and throughout Swabia, even
+on the eastern side towards Salzburg, the country seemed to be
+undermined. At every moment burst forth some fresh revolt of the
+peasantry. A vast underground volcano, an invisible lake of fire,
+showed itself, as it were, from place to place, in continual spouts of
+flame. More dreaded than that of Germany, the foreign Inquisition
+appeared at a most seasonable hour for spreading terror through the
+country, and crushing the rebellious spirits, by roasting, as the
+wizards of to-day, those who might else have been the insurgents of
+to-morrow. It was a beautiful _derivative_, an excellent popular
+weapon for putting down the people. This time the storm got turned
+upon the Wizards, as in 1349, and on many other occasions it had been
+launched against the Jews.
+
+Only the right man was needed. He who should be the first to set up
+his judgment-seat in sight of the jealous courts of Mentz and Cologne,
+in presence of the mocking mobs of Strazburg or Frankfort, must indeed
+be a man of ready wit. He would need great personal cleverness to
+atone for, to cause a partial forgetfulness of his hateful mission.
+Rome, too, has always plumed herself on choosing the best men for her
+work. Caring little for questions, and much for persons, she thought
+rightly enough that the successful issue of her affairs depended on
+the special character of her several agents abroad. Was Sprenger the
+right man? He was a German to begin with, a Dominican enjoying
+beforehand the support of that dreaded order through all its convents,
+through all its schools. Need was there of a worthy son of the
+schools, a good disputant, of a man well skilled in the _Sum_,[71]
+grounded firm in his St. Thomas, able at any moment to quote texts.
+All this Sprenger certainly was: and best of all, he was a fool.
+
+    [71] A mediæval text-book on theology.--TRANS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“It has been often said that _diabolus_ comes from _dia_, ‘two,’ and
+_bolus_, ‘a pill or ball,’ because devouring alike soul and body, he
+makes but one pill, one mouthful of the two. But”--he goes on to say
+with the gravity of _Sganarelle_--“in Greek etymology _diabolus_ means
+‘shut up in a house of bondage,’ or rather ‘flowing down’ (Teufel?),
+that is to say, falling, because he fell from heaven.”
+
+Whence comes the word sorcery (_maléfice_)? From _maleficiendo_, which
+means _male de fide sentiendo_.[72] A curious etymology, but one that
+will hold a great deal. Once trace a resemblance between witchcraft
+and evil opinions, and every wizard becomes a heretic, every doubter a
+wizard. All who think wrongly can be burnt for wizards. This was done
+at Arras; and they long to establish the same rule, little by little,
+everywhere else.
+
+    [72] “Thinking ill of the faith.”--TRANS.
+
+Herein lies the once sure merit of Sprenger. A fool, but a fearless
+one, he boldly lays down the most unwelcome theses. Others would have
+striven to shirk, to explain away, to diminish, the objections that
+might be made. Not he, however. From the first page he puts plainly
+forward, one by one, the natural manifest reasons for not believing in
+the Satanic miracles. To these he coldly adds: “_They are but so many
+heretical mistakes_.” And without stopping to refute those reasons, he
+copies you out the adverse passages found in the Bible, St. Thomas, in
+books of legends, in the canonists, and the scholiasts. Having first
+shown you the right interpretation, he grinds it to powder by dint of
+authority.
+
+He sits down satisfied, calm as a conqueror; seeming to say, “Well,
+what say you now? Will you dare use your reason again? Go and doubt
+away then; doubt, for instance, that the Devil delights in setting
+himself between wife and husband, although the Church and all the
+canonists repeatedly admit this reason for a divorce!”
+
+Of a truth this is unanswerable: nobody will breathe so much as a
+whisper in reply. Since Sprenger heads his handbook for judges by
+declaring the slightest doubt _heretical_, the judge stands bound
+accordingly; he feels that he cannot stumble, that if unhappily he
+should ever be tempted by an impulse of doubt or humanity, he must
+begin by condemning himself and delivering his own body to the flames.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The same method prevails everywhere: first the sensible meaning, which
+is then confronted openly, without reserve, by the negation of all
+good sense. Some one, for instance, might be tempted to say that as
+love is in the soul, there is no need to account for it by the
+mysterious working of the Devil. That is surely specious, is it not?
+
+“By no means,” says Sprenger.
+
+“I mark a difference. He who cuts wood does not cause it to burn: he
+only does so indirectly. The woodcutter is Love; see Denis the
+Areopagite, Origen, John of Damascus. Therefore, love is but the
+indirect cause of love.”
+
+What a thing, you see, to have studied! No weak school could have
+turned out such a man. Only Paris, Louvain, or Cologne, had machinery
+fit to mould the human brain. The school of Paris was mighty: for
+dog-Latin who can be matched with the _Janotus_ of Gargantua?[73] But
+mightier yet was Cologne, glorious queen of darkness, whence Hutten
+drew the type of his _Obscuri viri_, that thriving and fruitful race
+of obscurantists and ignoramuses.[74]
+
+    [73] A character in Rabelais. “Date nobis clochas nostras,
+    &c.”--_Gargantua_, ch. 19.--TRANS.
+
+    [74] Ulrich von Hutten, friend of Luther, and author of the
+    witty _Epistolæ obscurorum virorum_.--TRANS.
+
+This massive logician, so full of words, so devoid of meaning, sworn
+foe of nature as well as reason, takes his seat with a proud reliance
+on his books and gown, on his dirt and dust. On one side of his
+judgement-table lies the _Sum_, on the other the _Directory_. Beyond
+these he never goes: at all else he only smiles. On such a man as he
+there is no imposing: he is not the man to utter anent astrology or
+alchemy nonsense not so foolish but that others might be led thereby
+to observe truly. And yet Sprenger is a freethinker: he is sceptical
+about old receipts! Albert the Great may aver, that some sage in a
+spring of water will suffice to raise a storm, but Sprenger only
+shakes his head. Sage indeed! Tell that to others, I beg. For all my
+little experience, I see herein the craft of One who would put us on
+the wrong scent, that cunning Prince of the Air; but he will fare
+ill, for he has to deal with a doctor more subtle than the Subtle One
+himself.
+
+I should have liked to see face to face this wonderful specimen of a
+judge, and the people who were brought before him. The creatures that
+God might bring together from two different worlds would not be more
+unlike, more strange to each other, more utterly wanting in a common
+language. The old hag, a skeleton in tatters, with an eye flashing
+forth evil things, a being thrice cooked in hell-fire; and the
+ill-looking hermit shepherd of the Black Forest or the upper Alpine
+wastes--such are the savages offered to the leaden gaze of a
+scholarling, to the judgement of a schoolman.
+
+Not long will they let him toil in his judgment-seat. They will tell
+all without being tortured. Come the torture will indeed, but
+afterwards, by way of complement and crown to the law-procedure. They
+explain and relate to order whatever they have done. The Devil is the
+Witch’s bedfellow, the shepherd’s intimate friend. She, for her part,
+smiles triumphantly, feels a manifest joy in the horror of those
+around.
+
+Truly, the old woman is very mad, and equally so the shepherd. Are
+they foolish? Not at all, but far otherwise. They are refined, subtle,
+skilled in growing herbs, and seeing through walls. Still more clearly
+do they see those monumental ass’s ears that overshadow the doctor’s
+cap. Clearest of all is the fear he has of them, for in vain does he
+try to bear him boldly; he does nought but tremble. He himself owns
+that, if the priest who adjures the demon does not take care, the
+Devil will change his lodging only to pass into the priest himself,
+feeling all the more proud of dwelling in a body dedicated to God. Who
+knows but these simple Devils of Witches and shepherds might even
+aspire to inhabit an inquisitor? He is far from easy in mind when in
+his loudest voice he says to the old woman, “If your master is so
+mighty, why do I not feel his blows?”
+
+“And, indeed I felt them but too strongly,” says the poor man in his
+book. “When I was in Ratisbon, how often he would come knocking at my
+windowpanes! How often he stuck pins in my cap! A hundred visions too
+did I have of dogs, monkeys,” &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The dearest delight of that great logician, the Devil, is, by the
+mouth of the seeming old woman, to push the doctor with awkward
+arguments, with crafty questions, from which he can only escape by
+acting like the fish who saves himself by troubling the water and
+turning it black as ink. For instance, “The Devil does no more than
+God allows him: why, then, punish his tools?” Or again, “We are not
+free. As in the case of Job, the Devil is allowed by God to tempt and
+beset us, to urge us on by blows. Should we, then, punish him who is
+not free?” Sprenger gets out of that by saying, “We are free beings.”
+Here come plenty of texts. “You are made serfs only by covenant with
+the Evil One.” The answer to this would be but too ready: “If God
+allows the Evil One to tempt us into making covenants, he renders
+covenants possible,” &c.
+
+“I am very good,” says he, “to listen to yonder folk. He is a fool who
+argues with the Devil.” So say all the rest likewise. They all cheer
+the progress of the trial: all are strongly moved, and show in murmurs
+their eagerness for the execution. They have seen enough of men
+hanged. As for the Wizard and the Witch, ’twill be a curious treat to
+see those two faggots crackling merrily in the flames.
+
+The judge has the people on his side, so he is not embarrassed.
+According to his _Directory_ three witnesses would be enough. Are not
+three witnesses readily found, especially to witness a falsehood? In
+every slanderous town, in every envious village teeming with the
+mutual hate of neighbours, witnesses abound. Besides, the _Directory_
+is a superannuated book, a century old. In that century of light, the
+fifteenth, all is brought to perfection. If witnesses are wanting, we
+are content with the _public voice_, the general clamour.[75]
+
+    [75] Faustin Hélie, in his learned and luminous _Traité de
+    l’Instruction Criminelle_ (vol. i. p. 398), has clearly
+    explained the manner in which Pope Innocent III., about 1200,
+    suppressed the safeguards theretofore required in any
+    prosecution, especially the risk incurred by prosecutors of
+    being punished for slander. Instead of these were established
+    the dismal processes of _Denunciation and Inquisition_. The
+    frightful levity of these latter methods is shown by Soldan.
+    Blood was shed like water.
+
+A genuine outcry, born of fear; the piteous cry of victims, of the
+poor bewitched. Sprenger is greatly moved thereat. Do not fancy him
+one of those unfeeling schoolmen, the lovers of a dry abstraction. He
+has a heart: for which very reason he is so ready to kill. He is
+compassionate, full of lovingkindness. He feels pity for yon weeping
+woman, but lately pregnant, whose babe the witch had smothered by a
+look. He feels pity for the poor man whose land she wasted with hail.
+He pities the husband, who though himself no wizard, clearly sees his
+wife to be a witch, and drags her with a rope round her neck before
+Sprenger, who has her burnt.
+
+From a cruel judge escape was sometimes possible; but from our worthy
+Sprenger it was hopeless. His humanity is too strong: it needs great
+management, a very large amount of ready wit, to avoid a burning at
+his hands. One day there was brought before him the plaint of three
+good ladies of Strasburg who, at one same hour of the same day, had
+been struck by an arm unseen. Ah, indeed! They are fain to accuse a
+man of evil aspect, of having laid them under a spell. On being
+brought before the inquisitor, the man vows and swears by all the
+saints that he knows nothing about these ladies, has never so much as
+seen them. The judge is hard of believing: nor tears nor oaths avail
+aught with him. His great compassion for the ladies made him
+inexorable, indignant at the man’s denials. Already he was rising from
+his seat. The man would have been tortured into confessing his guilt,
+as the most innocent often did. He got leave to speak, and said: “I
+remember, indeed, having struck some one yesterday at the hour named;
+but whom? No Christian beings, but only three cats which came
+furiously biting at my legs.” The judge, like a shrewd fellow, saw the
+whole truth of the matter; the poor man was innocent; the ladies were
+doubtless turned on certain days into cats, and the Evil One amused
+himself by sending them at the legs of Christian folk, in order to
+bring about the ruin of these latter by making them pass for wizards.
+
+A judge of less ability would never have hit upon this. But such a man
+was not always to be had. It was needful to have always handy on the
+table of the Inquisition a good fool’s guide, to reveal to simple and
+inexperienced judges the tricks of the Old Enemy, the best way of
+baffling him, the clever and deep-laid tactics employed with such
+happy effect by the great Sprenger in his campaigns on the Rhine. To
+that end the _Malleus_, which a man was required to carry in his
+pocket, was commonly printed in small 18mo, a form at that time
+scarce. It would not have been seemly for a judge in difficulties to
+open a folio on the table before his audience. But his handbook of
+folly he might easily squint at from the corner of his eye, or turn
+over its leaves as he held it under the table.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This _Malleus_ (or Mallet), like all books of the same class, contains
+a singular avowal, namely, that the Devil is gaining ground; in other
+words, that God is losing it; that mankind, after being saved by
+Christ, is becoming the Devil’s prey. Too clearly indeed does he step
+forward from legend to legend. What a way he has made between the time
+of the Gospels, when he was only too glad to get into the swine, and
+the days of Dante, when, as lawyer and divine, he argues with the
+saints, pleads his cause, and by way of closing a successful
+syllogism, bears away the soul he was fighting for, saying, with a
+triumphant laugh, “You didn’t know that I was a logician!”
+
+In the earlier days of the Middle Ages he waits till the last pangs to
+seize the soul and bear it off. Saint Hildegarde, about 1100, thinks
+that “_he cannot enter the body of a living man_, for else his limbs
+would fly off in all directions: it is but the shadow and the smoke of
+the Devil which pass therein.” That last gleam of good sense vanishes
+in the twelfth century. In the thirteenth we find a suppliant so
+afraid of being caught alive that he has himself watched day and night
+by two hundred armed men.
+
+Then begins a period of increasing terror, in which men trust
+themselves less and ever less to God’s protection. The Demon is no
+longer a stealthy sprite, no longer a thief by night, gliding through
+the gloom. He becomes the fearless adversary, the daring ape of
+Heaven, who in broad daylight mimics God’s creation under God’s own
+sun. Is it the legends tell us this? Nay, it is the greatest of the
+doctors. “The Devil,” says Albert the Great, “transforms all living
+things.” St. Thomas goes yet further. “All changes that may occur
+naturally by means of seeds, can be copied by the Devil.” What an
+astounding concession, which coming from the mouth of so grave a
+personage, means nothing short of setting up one Creator face to face
+with another! “But in things done without the germinal process,” he
+adds, “such as the changing of men into beasts or the resurrection of
+the dead, there the Devil can do nothing.” Thus to God is left the
+smaller part of His work! He may only perform miracles, a kind of
+action alike singular and infrequent. But the daily miracle of life is
+not for Him alone: His copyist, the Devil, shares with Him the world
+of nature!
+
+For man himself, whose weak eyes see no difference between nature as
+sprung from God and nature as made by the Devil, here is a world split
+in twain! A dreadful uncertainty hangs over everything. Nature’s
+innocence is gone. The clear spring, the pale flower, the little bird,
+are these indeed of God, or only treacherous counterfeits, snares laid
+out for man? Back! all things look doubtful! The better of the two
+creations, being suspiciously like the other, becomes eclipsed and
+conquered. The shadow of the Devil covers up the day, spreads over all
+life. To judge by appearances and the fears of men, he has ceased to
+share the world; he has taken it all to himself.
+
+So matters stand in the days of Sprenger. His book teems with saddest
+avowals of God’s weakness. “These things,” he says, “are done with
+God’s leave.” To permit an illusion so entire, to let people believe
+that God is nought and the Devil everything, is more than mere
+_permission_; is tantamount to decreeing the damnation of countless
+souls whom nothing can save from such an error. No prayers, no
+penances, no pilgrimages, are of any avail; nor even, so it is said,
+the sacrament of the altar. Strange and mortifying avowal! The very
+nuns who have just confessed themselves, declare _while the host is
+yet in their mouths_, that even then they feel the infernal lover
+troubling them without fear or shame, troubling and refusing to leave
+his hold. And being pressed with further questions, they add, through
+their tears, that he has a body _because he has a soul_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Manichees of old, and the more modern Albigenses, were charged
+with believing in the Power of Evil struggling side by side with Good,
+with making the Devil equal to God. Here, however, he is more than
+equal; for if God through His holy sacrament has still no power for
+good, the Devil certainly seems superior.
+
+I am not surprised at the wondrous sight then offered by the world.
+Spain with a darksome fury, Germany with the frightened pedantic rage
+certified in the _Malleus_, assail the insolent conqueror through the
+wretches in whom he chooses to dwell. They burn, they destroy the
+dwellings in which he has taken up his abode. Finding him too strong
+for men’s souls, they try to hunt him out of their bodies. But what is
+the good of it all? You burn one old woman and he settles himself in
+her neighbour. Nay, more; if Sprenger may be trusted, he fastens
+sometimes on the exorcising priest, and triumphs over his very judge.
+
+Among other expedients, the Dominicans advised recourse to the
+intercession of the Virgin, by a continual repeating of the _Ave
+Maria_. Sprenger, for his part, always averred that such a remedy was
+but a momentary one. You might be caught between two prayers. Hence
+came the invention of the rosary, the chaplet of beads, by means of
+which any number of aves might be mumbled through, whilst the mind was
+busied elsewhere. Whole populations adopted this first essay of an art
+thereafter to be used by Loyola in his attempt to govern the world, an
+art of which his _Exercises_ furnish the ingenious groundwork.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All this seems opposed to what was said in the foregoing chapter as to
+the decline of Witchcraft. The Devil is now popular and everywhere
+present. He seems to have come off conqueror: but has he gained by
+his victory? What substantial profit has he reaped therefrom?
+
+Much, as beheld in his new phase of a scientific rebellion which is
+about to bring forth the bright Renaissance. None, if beheld under his
+old aspect, as the gloomy Spirit of Witchcraft. The stories told of
+him in the sixteenth century, if more numerous, more widespread than
+ever, readily swing towards the grotesque. People tremble, but they
+laugh withal.[76]
+
+    [76] See my _Memoirs of Luther_, concerning the Kilcrops, &c.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+CENTURY OF TOLERATION IN FRANCE: REACTION.
+
+
+The Church forfeited the wizard’s property to the judge and the
+prosecutor. Wherever the Canon Law was enforced the trials for
+witchcraft waxed numerous, and brought much wealth to the clergy.
+Wherever the lay tribunals claimed the management of these trials they
+grew scarce and disappeared, at least for a hundred years in France,
+from 1450 to 1550.
+
+The first gleam of light shot forth from France in the middle of the
+fifteenth century. The inquiry made by Parliament into the trial of
+Joan of Arc, and her after reinstalment, set people thinking on the
+intercourse of spirits, good and bad; on the errors, also, of the
+spiritual courts. She whom the English, whom the greatest doctors of
+the Council of Basil pronounced a Witch, appeared to Frenchmen a saint
+and sibyl. Her reinstalment proclaimed to France the beginning of an
+age of toleration. The Parliament of Paris likewise reinstalled the
+alleged Waldenses of Arras. In 1498 it discharged as mad one who was
+brought before it as a wizard. None such were condemned in the reigns
+of Charles VIII., Louis XII., and Francis I.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the contrary, Spain, under the pious Isabella (1506) and the
+Cardinal Ximenes, began burning witches. In 1515, Geneva, being then
+under a Bishop, burned five hundred in three months. The Emperor
+Charles V., in his German Constitutions, vainly sought to rule, that
+“Witchcraft, as causing damage to goods and persons, is a question for
+_civil_, not ecclesiastic law.” In vain did he do away the right of
+confiscation, except in cases of treason. The small prince-bishops,
+whose revenues were largely swelled by trials for witchcraft, kept on
+burning at a furious rate. In one moment, as it were, six hundred
+persons were burnt in the infinitesimal bishopric of Bamberg, and nine
+hundred in that of Wurtzburg. The way of going to work was very
+simple. Begin by using torture against the witnesses; create witnesses
+for the prosecution by means of pain and terror; then, by dint of
+excessive kindliness, draw from the accused a certain avowal, and
+believe that avowal in the teeth of proven facts. A witch, for
+instance, owns to having taken from the graveyard the body of an
+infant lately dead, that she might use it in her magical compounds.
+Her husband bids them go the graveyard, for the child is there still.
+On being disinterred, the child is found all right in his coffin. But
+against the witness of his own eyes the judge pronounces it _an
+appearance_, a cheat of the Devil. He prefers the wife’s confession to
+the fact itself; and she is burnt forthwith.[77]
+
+    [77] For this and other facts regarding Germany, see Soldan.
+
+So far did matters go among these worthy prince-bishops, that after a
+while, Ferdinand II., the most bigoted of all emperors, the emperor of
+the Thirty Years’ War, was fain to interfere, to set up at Bamberg an
+imperial commissary, who should maintain the law of the empire, and
+see that the episcopal judge did not begin the trial with tortures
+which settled it beforehand, which led straight to the stake.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Witches were easily caught by their confessions, sometimes without the
+torture. Many of them were half mad. They would own to turning
+themselves into beasts. The Italian women often became cats, and
+gliding under the doors, sucked, they said, the blood of children. In
+the land of mighty forests, in Lorraine and on the Jura, the women, of
+their own accord, became wolves, and, if you could believe them,
+devoured the passers by, even when nobody had passed by. They were
+burnt. Some girls, who swore they had given themselves to the Devil,
+were found to be maidens still. They, too, were burnt. Several seemed
+in a great hurry, as if they wanted to be burnt. Sometimes it happened
+from raging madness, sometimes from despair. An Englishwoman being led
+to the stake, said to the people, “Do not blame my judges. I wanted to
+put an end to my own self. My parents kept aloof from me in their
+dread. My husband had disowned me. I could not have lived on without
+disgrace. I longed for death, and so I told a lie.”
+
+The first words of open toleration against silly Sprenger, his
+frightful Handbook, and his Inquisitors, were spoken by Molitor, a
+lawyer of Constance. He made this sensible remark, that the
+confessions of witches should not be taken seriously, because it was
+the very Father of Lies who spoke by their mouths. He laughed at the
+miracles of Satan, affirming them to be all illusory. In an indirect
+way, such jesters as Hutten and Erasmus dealt violent blows at the
+Inquisition, through their satires on the Dominican idiots. Cardan[78]
+said, straightforwardly, “In order to obtain forfeit property, the
+same persons acted as accusers and judges, and invented a thousand
+stories in proof.”
+
+    [78] A famous Italian physician, who lived through the
+    greater part of the sixteenth century.--TRANS.
+
+That apostle of toleration, Chatillon, who maintained against
+Catholics and Protestants both, that heretics should not be burnt,
+though he said nothing about wizards, put men of sense in a better
+way. Agrippa,[79] Lavatier, above all, Wyer[80]] the illustrious
+physician of Clèves, rightly said that if those wretched witches were
+the Devil’s plaything, we must lay the blame on the Devil, not on
+them; must cure, instead of burning them. Some physicians of Paris
+soon pushed incredulity so far as to maintain that the possessed and
+the witches were simply knaves. This was going too far. Most of them
+were sufferers under the sway of an illusion.
+
+    [79] Cornelius Agrippa, of Cologne, born in 1486, sometime
+    Secretary of the Emperor Maximilian, and author of two works
+    famous in their day, _Vanity of the Sciences_, and _Occult
+    Philosophy_.--TRANS.
+
+    [80] A friend of Sir Philip Sydney, who sent for him when
+    dying.--TRANS.
+
+The dark reign of Henry II. and Diana of Poitiers ends the season of
+toleration. Under Diana, they burn heretics and wizards again. On the
+other hand, Catherine of Medici, surrounded as she was by astrologers
+and magicians, would have protected the latter. Their numbers
+increased amain. The wizard Trois-Echelles, who was tried in the reign
+of Charles IX., reckons them at a hundred thousand, declaring all
+France to be one Witch.
+
+Agrippa and others affirm, that all science is contained in magic. In
+white magic undoubtedly. But the fears of fools and their fanatic
+rage, put little difference between them. In spite of Wyer, in spite
+of those true philosophers, Light and Toleration, a strong reaction
+towards darkness set in from a quarter whence it was least expected.
+Our magistrates, who for nearly a century, had shown themselves
+enlightened and fair-dealing, now threw themselves into the Spanish
+Catholicon[81] and the fury of the Leaguists,[82] until they waxed
+more priest-like than the priests themselves. While scouting the
+Inquisition from France, they matched, and well-nigh eclipsed it by
+their own deeds: the Parliament of Toulouse alone sending four hundred
+human bodies at one time to the stake. Think of the horror, the black
+smoke of all that flesh, of the frightful melting and bubbling of the
+fat amidst those piercing shrieks and yells! So accursed, so sickening
+a sight had not been seen, since the Albigenses were broiled and
+roasted.
+
+    [81] Catholicon, or purgative panacea: _i. e._ the
+    Inquisition.--TRANS.
+
+    [82] The wars of the Catholic League against Henry of Navarre
+    began in 1576.--TRANS.
+
+But this is all too little for Bodin, lawyer of Angers, and a violent
+adversary to Wyer. He begins by saying that the wizards in Europe are
+numerous enough to match Xerxes’ army of eighteen hundred thousand
+men. Then, like Caligula, he utters a prayer, that these two millions
+might be gathered together, so as he, Bodin, could sentence and burn
+them all at one stroke.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The new rivalry makes matters worse. The gentry of the Law begin to
+say that the priest, being too often connected with the wizard, is no
+longer a safe judge. In fact, for a moment, the lawyers seem to be yet
+more trustworthy. In Spain, the Jesuit pleader, Del Rio; in Lorraine,
+Remy (1596); Boguet (1602) on the Jura; Leloyer (1605) in Anjou; are
+all matchless persecutors, who would have made Torquemada[83] himself
+die of envy.
+
+    [83] The infamous Spanish Inquisitor, who died at the close
+    of the fifteenth century, after sixteen years of untold
+    atrocities against the heretics of Spain.--TRANS.
+
+In Lorraine there seemed to be quite a dreadful plague of wizards and
+visionaries. Driven to despair by the constant passing of troops and
+brigands, the multitude prayed to the Devil only. They were drawn on
+by the wizards. A number of villagers, frightened by a twofold dread
+of wizards on the one hand, and judges on the other, longed to leave
+their homes and flee elsewhither, if Remy, Judge of Nancy, may be
+believed. In the work he dedicated (1596) to the Cardinal of Lorraine,
+he owns to having burnt eight hundred witches, in sixteen years. “So
+well do I deal out judgements,” he says, “that last year sixteen slew
+themselves to avoid passing through my hands.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The priests felt humbled. Could they have done better than the laity?
+Nay, even the monkish lords of Saint Claude asked for a layman, honest
+Boguet, to sit in judgment on their own people, who were much given to
+witchcraft. In that sorry Jura, a poor land of firs and scanty
+pasturage, the serf in his despair yielded himself to the Devil. They
+all worshipped the Black Cat.
+
+Boguet’s book had immense weight. This Golden Book, by the petty judge
+of Saint Claude, was studied as a handbook by the worshipful members
+of Parliament. In truth, Boguet is a thorough lawyer, is even
+scrupulous in his own way. He finds fault with the treachery shown in
+these prosecutions; will not hear of barristers betraying their
+clients, of judges promising pardon only to ensure the death of the
+accused. He finds fault with the very doubtful tests to which the
+witches were still exposed. “Torture,” he says, “is needless: it never
+makes them yield.” Moreover, he is humane enough to have them
+strangled before throwing them to the flames, always except the
+werewolves, “whom you must take care to burn alive.” He cannot believe
+that Satan would make a compact with children: “Satan is too sharp;
+knows too well that, under fourteen years, any bargain made with a
+minor, is annulled by default of years and due discretion.” Then the
+children are saved? Not at all; for he contradicts himself, and holds,
+moreover, that such a leprosy cannot be purged away without burning
+everything, even to the cradles. Had he lived, he would have come to
+that. He made the country a desert: never was there a judge who
+destroyed people with so fine a conscience.
+
+But it is to the Parliament of Bourdeaux that the grand hurrah for lay
+jurisdiction is sent up in Lancre’s book on _The Fickleness of
+Demons_. The author, a man of some sense, a counsellor in this same
+Parliament, tells with a triumphant air of his fight with the Devil in
+the Basque country, where, in less than three months, he got rid of I
+know not how many witches, and, better still, of three priests. He
+looks compassionately on the Spanish Inquisition, which at Logroño,
+not far off, on the borders of Navarre and Castille, dragged on a
+trial for two years, ending in the poorest way by a small
+_auto-da-fé_, and the release of a whole crowd of women.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE WITCHES OF THE BASQUE COUNTRY: 1609.[84]
+
+    [84] The Basques of the Lower Pyrenees, the Aquitani of
+    Cæsar, belonged to the old Iberian race which peopled Western
+    Europe before the Celtic era.--TRANS.
+
+
+That strong-handed execution of the priests shows M. Lancre to have
+been a man of independent spirit. In politics he is the same. In his
+book on _The Prince_ (1617), he openly declares “the law to be above
+the King.”
+
+Never was the Basque character better drawn than in his book on _The
+Fickleness of Demons_. In France, as in Spain, the Basque people had
+privileges which almost made them a republic. On our side they owed
+the King no service but that of arms: at the first beat of drum they
+were bound to gather two thousand armed men commanded by Basque
+captains. They were not oppressed by their clergy, who seldom
+prosecuted wizards, being wizards themselves. The priests danced, wore
+swords, and took their mistresses to the Witches’ Sabbath. These
+mistresses acted as their sextonesses or _bénédictes_, to keep the
+churches in order. The parson quarrelled with nobody, offered the
+White Mass to God by day, the Black by night to the Devil, and
+sometimes, according to Lancre, in the same church.
+
+The Basques of Bayonne and St. Jean de Luz, a race of men quaint,
+venturesome, and fabulously bold, left many widows, from their habit
+of sailing out into the roughest seas to harpoon whales. Leaving their
+wives to God or the Devil, they threw themselves in crowds into the
+Canadian settlements of Henry IV. As for the children, these honest
+worthy sailors would have thought about them more, if they had been
+clear as to their parentage. But on their return home they would
+reckon up the months of their absence, and they never found the
+reckoning right.
+
+The women, bold, beautiful, imaginative, spent their day seated on
+tombs in the grave-yards, talking of the Sabbath, whither they
+expected to go in the evening. This was their passion, their craze.
+
+They are born witches, daughters of the sea and of enchantment. They
+sport among the billows, swimming like fish. Their natural master is
+the Prince of the Air, King of Winds and Dreams, the same who inspired
+the Sibyl and breathed to her the future.
+
+The judge who burns them is charmed with them, nevertheless. “When you
+see them pass,” says he, “their hair flowing in the breeze about their
+shoulders, they walk so trim, so bravely armed in that fair
+head-dress, that the sun playing through it as through a cloud, causes
+a mighty blaze which shoots forth hot lightning-flashes. Hence the
+fascination of their eyes, as dangerous in love as in witchcraft.”
+
+This amiable Bordeaux magistrate, the earliest sample of those worldly
+judges who enlivened the gown in the seventeenth century, plays the
+lute between whiles, and even makes the witches dance before sending
+them to the stake. And he writes well, far more clearly than anyone
+else. But for all that, one discovers in his work a new source of
+obscurity, inherent to those times. The witches being too numerous for
+the judge to burn them all, the most of them have a shrewd idea that
+he will show some indulgence to those who enter deepest into his
+thoughts and passions! What passions? you ask. First, his love of the
+frightfully marvellous, a passion common enough; the delight of
+feeling afraid; and also, if it must be said, the enjoyment of
+unseemly pleasures. Add to these a touch of vanity: the more dreadful
+and enraged those clever women show the Devil to be, the greater the
+pride taken by the judge in subduing so mighty an adversary. He arrays
+himself as it were in his victory, enthrones himself in his
+foolishness, triumphs in his senseless twaddling.
+
+The prettiest thing of this kind is the report of the procedure in the
+Spanish _auto-da-fé_ of Logroño, as furnished to us by Llorente.
+Lancre, while quoting him jealously and longing to disparage him, owns
+to the surpassing charm of the festival, the splendour of the sight,
+the moving power of the music. On one platform were the few condemned
+to the flames, on another a crowd of reprieved criminals. The
+confession of a repentant heroine who had dared all things, is read
+aloud. Nothing could be wilder. At the Sabbaths they ate children made
+into hash, and by way of second course, the bodies of wizards
+disentombed. Toads dance, and talk and complain lovingly of their
+mistresses, getting them scolded by the Devil. The latter politely
+escorts the witches home, lighting them with the arm of a child who
+died unchristened, &c.
+
+Among our Basques witchcraft put on a less fantastic guise. It seems
+that at this time the Sabbath was only a grand feast to which all, the
+nobles included, went for purposes of amusement. In the foremost line
+would be seen persons in veils and masks, by some supposed to be
+princes. “Once on a time,” says Lancre, “none but idiots of the Landes
+appeared there: now people of quality are seen to go.” To entertain
+these local grandees, Satan sometimes created a _Bishop of the
+Sabbath_. Such was the title he gave the young lord Lancinena, with
+whom the Devil in person was good enough to open the ball.
+
+So well supported, the witches held their sway, wielding over the land
+an amazing terrorism of the fancy. Numbers regarded themselves as
+victims, and became in fact seriously ill. Many were stricken with
+epilepsy, and barked like dogs. In one small town of Acqs were counted
+as many as forty of these barkers. The Witch had so fearful a hold
+upon them, that one lady being called as witness, began barking with
+uncontrollable fury as the Witch, unawares to herself, drew near.
+
+Those to whom was ascribed so terrible a power lorded it everywhere.
+No one would dare shut his door against them. One magistrate, the
+criminal assessor of Bayonne, allowed the Sabbath to be held in his
+own house. Urtubi, Lord of Saint Pé, was forced to hold the festival
+in his castle. But his head was shaken to that degree, that he
+imagined a witch was sucking his blood. Emboldened, however, by his
+fear, he, with another gentleman, repaired to Bordeaux, and persuaded
+the Parliament to obtain from the King the commissioning of two of its
+members, Espagnet and Lancre, to try the wizards in the Basque
+country. This commission, absolute and without appeal, worked with
+unheard-of vigour; in four months, from May to August, 1609, condemned
+sixty or eighty witches, and examined five hundred more, who, though
+equally marked with the sign of the Devil, figured in the proceedings
+as witnesses only.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was no safe matter for two men and a few soldiers to carry on these
+trials amongst a violent, hot-headed people, a multitude of wild and
+daring sailors’ wives. Another source of danger was in the priests,
+many of whom were wizards, needing to be tried by the lay
+commissioners, despite the lively opposition of the clergy.
+
+When the judges appeared, many persons saved themselves in the hills.
+Others boldly remained, saying, it was the judges who would be burnt.
+So little fear had the witches themselves, that before the audience
+they would sink into the Sabbatic slumber, and affirm on awaking that,
+even in court, they had enjoyed the blessedness of Satan. Many said,
+they only suffered from not being able to prove to him how much they
+burned to suffer for his sake.
+
+Those who were questioned said they could not speak. Satan rising into
+their throats blocked up their gullets. Lancre, who wrote this
+narrative, though the younger of the commissioners, was a man of the
+world. The witches guessed that, with a man of his sort, there were
+means of saving themselves. The league between them was broken. A
+beggar-girl of seventeen, La Murgui, or Margaret, who had found
+witchcraft gainful, and, while herself almost a child, had brought
+away children as offerings to the Devil, now betook herself, with
+another girl, Lisalda, of the same age, to denouncing all the rest. By
+word of mouth or in writing she revealed all; with the liveliness, the
+noise, the emphatic gestures of a Spaniard, entering truly or falsely
+into a hundred impure details. She frightened, amused, wheedled her
+judges, drawing them after her like fools. To this corrupt, wanton,
+crazy girl, they entrusted the right of searching about the bodies of
+girls and boys, for the spot whereon Satan had set his mark. This spot
+discovered itself by a certain numbness, by the fact that you might
+stick needles into it without causing pain. While a surgeon thus
+tormented the elder ones, she took in hand the young, who, though
+called as witnesses, might themselves be accused, if she pronounced
+them to bear the mark. It was a hateful thing to see this brazen-faced
+girl made sole mistress of the fate of those wretched beings,
+commissioned to prod them all over with needles, and able at will to
+assign those bleeding bodies to death!
+
+She had gotten so mighty a sway over Lancre, as to persuade him that,
+while he was sleeping in Saint Pé, in his own house, guarded by his
+servants and his escort, the Devil came by night into his room, to say
+the Black Mass; while the witches getting inside his very curtains,
+would have poisoned him, had he not been well protected by God
+Himself. The Black Mass was offered by the Lady of Lancinena, to whom
+Satan made love in the very bedroom of the judge. We can guess the
+likely aim of this wretched tale: the beggar bore a grudge against the
+lady, who was good-looking, and, but for this slander, might have come
+to bear sway over the honest commissioner.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lancre and his colleague taking fright, went forward; never dared to
+draw back. They had their royal gallows set up on the very spots where
+Satan had held a Sabbath. People were alarmed thereat, deeming them
+strongly backed by the arm of royalty. Impeachments hailed about them.
+The women all came in one long string to accuse each other. Children
+were brought forward to impeach their mothers. Lancre gravely ruled
+that a child of eight was a good, sufficient, reputable witness!
+
+M. d’Espagnet could give but a few moments to this matter, having
+speedily to show himself in the Estates of Béarn. Lancre being pushed
+unwittingly forward by the violence of the younger informers, who
+would have fallen into great danger, if they had failed to get the old
+ones burnt, threw the reins on the neck of the business, and hurried
+it on at full gallop. A due amount of witches were condemned to the
+stake. These, too, on finding themselves lost, ended by impeaching
+others. When the first batch were brought to the stake, a frightful
+scene took place. Executioner, constables, and sergeants, all thought
+their last hour was come. The crowd fell savagely upon the carts,
+seeking to force the wretches to withdraw their accusations. The men
+put daggers to their throats: their furious companions were like to
+finish them with their nails.
+
+Justice, however, got out of the scrape with some credit; and then the
+commissioners went on to the harder work of sentencing eight priests
+whom they had taken up. The girls’ confessions had brought these men
+to light. Lancre speaks of their morals like one who knew all about
+them of himself. He rebukes them, not only for their gay proceedings
+on Sabbath nights, but, most of all, for their sextonesses and female
+churchwardens. He even repeats certain tales about the priests having
+sent off the husbands to Newfoundland, and brought back Devils from
+Japan who gave up the wives into their hands.
+
+The clergy were deeply stirred: the Bishop of Bayonne would have made
+resistance. His courage failing him, he appointed his vicar-general to
+act as judge-assistant in his own absence. Luckily the Devil gave the
+accused more help than their Bishop. He opened all the doors, so that
+one morning five of the eight were found missing. The commissioners
+lost no time in burning the three still left to them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This happened about August, 1609. The Spanish inquisitors at Logroño
+did not crown their proceedings with an _auto-da-fé_ before the 8th
+November, 1610. They had met with far more trouble than our own
+countrymen, owing to the frightful number of persons accused. How burn
+a whole people? They sought advice of the Pope, of the greatest
+doctors in Spain. The word was given to draw back. Only the wilful who
+persisted in denying their guilt, were to be burnt; while they who
+pleaded guilty should be let go. The same method had already been used
+to rescue priests in trials for loose living. According to Llorente,
+it was deemed sufficient, if they owned their crime, and went through
+a slight penance.
+
+The Inquisition, so deadly to heretics, so cruel to Moors and Jews,
+was much less so to wizards. These, being mostly shepherds, had no
+quarrel with the Church. The rejoicings of goatherds were too low, if
+not too brutish, to disturb the enemies of free thought.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lancre wrote his book mainly to show how much the justice of French
+Parliaments and laymen excelled the justice of the priests. It is
+written lightly, merrily, with flowing pen. It seems to express the
+joy felt by one who has come creditably out of a great risk. It is a
+gasconading, an over-boastful joy. He tells with pride how, the
+Sabbath following the first execution of the witches, their children
+went and wailed to Satan, who replied that their mothers had not been
+burnt, but were alive and happy. From the midst of the crowd the
+children thought they heard their mothers’ voices saying how
+thoroughly blest they were. Satan was frightened nevertheless. He
+absented himself for four Sabbaths, sending a small commonplace devil
+in his stead. He did not show himself again till the 22nd July. When
+the wizards asked him the reason of his absence, he said, “I have been
+away, pleading your cause against _Little John_,” the name by which he
+called Jesus. “I have won the suit, and they who are still in prison
+will not be burnt.”
+
+The lie was given to the great liar. And the conquering magistrate
+avers that, while the last witch was burning, they saw a swarm of
+toads come out of her head. The people fell on them with stones, so
+that she was rather stoned than burnt. But for all their attacks, they
+could not put an end to one black toad which escaped from flames,
+sticks, and stones, to hide, like the Devil’s imp it was, in some spot
+where it could never be found.[85]
+
+    [85] For a more detailed account of these Basque Witches, the
+    English reader may turn to Wright’s _Narratives of Sorcery
+    and Magic_. Bentley, 1851.--TRANS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+SATAN TURNS PRIEST.
+
+
+Whatever semblance of Satanic fanaticism was still preserved by the
+witches, it transpires from the narratives of Lancre and other writers
+of the seventeenth century, that the Sabbath then was mainly an affair
+of money. They raised contributions almost by force, charged something
+for right of entrance, and extracted fines from those who stayed away.
+At Brussels and in Picardy, they had a fixed scale of payment for
+rewarding those who brought new members into the brotherhood.
+
+In the Basque country no mystery was kept up. The gatherings there
+would amount to twelve thousand persons, of all classes, rich or poor,
+priests and gentlemen. Satan, himself a gentleman, wore a hat upon his
+three horns, like a man of quality. Finding his old seat, the druidic
+stone, too hard for him, he treats himself to an easy well-gilt
+arm-chair. Shall we say he is growing old? More nimble now than when
+he was young, he frolics about, cuts capers, and leaps from the bottom
+of a large pitcher. He goes through the service head downwards, his
+feet in the air.
+
+He likes everything to go off quite respectably, and spares no cost
+in his scenic arrangements. Besides the customary flames, red, yellow,
+and blue, which entertain the eye, as they show forth or hide the
+flickering shadows, he charms the ear with strange music, mainly of
+little bells that tickle the nerves with something like the searching
+vibrations of musical-glasses. To crown this splendour Satan bids them
+bring out his silver plate. Even his toads give themselves airs,
+become fashionable, and, like so many lordlings, go about in green
+velvet.
+
+The general effect is that of a large fair, of a great masked ball
+with very transparent disguises. Satan, who understands his epoch,
+opens the ball with the Bishop of the Sabbath; or the King and Queen:
+offices devised in compliment to the great personages, wealthy or
+well-born, who honour the meeting by their presence.
+
+Here may be seen no longer the gloomy feast of rebels, the baleful
+orgie of serfs and boors, sharing by night the sacrament of love, by
+day the sacrament of death. The violent Sabbath-round is no more the
+one only dance of the evening. Thereto are now added the Moorish
+dances, lively or languishing, but always amorous and obscene, in
+which girls dressed up for the purpose, like _La Murgui_ or _La
+Lisalda_, feigned and showed off the most provoking characters. Among
+the Basques these dances formed, we are told, the invincible charm
+which sent the whole world of women, wives, daughters, widows--the
+last in great numbers--headlong into the Sabbath.
+
+Without such amusements and the accompanying banquet, one could hardly
+understand this general rage for these Sabbaths. It is a kind of love
+without love; a feast of barrenness undisguised. Boguet has settled
+that point to a nicety. Differing in one passage, where he dismisses
+the women as afraid of coming to harm, Lancre is generally at one with
+Boguet, besides being more sincere. The cruel and foul researches he
+pursues on the very bodies of witches, show clearly that he deemed
+them barren, and that a barren passive love underlay the Sabbath
+itself.
+
+The feast ought therefore to have been a dismal one, if the men had
+owned the smallest heart.
+
+The silly girls who went to dance and eat were victims in every way.
+But they were resigned to everything save the prospect of bearing
+children. They bore indeed a far heavier load of wretchedness than the
+men. Sprenger tells of the strange cry, which even in his day burst
+forth in the hour of love, “May the Devil have the fruits!” In his
+day, moreover, people could live for two _sous_ a day, while in the
+reign of Henry IV., about 1600, they could barely live for twenty.
+Through all that century the desire, the need for barrenness grew more
+and more.
+
+Under this growing dread of love’s allurements the Sabbath would have
+become quite dull and wearisome, had not the conductresses cleverly
+made the most of its comic side, enlivening it with farcical
+interludes. Thus, the opening scene in which Satan, like the Priapus
+of olden times, bestowed his coarse endearments on the Witch, was
+followed by another game, a kind of chilly purification, which the
+sorceress underwent with much grimacing, and a great show of
+unpleasant shuddering. Then came another swinish farce, described by
+Lancre and Boguet, in which some young and pretty wife would take the
+Witch’s place as Queen of the Sabbath, and submit her body to the
+vilest handling. A farce not less repulsive was the “Black Sacrament,”
+performed with a black radish, which Satan would cut into little
+pieces and gravely swallow.
+
+The last act of all, according to Lancre, or at least according to the
+two bold hussies who made him their fool, was an astounding event to
+happen in such crowded meetings. Since witchcraft had become
+hereditary in whole families, there was no further need of openly
+divulging the old incestuous ways of producing witches, by the
+intercourse of a mother with her son. Some sort of comedy perhaps was
+made out of the old materials, in the shape of a grotesque Semiramis
+or an imbecile Ninus. But the more serious game, which doubtless
+really took place, attests the existence of great profligacy in the
+upper walks of society: it took the form of a most hateful and
+barbarous hoax.
+
+Some rash husband would be tempted to the spot, so fuddled with a
+baleful draught of datura or belladonna, that, like one entranced, he
+came to lose all power of speech and motion, retaining only his
+sight. His wife, on the other hand, being so bewitched with erotic
+drinks as to lose all sense of what she was doing, would appear in a
+woeful state of nature, letting herself be caressed under the
+indignant eyes of one who could no longer help himself in the least.
+His manifest despair, his bootless efforts to unshackle his tongue,
+and set free his powerless limbs, his dumb rage and wildly rolling
+eyes, inspired beholders with a cruel joy, like that produced by some
+of Molière’s comedies. The poor woman, stung with a real delight,
+yielded herself up to the most shameful usage, of which on the morrow
+neither herself nor her husband would have the least remembrance. But
+those who had seen or shared in the cruel farce, would they, too, fail
+to remember?
+
+In such heinous outrages an aristocratic element seems traceable. In
+no way do they remind us of the old brotherhood of serfs, of the
+original Sabbath, which, though ungodly, and foul enough, was still a
+free straightforward matter, in which all was done readily and without
+constraint.
+
+Clearly, Satan, depraved as he was from all time, goes on spoiling
+more and more. A polite, a crafty Satan is he now become, sweetly
+insipid, but all the more faithless and unclean. It is a new, a
+strange thing to see at the Sabbaths, his fellowship with priests. Who
+is yon parson coming along with his _Bénédicte_, his sextoness, he who
+jobs the things of the Church, saying the White Mass of mornings, the
+Black at night? “Satan,” says Lancre, “persuades him to make love to
+his daughters in the spirit, to debauch his fair penitents.” Innocent
+magistrate! He pretends to be unaware that for a century back the
+Devil had been working away at the Church livings, like one who knew
+his business! He had made himself father-confessor; or, if you would
+rather have it so, the father-confessor had turned Devil.
+
+The worthy M. de Lancre should have remembered the trials that began
+in 1491, and helped perchance to bring the Parliament of Paris into a
+tolerant frame of mind. It gave up burning Satan, for it saw nothing
+of him but a mask.
+
+A good many nuns were conquered by his new device of borrowing the
+form of some favourite confessor. Among them was Jane Pothierre, a
+holy woman of Quesnoy, of the ripe age of forty-five, but still, alas!
+all too impressible. She owns her passion to her ghostly counsellor,
+who loth to listen to her, flies to Falempin, some leagues off. The
+Devil, who never sleeps, saw his advantage, and perceiving her, says
+the annalist, “goaded by the thorns of Venus, he slily took the shape
+of the aforesaid ‘Father,’ and returning every night to the convent,
+was so successful in befooling her, that she owned to having received
+him 434 times.”[86] Great pity was felt for her on her repenting; and
+she was speedily saved from all need of blushing, being put into a
+fine walled-tomb built for her in the Castle of Selles, where a few
+days after she died the death of a good Catholic. Is it not a deeply
+moving tale? But this is nothing to that fine business of Gauffridi,
+which happened at Marseilles while Lancre was drawing up deeds at
+Bayonne.
+
+    [86] Massée, _Chronique du Monde_, 1540; and the Chroniclers
+    of Hainault, &c.
+
+The Parliament of Provence had no need to envy the success attained by
+that of Bordeaux. The lay authorities caught at the first occasion of
+a trial for witchcraft to institute a reform in the morals of the
+clergy. They sent forth a stern glance towards the close-shut
+convent-world. A rare opportunity was offered by the strange
+concurrence of many causes, by the fierce jealousies, the revengeful
+longings which severed priest from priest. But for those mad passions
+which ere long began to burst forth at every moment, we should have
+gained no insight into the real lot of that great world of women who
+died in those gloomy dwellings; not one word should we have heard of
+the things that passed behind those parlour gratings, within those
+mighty walls which only the confessor could overleap.
+
+The example of the Basque priest, whom Lancre presents to us as
+worldly, trifling, going with his sword upon him, and his deaconess by
+his side, to dance all night at the Sabbath, was not one to inspire
+fear. It was not such as he whom the Inquisition took such pains to
+screen, or towards whom a body so stern for others, proved itself, for
+once, indulgent. It is easy to see through all Lancre’s reticences
+the existence of _something else_. And the States-General of 1614,
+affirming that priests should not be tried by priests, are also
+thinking of _something else_. This very mystery it is which gets torn
+in twain by the Parliament of Provence. The director of nuns gaining
+the mastery over them and disposing of them, body and soul, by means
+of witchcraft,--such is the fact which comes forth from the trial of
+Gauffridi; at a later date from the dreadful occurrences at Loudun and
+Louviers; and also in the scenes described by Llorente, Ricci, and
+several more.
+
+One common method was employed alike for reducing the scandal, for
+misleading the public, for hiding away the inner fact while it was
+busied with the outer aspects of it. On the trial of a priestly
+wizard, all was done to juggle away the priest by bringing out the
+wizard; to impute everything to the art of the magician, and put out
+of sight the natural fascination wielded by the master of a troop of
+women all abandoned to his charge.
+
+But there was no way of hushing up the first affair. It had been
+noised abroad in all Provence, in a land of light, where the sun
+pierces without any disguise. The chief scene of it lay not only in
+Aix and Marseilles, but also in Sainte-Baume, the famous centre of
+pilgrimage for a crowd of curious people, who thronged from all parts
+of France to be present at a deadly duel between two bewitched nuns
+and their demons. The Dominicans, who attacked the affair as
+inquisitors, committed themselves by the noise they made about it
+through their partiality for one of these nuns. For all the care
+Parliament presently took to hurry the conclusion, these monks were
+exceedingly anxious to excuse her and justify themselves. Hence the
+important work of the monk Michaëlis, a mixture of truth and fable;
+wherein he raises Gauffridi, the priest he had sent to the flames,
+into the Prince of Magicians, not only in France, but even in Spain,
+Germany, England, Turkey, nay, in the whole inhabited earth.
+
+Gauffridi seems to have been a talented, agreeable man. Born in the
+mountains of Provence, he had travelled much in the Low Countries and
+the East. He bore the highest character in Marseilles, where he served
+as priest in the Church of Acoules. His bishop made much of him: the
+most devout of the ladies preferred him for their confessor. He had a
+wondrous gift, they say, of endearing himself to all. Nevertheless, he
+might have preserved his fair reputation had not a noble lady of
+Provence, whom he had already debauched, carried her blind, doting
+fondness to the extent of entrusting him, perhaps for her religious
+training, with the care of a charming child of twelve, Madeline de la
+Palud, a girl of fair complexion and gentle nature. Thereon, Gauffridi
+lost his wits, and respected neither the youth nor the holy ignorance,
+the utter unreserve of his pupil.
+
+As she grew older, however, the young highborn girl discovered her
+misfortune, in loving thus beneath her, without hope of marriage. To
+keep his hold on her, Gauffridi vowed he would wed her before the
+Devil, if he might not wed her before God. He soothed her pride by
+declaring that he was the Prince of Magicians, and would make her his
+queen. He put on her finger a silver ring, engraved with magic
+characters. Did he take her to the Sabbath, or only make her believe
+she had been there, by confusing her with strange drinks and magnetic
+witcheries? Certain it is, at least, that torn by two different
+beliefs, full of uneasiness and fear, the girl thenceforth became mad
+at certain times, and fell into fits of epilepsy. She was afraid of
+being carried off alive by the Devil. She durst no longer stay in her
+father’s house, and took shelter in the Ursuline Convent at
+Marseilles.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+GAUFFRIDI: 1610.
+
+
+The order of Ursuline nuns seemed to be the calmest, the least
+irrational of them all. They were not wholly idle, but found some
+little employment in the bringing up of young girls. The Catholic
+reaction which, aiming at a higher flight of ecstasy than was possible
+at that time even in Spain, had foolishly built a number of convents,
+Carmelite, Bernardine, and Capuchin, soon found itself at the end of
+its motive-powers. The girls of whom people got rid by shutting them
+up so strictly therein, died off immediately, and their swift decease
+led to frightful statements of the cruelty shown by their families.
+They perished, indeed, not by their excessive penances, but rather of
+heart-sickness and despair. After the first heats of zeal were over,
+the dreadful disease of the cloister, described by Cassieu as dating
+from the fifteenth century, that crushing, sickening sadness which
+came on of an afternoon--that tender listlessness which plunged them
+into a state of unutterable exhaustion, speedily wore them away. A few
+among them would turn as if raging mad, choking, as it were, with the
+exceeding strength of their blood.
+
+A nun who hoped to die decently, without bequeathing too large a share
+of remorse to her kindred, was bound to live on about ten years, the
+mean term of life in the cloister. She needed to be let gently down;
+and men of sense and experience felt that her days could only be
+prolonged by giving her something to do, by leaving her not quite
+alone. St. Francis of Sales[87] founded the Visitandine order, whose
+duty it was to visit the sick in pairs. Cæsar of Bus and Romillion,
+who had established the Teaching Priests in connection with the
+Oratorians[88], afterwards ordained what might be called the Teaching
+Sisters, the Ursulines, who taught under the direction of the said
+priests. The whole thing was under the supervision of the bishops, and
+had very little of the monastic about it: the nuns were not shut up
+again in cloisters. The Visitandines went out; the Ursulines received,
+at any rate, their pupils’ kinsfolk. Both of them had connection with
+the world under guardians of good repute. The result was a certain
+mediocrity. Though the Oratorians and the Doctrinaries numbered among
+them persons of high merit, the general character of the order was
+uniformly moderate, commonplace; it took care never to soar too high.
+Romillion, founder of the Ursulines, was an oldish man, a convert
+from Protestantism, who had roamed everywhere, and come back again to
+his starting point. He deemed his young Provencials wise enough
+already, and counted on keeping his little flock on the slender
+pasturage of an Oratorian faith, at once monotonous and rational. And
+being such, it came in time to be utterly wearisome. One fine morning
+all had disappeared.
+
+    [87] St. Francis of Sales, famous for his successful missions
+    among the Protestants, and Bishop of Geneva in his later
+    years, died in 1622.--TRANS.
+
+    [88] The Brethren of the Oratory, founded at Rome in
+    1564.--TRANS.
+
+Gauffridi, the mountaineer of Provence, the travelled mystic, the man
+of strong feelings and restless mind, had quite another effect upon
+them, when he came thither as Madeline’s ghostly guide. They felt a
+certain power, and by those who had already passed out of their wild,
+amorous youth, were doubtless assured that it was nothing less than a
+power begotten of the Devil. All were seized with fear, and more than
+one with love also. Their imaginations soared high; their heads began
+to turn. Already six or seven may be seen weeping, shrieking, yelling,
+fancying themselves caught by the Devil. Had the Ursulines lived in
+cloisters, within high walls, Gauffridi, being their only director,
+might one way or another have made them all agree. As in the cloisters
+of Quesnoy, in 1491, so here also it might have happened that the
+Devil, who gladly takes the form of one beloved, had under that of
+Gauffridi made himself lover-general to the nuns. Or rather, as in
+those Spanish cloisters named by Llorente, he would have persuaded
+them that the priestly office hallowed those to whom the priest made
+love, that to sin with him, was only to be sanctified. A notion,
+indeed, ripe through France, and even in Paris, where the mistresses
+of priests were called “the hallowed ones.”[89]
+
+    [89] Lestoile, edit. Michaud, p. 561.
+
+Did Gauffridi, thus master of all, keep to Madeline only? Did not the
+lover change into the libertine? We know not. The sentence points to a
+nun who never showed herself during the trial, but reappeared at the
+end, as having given herself up to the Devil and to him.
+
+The Ursuline convent was open to all visitors. The nuns were under the
+charge of their Doctrinaries, men of fair character, and jealous
+withal. The founder himself was there, indignant, desperate. How
+woeful a mishap for the rising order, just as it was thriving amain
+and spreading all over France! After all its pretensions to wisdom,
+calmness, good sense, thus suddenly to go mad! Romillion would have
+hushed up the matter if he could. He caused one of his priests to
+exorcise the maidens. But the demons laughed the exorciser to scorn.
+He who dwelt in the fair damsel, even the noble demon Beelzebub,
+Spirit of Pride, never deigned to unclose his teeth.
+
+Among the possessed was one sister from twenty to twenty-five years
+old, who had been specially adopted by Romillion; a girl of good
+culture, bred up in controversy; a Protestant by birth, but left an
+orphan, to fall into the hands of the Father, a convert like herself
+from Protestantism. Her name, Louisa Capeau, sounds plebeian. She
+showed herself but too clearly a girl of exceeding wit, and of a
+raging passion. Her strength, moreover, was fearful to see. For three
+months, in addition to the hellish storm within, she carried on a
+desperate struggle, which would have killed the strongest man in a
+week.
+
+She said she had three devils: Verrine, a good Catholic devil, a
+volatile spirit of the air; Leviathan, a wicked devil, an arguer and a
+Protestant; lastly, another, acknowledged by her to be the spirit of
+uncleanness. One other she forgot to name, the demon of jealousy.
+
+She bore a savage hate to the little fair-faced damsel, the favoured
+rival, the proud young woman of rank. This latter, in one of her fits,
+had said that she went to the Sabbath, where she was made queen, and
+received homage, and gave herself up, but only to the prince--“What
+prince?” To Louis Gauffridi, prince of magicians.
+
+Pierced by this revelation as by a dagger, Louisa was too wild to
+doubt its truth. Mad herself, she believed the mad woman’s story in
+order to ruin her. Her own devil was backed by all the jealous demons.
+The women all exclaimed that Gauffridi was the very king of wizards.
+The report spread everywhere, that a great prize had been taken, a
+priest-king of magicians, even the prince of universal magic. Such was
+the dreadful diadem of steel and flame which these feminine demons
+drove into his brow.
+
+Everyone lost his head, even to old Romillion himself. Whether from
+hatred of Gauffridi, or fear of the Inquisition, he took the matter
+out of the bishop’s hands, and brought his two bewitched ones, Louisa
+and Madeline, to the Convent of Sainte-Baume, whose prior was the
+Dominican Michaëlis, papal inquisitor in the Pope’s domain of Avignon,
+and, as he himself pretended, over all Provence. The great point was
+to get them exorcised. But as the two women were obliged to accuse
+Gauffridi, the business ended in making him fall into the hands of the
+Inquisition.
+
+Michaëlis had to preach on Advent Sunday at Aix, before the
+Parliament. He felt how much so striking a drama would exalt him. He
+grasped at it with all the eagerness of a barrister in a Criminal
+Court, when a very dramatic murder, or a curious case of adultery
+comes before him.
+
+The right thing in matters of this sort was, to spin out the play
+through Advent, Christmas, Lent, and burn no one before the Holy Week,
+the vigil, as it were, of the great day of Easter. Michaëlis kept
+himself for the last act, entrusting the bulk of the business to a
+Flemish Dominican in his service, Doctor Dompt, from Louvain, who had
+already exorcised, was well-skilled in fooleries of that nature.
+
+The best thing the Fleming could do, was to do nothing. In Louisa, he
+found a terrible helpmate, with thrice as much zeal in her as the
+Inquisition itself, unquenchable in her rage, of a burning eloquence,
+whimsical, and sometimes very odd, but always raising a shudder; a
+very torch of Hell.
+
+The matter was reduced to a public duel between the two devils, Louisa
+and Madeline.
+
+Some simple folk who came thither on a pilgrimage to Sainte-Baume, a
+worthy goldsmith, for instance, and a draper, both from Troyes, in
+Champagne, were charmed to see Louisa’s devil deal such cruel blows at
+the other demons, and give so sound a thrashing to the magicians. They
+wept for joy, and went away thanking God.
+
+It is a terrible sight, however, even in the dull wording of the
+Fleming’s official statement, to look upon this unequal strife; to
+watch the elder woman, the strong and sturdy Provencial, come of a
+race hard as the flints of its native Crau, as day after day she
+stones, knocks down, and crushes her young and almost childish victim,
+who, wasted with love and shame, has already been fearfully punished
+by her own distemper, her attacks of epilepsy.
+
+The Fleming’s volume, which, with the additions made by Michaëlis,
+reaches to four hundred pages in all, is one condensed epitome of the
+invectives, threats, and insults spewed forth by this young woman in
+five months; interspersed with sermons also, for she used to preach on
+every subject, on the sacraments, on the next coming of Antichrist, on
+the frailty of women, and so forth. Thence, on the mention of her
+devils, she fell into the old rage, and renewed twice a-day, the
+execution of the poor little girl; never taking breath, never for one
+minute staying the frightful torrent, until at least the other in her
+wild distraction, “with one foot in hell”--to use her own
+words--should have fallen into a convulsive fit, and begun beating the
+flags with her knees, her body, her swooning head.
+
+It must be acknowledged that Louisa herself is a trifle mad: no amount
+of mere knavishness would have enabled her to maintain so long a
+wager. But her jealousy points with frightful clearness to every
+opening by which she may prick or rend the sufferer’s heart.
+
+Everything gets turned upside down. This Louisa, possessed of the
+Devil, takes the sacrament whenever she pleases. She scolds people of
+the highest authority. The venerable Catherine of France, the oldest
+of the Ursulines, came to see the wonder, asked her questions, and at
+the very outset caught her telling a flagrant and stupid falsehood.
+The impudent woman got out of the mess by saying in the name of her
+evil spirit, “The Devil is the Father of Lies.”
+
+A sensible Minorite who was present, took up the word and said, “Now,
+thou liest.” Turning to the exorcisers, he added, “Cannot ye make her
+hold her tongue?” Then he quoted to them the story of one Martha, a
+sham demoniac of Paris. By way of answer, she was made to take the
+communion before him. The Devil communicate, the Devil receive the
+body of God! The poor man was bewildered; humbled himself before the
+Inquisition. They were too many for him, so he said not another word.
+
+One of Louisa’s tricks was to frighten the bystanders, by saying she
+could see wizards among them; which made every one tremble for
+himself.
+
+Triumphant over Sainte-Baume, she hits out even at Marseilles. Her
+Flemish exorciser, being reduced to the strange part of secretary and
+bosom-counsellor to the Devil, writes, under her dictation, five
+letters: first, to the Capuchins of Marseilles, that they may call
+upon Gauffridi to recant; second, to the same Capuchins, that they may
+arrest Gauffridi, bind him fast with a stole, and keep him prisoner in
+a house of her describing; thirdly, several letters to the moderate
+party, to Catherine of France, to the Doctrinal Priests, who had
+declared against her; and then this lewd, outrageous termagant ends
+with insulting her own prioress: “When I left, you bade me be humble
+and obedient. Now take back your own advice.”
+
+Her devil Verrine, spirit of air and wind, whispered to her some
+trivial nonsense, words of senseless pride which harmed friends and
+foes, and the Inquisition itself. One day she took to laughing at
+Michaëlis, who was shivering at Aix, preaching in a desert while all
+the world was gone to hear strange things at Sainte-Baume. “Michaëlis,
+you preach away, indeed, but you get no further forward; while Louisa
+has reached, has caught hold of the quintessence of all perfection.”
+
+This savage joy was mainly caused by her having quite conquered
+Madeline at last. One word had done more for her than a hundred
+sermons: “Thou shalt be burnt.” Thenceforth in her distraction the
+young girl said whatever the other pleased, and upheld her statements
+in the meanest way. Humbling herself before them all, she besought
+forgiveness of her mother, of her superior Romillion, of the
+bystanders, of Louisa. According to the latter, the frightened girl
+took her aside, and begged her to be merciful, not to chasten her too
+much.
+
+The other woman, tender as a rock and merciful as a hidden reef, felt
+that Madeline was now hers, to do whatever she might choose. She
+caught her, folded her round, and bedazed her out of what little
+spirit she had left. It was a second enchantment; but all unlike that
+by Gauffridi, a _possession_ by means of terror. The poor downtrodden
+wretch, moving under rod and scourge, was pushed onward in a path of
+exquisite suffering which led her to accuse and murder the man she
+loved still.
+
+Had Madeline stood out, Gauffridi would have escaped, for every one
+was against Louisa. Michaëlis himself at Aix, eclipsed by her as a
+preacher, treated by her with so much coolness, would have stopped the
+whole business rather than leave the honour of it in her hands.
+
+Marseilles supported Gauffridi, being fearful of seeing the
+Inquisition of Avignon pushed into her neighbourhood, and one of her
+own children carried off from her threshold. The Bishop and Chapter
+were specially eager to defend their priest, maintaining that the
+whole affair sprang from nothing but a rivalry between confessors,
+nothing but the hatred commonly shown by monks towards secular
+priests.
+
+The Doctrinaries would have quashed the matter. They were sore
+troubled by the noise it made. Some of them in their annoyance were
+ready to give up everything and forsake their house.
+
+The ladies were very wroth, especially Madame Libertat, the lady of
+the Royalist leader who had given Marseilles up to the King.
+
+The Capuchins whom Louisa had so haughtily commanded to seize on
+Gauffridi, were, like all other of the Franciscan orders, enemies of
+the Dominicans. They were jealous of the prominence gained for these
+latter by their demoniac friend. Their wandering life, moreover, by
+throwing them into continual contact with the women, brought them a
+good deal of moral business. They had no wish to see too close a
+scrutiny made into the lives of clergymen; and so they also took the
+side of Gauffridi. Demoniacs were not so scarce, but that one was
+easily found and brought forward at the first summons. Her devil,
+obedient to the rope-girdle of St. Francis, gainsaid everything said
+by the Dominicans’ devil: it averred--and the words were straightway
+written down--that “Gauffridi was no magician at all, and could not
+therefore be arrested.”
+
+They were not prepared for this at Sainte-Baume. Louisa seemed
+confounded. She could only manage to say that apparently the Capuchins
+had not made their devil swear to tell the truth: a sorry reply,
+backed up, however, by the trembling Madeline, who, like a beaten
+hound that fears yet another beating, was ready for anything, ready
+even to bite and tear. Through her it was that Louisa at such a crisis
+inflicted an awful bite.
+
+She herself merely said that the Bishop was offending God unawares.
+She clamoured against “the wizards of Marseilles” without naming any
+one. But the cruel, the deadly word was spoken at her command by
+Madeline. A woman who had lost her child two years before, was pointed
+out by her as having throttled it. Afraid of being tortured, she fled
+or hid herself. Her husband, her father, went weeping to Sainte-Baume,
+hoping of course to soften the inquisitors. But Madeline durst not
+unsay her words; so she renewed the charge.
+
+No one now could feel safe. As soon as the Devil came to be accounted
+God’s avenger, from the moment that people under his dictation began
+writing the names of those who should pass through the fire, every one
+had before him, day and night, the hideous nightmare of the stake.
+
+To withstand these bold attempts of the Papal Inquisition, Marseilles
+ought to have been backed up by the Parliament of Aix. Unluckily she
+knew herself to be little liked at Aix. That small official town of
+magistrates and nobles was always jealous of the wealth and splendour
+of Marseilles, the Queen of the South. On the other hand, the great
+opponent of Marseilles, the Papal Inquisitor, forestalled Gauffridi’s
+appeal to the Parliament by carrying his own suit thither first. This
+was a body of utter fanatics, headed by some heavy nobles, whose
+wealth had been greatly increased in a former century by the massacre
+of the Vaudois. As lay judges, too, they were charmed to see a Papal
+Inquisitor set the precedent of acknowledging that, in a matter
+touching a priest, in a case of witchcraft, the Inquisition could not
+go beyond the preliminary inquiry. It was just as though the
+inquisitors had formally laid aside their old pretensions. The people
+of Aix, like those of Bordeaux before them, were also bitten by the
+flattering thought, that these lay-folk had been set up by the Church
+herself as censors and reformers of the priestly morals.
+
+In a business where all would needs be strange and miraculous, not
+least among those marvels was it to see so raging a demon grow all at
+once so fair-spoken towards the Parliament, so politic and
+fine-mannered. Louisa charmed the Royalists by her praises of the late
+King. Henry IV.--who would have thought it?--was canonized by the
+Devil. One morning, without any invitation, he broke forth into
+praises of “that pious and saintly King who had just gone up to
+heaven.”
+
+Such an agreement between two old enemies, the Parliament and the
+Inquisition, which latter was thenceforth sure of the secular arm, its
+soldiers, and executioner; this and the sending of a commission to
+Sainte-Baume to examine the possessed, take down their statements,
+hear their charges, and impannel a jury, made up a frightful business
+indeed. Louisa openly pointed out the Capuchins, Gauffridi’s
+champions, and proclaimed “their coming punishment _temporally_” in
+their bodies, and in their flesh.
+
+The poor Fathers were sorely bruised. Their devil would not whisper
+one word. They went to find the Bishop, and told him that indeed they
+might not refuse to bring Gauffridi forward at Sainte-Baume, in
+obedience to the secular power; but afterwards the Bishop and Chapter
+could claim him back, and replace him under the shelter of episcopal
+justice.
+
+Doubtless they had also reckoned on the agitation that would be shown
+by the two young women at the sight of one they loved; on the extent
+to which even the terrible Louisa might be shaken by the reproaches of
+her own heart.
+
+That heart indeed woke up at the guilty one’s approach: for one moment
+the furious woman seemed to grow tender. I know nothing more fiery
+than her prayer for God to save the man she has driven to death:
+“Great God, I offer thee all the sacrifices that have been offered
+since the world began, that will be offered until it ends. All, all,
+for Lewis. I offer thee all the tears of every saint, all the
+transports of every angel. All, all, for Lewis. Oh, that there were
+yet more souls to reckon up, that so the oblation might be all the
+greater! It should be all for Lewis. O God, the Father of Heaven, have
+pity on Lewis! O God the Son, Redeemer of the world, have pity on
+Lewis!” &c.
+
+Bootless pity! baneful as well as bootless! Her real desire was that
+the accused _should not harden his heart_, should plead guilty. In
+that case by our laws he would most assuredly be burnt.
+
+She herself, in short, was worn out, unable to do anything more. The
+inquisitor Michaëlis was so humbled by a victory he could not have
+gained without her, so wroth with the Flemish exorciser who had become
+her obedient follower, and let her see into all the hidden springs of
+the tragedy, that he came simply to crush Louisa, and save Madeline by
+substituting the one for the other, if he could, in this popular
+drama. This move of his implies some skill, and a knowing eye for
+scenery. The winter and the Advent season had been wholly taken up
+with the acting of that awful sibyl, that raging bacchante. In the
+milder days of a Provencial spring, in the season of Lent, he would
+bring upon the scene a more moving personage, a demon all womanly,
+dwelling in a sick child, in a fair-haired frightened girl. The nobles
+and the Parliament of Provence would feel an interest in a little lady
+who belonged to an eminent house.
+
+Far from listening to his Flemish agent, Louisa’s follower, Michaëlis
+shut the door upon him when he sought to enter the select council of
+Parliament-men. A Capuchin who also came, on the first words spoken by
+Louisa, cried out, “Silence, accursed devil!”
+
+Meanwhile Gauffridi had arrived at Sainte-Baume, where he cut a sorry
+figure. A man of sense, but weak and blameworthy, he foreboded but too
+truly how that kind of popular tragedy would end; and in coming to a
+strait so dreadful, he saw himself forsaken and betrayed by the child
+he loved. He now entirely forsook himself. When he was confronted with
+Louisa, she seemed to him like a judge, like one of those cruel and
+subtle schoolmen who judged the causes of the Church. To all her
+questions concerning doctrine, he only answered _yes_, assenting even
+to points most open to dispute; as, for instance, to the assumption
+“that the Devil in a court of justice might be believed on his word
+and his oath.”
+
+This lasted only a week, from the 1st to the 8th January. The clergy
+of Marseilles demanded Gauffridi back. His friends, the Capuchins,
+declared that they had found no signs of magic in his room. Four
+canons of Marseilles came with authority to take him, and carried him
+away home.
+
+If Gauffridi had fallen very low, his adversaries had not risen much.
+Even the two inquisitors, Michaëlis and the Fleming, were in shameful
+variance with each other. The partiality of the former for Madeline,
+of the latter for Louisa, went beyond mere words, leading them into
+opposite lines of action. That chaos of accusations, sermons,
+revelations, which the Devil had dictated by the mouth of Louisa, the
+Fleming who wrote it down maintained to be the very word of God, and
+expressed his fear that somebody might tamper with the same. He owned
+to a great mistrust of his chief, Michaëlis, who, he was sore afraid,
+would so amend the papers in behalf of Madeline, as to ensure the ruin
+of Louisa. To guard them to the best of his power, he shut himself up
+in his room and underwent a regular siege. Michaëlis, with the
+Parliament-men on his side, could only get at the manuscript by using
+the King’s name and breaking the door open.
+
+Louisa, afraid of nothing, sought to array the Pope against the King.
+The Fleming carried an appeal to the legate at Avignon, against his
+chief, Michaëlis. But the Papal Court had a prudent fear of causing
+scandal by letting one inquisitor accuse another. Lacking its support,
+the Fleming had no resource but to submit. To keep him quiet Michaëlis
+gave him back his papers.
+
+Those of Michaëlis, forming a second report, dull and nowise
+comparable with the former, are full of nought but Madeline. They
+played music to try and soothe her: care was taken to note down when
+she ate, and when she did not eat. Too much time indeed was taken up
+about her, often in a way but little edifying. Strange questions are
+put to her touching the Magician, and what parts of his body might
+bear the mark of the Devil. She herself was examined. This would have
+to be done at Aix by surgeons and doctors; but meanwhile, in the
+height of his zeal, Michaëlis examined her at Sainte-Baume, and put
+down the issue of his researches. No matron was called to see her. The
+judges, lay and monkish, agreeing in this one matter, and having no
+fear of each other’s overlooking, seem to have quietly passed over
+this contempt of outward forms.
+
+In Louisa, however, they found a judge. The bold woman branded the
+indecency as with hot iron. “They who were swallowed up by the Flood
+never behaved so ill!... Even of thee, O Sodom, the like was never
+said!”
+
+She also averred that Madeline was given over to uncleanness. This was
+the saddest thing of all. In her blind joy at being alive, at escaping
+the flames, or else from some cloudy notion that it was her turn now
+to act upon her judges, the poor simpleton would sing and dance at
+times with a shameful freedom, in a coarse, indecent way. The old
+Doctrinal father, Romillion, blushed for his Ursuline. Shocked to
+remark the admiration of the men for her long hair, he said that such
+a vanity must be taken from her, be cut away.
+
+In her better moments she was gentle and obedient.
+
+They would have liked to make her a second Louisa; but her devils were
+vain and amorous; not, like the other’s, eloquent and raging. When
+they wanted her to preach, she could only utter sorry things.
+Michaëlis was fain to play out the piece by himself. As chief
+inquisitor, and bound greatly to outdo his Flemish underling, he
+avowed that he had already drawn out of this small body a host of six
+thousand, six hundred, and sixty devils: only a hundred still
+remained. By way of convincing the public, he made her throw up the
+charm or spell which by his account she had swallowed, and he drew it
+from her mouth in some slimy matter. Who could hold out any longer?
+Assurance itself stood stupefied and convinced.
+
+Madeline was in a fair way to escape: the only hindrance was herself.
+Every moment she would be saying something rash, something to arouse
+the misgivings of her judges, and urge them beyond all patience. She
+declared that everything to her recalled Gauffridi, that everywhere
+she saw him present. Nor would she hide from them her dreams of love.
+“To-night,” she said, “I was at the Sabbath. To my statue all covered
+with gilding the magicians offered their homage. Each of them, in
+honour thereof, made oblation of some blood drawn from his hands with
+a lancet. _He_ was also there, on his knees, a rope round his neck,
+beseeching me to go back and betray him not. I held out. Then said he,
+‘Is there anyone here who would die for her?’ ‘I,’ said a young man,
+and he was sacrificed by the magician.”
+
+At another time she saw him, and he asked her only for one of her fine
+fair locks. “And when I refused, he said, ‘Only the half of one
+hair.’”
+
+She swore, however, that she never yielded. But one day, the door
+happening to be open, behold our convert running off at the top of her
+speed to rejoin Gauffridi!
+
+They took her again, at least her body. But her soul? Michaëlis knew
+not how to catch that again. Luckily he caught sight of her magic
+ring, which was taken off, cut up, destroyed, and thrown into the
+fire. Fancying, moreover, that this perverseness on the part of one so
+gentle was due to unseen wizards who found their way into her room, he
+set there a very substantial man at arms, with a sword to slash about
+him everywhere, and cut the invisible imps into pieces.
+
+But the best physic for the conversion of Madeline was the death of
+Gauffridi. On the 5th February, the inquisitor went to Aix for his
+Lent preachings, saw the judges, and stirred them up. The Parliament,
+swiftly yielding to such a pressure, sent off to Marseilles an order
+to seize the rash man, who, finding himself so well backed by Bishop,
+Chapter, Capuchins, and all the world, had fancied they would never
+dare so far.
+
+Madeline from one quarter, Gauffridi from another, arrived at Aix. She
+was so disturbed that they were forced to bind her. Her disorder was
+frightful, and all were in great perplexity what to do. They bethought
+them at least of one bold way of dealing with this sick child; one of
+those fearful tricks that throw a woman into fits, and sometimes kill
+her outright. A vicar-general of the archbishopric said that the
+palace contained a dark narrow charnel-house, such as you may see in
+the Escurial, and called in Spain a “rotting vat.”
+
+There, in olden days, old bones of unknown dead were left to waste
+away. Into this tomb-like cave the trembling girl was led. They
+exorcised her by putting those chilly bones to her face. She did not
+die of fright, but thenceforth gave herself up to their will and
+pleasure; and so they got what they wanted, the death of the
+conscience, the destruction of all that remained to her of moral
+insight and free will.
+
+She became their pliant tool, ready to obey their least desire, to
+flatter them, to try and guess beforehand what would give them most
+pleasure. Huguenots were brought before her: she called them names.
+Confronted with Gauffridi, she told forth by heart her grievances
+against him, better than the King’s own officers could have done. This
+did not prevent her from squalling violently, when she was brought to
+the church to excite the people against Gauffridi, by making her devil
+blaspheme in the magician’s name. Beelzebub speaking through her said,
+“In the name of Gauffridi I abjure God;” and again, at the lifting up
+of the Host, “Let the blood of the just be upon me, in the name of
+Gauffridi!”
+
+An awful fellowship indeed! This twofold devil condemns one out of the
+other’s mouth; whatever Madeline says, is ascribed to Gauffridi. And
+the scared crowd were impatient to behold the burning of the dumb
+blasphemer, whose ungodliness so loudly declared itself by the voice
+of the girl.
+
+The exorcisers then put to her this cruel question, to which they
+themselves could have given the best answer:--“Why, Beelzebub, do you
+speak so ill of your great friend?” Her answer was frightful: “If
+there be traitors among men, why not among demons also? When I am with
+Gauffridi, I am his to do all his will. But when you constrain me, I
+betray him and turn him to scorn.”
+
+However, she could not keep up this hateful mockery. Though the demon
+of fear and fawning seemed to have gotten fast hold of her, there was
+room still for despair. She could no longer take the slightest food;
+and they who for five months had been killing her with exorcisms and
+pretending to relieve her of six or seven thousand devils, were fain
+to admit that she longed only to die, and greedily sought after any
+means of self-destruction. Courage alone was wanting to her. Once she
+pricked herself with a lancet, but lacked the spirit to persevere.
+Once she caught up a knife, and when that was taken from her, tried to
+strangle herself. She dug needles into her body, and then made one
+last foolish effort to drive a long pin through her ear into her head.
+
+What became of Gauffridi? The inquisitor, who dwells so long on the
+two women, says almost nothing about him. He walks as it were over
+the fire. The little he does say is very strange. He relates that
+having bound Gauffridi’s eyes, they pricked him with needles all over
+the body, to find out the callous places where the Devil had made his
+mark. On the removal of the bandage, he learned, to his horror and
+amazement, that the needle had thrice been stuck into him without his
+feeling it; so he was marked in three places with the sign of Hell.
+And the inquisitor added, “If we were in Avignon, this man should be
+burnt to-morrow.”
+
+He felt himself a lost man; and defended himself no more. His only
+thought now was to see if he could save his life through any of the
+Dominicans’ foes. He wished, he said, to confess himself to the
+Oratorians. But this new order, which might have been called the right
+mean of Catholicism, was too cold and wary to take up a matter already
+so hopeless and so far advanced.
+
+Thereon he went back again to the Begging Friars, confessing himself
+to the Capuchins, and acknowledging all and more than all the truth,
+that he might purchase life with dishonour. In Spain he would
+assuredly have been enlarged, barring a term of penance in some
+convent. But our Parliaments were sterner: they felt bound to prove
+the greater purity of the lay jurisdiction. The Capuchins, themselves
+a little shaky in the matter of morals, were not the people to draw
+the lightning down on their own body. They surrounded Gauffridi,
+sheltered him, gave him comfort day and night; but only in order that
+he might own himself a magician, and so, because magic formed the main
+head of his indictment, the seduction wrought by a confessor to the
+great discredit of the clergy might be left entirely in the
+background.
+
+So his friends the Capuchins, by dint of tender caresses and urgent
+counsel, drew from him the fatal confession which, by their showing,
+was to save his soul, but which was very certain to hand his body over
+to the stake.
+
+The man thus lost and done for, they made an end with the girls whom
+it was not their part to burn. A farcical scene took place. In a large
+gathering of the clergy and the Parliament, Madeline was made to
+appear, and, in words addressed to herself, her devil Beelzebub was
+summoned to quit the place or else offer some opposition. Not caring
+to do the latter, he went off in disgrace.
+
+Then Louisa, with her demon Verrine, was made to appear. But before
+they drove away a spirit so friendly to the Church, the monks regaled
+the Parliamentaries, who were new to such things, with the clever
+management of this devil, making him perform a curious pantomime. “How
+do the Seraphim, the Cherubim, the Thrones, behave before God?” “A
+hard matter this:” says Louisa, “they have no bodies.” But on their
+repeating the command, she made an effort to obey, imitating the
+flight of the one class, the fiery longing of the others; and ending
+with the adoration, when she bowed herself before the judges, falling
+prostrate with her head downwards. Then was the far-famed Louisa, so
+proud and so untamable, seen to abase herself, kissing the pavement,
+and with outstretched arms laying all her length thereon.
+
+It was a strange, frivolous, unseemly exhibition, by which she was
+made to atone for her terrible success among the people. Once more she
+won the assembly by dealing a cruel dagger-stroke at Gauffridi, who
+stood there strongly bound. “Where,” said they, “is Beelzebub now, the
+devil who went out of Madeline?” “I see him plainly at Gauffridi’s
+ear.”
+
+Have you had shame and horror enough? We should like further to know
+what the poor wretch said, when put to the torture. Both the ordinary
+and the extraordinary forms were used upon him. His revelations must
+undoubtedly have thrown light on the curious history of the nunneries.
+Those tales the Parliament stored up with greediness, as weapons that
+might prove serviceable to itself; but it retained them “under the
+seal of the Court.”
+
+The inquisitor Michaëlis, who was fiercely assailed in public for an
+excess of animosity so closely resembling jealousy, was summoned by
+his order to a meeting at Paris, and never saw the execution of
+Gauffridi, who was burnt alive four days afterwards, 30th April, 1611,
+at Aix.
+
+The name of the Dominicans, damaged by this trial, was not much
+exalted by another case of _possession_ got up at Beauvais in such a
+way as to ensure them all the honours of a war, the account of which
+they got printed in Paris. Louisa’s devil having been reproached for
+not speaking Latin, the new demoniac, Denise Lacaille, mingled a few
+words of it in her gibberish. They made a plenty of noise about her,
+often displayed her in the midst of a procession, and even carried her
+from Beauvais to Our Lady of Liesse. But the matter kept quite cool.
+This Picard pilgrimage lacked the horror, the dramatic force of the
+affair at Sainte-Baume. This Lacaille, for all her Latin, had neither
+the burning eloquence, nor the mettle, nor the fierce rage, that
+marked the woman of Provence. The only end of all her proceedings was
+to amuse the Huguenots.
+
+What became of the two rivals, Madeline and Louisa? The former, or at
+least her shadow, was kept on Papal ground, for fear of her being led
+to speak about so mournful a business. She was never shown in public,
+save in the character of a penitent. She was taken out among the poor
+women to cut wood, which was afterwards sold for alms; the parents,
+whom she had brought to shame, having forsworn and forsaken her.
+
+Louisa, for her part, had said during the trial: “I shall make no
+boast about it. The trial over, I shall soon be dead.” But this was
+not to be. Instead of dying, she went on killing others. The
+murdering devil within her waxed stormier than ever. She set about
+revealing to the inquisitors the names, both Christian and surnames,
+of all whom she fancied to have any dealings with magic; among others
+a poor girl named Honoria, “blind of both eyes,” who was burnt alive.
+
+“God grant,” says Father Michaëlis, in conclusion, “that all this may
+redound to His own glory and to that of His Church!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE DEMONIACS OF LOUDUN--URBAN GRANDIER: 1632-1634.
+
+
+In the _State Memoirs_, written by the famous Father Joseph, and known
+to us by extracts only--the work itself having, no doubt, been wisely
+suppressed as too instructive--the good Father explained how, in 1633,
+he had the luck to discover a heresy, a huge heresy, in which ever so
+many confessors and directors were concerned. That excellent army of
+Church-constables, those dogs of the Holy Troop, the Capuchins, had,
+not only in the wildernesses, but even in the populous parts of
+France--at Chartres, in Picardy, everywhere--got scent of some
+dreadful game; the _Alumbrados_ namely, or Illuminate, of Spain, who
+being sorely persecuted there, had fled for shelter into France,
+where, in the world of women, especially among the convents, they
+dropped the gentle poison which was afterwards called by the name of
+Molinos.[90]
+
+    [90] Molinos, born at Saragossa in 1627, died a prisoner to
+    the Inquisition in 1696. His followers were called
+    Quietists.--TRANS.
+
+The wonder was, that the matter had not been sooner known. Having
+spread so far, it could not have been wholly hidden. The Capuchins
+swore that in Picardy alone, where the girls are weak and
+warmer-blooded than in the South, this amorously mystic folly owned
+some sixty thousand professors. Did all the clergy share in it--all
+the confessors and directors? We must remember, that attached to the
+official directors were a good many laymen, who glowed with the same
+zeal for the souls of women. One of them, who afterwards made some
+noise by his talent and boldness, is the author of _Spiritual
+Delights_, Desmarets of Saint Sorlin.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Without remembering the new state of things, we should fail to
+understand the all-powerful attitude of the director towards the nuns,
+of whom he was now a hundred-fold more the master than he had been in
+days of yore.
+
+The reforming movement of the Council of Trent, for the better
+enclosing of monasteries, was not much followed up in the reign of
+Henry IV., when the nuns received company, gave balls, danced, and so
+forth. In the reign, however, of Louis XIII., it began afresh with
+greater earnestness. The Cardinal Rochefoucauld, or rather the Jesuits
+who drew him on, insisted on a great deal of outward decency. Shall we
+say, then, that all entrance into the convents was forbidden? One man
+only went in every day, not only into the house, but also, if he
+chose, into each of the cells; a fact made evident from several known
+cases, especially that of David at Louviers. By this reform, this
+closing system, the door was shut upon the world at large, on all
+inconvenient rivals, while the director enjoyed the sole command of
+his nuns, the special right of private interviews with them.
+
+What would come of this? The speculative might treat it as a problem;
+not so practical men or physicians. The physician Wyer tells some
+plain stories to show what did come of it from the sixteenth century
+onwards. In his Fourth Book he quotes a number of nuns who went mad
+for love. And in Book III. he talks of an estimable Spanish priest
+who, going by chance into a nunnery, came out mad, declaring that the
+brides of Jesus were his also, brides of the priest, who was a vicar
+of Jesus. He had masses said in return for the favour which God had
+granted him in this speedy marriage with a whole convent.
+
+If this was the result of one passing visit, we may understand the
+plight of a director of nuns when he was left alone with them, and
+could take advantage of the new restrictions to spend the day among
+them, listening hour by hour to the perilous secret of their
+languishings and their weaknesses.
+
+In the plight of these girls the mere senses are not all in all.
+Allowance must be made for their listlessness of mind; for the
+absolute need of some change in their way of life; of some dream or
+diversion to relieve their lifelong monotony. Strange things are
+happening constantly at this period. Travels, events in the Indies,
+the discovery of a world, the invention of printing: what romance
+there is everywhere! While all this goes on without, putting men’s
+minds into a flutter, how, think you, can those within bear up against
+the oppressive sameness of monastic life--the irksomeness of its
+lengthy services, seasoned by nothing better than a sermon preached
+through the nose?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The laity themselves, living amidst so many distractions, desire, nay
+insist, that their confessors shall absolve them for their acts of
+inconstancy. The priests, on their side, are drawn or forced on, step
+by step. There grows up a vast literature, at once various and
+learned, of casuistry, of the art of allowing all things; a
+progressive literature, in which the indulgence of to-night seems to
+become the severity of the morrow.
+
+This casuistry was meant for the world; that mysticism for the
+convent. The annihilation of the person and the death of the will form
+the great mystic principle. The true moral bearings of that principle
+are well shown by Desmarets. “The devout,” he says, “having offered up
+and annihilated their own selves, exist no longer but in God.
+_Thenceforth they can do no wrong._ The better part of them is so
+divine that it no longer knows what the other is doing.”[91]
+
+    [91] An old doctrine which often turns up again in the Middle
+    Ages. In the seventeenth century it prevails among the
+    convents of France and Spain. A Norman angel, in the Louviers
+    business, teaches a nun to despise the body and disregard the
+    flesh, after the example of Jesus, who bared himself for a
+    scourging before all the people. He enforces an utter
+    surrendering of the soul and the will by the example of the
+    Virgin, “who obeyed the angel Gabriel and conceived, without
+    risk of evil, for impurity could not come of a spirit.” At
+    Louviers, David, an old director of some authority, taught
+    “that sin could be killed by sin, as the better way of
+    becoming innocent again.”
+
+It might have been thought that the zealous Joseph who had raised so
+loud a cry of alarm against these corrupt teachers, would have gone
+yet further; that a grand searching inquiry would have taken place;
+that the countless host whose number, in one province only, were
+reckoned at sixty thousand, would be found out and closely examined.
+But not so: they disappear, and nothing more is known about them. A
+few, it is said, were imprisoned; but trial there was none: only a
+deep silence. To all appearance Richelieu cared but little about
+fathoming the business. In his tenderness for the Capuchins he was not
+so blind as to follow their lead in a matter which would have thrown
+the supervision of all confessors into their hands.
+
+As a rule, the monks had a jealous dislike of the secular clergy.
+Entire masters of the Spanish women, they were too dirty to be
+relished by those of France; who preferred going to their own priests
+or to some Jesuit confessor, an amphious creature, half monk, half
+worldling. If Richelieu had once let loose the pack of Capuchins,
+Recollects, Carmelites, Dominicans, &c., who among the clergy would
+have been safe? What director, what priest, however upright, but had
+used, and used amiss, the gentle language of the Quietists towards
+their penitents?
+
+Richelieu took care not to trouble the clergy, while he was already
+bringing about the General Assembly from which he was soon to ask a
+contribution towards the war. One trial alone was granted the monks,
+the trial of a vicar, but a vicar who dealt in magic; a trial wherein
+matters were allowed, as in the case of Gauffridi, to get so
+entangled, that no confessor, no director, saw his own likeness there,
+but everyone in full security could say, “This is not I.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thanks to these strict precautions the Grandier affair is involved in
+some obscurity.[92] Its historian, the Capuchin Tranquille, proves
+convincingly that Grandier was a wizard, and, still more, a devil; and
+on the trial he is called, as Ashtaroth might have been called,
+_Grandier of the Dominations_. On the other hand, Ménage is ready to
+rank him with great men accused of magic, with the martyrs of free
+thought.
+
+    [92] The _History of the Loudun Devils_, by the Protestant
+    Aubin, is an earnest, solid book, confirmed by the _Reports_
+    of Laubardemont himself. That of the Capuchin Tranquille is a
+    piece of grotesquerie. The _Proceedings_ are in the Great
+    Library of Paris. M. Figuier has given a long and excellent
+    account of the whole affair, in his _History of the
+    Marvellous_.
+
+In order to see a little more clearly, we must not set Grandier by
+himself; we must keep his place in the devilish trilogy of those
+times, in which he figured only as a second act; we must explain him
+by the first act, already shown to us in the dreadful business of
+Sainte-Baume, and the death of Gauffridi; we must explain him by the
+third act, by the affair at Louviers, which copied Loudun, as Loudun
+had copied Sainte-Baume, and which in its turn owned a Gauffridi and
+an Urban Grandier.
+
+The three cases are one and selfsame. In each case there is a
+libertine priest, in each a jealous monk, and a frantic nun by whose
+mouth the Devil is made to speak; and in all three the priest gets
+burnt at last.
+
+And here you may notice one source of light which makes these matters
+clearer to our eyes than if we saw them through the miry shades of a
+monastery in Spain or Italy. In those lands of Southern laziness, the
+nuns were astoundingly passive, enduring the life of the seraglio and
+even worse.[93] Our French women, on the contrary, gifted with a
+personality at once strong, lively, and hard to please, were equally
+dreadful in their jealousy and in their hate; and being devils indeed
+without metaphor, were accordingly rash, blusterous, and prompt to
+accuse. Their revelations were very plain, so plain indeed at the
+last, that everyone felt ashamed; and after thirty years and three
+special cases, the whole thing, begun as it was through terror, got
+fairly extinguished in its own dulness beneath hisses of general
+disgust.
+
+    [93] See Del Rio, Llorente Ricci, &c.
+
+It was not in Loudun, amidst crowds of Poitevins, in the presence of
+so many scoffing Huguenots, in the very town where they held their
+great national synods, that one would have looked for an event so
+discreditable to the Catholics. But these latter, living, as it were,
+in a conquered country,[94] in the old Protestant towns, with the
+greatest freedom, and thinking, not without cause, of the people they
+had often massacred and but lately overcome, were not the persons to
+say a word about it. Catholic Loudun, composed of magistrates,
+priests, monks, a few nobles, and some workmen, dwelled aloof from the
+rest, like a true conquering settlement. This settlement, as one might
+easily guess, was rent in twain by the rivalry of the priests and the
+monks.
+
+    [94] The capture of Rochelle, the last of the Huguenot
+    strongholds took place in 1628.--TRANS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The monks, being numerous and proud, as men specially sent forth to
+make converts, kept the pick of the pavement against the Protestants,
+and were confessing the Catholic ladies, when there arrived from
+Bordeaux a young vicar, brought up by the Jesuits, a man of letters,
+of pleasing manners, who wrote well and spoke better. He made a noise
+in the pulpit, and ere long in the world. By birth a townsman of
+Mantes, of a wrangling turn, he was Southern by education, with all
+the readiness of a Bordelais, boastful and frivolous as a Gascon. He
+soon managed to set the whole town by the ears, drawing the women to
+his side, while the men were mostly against him. He became lofty,
+insolent, unbearable, devoid of respect for everything. The Carmelites
+he overwhelmed with jibes; he would rail away from his pulpit against
+monks in general. They choked with rage at his sermons. Proud and
+stately, he went along the streets of Loudun like a Father of the
+Church; but by night he would steal, with less of bluster, down the
+byeways and through back-doors.
+
+They all surrendered themselves to his pleasure. The wife of the Crown
+Counsel was aware of his charms; still more so the daughter of the
+Public Prosecutor, who had a child by him. This did not satisfy him.
+Master of the ladies, this conqueror pushed his advantage until he had
+gained the nuns.
+
+By that time the Ursulines abounded everywhere, sisters devoted to
+education, feminine missionaries in a Protestant land, who courted and
+pleased the mothers, while they won over the little girls. The nuns of
+Loudun formed a small convent of young ladies, poor and well-born. The
+convent in itself was poor, the nuns for whom it was founded, having
+been granted nothing but their house, an old Huguenot college. The
+prioress, a lady of good birth and high connections, burned to exalt
+her nunnery, to enlarge it, make it wealthier and wider known. Perhaps
+she would have chosen Grandier, as being then the fashion, had she not
+already gotten for her director a priest with very different rootage
+in the country, a near kinsman of the two chief magistrates. The
+Canon Mignon, as he was called, held the prioress fast. These two were
+enraged at learning through the confessional--the “Ladies Superior”
+might confess their nuns--that the young nuns dreamed of nothing but
+this Grandier, of whom there was so much talk.
+
+Thereupon three parties, the threatened director, the cheated husband,
+the outraged father, joined together by a common jealousy, swore
+together the destruction of Grandier. To ensure success, they only
+needed to let him go on. He was ruining himself quite fast enough. An
+incident that came to light made noise enough almost to bring down the
+town.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The nuns placed in that old Huguenot mansion, were far from easy in
+their minds. Their boarders, children of the town, and perhaps also
+some of the younger nuns, had amused themselves with frightening the
+rest by playing at ghosts and apparitions. Little enough of order was
+there among this throng of rich spoilt girls. They would run about the
+passages at night, until they frightened themselves. Some of them were
+sick, or else sick at heart. But these fears and fancies mingled with
+the gossip of the town, of which they heard but too much during the
+day, until the ghost by night took the form of Grandier himself.
+Several said they saw him, felt him near them in the night, and
+yielded unawares to his bold advances. Was all this fancy, or the fun
+of novices? Had Grandier bribed the porteress or ventured to climb
+the walls? This part of the business was never cleared up.
+
+From that time the three felt sure of catching him. And first, among
+the small folk under their protection, they stirred up two good souls
+to declare that they could no longer keep as vicar a profligate, a
+wizard, a devil, a freethinker, who bent one knee in church instead of
+two, who scoffed at rules and granted dispensations contrary to the
+rights of the Bishop. A shrewd accusation, which turned against him
+his natural defender, the Bishop of Poitiers, and delivered him over
+to the fury of the monks.
+
+To say truth, all this was planned with much skill. Besides raising up
+two poor people as accusers, they thought it advisable to have him
+cudgelled by a noble. In those days of duelling a man who let himself
+be cudgelled with impunity lost ground with the public, and sank in
+the esteem of the women. Grandier deeply felt the blow. Fond of making
+a noise in all cases, he went to the King, threw himself on his knees,
+and besought vengeance for the insult to his gown. From so devout a
+king he might have gained it; but here there chanced to be some
+persons who told the King that it was all an affair of love, the fury
+of a betrayed husband wreaking itself on his foe.
+
+At the spiritual court of Poitiers, Grandier was condemned to do
+penance, to be banished from Loudun, and disgraced as a priest. But
+the civil court took up the matter and found him innocent. He had
+still to await the orders of him by whom Poitiers was spiritually
+overruled, Sourdis, Archbishop of Bordeaux. That warlike prelate, an
+admiral and brave sailor more than a priest, shrugged his shoulders on
+hearing of such peccadilloes. He acquitted the vicar, but at the same
+time wisely recommended him to go and live anywhere out of Loudun.
+
+This the proud man did not care to do. He wanted to enjoy his triumph
+on the very field of battle, to show off before the ladies. He came
+back to Loudun in broad day, with mighty noise; the women all looking
+out of window, as he went by with a laurel-branch in his hand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Not satisfied with that piece of folly, he began to threaten, to
+demand reparation. Thus pushed and imperilled in their turn, his
+enemies called to remembrance the affair of Gauffridi, where the
+Devil, the Father of Lies, was restored to his honours and accepted in
+a court of justice as a right truthful witness, worthy of belief on
+the side of the Church, worthy of belief on the side of His Majesty’s
+servants. In despair they invoked a devil and found one at their
+command. He showed himself among the Ursulines.
+
+A dangerous thing; but then, how many were nearly concerned in its
+success! The prioress saw her poor humble convent suddenly attracting
+the gaze of the Court, of the provinces, of all the world. The monks
+saw themselves victorious over their rivals the priests. They pictured
+anew those popular battles waged with the Devil in a former century,
+and often, as at Soissons, before the church doors; the terror of the
+people, and their joy at the triumph of the Good Spirit; the
+confession drawn from the Devil touching God’s presence in the
+Sacrament; and the humiliation of the Huguenots at being refuted by
+the Demon himself.
+
+In these tragi-comedies the exorciser represented God, or at any rate
+the Archangel, overthrowing the dragon. He came down from the platform
+in utter exhaustion, streaming with sweat, but victorious, to be borne
+away in the arms of the crowd, amidst the blessings of good women who
+shed tears of joy the while.
+
+Therefore it was that in these trials a dash of witchcraft was always
+needful. The Devil alone roused the interest of the vulgar. They could
+not always see him coming out of a body in the shape of a black toad,
+as at Bordeaux in 1610. But it was easy to make it up to them by a
+grand display of splendid stage scenery. The affair of Provence owed
+much of its success to Madeline’s desolate wildness and the terror of
+Sainte-Baume. Loudun was regaled with the uproar and the bacchanal
+frenzy of a host of exorcisers distributed among several churches.
+Lastly, Louviers, as we shall presently see, put a little new life
+into this fading fashion by inventing midnight scenes, in which the
+demons who possessed the nuns began digging by the glimmer of torches,
+until they drew forth certain charms from the holes wherein they had
+been concealed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Loudun business began with the prioress and a lay sister of hers.
+They had convulsive fits, and talked infernal gibberish. Other of the
+nuns began copying them, one bold girl especially taking up Louisa’s
+part at Marseilles, with the same devil Leviathan, the leading demon
+of trickery and evil speaking.
+
+The little town was all in a tremble. Monks of every hue provided
+themselves with nuns, shared them all round, and exorcised them by
+threes and fours. The churches were parcelled out among them; the
+Capuchins alone taking two for themselves. The crowd go after them,
+swollen by all the women in the place, and in this frightened
+audience, throbbing with anxiety, more than one cries out that she,
+too, is feeling the devils.[95] Six girls of the town are possessed.
+And the bare recital of these alarming events begets two new cases of
+possession at Chinon.
+
+    [95] The same hysteric contagion marks the “Revivals” of a
+    later period, down to the last mad outbreak in Ireland. The
+    translator hopes some day to work out the physical question
+    here stated.--TRANS.
+
+Everywhere the thing was talked of, at Paris, at the Court. Our
+Spanish queen,[96] who is imaginative and devout, sends off her
+almoner; nay more, sends her faithful follower, the old papist, Lord
+Montague, who sees, who believes everything, and reports it all to the
+Pope. It is a miracle proven. He had seen the wounds on a certain nun,
+and the marks made by the Devil on the Lady Superior’s hands.
+
+    [96] Anne of Austria, wife of Louis XIII.--TRANS.
+
+What said the King of France to this? All his devotion was turned on
+the Devil, on hell, on thoughts of fear. It is said that Richelieu was
+glad to keep him thus. I doubt it; the demons were essentially
+Spanish, taking the Spanish side: if ever they talked politics, they
+must have spoken against Richelieu. Perhaps he was afraid of them. At
+any rate, he did them homage, and sent his niece to prove the interest
+he took in the matter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Court believed, but Loudun itself did not. Its devils, but sorry
+imitators of the Marseilles demons, rehearsed in the morning what they
+had learnt the night before from the well-known handbook of Father
+Michaëlis. They would never have known what to say but for the secret
+exorcisms, the careful rehearsal of the day’s farce, by which night
+after night they were trained to figure before the people.
+
+One sturdy magistrate, bailiff of the town, made a stir: going himself
+to detect the knaves, he threatened and denounced them. Such, too, was
+the tacit opinion of the Archbishop of Bordeaux, to whom Grandier
+appealed. He despatched a set of rules for the guidance at least of
+the exorcisers, for putting a stop to their arbitrary doings; and,
+better still, he sent his surgeon, who examined the girls, and found
+them to be neither bewitched, nor mad, nor even sick. What were they
+then? Knaves, to be sure.[97]
+
+    [97] Not of necessity knaves, Mr. Michelet; at least not
+    wilfully so; but silly hysteric patients, of the
+    spirit-rapping, revivalist order, victims of nervous
+    derangement, or undue nervous sensibility.--TRANS.
+
+So through the century keeps on this noble duel between the Physician
+and the Devil, this battle of light and knowledge with the dark shades
+of falsehood. We saw its beginning in Agrippa and Wyer. Doctor Duncan
+carried it bravely on at Loudun, and fearlessly impressed on others
+the belief that this affair was nothing but a farce.
+
+For all his alleged resistance, the Demon was frightened, held his
+tongue, quite lost his voice. But people’s passions had been too
+fiercely roused for the matter to end there. The tide flowed again so
+strongly in favour of Grandier, that the assailed became in their turn
+assailants. An apothecary of kin to the accusers was sued by a rich
+young lady of the town for speaking of her as the vicar’s mistress. He
+was condemned to apologise for his slander.
+
+The prioress was a lost woman. It would have been easy to prove, what
+one witness afterwards saw, that the marks upon her were made with
+paint renewed daily. But she was kinswoman to one of the King’s
+judges, Laubardemont, and he saved her. He was simply charged to
+overthrow the strong places of Loudun. He got himself commissioned to
+try Grandier. The Cardinal was given to understand that the accused
+was vicar and friend of the _Loudun shoemaker_,[98] was one of the
+numerous agents of Mary of Medici, had made himself his parishioner’s
+secretary, and written a disgraceful pamphlet in her name.
+
+    [98] A woman named Hammon, of low birth, who entered the
+    service, and rose high in the good graces of Mary of Medici.
+    See Dumas’ _Celebrated Crimes_.--TRANS.
+
+Richelieu, for his part, would have liked to show a high-minded scorn
+of the whole business, if he could have done so with safety to
+himself. The Capuchins and Father Joseph had an eye to that also.
+Richelieu would have given them a fine handle against him with the
+King, had he displayed a want of zeal. One Quillet, after much grave
+reflection, went to see the Minister and give him warning. But the
+other, afraid to listen, regarded him with so stern a gaze that the
+giver of advice deemed it prudent to seek shelter in Italy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Laubardemont arrived at Loudun on the 6th December, 1633, bringing
+along with him great fear, and unbounded powers; even those of the
+King himself. The whole strength of the kingdom became, as it were, a
+dreadful bludgeon to crush one little fly.
+
+The magistrates were wroth; the civic lieutenant warned Grandier that
+he would have to arrest him on the morrow. The latter paid no heed to
+him, and was arrested accordingly. In a moment he was carried off,
+without form of trial, to the dungeons of Angers. Presently he was
+taken back and thrown, where think you? Into the house, the room of
+one of his enemies, who had the windows walled up so as well-nigh to
+choke him. The loathsome scrutiny of the wizard’s body, in order to
+find out the Devil’s marks by sticking needles all over it, was
+carried on by the hands of the accusers themselves, who took their
+revenge upon him beforehand in the foretaste thus given him of his
+future punishment.
+
+They led him to the churches, confronted him with the girls, who had
+got their cue from Laubardemont. These Bacchanals, for such they
+became under the fuddling effect of some drugs administered by the
+condemned apothecary above-named, flung out in such frantic rages,
+that Grandier was nearly perishing one day beneath their nails.
+
+Unable to imitate the eloquence of the Marseilles demoniac, they tried
+obscenity in its stead. It was a hideous thing to see these girls give
+full vent in public to their sensual fury, on the plea of scolding
+their pretended devils. Thus indeed it was that they managed to swell
+their audiences. People flocked to hear from the lips of these women
+what no woman would else have dared to utter.
+
+As the matter grew more hateful, so it also grew more laughable. They
+were sure to repeat all awry what little Latin was ever whispered to
+them. The public found that the devils had never gone through _their
+lower classes_. The Capuchins, however, coolly said that if these
+demons were weak in Latin, they were marvellous speakers of Iroquois
+and Tupinambi.[99]
+
+    [99] Indians of the coast of Brazil.--TRANS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A farce so shameful, seen from a distance of sixty leagues, from St.
+Germain or the Louvre, appeared miraculous, awful, terrifying. The
+Court admired and trembled. Richelieu to please them did a cowardly
+thing. He ordered money to be paid to the exorcisers, to the nuns.
+
+The height of favour to which they had risen, drove the plotters
+altogether mad. Senseless words were followed by shameful deeds.
+Pleading that the nuns were tired, the exorcisers got them outside the
+town, took them about by themselves. One of them, at least to all
+appearance, returned pregnant. In the fifth or sixth month all outward
+trace of it disappeared, and the devil within her acknowledged how
+wickedly he had slandered the poor nun by making her look so large.
+This tale concerning Loudun we learn from the historian of
+Louviers.[100]
+
+    [100] Esprit de Bosroger, p. 135.
+
+It is stated that Father Joseph, after a secret journey to the spot,
+saw to what end the matter was coming, and noiselessly backed out of
+it. The Jesuits also went, tried their exorcisms, did next to nothing,
+got scent of the general feeling, and stole off in like manner.
+
+But the monks, the Capuchins, were gone so far, that they could only
+save themselves by frightening others. They laid some treacherous
+snares for the daring bailiff and his wife, seeking to destroy them,
+and thereby quench the coming reaction of justice. Lastly, they urged
+on the commissioners to despatch Grandier. Things could be carried no
+further: the nuns themselves were slipping out of their hands. After
+that dreadful orgie of sensual rage and immodest shouting in order to
+obtain the shedding of human blood, two or three of them swooned away,
+were seized with disgust and horror; vomited up their very selves.
+Despite the hideous doom that awaited them if they spoke the truth,
+despite the certainty of ending their days in a dungeon, they owned in
+church that they were damned, that they had been playing with the
+Devil, and Grandier was innocent.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They ruined themselves, but could not stay the issue. A general
+protest by the town to the King failed to stay it also. On the 18th
+August, 1634, Grandier was condemned to the stake. So violent were his
+enemies that, for the second time before burning him, they insisted on
+having him stuck with needles in order to find out the Devil’s marks.
+One of his judges would have had even his nails torn out of him, had
+not the surgeon withheld his leave.
+
+They were afraid of the last words their victim might say on the
+scaffold. Among his papers there had been found a manuscript
+condemning the celibacy of priests, and those who called him a wizard
+themselves believed him to be a freethinker. They remembered the brave
+words which the martyrs of free thought had thrown out against their
+judges; they called to mind the last speech of Giordano Bruno, the
+bold defiance of Vanini.[101] So they agreed with Grandier, that if he
+were prudent, he should be saved from burning, perhaps be strangled.
+The weak priest, being a man of flesh, yielded to this demand of the
+flesh, and promised to say nothing. He spoke not a word on the road,
+nor yet upon the scaffold. When he was fairly fastened to the post,
+with everything ready, and the fire so arranged as to enfold him
+swiftly in smoke and flames, his own confessor, a monk, set the
+faggots ablaze without waiting for the executioner. The victim,
+pledged to silence, had only time to say, “So, you have deceived me!”
+when the flames whirled fiercely upwards, and the furnace of pain
+began, and nothing was audible save the wretch’s screams.
+
+    [101] Both Neapolitans, burnt alive, the former at Venice in
+    1600, the latter at Toulouse in 1619.--TRANS.
+
+Richelieu in his Memoirs says little, and that with evident shame,
+concerning this affair. He gives one to believe that he only followed
+the reports that reached him, the voice of general opinion.
+Nevertheless, by rewarding the exorcisers, by throwing the reins to
+the Capuchins, and letting them triumph over France, he gave no slight
+encouragement to that piece of knavery. Gauffridi, thus renewed in
+Grandier, is about to reappear in yet fouler plight in the Louviers
+affair.
+
+In this very year, 1634, the demons hunted from Poitou pass over into
+Normandy, copying again and again the fooleries of Sainte-Baume,
+without any trace of invention, of talent, or of imagination. The
+frantic Leviathan of Provence, when counterfeited at Loudun, loses his
+Southern sting, and only gets out of a scrape by talking fluently to
+virgins in the language of Sodom. Presently, alas! at Louviers he
+loses even his old daring, imbibes the sluggish temper of the North,
+and sinks into a sorry sprite.[102]
+
+    [102] Wright and Dumas both differ from M. Michelet in their
+    view of Urban Grandier’s character. The latter especially,
+    regards him as an innocent victim to his own fearlessness and
+    the hate of his foes, among whom not the least deadly was
+    Richelieu himself, who bore him a deep personal
+    grudge.--TRANS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE DEMONIACS OF LOUVIERS--MADELINE BAVENT: 1633-1647.
+
+
+Had Richelieu allowed the inquiry demanded by Father Joseph into the
+doings of the Illuminate Confessors, some strange light would have
+been thrown into the depth of the cloisters, on the daily life of the
+nuns. Failing that, we may still learn from the Louviers story, which
+is far more instructive than those of Aix and Loudun, that,
+notwithstanding the new means of corruption furnished by Illuminism,
+the director still resorted to the old trickeries of witchcraft, of
+apparitions, heavenly or infernal, and so forth.[103]
+
+    [103] It was very easy to cheat those who wished to be
+    cheated. By this time celibacy was harder to practise than in
+    the Middle Ages, the number of fasts and bloodlettings being
+    greatly reduced. Many died from the nervous plethora of a
+    life so cruelly sluggish. They made no secret of their
+    torments, owning them to their sisters, to their confessor,
+    to the Virgin herself. A pitiful thing, a thing to sorrow
+    for, not to ridicule. In Italy, a nun besought the Virgin for
+    pity’s sake to grant her a lover.
+
+Of the three directors successively appointed to the Convent of
+Louviers in the space of thirty years, David, the first, was an
+Illuminate, who forestalled Molinos; the second, Picart, was a wizard
+dealing with the Devil; and Boullé, the third, was a wizard working
+in the guise of an angel.
+
+There is an excellent book about this business; it is called _The
+History of Magdalen Bavent_, a nun of Louviers; with her Examination,
+&c., 1652: Rouen.[104] The date of this book accounts for the thorough
+freedom with which it was written. During the wars of the Fronde, a
+bold Oratorian priest, who discovered the nun in one of the Rouen
+prisons, took courage from her dictation to write down the story of
+her life.
+
+    [104] I know of no book more important, more dreadful, or
+    worthier of being reprinted. It is the most powerful
+    narrative of its class. _Piety Afflicted_, by the Capuchin
+    Esprit de Bosroger, is a work immortal in the annals of
+    tomfoolery. The two excellent pamphlets by the doughty
+    surgeon, Yvelin, the _Inquiry_ and the _Apology_, are in the
+    Library of Ste. Genevieve.
+
+Born at Rouen in 1607, Madeline was left an orphan at nine years old.
+At twelve she was apprenticed to a milliner. The confessor, a
+Franciscan, held absolute sway in the house of this milliner, who as
+maker of clothes for the nuns, was dependent on the Church. The monk
+caused the apprentices, whom he doubtless made drunk with belladonna
+and other magical drinks, to believe that they had been taken to the
+Sabbath and there married to the devil Dagon. Three were already
+possessed by him, and Madeline at fourteen became the fourth.
+
+She was a devout worshipper, especially of St. Francis. A Franciscan
+monastery had just been founded at Louviers, by a lady of Rouen, widow
+of lawyer Hennequin, who was hanged for cheating. She hoped by this
+good deed of hers to help in saving her husband’s soul. To that end
+she sought counsel of a holy man, the old priest David, who became
+director to the new foundation. Standing at the entrance of the town,
+with a wood surrounding it, this convent, born of so tragical a
+source, seemed quite gloomy and poor enough for a place of stern
+devotion. David was known as author of a _Scourge for Rakes_, an odd
+and violent book against the abuses that defiled the Cloister.[105]
+All of a sudden this austere person took up some very strange ideas
+concerning purity. He became an Adamite, preached up the nakedness of
+Adam in his days of innocence. The docile nuns of Louviers sought to
+subdue and abase the novices, to break them into obedience, by
+insisting--of course in summer-time--that these young Eves should
+return to the plight of their common mother. In this state they were
+sent out for exercise in some secluded gardens, and were taken into
+the chapel itself. Madeline, who at sixteen had come to be received as
+a novice, was too proud, perhaps in those days too pure also, to
+submit to so strange a way of life. She got an angry scolding for
+having tried at communion to hide her bosom with the altar-cloth.
+
+    [105] See Floquet; _Parliament of Normandy_, vol. v. p. 636.
+
+Not less unwilling was she to uncover her soul, to confess to the Lady
+Superior, after the usual monastic custom of which the abbesses were
+particularly fond. She would rather trust herself with old David, who
+kept her apart from the rest. He himself confided his own ailments
+into her ear. Nor did he hide from her his inner teaching, the
+Illuminism, which governed the convent: “You must kill sin by being
+made humble and lost to all sense of pride through sin.” Madeline was
+frightened at the depths of depravity reached by the nuns, who quietly
+carried out the teaching with which they had been imbued. She avoided
+their company, kept to herself, and succeeded in getting made one of
+the doorkeepers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+David died when she was eighteen. Old age prevented his going far with
+the girl. But the vicar Picart, who succeeded him, was furious in his
+pursuit of her; at the confessional spoke to her only of his love. He
+made her his sextoness, that he might meet her alone in chapel. She
+liked him not; but the nuns forbade her to have another confessor,
+lest she might divulge their little secrets. And thus she was given
+over to Picart. He beset her when she was sick almost to death;
+seeking to frighten her by insisting that from David he had received
+some infernal prescriptions. He sought to win her compassion by
+feigning illness and begging her to come and see him. Thenceforth he
+became her master, upset her mind with magic potions, and worked her
+into believing that she had gone with him to the Sabbath, there to
+officiate as altar and victim. At length, exceeding even the Sabbath
+usages and daring the scandal that would follow, he made her to be
+with child.
+
+The nuns were afraid of one who knew the state of their morals; and
+their interest also bound them to him. The convent was enriched by his
+energy, his good repute, the alms and gifts he attracted towards it
+from every quarter. He was building them a large church. We saw in the
+Loudun business by what rivalries and ambitions these houses were led
+away, how jealously they strove each to outdo the others. Through the
+trust reposed in him by the wealthy, Picart saw himself raised into
+the lofty part of benefactor and second founder of the convent.
+“Sweetheart,” he said to Madeline, “that noble church is all my
+building! After my death you will see wonders wrought there. Do you
+not agree to that?”
+
+This fine gentleman did not put himself out at all regarding Madeline.
+He paid a dowry for her, and made a nun of her who was already a
+lay-sister. Thus, being no longer a doorkeeper, she could live in one
+of the inner rooms, and there be brought to bed at her convenience. By
+means of certain drugs, and practices of their own, the convents could
+do without the help of doctors. Madeline said that she was delivered
+several times. She never said what became of the newly-born.
+
+Picart being now an old man, feared lest Madeline might in her
+fickleness fly off some day, and utter words of remorse to another
+confessor. So he took a detestable way of binding her to himself
+beyond recall, by forcing her to make a will in which she promised “to
+die when he died, and to be wherever he was.” This was a dreadful
+thought for the poor soul. Must she be drawn along with him into the
+bottomless pit? Must she go down with him, even into hell? She deemed
+herself for ever lost. Become his property, his mere tool, she was
+used and misused by him for all kinds of purposes. He made her do the
+most shameful things. He employed her as a magical charm to gain over
+the rest of the nuns. A holy wafer steeped in Madeline’s blood, and
+buried in the garden, would be sure to disturb their senses and their
+minds.
+
+This was the very year in which Urban Grandier was burnt. Throughout
+France, men spoke of nothing but the devils of Loudun. The
+Penitentiary of Evreux, who had been one of the actors on that stage,
+carried the dreadful tale back with him to Normandy. Madeline fancied
+herself bewitched and knocked about by devils; followed about by a
+lewd cat with eyes of fire. By degrees, other nuns caught the
+disorder, which showed itself in odd supernatural jerks and writhings.
+Madeline had besought aid of a Capuchin, afterwards of the Bishop of
+Evreux. The prioress was not sorry for a step of which she must have
+been aware, for she saw what wealth and fame a like business had
+brought to the Convent of Loudun. But for six years the bishop turned
+a deaf ear to the prayer, doubtless through fear of Richelieu, who was
+then at work on a reform of the cloisters.
+
+Richelieu wanted to bring these scandals to an end. It was not till
+his own death, and that of Louis XIII., during the break-up which
+followed on the rule of the Queen and Mazarin, that the priests again
+betook themselves to working wonders, and waging war with the Devil.
+Picart being dead, they were less shy of a matter in which so
+dangerous a man might have accused others in his turn. They met the
+visions of Madeline, by looking out a visionary for themselves. They
+got admission into the convent for a certain Sister Anne of the
+Nativity, a girl of sanguine, hysteric temperament, frantic at need
+and half-mad, so far at least as to believe in her own lies. A kind of
+dogfight was got up between the two. They besmeared each other with
+false charges. Anne saw the Devil quite naked, by Madeline’s side.
+Madeline swore to seeing Anne at the Sabbath, along with the Lady
+Superior, the Mother-Assistant, and the Mother of the Novices. Besides
+this, there was nothing new; merely a hashing up of the two great
+trials at Aix and Loudun. They read and followed the printed
+narratives only. No wit, no invention, was shown by either.
+
+Anne, the accuser, and her devil Leviathan, were backed by the
+Penitentiary of Evreux, one of the chief actors in the Loudun affair.
+By his advice, the Bishop of Evreux gave orders to disinter the body
+of Picart, so that the devils might leave the convent when Picart
+himself was taken away from the neighbourhood. Madeline was condemned,
+without a hearing, to be disgraced, to have her body examined for the
+marks of the Devil. They tore off her veil and gown, and made her the
+wretched sport of a vile curiosity, that would have pierced her till
+she bled again, in order to win the right of sending her to the stake.
+Leaving to no one else the care of a scrutiny which was in itself a
+torture, these virgins acting as matrons, ascertained if she was with
+child or no, shaved all her body, and dug their needles into her
+quivering flesh, to find out the insensible spots that betrayed the
+mark of the Devil. At every dig they discovered signs of pain: if they
+had not the luck to prove her a Witch, at any rate, they could revel
+in her tears and cries.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Sister Anne was not satisfied, until, on the mere word of her own
+devil, Madeline, though acquitted by the results of this examination,
+was condemned for the rest of her life to an _In pace_. It was said
+that the convent would be quieted by her departure; but such was not
+the case. The Devil was more violent than ever; some twenty nuns began
+to cry out, to prophesy, to beat themselves.
+
+Such a sight drew thither a curious crowd from Rouen, and even from
+Paris. Yvelin, a young Parisian surgeon, who had already seen the
+farce at Loudun, came to see that of Louviers. He brought with him a
+very clear-headed magistrate, the Commissioner of Taxes at Rouen. They
+devoted unwearying attention to the matter, settled themselves at
+Louviers, and carried on their researches for seventeen days.
+
+From the first day they saw into the plot. A conversation they had had
+with the Penitentiary of Evreux on their entrance into the town, was
+repeated back to them by Sister Anne’s demon, as if it had been a
+revelation. The scenic arrangements were very bewitching. The shades
+of night, the torches, the flickering and smoking lights, produced
+effects which had not been seen at Loudun. The rest of the process was
+simple enough. One of the bewitched said that in a certain part of the
+garden they would find a charm. They dug for it, and it was found.
+Unluckily, Yvelin’s friend, the sceptical magistrate, never budged
+from the side of the leading actress, Sister Anne. At the very edge of
+a hole they had just opened he grasped her hand, and on opening it,
+found the charm, a bit of black thread, which she was about to throw
+into the ground.
+
+The exorcisers, the penitentiary, priests, and Capuchins, about the
+spot, were overwhelmed with confusion. The dauntless Yvelin, on his
+own authority, began a scrutiny, and saw to the uttermost depth of the
+affair.
+
+Among the fifty-two nuns, said he, there were six _possessed_, but
+deserving of chastisement. Seventeen more were victims under a spell,
+a pack of girls upset by the disease of the cloisters. He describes
+it with great precision: the girls are regular but hysterical, blown
+out with certain inward storms, lunatics mainly, and disordered in
+mind. A nervous contagion has ruined them; and the first thing to do
+is to keep them apart.
+
+He then, with the liveliness of Voltaire, examines the tokens by which
+the priests were wont to recognize the supernatural character of the
+bewitched. They foretel, he allows, but only what never happens. They
+translate, indeed, but without understanding; as when, for instance,
+they render “_ex parte virginis_,” by “the departure of the Virgin.”
+They know Greek before the people of Louviers, but cannot speak it
+before the doctors of Paris. They cut capers, take leaps of the
+easiest kind, climb up the trunk of a tree which a child three years
+old might climb. In short, the only thing they do that is really
+dreadful and unnatural, is to use dirtier language than men would ever
+do.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In tearing off the mask from these people, the surgeon rendered a
+great service to humanity. For the matter was being pushed further;
+other victims were about to be made. Besides the charms were found
+some papers, ascribed to David or Picart, in which this and that
+person were called witches, and marked out for death. Each one
+shuddered lest his name should be found there. Little by little the
+fear of the priesthood made its way among the people.
+
+The rotten age of Mazarin, the first days of the weak Anne of Austria,
+were already come. Order and government were no more. “But one phrase
+was left in the language: _The Queen is so good._” Her goodness gave
+the clergy a chance of getting the upper hand. The power of the laity
+entombed with Richelieu, bishops, priests, and monks, were about to
+reign. The bold impiety of the magistrate and his friend Yvelin
+imperilled so sweet a hope. Groans and wailings went forth to the Good
+Queen, not from the victims, but from the knaves thus caught in the
+midst of their offences. Up to the Court they went, weeping for the
+outrage to their religion.
+
+Yvelin was not prepared for this stroke: he deemed himself firm at
+Court, having for ten years borne the title of Surgeon to the Queen.
+Before he returned from Louviers to Paris, the weakness of Anne of
+Austria had been tempted into granting another commission named by his
+opponents, consisting of an old fool in his dotage, one Diafoirus of
+Rouen, and his nephew, both attached to the priesthood. These did not
+fail to discover that the Louviers affair was supernatural,
+transcending all art of man.
+
+Any other than Yvelin would have been discouraged. The Rouen
+physicians treated with utter scorn this surgeon, this barber fellow,
+this mere sawbones. The Court gave him no encouragement. Still, he
+held on his way in a treatise which will live yet. He accepts this
+battle of science against priestcraft, declaring, as Wyer did in the
+sixteenth century, that “in all such matters the right judge is not
+the priest but the man of science.” With great difficulty he found
+some one bold enough to print, but no one willing to sell his little
+work. So in broad daylight the heroic young man set about distributing
+it with his own hands. Placing himself on the Pont Neuf, the most
+frequented spot in Paris, at the foot of Henry the Fourth’s statue, he
+gave out copies of his memoir to the passers by. At the end of it they
+found a formal statement of the shameful fraud, how in the hand of the
+female demons the magistrate had caught the unanswerable evidence of
+their dishonour.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Return we to the wretched Madeline. Her enemy, the Penitentiary of
+Evreux, by whose influence she had been searched with needles, carried
+her off as his prey to the heart of the episcopal dungeons in that
+town. Below an underground passage dipped a cave, below the cave a
+cell, where the poor human creature lay buried in damps and darkness.
+Reckoning upon her speedy death, her dread companions had not even the
+kindness to give her a piece of linen for the dressing of her ulcer.
+There, as she lay in her own filth, she suffered alike from pain and
+want of cleanliness. The whole night long she was disturbed by the
+running to and fro of ravenous rats, those terrors of every prison,
+who were wont to nibble men’s ears and noses.
+
+But all these horrors fell short of those which her tyrant, the
+Penitentiary, dealt out to her himself. Day after day he would come
+into the upper vault and speak to her through the mouth of her pit,
+threatening her, commanding her, and making her, whether she would or
+no, confess to this or that crime as having been wrought by others. At
+length she ceased to eat. Fearing that she might die at once, he drew
+her for a while out of her _In Pace_, and laid her in the upper vault.
+Then, in his rage against Yvelin’s memoir, he cast her back into her
+sewer below.
+
+That glimpse of light, that short renewal and sudden death of hope,
+gave the crowning impulse to her despair. Her wound was closing, so
+that her strength was greater. She was seized with a deep and violent
+thirst for death. She swallowed spiders, but instead of dying, only
+brought them up again. Pounded glass she swallowed, but in vain.
+Finding an old bit of sharp iron, she tried to cut her throat, but
+could not. Then, as an easier way, she dug the iron into her belly.
+For four hours she worked and bled, but without success. Even this
+wound shortly began to close. To crown all, the life she hated so
+returned to her stronger than before. Her heart’s death was of no
+avail.
+
+She became once more a woman; still, alas! an object of desire, of
+temptation for her jailers, those brutish varlets of the bishopric,
+who, notwithstanding the horror of the place, and the unhappy
+creature’s own sad and filthy plight, would come to make sport of
+her, believing that they might do all their pleasure against a Witch.
+But an angel succoured her, so she said. From men and rats alike she
+defended herself. But against herself, herself she could not protect.
+Her prison corrupted her mind. She dreamed of the Devil, besought him
+to come and see her, to restore to her the shameful pleasures in which
+she had wallowed at Louviers. He never deigned to come back. Once more
+amidst this corruption of her senses, she fell back on her old desire
+for death. One of the jailers had given her a drug to kill the rats.
+She was just going to swallow it herself, when an angel--an angel, was
+it, or a devil?--stayed her hand, reserving her for other crimes.
+
+Thenceforward--sunk into the lowest depths of vileness, become an
+unspeakable cipher of cowardice and servility--she signed endless
+lists of crimes which she had never committed. Was she worth the
+trouble of burning? Many had given up that idea, but the ruthless
+Penitentiary clung to it still. He offered money to a Wizard of
+Evreux, then in prison, if he would bear such witness as might bring
+about the death of Madeline.
+
+For the future, however, they could use her for other purposes--to
+bear false witness, to become a tool for any slander. Whenever they
+sought the ruin of any man, they had only to drag down to Louviers or
+to Evreux this accursed ghost of a dead woman, living only to make
+others die. In this way she was brought out to kill with her words a
+poor man named Duval. What the Penitentiary dictated to her, she
+repeated readily: when he told her by what marks she should know
+Duval, whom she had never seen, she pointed him out and said she had
+seen him at the Sabbath. Through her it fell out that he was burnt!
+
+She owned her dreadful crime, and shuddered to think what answer she
+could make before God. She was fallen into such contempt that no one
+now deigned to look after her. The doors stood wide open: sometimes
+she had the keys herself. But where now should she go, object as she
+was of so much dread? Thenceforth the world repelled her--cast her
+out: the only world she had left was her dungeon.
+
+During the anarchy of Mazarin and his Good Lady the chief authority
+remained with the Parliaments. That of Rouen, hitherto the friendliest
+to the clergy, grew wroth at last at their arrogant way of examining,
+ordering, and burning people. A mere decree of the Bishop had caused
+Picart’s body to be disinterred and thrown into the common sewer. And
+now they were passing on to the trial of Boullé, the curate, and
+supposed abettor of Picart. Listening to the plaint of Picart’s
+family, the Parliament sentenced the Bishop of Evreux to replace him
+at his own expense in his tomb at Louviers. They called up Boullé,
+undertook his trial themselves, and at the same time sent for the
+wretched Madeline from Evreux to Rouen.
+
+People were afraid that Yvelin and the magistrate who had caught the
+nuns in the very act of cheating, would be made to appear. Hieing away
+to Paris, they found the knave Mazarin ready to protect their knavish
+selves. The whole matter was appealed to the King’s Council--an
+indulgent court, without eyes or ears--whose care it was to bury, hush
+up, bedarken everything connected with justice.
+
+Meanwhile, some honey-tongued priests had comforted Madeline in her
+Rouen dungeon; they heard her confessions, and enjoined her, by way of
+penance, to ask forgiveness of her persecutors, the nuns of Louviers.
+Thenceforth, happen what might, Madeline could never more be brought
+in evidence against those who had thus bound her fast. It was a
+triumph indeed for the clergy, and the victory was sung by a knave of
+an exorciser, the Capuchin Esprit de Bosroger, in his _Piety
+Afflicted_, a farcical monument of stupidity, in which he accuses,
+unawares, the very people he fancies himself defending.
+
+The Fronde, as I said before, was a revolution for honest ends. Fools
+saw only its outer form--its laughable aspects; but at bottom it was a
+serious business, a moral reaction. In August, 1647, with the first
+breath of freedom, Parliament stepped forward and cut the knot. It
+ordered, in the first place, the destruction of the Louviers Sodom;
+the girls were to be dispersed and sent back to their kinsfolk. In the
+next, it decreed that thenceforth the bishops of the province should,
+four times a-year, send special confessors to the nunneries, to
+ascertain that such foul abuses were not renewed.
+
+One comfort, however, the clergy were to receive. They were allowed to
+burn the bones of Picart and the living body of Boullé, who, after
+making public confession in the cathedral, was drawn on a hurdle to
+the Fish Market, and there, on the 21st August, 1647, devoured by the
+flames. Madeline, or rather her corpse, remained in the prisons of
+Rouen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE DEVIL TRIUMPHS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
+
+
+The Fronde was a kind of Voltaire. The spirit of Voltaire, old as
+France herself, but long restrained, burst forth in the political, and
+anon in the religious, world. In vain did the Great King seek to
+establish a solemn gravity. Beneath it laughter went on.
+
+Was there nought else, then, but laughter and jesting? Nay, it was the
+Advent of Reason. By means of Kepler, of Galileo, Descartes, Newton,
+there was now triumphantly enthroned the reasonable dogma of faith in
+the unchangeable laws of nature. Miracle dared no longer show itself,
+or, when it did dare, was hissed down. In other and better words, the
+fantastic miracles of mere whim had vanished, and in their stead was
+seen the mighty miracle of the universe--more regular, and therefore
+more divine.
+
+The great rebellion decidedly won the day. You may see it working in
+the bold forms of those earlier outbursts; in the irony of Galileo; in
+the absolute doubt wherewith Descartes leads off his system. The
+Middle Ages would have said, “’Tis the spirit of the Evil One.”
+
+The victory, however, is not a negative one, but very affirmative and
+surely based. The spirit of nature and the natural sciences, those
+outlaws of an elder day, return in might irresistible. All idle
+shadows are hunted out by the real, the substantial.
+
+They had said in their folly, “Great Pan is dead.” Anon, observing
+that he was yet alive, they had made him a god of evil: amid such a
+chaos they might well be deceived. But, lo! he lives, and lives
+harmonious, in the grand stability of laws that govern alike the star
+and the deep-hidden mystery of life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of this period two things, by no means contradictory, may be averred:
+the spirit of Satan conquers, while the reign of witchcraft is at an
+end.
+
+All marvel-mongering, hellish or holy, is fallen very sick at last.
+Wizards and theologians are powerless alike. They are become, as it
+were, empirics, who pray in vain for some supernatural change, some
+whim of Providence, to work the wonders which science asks of nature
+and reason only.
+
+For all their zeal, the Jansenists of this century succeed only in
+bringing forth a miracle very small and very ridiculous. Still less
+lucky are the rich and powerful Jesuits, who cannot get a miracle done
+at any price; who have to be satisfied with the visions of a hysteric
+girl, Sister Mary Alacoque, of an exceedingly sanguine habit, with
+eyes for nothing but blood. In view of so much impotence, magic and
+witchcraft may find some solace for themselves.
+
+While the old faith in the supernatural was thus declining, priests
+and witches shared a common fate. In the fears, the fancies of the
+Middle Ages, these two were bound up together. Together they were
+still to face the general laughter and disdain. When Molière made fun
+of the Devil and his “seething cauldrons,” the clergy were deeply
+stirred, deeming that the belief in Paradise had fallen equally low.
+
+A government of laymen only, that of the great Colbert, who was long
+the virtual King of France, could not conceal its scorn for such old
+questions. It emptied the prisons of the wizards whom the Rouen
+Parliament still crowded into them, and, in 1672, forbade the law
+courts from entertaining any prosecutions for witchcraft. The
+Parliament protested, and gave people to understand that by this
+denial of sorcery many other things were put in peril. Any doubting of
+these lower mysteries would cause many minds to waver from their
+belief in mysteries of a higher sort.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Sabbath disappears, but why? Because it exists everywhere. It
+enters into the people’s habits, becomes the practice of their daily
+life. The Devil, the Witches, had long been reproached with loving
+death more than life, with hating and hindering the generative powers
+of nature. And now in the pious seventeenth century, when the Witch is
+fast dying out, a love of barrenness, and a fear of being fruitful,
+are found to be, in very truth, the one prevalent disease.
+
+If Satan ever read, he would have good cause for laughter as he read
+the casuists who took him up where he left off. For there was one
+difference at least between them. In times of terror Satan made
+provision for the famished, took pity on the poor. But these fellows
+have compassion only for the rich. With his vices, his luxury, his
+court life, the rich man is still a needy miserable beggar. He comes
+to confession with a humbly threatening air, in order to wrest from
+his doctor permission to sin with a good conscience. Some day will be
+told, by him who may have the courage to tell it, an astounding tale
+of the cowardly things done, and the shameful tricks so basely
+ventured by the casuist who wished to keep his penitent. From Navarro
+to Escobar the strangest bargains were continually made at the wife’s
+expense, and some little wrangling went on after that. But all this
+would not do. The casuist was conquered, was altogether a coward. From
+Zoccoli to Liguori--1670 to 1770--he gave up banning Nature.
+
+The Devil, so it was said, showed two countenances at the Sabbath: the
+one in front seemed threatening, the other behind was farcical. Now
+that he has nothing to do with it, he has generously given the latter
+to the casuist.
+
+It must have amused him to see his trusty friends settled among honest
+folk, in the serious households swayed by the Church. The worldling
+who bettered himself by that great resource of the day, lucrative
+adultery, laughed at prudence, and boldly followed his natural bent.
+Pious families, on the other hand, followed nothing but their Jesuits.
+In order to preserve, to concentrate their property, to leave each one
+wealthy heir, they entered on the crooked ways of the new
+spiritualism. Buried in a mysterious gloom, losing at the faldstool
+all heed and knowledge of themselves, the proudest of them followed
+the lesson taught by Molinos: “In this world we live to suffer. But in
+time that suffering is soothed and lulled to sleep by a habit of pious
+indifference. We thus attain to a negation. Death do you say? Not
+altogether. Without mingling in the world, or heeding its voices, we
+get thereof an echo dim and soft. It is like a windfall of Divine
+Grace, so mild and searching; never more so than in moments of
+self-abasement, when the will is wholly obscured.”
+
+Exquisite depths of feeling! Alas, poor Satan! how art thou left
+behind! Bend low, acknowledge, and admire thy children!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The physicians who, having sprung from the popular empiricism which
+men called witchcraft, were far more truly his lawful children, were
+too forgetful of him who had left them his highest patrimony, as being
+his favoured heirs. They were ungrateful to the Witch, who laid the
+way for themselves. Nay, they went further than that. On this fallen
+king, their father and creator, they dealt some hard strokes with the
+whip. “_Thou, too, my son?_” They gave the jesters cruel weapons
+against him.
+
+Even in the sixteenth century there were some to scoff at the spirit
+who through all time, from the days of the Sibyl to those of the
+Witch, had filled and troubled the woman. They maintained that he was
+neither God nor Devil, but only “the Prince of the Air,” as the Middle
+Ages called him. Satan was nothing but a disease!
+
+_Possession_ to them was only a result of the prison-like, sedentary,
+dry, unyielding life of the cloister. As for the 6500 devils in
+Gauffridi’s little Madeline, and the hosts that fought in the bodies
+of maddened nuns at Loudun and Louviers, these doctors called them
+physical storms. “If Æolus can shake the earth,” said Yvelin, “why not
+also the body of a girl?” La Cadière’s surgeon, of whom more anon, had
+the coolness to say, “it was nothing more than a choking of the womb.”
+
+Wonderful descent! Routed by the simplest remedies, by exorcisms after
+Molière, the terror of the Middle Ages would flee away and vanish
+utterly!
+
+This is too sweeping a reduction of the question. Satan was more than
+that. The doctors saw neither the height nor the depth of him; neither
+his grand revolt in the form of science, nor that strange mixture of
+impurity and pious intrigue, that union of Tartuffe and Priapus, which
+he brought to pass about the year 1700.
+
+People fancy they know something about the eighteenth century, and
+yet have never seen one of its most essential features. The greater
+its outward civilization, the clearer and fuller the light that bathed
+its uppermost layers, so much the more hermetically sealed lay all
+those widespread lower realms, of priests and monks, and women
+credulous, sickly, prone to believe whatever they heard or saw. In the
+years before Cagliostro, Mesmer, and the magnetisers, who appeared
+towards the close of the century, a good many priests still worked
+away at the old dead witchcraft. They talked of nothing but
+enchantments, spread the fear of them abroad, and undertook to hunt
+out the devils with their shameful exorcisms. Many set up for wizards,
+well knowing how little risk they ran, now that people were no longer
+burnt. They knew they were sheltered by the milder spirit of their
+age, by the tolerant teachings of their foes the philosophers, by the
+levity of the great jesters, who thought that anything could be
+extinguished with a laugh. Now it was just because people laughed,
+that these gloomy plot-spinners went their way without much fear. The
+new spirit, that of the Regent namely, was sceptical and easy-natured.
+It shone forth in the _Persian Letters_, it shone forth everywhere in
+the all-powerful journalist who filled that century, Voltaire. At any
+shedding of human blood his whole heart rises indignant. All other
+matters only make him laugh. Little by little, the maxim of the
+worldly public seems to be, “Punish nothing, and laugh at all.”
+
+This tolerant spirit suffered Cardinal Tencin to appear in public as
+his sister’s husband. This, too, it was that ensured to the masters of
+convents the peaceful possession of their nuns, who were even allowed
+to make declarations of pregnancy, to register the births of their
+children.[106] This tolerant temper made excuses for Father
+Apollinaire, when he was caught in a shameful piece of exorcism. That
+worthy Jesuit, Cauvrigny, idol of the provincial convents, paid for
+his adventures only by a recall to Paris, in other words--by fresh
+preferment.
+
+    [106] The noble Chapter of Canons of Pignan were sixteen in
+    number. In one year the provost received from the nuns
+    sixteen declarations of pregnancy. (See MS. History of Besse,
+    by M. Renoux.) One good fruit of this publicity was the
+    decrease of infanticide among the religious orders. At the
+    price of a little shame, the nuns let their children live,
+    and doubtless became good mothers. Those of Pignan put their
+    babes out to nurse with the neighbouring peasants, who
+    brought them up as their own.
+
+Such also was the punishment awarded the famous Jesuit, Girard, who
+was loaded with honours when he should have got the rope. He died in
+the sweetest savour of holiness. His was the most curious affair of
+that century. It enables us to probe the peculiar methods of that day,
+to realize the coarse jumble of jarring machinery which was then at
+work. As a thing of course, it was preluded by the dangerous suavities
+of the Song of Songs. It was carried on by Mary Alacoque, with a
+marriage of Bleeding Hearts spiced with the morbid blandishments of
+Molinos. To these Girard added the whisperings of Satan and the
+terrors of enchantment. He was at once the Devil and the Devil’s
+exorciser. At last, horrible to say, instead of getting justice done
+to her, the unhappy girl whom he sacrificed with so much cruelty, was
+persecuted to death. She disappeared, shut up perhaps by a _lettre de
+cachet_, and buried alive in her tomb.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+FATHER GIRARD AND LA CADIERE: 1730.
+
+
+The Jesuits were unlucky. Powerful at Versailles, where they ruled the
+Court, they had not the slightest credit with Heaven. Not one tiny
+miracle could they do. The Jansenists overflowed, at any rate, with
+touching stories of miracles done. Untold numbers of sick, infirm,
+halt, and paralytic obtained a momentary cure at the tomb of the
+Deacon Pâris. Crushed by a terrible succession of plagues, from the
+time of the Great King to the Regency, when so many were reduced to
+beggary, these unfortunate people went to entreat a poor, good fellow,
+a virtuous imbecile, a saint in spite of his absurdities, to make them
+whole. And what need, after all, of laughter? His life is far more
+touching than ridiculous. We are not to be surprised if these good
+folk, in the emotion of seeing their benefactor’s tomb, suddenly
+forgot their own sufferings. The cure did not last, but what matter? A
+miracle indeed had taken place, a miracle of devotion, of
+lovingkindness, of gratitude. Latterly, with all this some knavery
+began to mingle, but at that time, in 1728, these wonderful popular
+scenes were very pure.
+
+The Jesuits would have given anything for the least of the miracles
+they denied. For well-nigh fifty years they worked away, embellishing
+with fables and anecdotes their Legend of the Sacred Heart, the story
+of Mary Alacoque. For twenty-five or thirty years they had been trying
+to convince the world that their helpmate, James II. of England, not
+content with healing the king’s evil (in his character of King of
+France), amused himself after his death in making the dumb to speak,
+the lame to walk straight, and the squint-eyed to see properly. They
+who were cured squinted worse than ever. As for the dumb, it so
+chanced that she who played this part was a manifest rogue, caught in
+the very act of stealing. She roamed the provinces: at every chapel of
+any renowned saint she was healed by a miracle and received alms, and
+then began her work again elsewhere.
+
+For getting wonders wrought the South was a better country. There
+might be found a plenty of nervous women, easy to excite, the very
+ones to make into somnambulists, subjects of miracle, bearers of
+mystic marks, and so forth.
+
+At Marseilles the Jesuits had on their side a bishop, Belzunce, a
+bold, hearty sort of man, renowned in the memorable plague,[107] but
+credulous and narrow-minded withal; under whose countenance many a
+bold venture might be made. Beside him they had placed a Jesuit of
+Franche-Comté, not wanting in mind, whose austere outside did not
+prevent his preaching pleasantly, in an ornate and rather worldly
+style, such as the ladies loved. A true Jesuit, he made his way by two
+different methods, now by feminine intrigue, anon by his holy
+utterances. Girard had on his side neither years nor figure; he was a
+man of forty-seven, tall, withered, weak-looking, of dirty aspect, and
+given to spitting without end.[108] He had long been a tutor, even
+till he was thirty-seven; and he preserved some of his college tastes.
+For the last ten years, namely, ever since the great plague, he had
+been confessor to the nuns. With them he had fared well, winning over
+them a high degree of power by enforcing a method seemingly quite at
+variance with the Provencial temperament, by teaching the doctrine and
+the discipline of a mystic death, of absolute passiveness, of entire
+forgetfulness of self. The dreadful crisis through which they had just
+passed had deadened their spirits, and weakened hearts already
+unmanned by a kind of morbid languor. Under Girard’s leading, the
+Carmelites of Marseilles carried their mysticism to great lengths; and
+first among them was Sister Remusat, who passed for a saint.
+
+    [107] The great plague of 1720, which carried off 60,000
+    people about Marseilles. Belzunce is the “Marseilles’ good
+    bishop” of Pope’s line--TRANS.
+
+    [108] See “The Proceedings in the Affair of Father Girard and
+    La Cadière,” Aix, 1733.
+
+In spite, or perhaps by reason, of this success, the Jesuits took
+Girard away from Marseilles: they wanted to employ him in raising
+anew their house at Toulon. Colbert’s splendid institution, the
+Seminary for Naval Chaplains, had been entrusted to the Jesuits, with
+the view of cleansing the young chaplains from the influence of the
+Lazarists, who ruled them almost everywhere. But the two Jesuits
+placed in charge were men of small capacity. One was a fool; the
+other, Sabatier, remarkable, in spite of his age, for heat of temper.
+With all the insolence of our old navy he never kept himself under the
+least control. In Toulon he was reproached, not for having a mistress,
+nor yet a married woman, but for intriguing in a way so insolent and
+outrageous as to drive the husband wild. He sought to keep the husband
+specially alive to his own shame, to make him wince with every kind of
+pang. Matters were pushed so far that at last the husband died
+outright.
+
+Still greater was the scandal caused by the Jesuits’ rivals, the
+Observantines, who, having spiritual charge of a sisterhood at
+Ollioules, made mistresses openly of the nuns, and, not content with
+this, dared even to seduce the little boarders. One Aubany, the Father
+Guardian, violated a girl of thirteen; when her parents pursued him,
+he found shelter at Marseilles.
+
+As Director of the Seminary for Chaplains, Girard began, through his
+seeming sternness and his real dexterity, to win for the Jesuits an
+ascendant over monks thus compromised, and over parish-priests of very
+vulgar manners and scanty learning.
+
+In those Southern regions, where the men are abrupt, not seldom
+uncouth of speech and appearance, the women have a lively relish for
+the gentle gravity of the men of the North: they feel thankful to them
+for speaking a language at once aristocratic, official, and French.
+
+When Girard reached Toulon, he must already have gained full knowledge
+of the ground before him. Already had he won over a certain Guiol, who
+sometimes came to Marseilles, where she had a daughter, a Carmelite
+nun. This Guiol, wife of a small carpenter, threw herself entirely
+into his hands, even more so than he wanted. She was of ripe age,
+extremely vehement for a woman of forty-seven, depraved and ready for
+anything, ready to do him service of whatever kind, no matter what he
+might do or be, whether he were a sinner or a saint.
+
+This Guiol, besides her Carmelite daughter at Marseilles, had another,
+a lay-sister to the Ursulines of Toulon. The Ursulines, an order of
+teaching nuns, formed everywhere a kind of centre; their parlour, the
+resort of mothers, being a half-way stage between the cloister and the
+world. At their house, and doubtless through their means, Girard saw
+the ladies of the town, among them one of forty years, a spinster,
+Mdlle. Gravier, daughter of an old contractor for the royal works at
+the Arsenal. This lady had a shadow who never left her, her cousin La
+Reboul, daughter of a skipper and sole heiress to herself; a woman,
+too, who really meant to succeed her, though very nearly her own age,
+being five-and-thirty. Around these gradually grew a small roomful of
+Girard’s admirers, who became his regular penitents. Among them were
+sometimes introduced a few young girls, such as La Cadière, a
+tradesman’s daughter and herself a sempstress, La Laugier, and La
+Batarelle, the daughter of a waterman. They had godly readings
+together, and now and then small suppers. But they were specially
+interested in certain letters which recounted the miracles and
+ecstacies of Sister Remusat, who was still alive; her death occurring
+in February, 1730. What a glorious thing for Father Girard, who had
+led her to a pitch so lofty! They read, they wept, they shouted with
+admiration. If they were not ecstatic yet, they were not far from
+being so. Already, to please her kinswoman, would La Reboul throw
+herself at times into a strange plight by holding her breath and
+pinching her nose.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Among these girls and women the least frivolous certainly was
+Catherine Cadière, a delicate, sickly girl of seventeen, taken up
+wholly with devotion and charity, of a mournful countenance, which
+seemed to say that, young as she was, she had felt more keenly than
+anyone else the great misfortunes of the time, those, namely, of
+Provence and Toulon. This is easily explained. She was born during the
+frightful famine of 1709; and just as the child was growing into a
+maiden, she witnessed the fearful scenes of the great plague. Those
+two events seemed to have left their mark upon her, to have taken her
+out of the present into a life beyond.
+
+This sad flower belonged wholly to Toulon, to the Toulon of that day.
+To understand her better we must remember what that town is and what
+it was.
+
+Toulon is a thoroughfare, a landing-place, the entrance of an immense
+harbour and a huge arsenal. The sense of this carries the traveller
+away, and prevents his seeing Toulon itself. There is a town however
+there, indeed an ancient city. It contains two different sets of
+people, the stranger functionaries, and the genuine Toulonnese, who
+are far from friendly to the former, regarding them with envy, and
+often roused to rebellion by the swaggering of the naval officers. All
+these differences were concentred in the gloomy streets of a town in
+those days choked up within its narrow girdle of fortifications. The
+most peculiar feature about this small dark town is, that it lies
+exactly between two broad seas of light, between the marvellous mirror
+of its roadstead and its glorious amphitheatre of mountains,
+baldheaded, of a dazzling grey, that blinds you in the noonday sun.
+All the gloomier look the streets themselves. Such as do not lead
+straight to the harbour and draw some light therefrom, are plunged at
+all hours in deep gloom. Filthy byeways, and small tradesmen with
+shops ill-furnished, invisible to anyone coming for the day, such is
+the general aspect of the place. The interior forms a maze of passages
+in which you may find plenty of churches, and old convents now turned
+into barracks. Copious kennels, laden and foul with sewage water, run
+down in torrents. The air is almost stagnant, and in so dry a climate
+you are surprised at seeing so much moisture.
+
+In front of the new theatre a passage called La Rue de l’Hôpital leads
+from the narrow Rue Royale into the narrow Rue des Cannoniers. It
+might almost be called a blind alley. The sun, however, just looks
+down upon it at noon, but, finding the place so dismal, passes on
+forthwith, and leaves the passage to its wonted darkness.
+
+Among these gloomy dwellings the smallest was that of the Sister
+Cadière, a retail dealer, or huckster. There was no entrance but by
+the shop, and only one room on each floor. The Cadières were honest
+pious folk, and Madame Cadière the mirror of excellence itself. These
+good people were not altogether poor. Besides their small dwelling in
+the town, they too, like most of their fellow-townsmen, had a
+country-house of their own. This latter is, commonly, a mere hut, a
+little stony plot of ground yielding a little wine. In the days of its
+naval greatness, under Colbert and his son, the wondrous bustle in the
+harbour brought some profit to the town. French money flowed in. The
+many great lords who passed that way brought their households along
+with them, an army of wasteful domestics, who left a good many things
+behind them. All this came to a sudden end. The artificial movement
+stopped short: even the workmen at the arsenal could no longer get
+their wages; shattered vessels were left unrepaired; and at last the
+timbers themselves were sold.
+
+Toulon was keenly sensible of the rebound. At the siege of 1707 it
+seemed as if dead. What, then, was it in the dreadful year 1709, the
+71st of Louis XIV., when every plague at once, a hard winter, a
+famine, and an epidemic, seemed bent on utterly destroying France? The
+very trees of Provence were not spared. All traffic came to an end.
+The roads were covered with starving beggars. Begirt with bandits who
+stopped up every outlet, Toulon quaked for fear.
+
+To crown all, Madame Cadière, in this year of sorrow, was with child.
+Three boys she had borne already. The eldest stayed in the shop to
+help his father. The second was with the Friar Preachers, and destined
+to become a Dominican, or a Jacobin as they were then called. The
+third was studying in the Jesuit seminary as a priest to be. The
+wedded couple wanted a daughter; Madame prayed to Heaven for a saint.
+She spent her nine months in prayer, fasting, or eating nought but rye
+bread. She had a daughter, namely Catherine. The babe was very
+delicate and, like her brothers, unhealthy. The dampness of an
+ill-aired dwelling, and the poor nourishment gained from a mother so
+thrifty and more than temperate, had something to do with this. The
+brothers had scrofulous glands, and in her earlier years the little
+thing suffered from the same cause. Without being altogether ill, she
+had all the suffering sweetness of a sickly child. She grew up without
+growing stronger. At an age when other children have all the strength
+and gladness of upswelling life in them, she was already saying, “I
+have not long to live.”
+
+She took the small-pox, which left her rather marked. I know not if
+she was handsome, but it is clear that she was very winning, with all
+the charming contrasts, the twofold nature of the maidens of Provence.
+Lively and pensive, gay and sad, by turns, she was a good little
+worshipper, but given to harmless pranks withal. Between the long
+church services, if she went into the country with girls of her own
+age, she made no fuss about doing as they did, but would sing and
+dance away and flourish her tambourine. But such days were few. Most
+times her chief delight was to climb up to the top of the house, to
+bring herself nearer heaven, to obtain a glimpse of daylight, to look
+out, perhaps, on some small strip of sea, or some pointed peak in the
+vast wilderness of hills. Thenceforth to her eyes they were serious
+still, but less unkindly than before, less bald and leafless, in a
+garment thinly strewn with arbutus and larch.
+
+This dead town of Toulon numbered 26,000 inhabitants when the plague
+began. It was a huge throng cooped up in one spot. But from this
+centre let us take away a girdle of great convents with their backs
+upon the ramparts, convents of Minorites, Ursulines, Visitandines,
+Bernardines, Oratorians, Jesuits, Capuchins, Recollects; those of the
+Refuge, the Good Shepherd, and, midmost of all, the enormous convent
+of Dominicans. Add to these the parish churches, parsonages, bishop’s
+palace, and it seems that the clergy filled up the place, while the
+people had no room at all, to speak of.[109]
+
+    [109] See the work by M. d’Antrechaus, and the excellent
+    treatise by M. Gustave Lambert.
+
+On a centre so closely thronged, we may guess how savagely the plague
+would fasten. Toulon’s kind heart was also to prove her bane. She
+received with generous warmth some fugitives from Marseilles. These
+are just as likely to have brought the plague with them, as certain
+bales of wool to which was traced the first appearance of that
+scourge. The chief men of the place were about to fly, to scatter
+themselves over the country. But the First Consul, M. d’Antrechaus, a
+man of heroic soul, withheld them, saying, with a stern air, “And what
+will the people do, sirs, in this impoverished town, if the rich folk
+carry their purses away?” So he held them back, and compelled all
+persons to stay where they were. Now the horrors of Marseilles had
+been ascribed to the mutual intercourse of its inhabitants.
+D’Antrechaus, however, tried a system entirely the reverse, tried to
+isolate the people of Toulon, by shutting them up in their houses.
+Two huge hospitals were established, in the roadstead and in the
+hills. All who did not come to these, had to keep at home on pain of
+death. For seven long months D’Antrechaus carried out a wager, which
+would have been held impossible, the keeping, namely, and feeding in
+their own houses, of a people numbering 26,000 souls. All that time
+Toulon was one vast tomb. No one stirred save in the morning, to deal
+out bread from door to door, and then to carry off the dead. Most of
+the doctors perished, and the magistrates all but D’Antrechaus. The
+gravediggers also perished, and their places were filled by condemned
+deserters, who went to work with brutal and headlong violence. Bodies
+were thrown into the tumbril, head downwards, from the fourth storey.
+One mother, having just lost her little girl, shrunk from seeing her
+poor wee body thus hurled below, and by dint of bribing, managed to
+get it lowered the proper way. As they were bearing it off, the child
+came to; it lived still. They took her up again, and she survived, to
+become the grandmother of the learned M. Brun, who wrote an excellent
+history of the port.
+
+Poor little Cadière was exactly the same age as this girl who died and
+lived again, being twelve years old, an age for her sex so full of
+danger. In the general closing of the churches, in the putting down of
+all holidays, and chiefly of Christmas, wont to be so merry a season
+at Toulon, the child’s fancy saw the end of all things. It seems as
+though she never quite shook off that fancy. Toulon never raised her
+head again. She retained her desert-like air. Everything was in ruins,
+everyone in mourning; widowers, orphans, desperate beings were
+everywhere seen. In the midst, a mighty shadow, moved D’Antrechaus
+himself; he had seen all about him perish, his sons, his brothers, and
+his colleagues; and was now so gloriously ruined, that he was fain to
+look to his neighbours for his daily meals. The poor quarrelled among
+themselves for the honour of feeding him.
+
+The young girl told her mother that she would never more wear any of
+her smarter clothes, and she must, therefore, sell them. She would do
+nothing but wait upon the sick, and she was always dragging her to the
+hospital at the end of the street. A little neighbour-girl of
+fourteen, Laugier by name, who had lost her father, was living with
+her mother in great wretchedness. Catherine was continually going to
+them with food and clothes, and anything she could get for them. She
+begged her parents to defray the cost of apprenticing Laugier to a
+dressmaker; and such was her sway over them that they could not refuse
+to incur so heavy an outlay. Her piety, her many little charms of
+soul, rendered her all-powerful. She was impassioned in her charity,
+giving not alms only, but love as well. She longed to make Laugier
+perfect, rejoiced to have her by her side, and often gave her half her
+bed. The pair had been admitted among the _Daughters of Saint
+Theresa_, the third order established by the Carmelites. Mdlle.
+Cadière was their model nun, and seemed at thirteen a Carmelite
+complete. Already she devoured some books of mysticism borrowed from a
+Visitandine. In marked contrast with herself seemed Laugier, now a
+girl of fifteen, who would do nothing but eat and look handsome. So
+indeed she was, and on that account had been made sextoness to the
+chapel of Saint Theresa. This led her into great familiarities with
+the priests, and so, when her conduct called for her expulsion from
+the congregation, another authority, the vicar-general, flew into such
+a rage as to declare that, if she were expelled, the chapel itself
+would be interdicted.
+
+Both these girls had the temperament of their country, suffering from
+great excitement of the nerves, and from what was called flatulence of
+the womb. But in each the result was entirely different; being very
+carnal in the case of Laugier, who was gluttonous, lazy, passionate;
+but wholly cerebral with regard to the pure and gentle Catherine, who
+owing to her ailments or to a lively imagination that took everything
+up into itself, had no ideas concerning sex. “At twenty she was like a
+child of seven.” For nothing cared she but praying and giving of alms;
+she had no wish at all to marry. At the very word “marriage,” she
+would fall a-weeping, as if she had been asked to abandon God.
+
+They had lent her the life of her patroness, Catherine of Genoa, and
+she had bought for herself _The Castle of the Soul_, by St. Theresa.
+Few confessors could follow her in these mystic flights. They who
+spoke clumsily of such things gave her pain. She could not keep either
+her mother’s confessor, the cathedral-priest, or another, a Carmelite,
+or even the old Jesuit Sabatier. At sixteen she found a priest of
+Saint Louis, a highly spiritual person. She spent days in church, to
+such a degree that her mother, by this time a widow and often in want
+of her, had to punish her, for all her own piety, on her return home.
+It was not the girl’s fault, however: during her ecstasies she quite
+forgot herself. So great a saint was she accounted by the girls of her
+own age, that sometimes at mass they seemed to see the Host drawn on
+by the moving power of her love, until it flew up and placed itself of
+its own accord in her mouth.
+
+Her two young brothers differed from each other in their feelings
+towards Girard. The elder, who lived with the Friar Preachers, shared
+the natural dislike of all Dominicans for the Jesuit. The other, who
+was studying with the Jesuits in order to become a priest, regarded
+Girard as a great man, a very saint, a man to honour as a hero. Of
+this younger brother, sickly like herself, Catherine was very fond.
+His ceaseless talking about Girard was sure to do its work upon her.
+One day she met the father in the street. He looked so grave, but so
+good and mild withal, that a voice within her said, “Behold the man to
+whose guidance thou art given!” The next Saturday, when she came to
+confess to him, he said that he had been expecting her. In her amazed
+emotion she never dreamed that her brother might have given him
+warning, but fancied that the mysterious voice had spoken to him also,
+and that they two were sharing the heavenly communion of warnings from
+the world above.
+
+Six months of summer passed away, and yet Girard, who confessed her
+every Saturday, had taken no step towards her. The scandal about old
+Sabatier had set him on his guard. His own prudence would have held
+him to an attachment of a darker kind for such a one as the Guiol, who
+was certainly very mature, but also ardent and a devil incarnate.
+
+It was Cadière who made the first advances towards him, innocent as
+they were. Her brother, the giddy Jacobin, had taken it into his head
+to lend a lady and circulate through the town a satire called _The
+Morality of the Jesuits_. The latter were soon apprised of this.
+Sabatier swore that he would write to the Court for a sealed order
+(lettre-de-cachet) to shut up the Jacobin. In her trouble and alarm,
+his sister, with tears in her eyes, went to beseech Father Girard for
+pity’s sake to interfere. On her coming again to him a little later,
+he said, “Make yourself easy; your brother has nothing to fear; I have
+settled the matter for him.” She was quite overcome. Girard saw his
+advantage. A man of his influence, a friend of the King, a friend of
+Heaven as well, after such proof of goodness as he had just been
+giving, would surely have the very strongest sway over so young a
+heart! He made the venture, and in her own uncertain language said to
+her, “Put yourself in my hands; yield yourself up to me altogether.”
+Without a blush she answered, in the fulness of her angelic purity,
+“Yes;” meaning nought else than to have him for her sole director.
+
+What were his plans concerning her? Would he make her a mistress or
+the tool of his charlatanry? Girard doubtless swayed to and fro, but
+he leant, I think, most towards the latter idea. He had to make his
+choice, might manage to seek out pleasures free from risk. But Mdlle.
+Cadière was under a pious mother. She lived with her family, a married
+brother and the two churchmen, in a very confined house, whose only
+entrance lay through the shop of the elder brother. She went no
+whither except to church. With all her simplicity she knew
+instinctively what things were impure, what houses dangerous. The
+Jesuit penitents were fond of meeting together at the top of a house,
+to eat, and play the fool, and cry out, in their Provencial tongue,
+“Vivent les _Jesuitons_!” A neighbour, disturbed by their noise, went
+and found them lying on their faces, singing and eating fritters, all
+paid for, it was said, out of the alms-money. Cadière was also
+invited, but taking a disgust to the thing she never went a second
+time.
+
+She was assailable only through her soul. And it was only her soul
+that Girard seemed to desire. That she should accept those lessons of
+passive faith which he had taught at Marseilles, this apparently was
+all his aim. Hoping that example would do more for him than precept,
+he charged his tool Guiol to escort the young saint to Marseilles,
+where lived the friend of Cadière’s childhood, a Carmelite nun, a
+daughter of Guiol’s. The artful woman sought to win her trust by
+pretending that she, too, was sometimes ecstatic. She crammed her with
+absurd stories. She told her, for instance, that on finding a cask of
+wine spoilt in her cellar, she began to pray, and immediately the wine
+became good. Another time she felt herself pierced by a crown of
+thorns, but the angels had comforted her by serving up a good dinner,
+of which she partook with Father Girard.
+
+Cadière gained her mother’s leave to go with this worthy Guiol to
+Marseilles, and Madame Cadière paid her expenses. It was now the most
+scorching month--that of August, 1729--in a scorching climate, when
+the country was all dried up, and the eye could see nothing but a
+rugged mirror of rocks and flintstone. The weak, parched brain of a
+sick girl suffering from the fatigues of travel, was all the more
+easily impressed by the dismal air of a nunnery of the dead. The true
+type of this class was the Sister Remusat, already a corpse to outward
+seeming, and soon to be really dead. Cadière was moved to admire so
+lofty a piece of perfection. Her treacherous companion allured her
+with the proud conceit of being such another and filling her place
+anon.
+
+During this short trip of hers, Girard, who remained amid the stifling
+heats of Toulon, had met with a dismal fall. He would often go to the
+girl Laugier, who believed herself to be ecstatic, and “comfort” her
+to such good purpose that he got her presently with child. When Mdlle.
+Cadière came back in the highest ecstasy, as if like to soar away, he
+for his part was become so carnal, so given up to pleasure, that he
+“let fall on her ears a whisper of love.” Thereat she took fire, but
+all, as anyone may see, in her own pure, saintly, generous way; as
+eager to keep him from falling, as devoting herself even to die for
+his sake.
+
+One of her saintly gifts was her power of seeing into the depths of
+men’s hearts. She had sometimes chanced to learn the secret life and
+morals of her confessors, to tell them of their faults; and this, in
+their fear and amazement, many of them had borne with great humility.
+One day this summer, on seeing Guiol come into her room, she suddenly
+said, “Wicked woman! what have you been doing?”
+
+“And she was right,” said Guiol herself, at a later period; “for I had
+just been doing an evil deed.” Perhaps she had just been rendering
+Laugier the same midwife’s service which next year she wished to
+render Batarelle.
+
+Very likely, indeed, Laugier had entrusted to Catherine, at whose
+house she often slept, the secret of her good fortune, the love, the
+fatherly caresses of her saint. It was a hard and stormy trial for
+Catherine’s spirits. On the one side, she had learnt by heart
+Girard’s maxim, that whatever a saint may do is holy. But on the other
+hand, her native honesty and the whole course of her education
+compelled her to believe that over-fondness for the creature was ever
+a mortal sin. This woeful tossing between two different doctrines
+quite finished the poor girl, brought on within her dreadful storms,
+until at last she fancied herself possessed with a devil.
+
+And here her goodness of heart was made manifest. Without humbling
+Girard, she told him she had a vision of a soul tormented with impure
+thoughts and deadly sin; that she felt the need of rescuing that soul,
+by offering the Devil victim for victim, by agreeing to yield herself
+into his keeping in Girard’s stead. He never forbade her, but gave her
+leave to be possessed for one year only.
+
+Like the rest of the town, she had heard of the scandalous loves of
+Father Sabatier--an insolent passionate man, with none of Girard’s
+prudence. The scorn which the Jesuits--to her mind, such pillars of
+the Church--were sure to incur, had not escaped her notice. She said
+one day to Girard, “I had a vision of a gloomy sea, with a vessel full
+of souls tossed by a storm of unclean thoughts. On this vessel were
+two Jesuits. Said I to the Redeemer, whom I saw in heaven, ‘Lord, save
+them, and let me drown! The whole of their shipwreck do I take upon
+myself,’ And God, in His mercy, granted my prayer.”
+
+All through the trial, and when Girard, become her foe, was aiming at
+her death, she never once recurred to this subject. These two
+parables, so clear in meaning, she never explained. She was too
+high-minded to say a word about them. She had doomed herself to very
+damnation. Some will say that in her pride she deemed herself so
+deadened and impassive as to defy the impurity with which the Demon
+troubled a man of God. But it is quite clear that she had no accurate
+knowledge of sensual things, foreseeing nought in such a mystery save
+pains and torments of the Devil. Girard was very cold, and quite
+unworthy of all this sacrifice. Instead of being moved to compassion,
+he sported with her credulity through a vile deceit. Into her casket
+he slipped a paper, in which God declared that, for her sake, He would
+indeed save the vessel. But he took care not to leave so absurd a
+document there: she would have read it again and again until she came
+to perceive how spurious it was. The angel who brought the paper
+carried it off the next day.
+
+With the same coarseness of feeling Girard lightly allowed her, all
+unsettled and incapable of praying as she plainly was, to communicate
+as much as she pleased in different churches every day. This only made
+her worse. Filled already with the Demon, she harboured the two foes
+in one place. With equal power they fought within her against each
+other. She thought she would burst asunder. She would fall into a
+dead faint, and so remain for several hours. By December she could
+not move even from her bed.
+
+Girard had now but too good a plea for seeing her. He was prudent
+enough to let himself be led by the younger brother at least as far as
+her door. The sick girl’s room was at the top of the house. Her mother
+stayed discreetly in the shop. He was left alone as long as he
+pleased, and if he chose could turn the key. At this time she was very
+ill. He handled her as a child, drawing her forward a little to the
+front of the bed, holding her head, and kissing her in a fatherly way.
+
+She was very pure, but very sensitive. A slight touch, that no one
+else would have remarked, deprived her of her senses: this Girard
+found out for himself, and the knowledge of it possessed him with evil
+thoughts. He threw her at will into this trance,[110] and she, in her
+thorough trust in him, never thought of trying to prevent it, feeling
+only somewhat troubled and ashamed at causing such a man to waste upon
+her so much of his precious time. His visits were very long. It was
+easy to foresee what would happen at last. Ill as she was, the poor
+girl inspired Girard with a passion none the less wild and
+uncontrollable. One freedom led to another, and her plaintive
+remonstrances were met with scornful replies. “I am your master--your
+god. You must bear all for obedience sake.” At length, about
+Christmas-time, the last barrier of reserve was broken down; and the
+poor girl awoke from her trance to utter a wail which moved even him
+to pity.
+
+    [110] A case of mesmerism applied to a very susceptible
+    patient.--TRANS.
+
+An issue which she but dimly realized, Girard, as better enlightened,
+viewed with growing alarm. Signs of what was coming began to show
+themselves in her bodily health. To crown the entanglement, Laugier
+also found herself with child. Those religious meetings, those suppers
+watered with the light wine of the country, led to a natural raising
+of the spirits of a race so excitable, and the trance that followed
+spread from one to another. With the more artful all this was mere
+sham; but with the sanguine, vehement Laugier the trance was genuine
+enough. In her own little room she had real fits of raving and
+swooning, especially when Girard came in. A little later than Cadière
+she, too became fruitful.
+
+The danger was great. The girls were neither in a desert nor in the
+heart of a convent, but rather, as one might say, in the open street:
+Laugier in the midst of prying neighbours, Cadière in her own family.
+The latter’s brother, the Jacobin, began to take Girard’s long visits
+amiss. One day when Girard came, he ventured to stay beside her as
+though to watch over her safety. Girard boldly turned him out of the
+room, and the mother angrily drove her son from the house.
+
+This was very like to bring on an explosion. Of course, the young
+man, swelling with rage at this hard usage, at this expulsion from his
+home, would cry aloud to the Preaching Friars, who in their turn would
+seize so fair an opening, to go about repeating the story and stirring
+up the whole town against the Jesuit. The latter, however, resolved to
+meet them with a strangely daring move, to save himself by a crime.
+The libertine became a scoundrel.
+
+He knew his victim, had seen the scrofulous traces of her childhood,
+traces healed up but still looking different from common scars. Some
+of these were on her feet, others a little below her bosom. He formed
+a devilish plan of renewing the wounds and passing them off as
+“_stigmata_,” like those procured from heaven by St. Francis and other
+saints, who sought after the closest conformity with their pattern,
+the crucified Redeemer, even to bearing on themselves the marks of the
+nails and the spear-wound in the side. The Jesuits were distressed at
+having nought to show against the miracles of the Jansenists. Girard
+felt sure of pleasing them by an unlooked-for miracle. He could not
+but receive the support of his own order, of their house at Toulon.
+One of them, old Sabatier, was ready to believe anything: he had of
+yore been Cadière’s confessor, and this affair would bring him into
+credit. Another of these was Father Grignet, a pious old dotard, who
+would see whatever they pleased. If the Carmelites or any others were
+minded to have their doubts, they might be taught, by warnings from a
+high quarter, to consult their safety by keeping silence. Even the
+Jacobin Cadière, hitherto a stern and jealous foe, might find his
+account in turning round and believing in a tale which made his family
+illustrious and himself the brother of a saint.
+
+“But,” some will say, “did not the thing come naturally? We have
+instances numberless, and well-attested, of persons really marked with
+the sacred wounds.”
+
+The reverse is more likely. When she was aware of the new wounds, she
+felt ashamed and distressed with the fear of displeasing Girard by
+this return of her childish ailments; for such she deemed the sores
+which he had opened afresh while she lay unconscious in the trance. So
+she sped away to a neighbour, one Madame Truc, who dabbled in physic,
+and of her she bought, as if for her youngest brother, an ointment to
+burn away the sores.
+
+She would have thought herself guilty of a great sin, if she had not
+told everything to Girard. So, however fearful she might be of
+displeasing and disgusting him, she spoke of this matter also. Looking
+at the wounds, he began playing his comedy, rebuked her attempt to
+heal them, and thus set herself against God. They were the marks, he
+said, of Heaven. Falling on his knees, he kissed the wounds on her
+feet. She crossed herself in self-abasement, struggled long-time
+against such a belief. Girard presses and scolds, makes her show him
+her side, and looks admiringly at the wound. “I, too,” he said, “have
+a wound; but mine is within.”
+
+And now she is fain to believe in herself as a living miracle. Her
+acceptance of a thing so startling was greatly quickened by the fact,
+that Sister Remusat was just then dead. She had seen her in glory, her
+heart borne upward by the angels. Who was to take her place on earth?
+Who should inherit her high gifts, the heavenly favours wherewith she
+had been crowned? Girard offered her the succession, corrupting her
+through her pride.
+
+From that time she was changed. In her vanity she set down every
+natural movement within her as holy. The loathings, the sudden starts
+of a woman great with child, of all which she knew nothing, were
+accounted for as inward struggles of the Spirit. As she sat at table
+with her family on the first day of Lent, she suddenly beheld the
+Saviour, who said, “I will lead thee into the desert, where thou shalt
+share with Me all the love and all the suffering of the holy Forty
+Days.” She shuddered for dread of the suffering she must undergo. But
+still she would offer up her single self for a whole world of sinners.
+Her visions were all of blood; she had nothing but blood before her
+eyes. She beheld Jesus like a sieve running blood. She herself began
+to spit blood, and lose it in other ways. At the same time her nature
+seemed quite changed. The more she suffered, the more amorous she
+grew. On the twentieth day of Lent she saw her name coupled with that
+of Girard. Her pride, raised and quickened by these new sensations,
+enabled her to comprehend the _special sway_ enjoyed by Mary, the
+Woman, with respect to God. She felt _how much lower angels are_ than
+the least of saints, male or female. She saw the Palace of Glory, and
+mistook herself for the Lamb. To crown these illusions she felt
+herself lifted off the ground, several feet into the air. She could
+hardly believe it, until Mdlle. Gravier, a respectable person, assured
+her of the fact. Everyone came, admired, worshipped. Girard brought
+his colleague Grignet, who knelt before her and wept with joy.
+
+Not daring to go to her every day, Girard often made her come to the
+Jesuits’ Church. There, before the altar, before the cross, he
+surrendered himself to a passion all the fiercer for such a sacrilege.
+Had she no scruples? did she still deceive herself? It seems as if, in
+the midst of an elation still unfeigned and earnest, her conscience
+was already dazed and darkened. Under cover of her bleeding wounds,
+those cruel favours of her heavenly Spouse, she began to feel some
+curious compensations....
+
+In her reveries there are two points especially touching. One is the
+pure ideal she had formed of a faithful union, when she fancied that
+she saw her name and that of Girard joined together for ever in the
+Book of Life. The other is her kindliness of heart, the charmingly
+childlike nature which shines out through all her extravagances. On
+Palm Sunday, looking at the joyous party around their family table,
+she wept three hours together, for thinking that “on that very day no
+one had asked Jesus to dinner.”
+
+Through all that Lent, she could hardly eat anything: the little she
+took was thrown up again. The last fifteen days she fasted altogether,
+until she reached the last stage of weakness. Who would have believed
+that against this dying girl, to whom nothing remained but the mere
+breath, Girard could practise new barbarities? He had kept her sores
+from closing. A new one was now formed on her right side. And at last,
+on Good Friday, he gave the finishing touch to his cruel comedy, by
+making her wear a crown of iron-wire, which pierced her forehead,
+until drops of blood rolled down her face. All this was done without
+much secresy. He began by cutting off her long hair and carrying it
+away. He ordered the crown of one Bitard, a cagemaker in the town. She
+did not show herself to her visitors with the crown on: they saw the
+result only, the drops of blood and the bleeding visage. Impressions
+of the latter, like so many _Veronicas_,[111] were taken off on
+napkins, and doubtless given away by Girard to people of great piety.
+
+    [111] After the saint of that name, whose handkerchief
+    received the impress of Christ’s countenance.--TRANS.
+
+The mother, in her own despite, became an abettor in all this
+juggling. In truth, she was afraid of Girard; she began to find him
+capable of anything, and somebody, perhaps the Guiol, had told her, in
+the deepest confidence, that, if she said a word against him, her
+daughter would not be alive twenty-four hours.
+
+Cadière, for her part, never lied about the matter. In the narrative
+taken down from her own lips of what happened this Lent, she expressly
+tells of a crown, with sharp points, which stuck in her head, and made
+it bleed. Nor did she then make any secret of the source whence came
+the little crosses she gave her visitors. From a model supplied by
+Girard, they were made to her order by one of her kinsfolk, a
+carpenter in the Arsenal.
+
+On Good Friday, she remained twenty-four hours in a swoon, which they
+called a trance; remained in special charge of Girard, whose
+attentions weakened her, and did her deadly harm. She was now three
+months gone with child. The saintly martyr, the transfigured marvel,
+was already beginning to fill out. Desiring, yet dreading the more
+violent issues of a miscarriage, he plied her daily with reddish
+powders and dangerous drinks.
+
+Much rather would he have had her die, and so have rid himself of the
+whole business. At any rate, he would have liked to get her away from
+her mother, to bury her safe in a convent. Well acquainted with houses
+of that sort, he knew, as Picard had done in the Louviers affair, how
+cleverly and discreetly such cases as Cadière’s could be hidden away.
+He talked of it this very Good Friday. But she seemed too weak to be
+taken safely from her bed. At last, however, four days after Easter, a
+miscarriage took place.
+
+The girl Laugier had also been having strange convulsive fits, and
+absurd beginnings of _stigmata_: one of them being an old wound,
+caused by her scissors when she was working as a seamstress, the other
+an eruptive sore in her side. Her transports suddenly turned to
+impious despair. She spat upon the crucifix: she cried out against
+Girard, “that devil of a priest, who had brought a poor girl of
+two-and-twenty into such a plight, only to forsake her afterwards!”
+Girard dared not go and face her passionate outbreaks. But the women
+about her, being all in his interest, found some way of bringing this
+matter to a quiet issue.
+
+Was Girard a wizard, as people afterwards maintained? They might well
+think so, who saw how easily, being neither young nor handsome, he had
+charmed so many women. Stranger still it was, that after getting thus
+compromised, he swayed opinion to such a degree. For a while, he
+seemed to have enchanted the whole town.
+
+The truth was, that everyone knew the strength of the Jesuits. Nobody
+cared to quarrel with them. It was hardly reckoned safe to speak ill
+of them, even in a whisper. The bulk of the priesthood consisted of
+monklings of the Mendicant orders, who had no powerful friends or high
+connections. The Carmelites themselves, jealous and hurt as they were
+at losing Cadière, kept silence. Her brother, the young Jacobin, was
+lectured by his trembling mother into resuming his old circumspect
+ways. Becoming reconciled to Girard, he came at length to serve him as
+devotedly as did his younger brother, even lending himself to a
+curious trick by which people were led to believe that Girard had the
+gift of prophecy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Such weak opposition as he might have to fear, would come only from
+the very person whom he seemed to have most thoroughly mastered.
+Submissive hitherto, Cadière now gave some slight tokens of a coming
+independence which could not help showing itself. On the 30th of
+April, at a country party got up by the polite Girard, and to which he
+sent his troop of young devotees in company with Guiol, Cadière fell
+into deep thought. The fair spring-time, in that climate so very
+charming, lifted her heart up to God. She exclaimed with a feeling of
+true piety, “Thee, Thee only, do I seek, O Lord! Thine angels are not
+enough for me.” Then one of the party, a blithesome girl, having, in
+the Provencial fashion, hung a tambourine round her neck, Cadière
+skipped and danced about like the rest; with a rug thrown across her
+shoulders, she danced the Bohemian measure, and made herself giddy
+with a hundred mad capers.
+
+She was very unsettled. In May she got leave from her mother to make a
+trip to Sainte-Baume, to the Church of St. Mary Magdalen, the chief
+saint of girls on penance. Girard would only let her go under charge
+of two faithful overlookers, Guiol and Reboul. But though she had
+still some trances on the way, she showed herself weary of being a
+passive tool to the violent spirit, whether divine or devilish, that
+annoyed her. The end of her year’s _possession_ was not far off. Had
+she not won her freedom? Once issued forth from the gloom and
+witcheries of Toulon, into the open air, in the midst of nature,
+beneath the full sunshine, the prisoner regained her soul, withstood
+the stranger spirit, dared to be herself, to use her own will.
+Girard’s two spies were far from edified thereat. On their return from
+this short journey, from the 17th to the 22nd May, they warned him of
+the change. He was convinced of it from his own experience. She fought
+against the trance, seeming no longer wishful to obey aught save
+reason.
+
+He had thought to hold her both by his power of charming and through
+the holiness of his high office, and, lastly, by right of possession
+and carnal usage. But he had no hold upon her at all. The youthful
+soul, which, after all, had not been so much conquered as
+treacherously surprised, resumed its own nature. This hurt him.
+Besides his business of pedant, his tyranny over the children he
+chastised at will, over nuns not less at his disposal, there remained
+within a hard bottom of domineering jealousy. He determined to snatch
+Cadière back by punishing this first little revolt, if such a name
+could be given to the timid fluttering of a soul rising again from its
+long compression. On the 22nd May she confessed to him after her wont;
+but he refused to absolve her, declaring her to be so guilty that on
+the morrow he would have to lay upon her a very great penance indeed.
+
+What would that be? A fast? But she was weakened and wasted already.
+Long prayers, again, were not in fashion with Quietist directors,--were
+in fact forbidden. There remained the _discipline_, or bodily
+chastisement. This punishment, then everywhere habitual, was enforced
+as prodigally in convents as in colleges. It was a simple and summary
+means of swift execution, sometimes, in a rude and simple age, carried
+out in the churches themselves. The _Fabliaux_ show us an artless
+picture of manners, where, after confessing husband and wife, the
+priest gave them the discipline without any ceremony, just as they
+were, behind the confessional. Scholars, monks, nuns, were all
+punished in the same way.[112]
+
+    [112] The Dauphin was cruelly flogged. A boy of fifteen,
+    according to St. Simon, died from the pain of a like
+    infliction. The prioress of the Abbey-in-the-Wood, pleaded
+    before the King against the “afflictive chastisement”
+    threatened by her superior. For the credit of the convent,
+    she was spared the public shame; but the superior, to whom
+    she was consigned, doubtless punished her in a quiet way. The
+    immoral tendency of such a practice became more and more
+    manifest. Fear and shame led to woeful entreaties and
+    unworthy bargains.
+
+Girard knew that a girl like Cadière, all unused to shame, and very
+modest--for what she had hitherto suffered took place unknown to
+herself in her sleep--would feel so cruelly tortured, so fatally
+crushed by this unseemly chastisement, as utterly to lose what little
+buoyancy she had. She was pretty sure too, if we must speak out, to be
+yet more cruelly mortified than other women, in respect of the pang
+endured by her woman’s vanity. With so much suffering, and so many
+fasts, followed by her late miscarriage, her body, always delicate,
+seemed worn away to a shadow. All the more surely would she shrink
+from any exposure of a form so lean, so wasted, so full of aches. Her
+swollen legs and such-like small infirmities would serve to enhance
+her humiliation.
+
+We lack the courage to relate what followed. It may all be read in
+those three depositions, so artless, so manifestly unfeigned, in
+which, without being sworn, she made it her duty to avow what
+self-interest bade her conceal, owning even to things which were
+afterwards turned to the cruellest account against her.
+
+Her first deposition was made on the spur of the moment, before the
+spiritual judge who was sent to take her by surprise. In this we seem
+to be ever hearing the utterances of a young heart that speaks as
+though in God’s own presence. The second was taken before the King--I
+should rather say before the magistrate who represented him, the
+Lieutenant Civil and Criminal of Toulon. The last was heard before
+the great assembly of the Parliament of Aix.
+
+Observe that all three, agreeing as they do wonderfully together, were
+printed at Aix under the eye of her enemies, in a volume where, as I
+shall presently prove, an attempt was made to extenuate the guilt of
+Girard, and fasten the reader’s gaze on every point likely to tell
+against Cadière. And yet the editor could not help inserting
+depositions like these, which bear with crushing weight on the man he
+sought to uphold.
+
+It was a monstrous piece of inconsistency on Girard’s part. He first
+frightened the poor girl, and then suddenly took a base, a cruel
+advantage of her fears.
+
+In this case no plea of love can be offered in extenuation. The truth
+is far otherwise: he loved her no more. And this forms the most
+dreadful part of the story. We have seen how cruelly he drugged her;
+we have now to see her utterly forsaken. He owed her a grudge for
+being of greater worth than those other degraded women. He owed her a
+grudge for having unwittingly tempted him and brought him into danger.
+Above all, he could not forgive her for keeping her soul in safety. He
+sought only to tame her down, but caught hopefully at her oft-renewed
+assurance, “I feel that I shall not live.” Villanous profligate that
+he was, bestowing his shameful kisses on that poor shattered body
+whose death he longed to see!
+
+How did he account to her for this shocking antagonism of cruelty and
+caresses? Was it meant to try her patience and obedience, or did he
+boldly pass on to the true depths of Molinos’ teaching, that “only by
+dint of sinning can sin be quelled”? Did she take it all in full
+earnest, never perceiving that all this show of justice, penitence,
+expiation, was downright profligacy and nothing else?
+
+She did not care to understand him in the strange moral crash that
+befell her after that 23rd May, under the influence of a mild warm
+June. She submitted to her master, of whom she was rather afraid, and
+with a singularly servile passion carried on the farce of undergoing
+small penances day by day. So little regard did Girard show for her
+feelings that he never hid from her his relations with other women.
+All he wanted was to get her into a convent. Meanwhile she was his
+plaything: she saw him, let him have his way. Weak, and yet further
+weakened by the shame that unnerved her, growing sadder and more sad
+at heart, she had now but little hold on life, and would keep on
+saying, in words that brought no sorrow to Girard’s soul, “I feel that
+I shall soon be dead.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+CADIERE IN THE CONVENT: 1730.
+
+
+The Abbess of the Ollioules Convent was young for an abbess, being
+only thirty-eight years old. She was not wanting in mind. She was
+lively, swift alike in love and in hatred, hurried away by her heart
+and her senses also, endowed with very little of the tact and the
+moderation needed for the governing of such a body.
+
+This nunnery drew its livelihood from two sources. On the one side,
+there came to it from Toulon two or three nuns of consular families,
+who brought good dowers with them, and therefore did what they
+pleased. They lived with the Observantine monks who had the ghostly
+direction of the convent. On the other hand, these monks, whose order
+had spread to Marseilles and many other places, picked up some little
+boarders and novices who paid for their keep: a contact full of danger
+and unpleasantness for the children, as one may see by the Aubany
+affair.
+
+There was no real confinement, nor much internal order. In the
+scorching summer nights of that African climate, peculiarly oppressive
+and wearying in the airless passes of Ollioules, nuns and novices
+went to and fro with the greatest freedom. The very same things were
+going on at Ollioules in 1730 which we saw in 1630 at Loudun. The bulk
+of nuns, well-nigh a dozen out of the fifteen who made up the house,
+being rather forsaken by the monks, who preferred ladies of loftier
+position, were poor creatures, sick at heart, and disinherited, with
+nothing to console them but tattling, child’s play, and other
+school-girls’ tricks.
+
+The abbess was afraid that Cadière would soon see through all this.
+She made some demur about taking her in. Anon, with some abruptness,
+she entirely changed her cue. In a charming letter, all the more
+flattering as sent so unexpectedly from such a lady to so young a
+girl, she expressed a hope of her leaving the ghostly guidance of
+Father Girard. The girl was not, of course, to be transferred to her
+Observantines, who were far from capable of the charge. The abbess had
+formed the bold, enlivening idea of taking her into her own hands and
+becoming her sole director.
+
+She was very vain. Deeming herself more agreeable than an old Jesuit
+confessor, she reckoned on making this prodigy her own, on conquering
+her without trouble. She would have worked the young saint for the
+benefit of her house.
+
+She paid her the marked compliment of receiving her on the threshold,
+at the street-door. She kissed her, caught her up, led her into the
+abbess’s own fine room, and bade her share it with herself. She was
+charmed with her modesty, with her invalid grace, with a certain
+strangeness at once mysterious and melting. In that short journey the
+girl had suffered a great deal. The abbess wanted to lay her down in
+her own bed, saying she loved her so that she would have them sleep
+together like sisters in one bed.
+
+For her purpose this was probably more than was needful. It would have
+been quite enough to have the saint under her own roof. She would now
+have too much the look of a little favourite. The lady, however, was
+surprised at the young girl’s hesitation, which doubtless sprang from
+her modesty or her humility; in part, perhaps, from a comparison of
+her own ill-health with the young health and blooming beauty of the
+other. But the abbess tenderly urged her request.
+
+Under the influence of a fondling so close and so continual, she
+deemed that Girard would be forgotten. With all abbesses it had become
+the ruling fancy, the pet ambition, to confess their own nuns,
+according to the practice allowed by St. Theresa. By this pleasant
+scheme of hers the same result would come out of itself, the young
+woman telling her confessors only of small things, but keeping the
+depths of her heart for one particular person. Caressed continually by
+one curious woman, at eventide, in the night, when her head was on the
+pillow, she would have let out many a secret, whether her own or
+another’s.
+
+From this living entanglement she could not free herself at the
+first. She slept with the abbess. The latter thought she held her fast
+by a twofold tie, by the opposite means employed on the saint and on
+the woman; that is, on the nervous, sensitive, and, through her
+weakness, perhaps sensual girl. Her story, her sayings, whatever fell
+from her lips, were all written down. From other sources she picked up
+the meanest details of her physical life, and forwarded the report
+thereof to Toulon. She would have made her an idol, a pretty little
+pet doll. On a slope so slippery the work of allurement doubtless
+moved apace. But the girl had scruples and a kind of fear. She made
+one great effort, of which her weak health would have made her seem
+incapable. She humbly asked leave to quit that dove’s-nest, that couch
+too soft and delicate, to go and live in common with the novices or
+the boarders.
+
+Great was the abbess’s surprise; great her mortification. She fancied
+herself scorned. She took a spite against the thankless girl, and
+never forgave her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From the others Cadière met with a very pleasant welcome. The mistress
+of the novices, Madame de Lescot, a nun from Paris, refined and good,
+was a worthier woman than the abbess. She seemed to understand the
+other--to see in her a poor prey of fate, a young heart full of God,
+but cruelly branded by some eccentric spell which seemed like to hurry
+her onward to disgrace, to some unhappy end. She busied herself
+entirely with looking after the girl, saving her from her own
+rashness, interpreting her to others, excusing those things which
+might in her be least excusable.
+
+Saving the two or three noble ladies who lived with the monks and had
+small relish for the higher mysticism, they were all fond of her, and
+took her for an angel from heaven. Their tender feelings having little
+else to engage them, became concentred in her and her alone. They
+found her not only pious and wonderfully devout, but a good child
+withal, kind-hearted, winning, and entertaining. They were no longer
+listless and sick at heart. She engaged and edified them with her
+dreams, with stories true, or rather, perhaps, unfeigned, mingled ever
+with touches of purest tenderness. She would say, “At night I go
+everywhere, even to America. Everywhere I leave letters bidding people
+repent. To-night I shall go and seek you out, even when you have
+locked yourselves in. We will all go together into the Sacred Heart.”
+
+The miracle was wrought. Each of them at midnight, so she said,
+received the delightful visit. They all fancied they felt Cadière
+embracing them, and making them enter the heart of Jesus. They were
+very frightened and very happy. Tenderest, most credulous of all, was
+Sister Raimbaud, a woman of Marseilles, who tasted this happiness
+fifteen times in three months, or nearly once in every six days.
+
+It was purely the effect of imagination. The proof is, that Cadière
+visited all of them at one same moment. The abbess meanwhile was
+hurt, being roused at the first to jealousy by the thought that she
+only had been left out, and afterwards feeling assured that, lost as
+the girl might be in her own dreams, she would get through so many
+intimate friends but too clear an inkling into the scandals of the
+house.
+
+These were scarcely hidden from her at all. But as nothing came to
+Cadière save by the way of spiritual insight, she fancied they had
+been told her in a revelation. Here her kindliness shone out. She felt
+a large compassion for the God who was thus outraged. And once again
+she imagined herself bound to atone for the rest, to save the sinners
+from the punishment they deserved, by draining herself the worst
+cruelties which the rage of devils would have power to wreak.
+
+All this burst upon her on the 25th June, the Feast of St. John. She
+was spending the evening with the sisters in the novices’ rooms. With
+a loud cry she fell backward in contortions, and lost all
+consciousness.
+
+When she came to, the novices surrounded her, waiting eager to hear
+what she was going to say. But the governess, Madame Lescot, guessed
+what she would say, felt that she was about to ruin herself. So she
+lifted her up, and led her straight to her room, where she found
+herself quite flayed, and her linen covered with blood.
+
+Why did Girard fail her amidst these struggles inward and from
+without? She could not make him out. She had much need of support, and
+yet he never came, except for one moment at rare intervals, to the
+parlour.
+
+She wrote to him on the 28th June, by her brothers; for though she
+could read, she was scarcely able to write. She called to him in the
+most stirring, the most urgent tones, and he answers by putting her
+off. He has to preach at Hyères, he has a sore throat, and so on.
+
+Wonderful to tell, it is the abbess herself who brings him thither. No
+doubt she was uneasy at Cadière’s discovering so much of the inner
+life of the convent. Making sure that the girl would talk of it to
+Girard, she wished to forestal her. In a very flattering and tender
+note of the 3rd July, she besought the Jesuit to come and see herself
+first, for she longed, between themselves, to be his pupil, his
+disciple, as humble Nicodemus had been of Christ. “Under your
+guidance, by the blessing of that holy freedom which my post ensures
+me, I should move forward swiftly and noiselessly in the path of
+virtue. The state of our young candidate here will serve me as a fair
+and useful pretext.”
+
+A startling, ill-considered step, betraying some unsoundness in the
+lady’s mind. Having failed to supplant Girard with Cadière, she now
+essayed to supplant Cadière with Girard. Abruptly, without the least
+preface, she stepped forward. She made her decision, like a great
+lady, who was still agreeable and quite sure of being taken at her
+word, who would go so far as even to talk of the _freedom_ she
+enjoyed!
+
+In taking so false a step she started from a true belief that Girard
+had ceased to care much for Cadière. But she might have guessed that
+he had other things to perplex him in Toulon. He was disturbed by an
+affair no longer turning upon a young girl, but on a lady of ripe age,
+easy circumstances, and good standing; on his wisest penitent, Mdlle.
+Gravier. Her forty years failed to protect her. He would have no
+self-governed sheep in his fold. One day, to her surprise and
+mortification, she found herself pregnant, and loud was her wail
+thereat.
+
+Taken up with this new adventure, Girard looked but coldly on the
+abbess’s unforeseen advances. He mistrusted them as a trap laid for
+him by the Observantines. He resolved to be cautious, saw the abbess,
+who was already embarrassed by her rash step, and then saw Cadière,
+but only in the chapel where he confessed her.
+
+The latter was hurt by his want of warmth. In truth his conduct showed
+strange inconsistencies. He unsettled her with his light, agreeable
+letters, full of little sportive threats which might have been called
+lover-like. And yet he never deigned to see her save in public.
+
+In a note written the same evening she revenged herself in a very
+delicate way. She said that when he granted her absolution, she felt
+wonderfully dissevered both from herself and from _every other
+creature_.
+
+It was just what Girard would have wanted. His plots had fallen into a
+sad tangle, and Cadière was in the way. Her letter enchanted him: far
+from being annoyed with her, he enjoined her to keep dissevered. At
+the same time, he hinted at the need he had for caution. He had
+received a letter, he said, warning him sharply of her faults.
+However, as he would set off on the 6th July for Marseilles, he would
+see her on the road.
+
+She awaited him, but no Girard came. Her agitation was very great. It
+brought on a sharp fit of her old bodily distemper. She spoke of it to
+her dear Sister Raimbaud, who would not leave her, who slept with her,
+against the rules. This was on the night of the 6th July, when the
+heat in that close oven of Ollioules was most oppressive and
+condensed. At four or five o’clock, seeing her writhe in sharp
+suffering, the other “thought she had the colic, and went to fetch
+some fire from the kitchen.” While she was gone, Cadière tried by one
+last effort to bring Girard to her side forthwith. Whether with her
+nails she had re-opened the wounds in her head, or whether she had
+stuck upon it the sharp iron crown, she somehow made herself all
+bloody. The pain transfigured her, until her eyes sparkled again.
+
+This lasted not less than two hours. The nuns flocked to see her in
+this state, and gazed admiringly. They would even have brought their
+Observantines thither, had Cadière not prevented them.
+
+The abbess would have taken good care to tell Girard nothing, lest he
+should see her in a plight so touching, so very pitiful. But good
+Madame Lescot comforted the girl by sending the news to the father. He
+came, but like a true juggler, instead of going up to her room at
+once, had himself an ecstatic fit in the chapel, staying there a whole
+hour on his knees, prostrate before the Holy Sacrament. Going at
+length upstairs, he found Cadière surrounded by all the nuns. They
+tell him how for a moment she looked as if she was at mass, how she
+seemed to open her lips to receive the Host. “Who should know that
+better than myself?” said the knave. “An angel had told me. I repeated
+the mass, and gave her the sacrament from Toulon.” They were so upset
+by the miracle, that one of them was two days ill. Girard then
+addressed Cadière with unseemly gaiety: “So, so, little glutton! would
+you rob me of half my share?”
+
+They withdraw respectfully, leaving these two alone. Behold him face
+to face with his bleeding victim, so pale, so weak, but agitated all
+the more! Anyone would have been greatly moved. The avowal expressed
+by her blood, her wounds, rather than spoken words, was likely to
+reach his heart. It was a humbling sight; but who would not have
+pitied her? This innocent girl could for one moment yield to nature!
+In her short unhappy life, a stranger as she was to the charms of
+sense, the poor young saint could still show one hour of weakness! All
+he had hitherto enjoyed of her without her knowledge, became mere
+nought. With her soul, her will, he would now be master of everything.
+
+In her deposition Cadière briefly and bashfully said that she lost all
+knowledge of what happened next. In a confession made to one of her
+friends she uttered no complaints, but let her understand the truth.
+
+And what did Girard do in return for so charmingly bold a flight of
+that impatient heart? He scolded her. He was only chilled by a warmth
+which would have set any other heart on fire. His tyrannous soul
+wanted nothing but the dead, the merest plaything of his will. And
+this girl, by the boldness of her first move, had forced him to come.
+The scholar had drawn the master along. The peevish pedant treated the
+matter as he would have treated a rebellion at school. His lewd
+severities, his coolly selfish pursuit of a cruel pleasure, blighted
+the unhappy girl, who now had nothing left her but remorse.
+
+It was no less shocking a fact, that the blood poured out for his sake
+had no other effect than to tempt him to make the most of it for his
+own purposes. In this, perhaps his last, interview he sought to make
+so far sure of the poor thing’s discretion, that, however forsaken by
+him, she herself might still believe in him. He asked if he was to be
+less favoured than the nuns who had seen the miracle. She let herself
+bleed before him. The water with which he washed away the blood he
+drank himself,[113] and made her drink also, and by this hateful
+communion, he thought to bind fast her soul.
+
+    [113] This communion of blood prevailed among the Northern
+    _Reiters_. See my _Origines_.
+
+This lasted two or three hours, and it was now near noon. The abbess
+was scandalized. She resolved to go with the dinner herself, and make
+them open the door. Girard took some tea: it being Friday, he
+pretended to be fasting; though he had doubtless armed himself well at
+Toulon. Cadière asked for coffee. The lay sister who managed the
+kitchen was surprised at this on such a day. But without that
+strengthening draught she would have fainted away. It set her up a
+little, and she kept hold of Girard still. He stayed with her, no
+longer indeed locked in, till four o’clock, seeking to efface the
+gloomy impression caused by his conduct in the morning. By dint of
+lying about friendship and fatherhood, he somewhat reassured the
+susceptible creature, and calmed her troubled spirits. She showed him
+the way out, and, walking after him, took, childlike, two or three
+skips for joy. He said, drily, “Little fool!”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She paid heavily for her weakness. At nine of that same night she had
+a dreadful vision, and was heard crying out, “O God! keep off from me!
+get back!” On the morning of the 8th, at mass she did not stay for the
+communion, deeming herself, no doubt, unworthy, but made her escape
+to her own room. Thereon arose much scandal. Yet so greatly was she
+beloved, that one of the nuns ran after her, and, telling a
+compassionate falsehood, swore she had beheld Jesus giving her the
+sacrament with His own hand.
+
+Madame Lescot delicately and cleverly wrote a legend out of the mystic
+ejaculations, the holy sighs, the devout tears, and whatever else
+burst forth from this shattered heart. Strange to say, these women
+tenderly conspired to shield a woman. Nothing tells more than this in
+behalf of poor Cadière and her delightful gifts. Already in one
+month’s time she had become the child of all. They defended her in
+everything she did. Innocent though she might be, they saw in her only
+the victim of the Devil’s attacks. One kind sturdy woman of the
+people, Matherone, daughter of the Ollioules locksmith, and porteress
+herself to the convent, on seeing some of Girard’s indecent liberties,
+said, in spite of them, “No matter: she is a saint.” And when he once
+talked of taking her from the convent, she cried out, “Take away our
+Mademoiselle Cadière! I will have an iron door made to keep her from
+going.”
+
+Alarmed at the state of things, and at the use to which it might be
+turned by the abbess and her monks, Cadière’s brethren who came to her
+every day, took courage to be beforehand; and in a formal letter
+written in her name to Girard, reminded him of the revelation given
+to her on the 25th June regarding the morals of the Observantines. It
+was time, they said, “to carry out God’s purposes in this matter,”
+namely, of course, to demand an inquiry, to accuse the accusers.
+
+Their excess of boldness was very rash. Cadière, now all but dying,
+had no such thoughts in her head. Her women-friends imagined that he
+who had caused the disturbance would, perhaps, bring back the calm.
+They besought Girard to come and confess her. A dreadful scene took
+place. At the confessional she uttered cries and wailings audible
+thirty paces off. The curious among them found some amusement
+listening to her, and were not disappointed. Girard was inflicting
+chastisement. Again and again he said, “Be calm, mademoiselle!” In
+vain did he try to absolve her. She would not be absolved. On the
+12th, she had so sharp a pang below her heart, that she felt as though
+her sides were bursting. On the 14th, she seemed fast dying, and her
+mother was sent for. She received the viaticum; and on the morrow made
+a public confession, “the most touching, the most expressive that had
+ever been heard. We were drowned in tears.” On the 20th, she was in a
+state of heart-rending agony. After that she had a sudden and saving
+change for the better, marked by a very soothing vision. She beheld
+the sinful Magdalen pardoned, caught up into glory, filling in heaven
+the place which Lucifer had lost.
+
+Girard, however, could only ensure her discretion by corrupting her
+yet further, by choking her remorse. Sometimes he would come to the
+parlour and greet her with bold embraces. But oftener he sent his
+faithful followers, Guiol and others, who sought to initiate her into
+their own disgraceful secrets, while seeming to sympathise tenderly
+with the sufferings of their outspoken friend. Girard not only winked
+at this, but himself spoke freely to Cadière of such matters as the
+pregnancy of Mdlle. Gravier. He wanted her to ask him to Ollioules, to
+calm his irritation, to persuade him that such a circumstance might be
+a delusion of the Devil’s causing, which could perchance be dispelled.
+
+These impure teachings made no way with Cadière. They were sure to
+anger her brethren, to whom they were not unknown. The letters they
+wrote in her name are very curious. Enraged at heart and sorely
+wounded, accounting Girard a villain, but obliged to make their sister
+speak of him with respectful tenderness, they still, by snatches, let
+their wrath become visible.
+
+As for Girard’s letters, they are pieces of laboured writing,
+manifestly meant for the trial which might take place. Let us talk of
+the only one which he did not get into his hands to tamper with. It is
+dated the 22nd July. It is at once sour and sweet, agreeable,
+trifling, the letter of a careless man. The meaning of it is thus:--
+
+“The bishop reached Toulon this morning, and will go to see
+Cadière.... They will settle together what to do and say. If the Grand
+Vicar and Father Sabatier wish to see her, and ask to see her wounds,
+she will tell them that she has been forbidden to do or say aught.
+
+“I am hungering to see you again, to see the whole of you. You know
+that I only demand _my right_. It is so long since I have seen more
+than half of you (he means to say, at the parlour grating). Shall I
+tire you? Well, do you not also tire me?” And so on.
+
+A strange letter in every way. He distrusts alike the bishop and the
+Jesuit, his own colleague, old Sabatier. It is at bottom the letter of
+a restless culprit. He knows that in her hands she holds his letters,
+his papers, the means, in short, of ruining him. The two young men
+write back in their sister’s name a spirited answer--the only one that
+has a truthful sound. They answer him line for line, without insult,
+but with a roughness often ironical, and betraying the wrath pent-up
+within them. The sister promises to obey him, to say nothing either to
+the bishop or the Jesuit. She congratulates him on having “boldness
+enough to exhort others to suffer.” She takes up and returns him his
+shocking gallantry, but in a shocking way; and here we trace a man’s
+hand, the hand of those two giddy heads.
+
+Two days after, they went and told her to decide on leaving the
+convent forthwith. Girard was dismayed. He thought his papers would
+disappear with her. The greatness of his terror took away his senses.
+He had the weakness to go and weep at the Ollioules parlour, to fall
+on his knees before her, and ask her if she had the heart to leave
+him. Touched by his words, the poor girl said “No,” went forward, and
+let him embrace her. And yet this Judas wanted only to deceive her, to
+gain a few days’ time for securing help from a higher quarter.
+
+On the 29th there is an utter change. Cadière stays at Ollioules, begs
+him to excuse her, vows submission. It is but too clear that he has
+set some mighty influences at work; that from the 29th threats come
+in, perhaps from Aix, and presently from Paris. The Jesuit bigwigs
+have been writing, and their courtly patrons from Versailles.
+
+In such a struggle, what were the brethren to do? No doubt they took
+counsel with their chiefs, who would certainly warn them against
+setting too hard on Girard as a _libertine confessor_; for thereby
+offence would be given to all the clergy, who deemed confession their
+dearest prize. It was needful, on the contrary; to sever him from the
+priests by proving the strangeness of his teaching, by bringing him
+forward as a _Quietist_. With that one word they might lead him a long
+way. In 1698, a vicar in the neighbourhood of Dijon had been burnt for
+Quietism. They conceived the idea of drawing up a memoir, dictated
+apparently by their sister, to whom the plan was really unknown, in
+which the high and splendid Quietism of Girard should be affirmed,
+and therefore in effect denounced. This memoir recounted the visions
+she had seen in Lent. In it the name of Girard was already in heaven.
+She saw it joined with her own in the Book of Life.
+
+They durst not take this memoir to the bishop. But they got their
+friend, little Camerle, his youthful chaplain, to steal it from them.
+The bishop read it, and circulated some copies about the town. On the
+21st August, Girard being at the palace, the bishop laughingly said to
+him, “Well, father, so your name is in the Book of Life!”
+
+He was overcome, fancied himself lost, wrote to Cadière in terms of
+bitter reproach. Once more with tears he asked for his papers. Cadière
+in great surprise vowed that her memoir had never gone out of her
+brother’s hands. But when she found out her mistake, her despair was
+unbounded. The sharpest pangs of body and soul beset her. Once she
+thought herself on the point of death. She became like one mad. “I
+long so much to suffer. Twice I caught up the rod of penance, and
+wielded it so savagely as to draw a great deal of blood.” In the midst
+of this dreadful outbreak, which proved at once the weakness of her
+head and the boundless tenderness of her conscience, Guiol finished
+her by describing Girard as nearly dead. This raised her compassion to
+the highest pitch.
+
+She was going to give up the papers. And yet it was but too clear
+that these were her only safeguard and support, the only proofs of her
+innocence, and the tricks of which she had been made the victim. To
+give them up was to risk a change of characters, to risk the
+imputation of having herself seduced a saint, the chance, in short, of
+seeing all the blame transferred to her own side.
+
+But, if she must either be ruined herself or else ruin Girard, she
+would far sooner accept the former result. A demon, Guiol of course,
+tempted her in this very way, with the wondrous sublimity of such a
+sacrifice. God, she wrote, asked of her a bloody offering. She could
+tell her of saints who, being accused, did not justify, but rather
+accused themselves, and died like lambs. This example Cadière
+followed. When Girard was accused before her, she defended him,
+saying, “He is right, and I told a falsehood.”
+
+She might have yielded up the letters of Girard only; but in so great
+an outflowing of heart she would have no haggling, and so gave him
+even copies of her own.
+
+Thus at the same time he held these drafts written by the Jacobin, and
+the copies made and sent him by the other brother. Thenceforth he had
+nothing to fear: no further check could be given him. He might make
+away with them or put them back again; might destroy, blot out, and
+falsify at pleasure. He was perfectly free to carry on his forger’s
+work, and he worked away to some purpose. Out of twenty-four letters,
+sixteen remain; and these still read like elaborately forged
+afterthoughts.
+
+With everything in his own hands, Girard could laugh at his foes. It
+was now their turn to be afraid. The bishop, a man of the upper world,
+was too well acquainted with Versailles and the name won by the
+Jesuits not to treat them with proper tenderness. He even thought it
+safest to make Girard some small amends for his unkind reproach about
+The Book of Life; and so he graciously informed him that he would like
+to stand godfather to the child of one of his kinsmen.
+
+The Bishops of Toulon had always been high lords. The list of them
+shows all the first names of Provence, and some famous names from
+Italy. From 1712 to 1737, under the Regency and Fleury, the bishop was
+one of the La Tours of Pin. He was very rich, having also the Abbeys
+of Aniane and St. William of the Desert, in Languedoc. He behaved
+well, it was said, during the plague of 1721. However, he stayed but
+seldom at Toulon, lived quite as a man of the world, never said mass,
+and passed for something more than a lady’s man.
+
+In July he went to Toulon, and though Girard would have turned him
+aside from Ollioules and Cadière, he was curious to see her
+nevertheless. He saw her in one of her best moments. She took his
+fancy, seemed to him a pretty little saint; and so far did he believe
+in her enlightenment from above, as to speak to her thoughtlessly of
+all his affairs, his interests, his future doings, consulting her as
+he would have consulted a teller of fortunes.
+
+In spite, however, of the brethren’s prayers he hesitated to take her
+away from Ollioules and from Girard. A means was found of resolving
+him. A report was spread about Toulon, that the girl had shown a
+desire to flee into the wilderness, as her model saint, Theresa, had
+essayed to do at twelve years old. Girard, they said, had put this
+fancy into her head, that he might one day carry her off beyond the
+diocese whose pride she was, and box-up his treasure in some far
+convent, where the Jesuits, enjoying the whole monopoly, might turn to
+the most account her visions, her miracles, her winsome ways as a
+young saint of the people. The bishop felt much hurt. He instructed
+the abbess to give Mdlle. Cadière up to no one save her mother, who
+was certain to come very shortly and take her away from the convent to
+a country-house belonging to the family.
+
+In order not to offend Girard, they got Cadière to write and say that,
+if such a change incommoded him, he could find a colleague and give
+her a second confessor. He saw their meaning, and preferred disarming
+jealousy by abandoning Cadière. He gave her up on the 15th September,
+in a note most carefully worded and piteously humble, by which he
+strove to leave her friendly and tender towards himself. “If I have
+sometimes done wrong as concerning you, you will never at least forget
+how wishful I have been to help you.... I am, and ever will be, all
+yours in the Secret Heart of Jesus.”
+
+The bishop, however, was not reassured. He fancied that the three
+Jesuits, Girard, Sabatier, and Grignet, wanted to beguile him, and
+some day, with some order from Paris, rob him of his little woman. On
+the 17th September, he decided once for all to send his carriage, a
+light fashionable _phaeton_, as it was called, and have her taken off
+at once to her mother’s country-house.
+
+By way of soothing and shielding her, of putting her in good trim, he
+looked out for a confessor, and applied first to a Carmelite who had
+confessed her before Girard came. But he, being an old man, declined.
+Some others also probably hung back. The bishop had to take a
+stranger, but three months come from the County (Avignon), one Father
+Nicholas, prior of the Barefooted Carmelites. He was a man of forty,
+endowed with brains and boldness, very firm and even stubborn. He
+showed himself worthy of such a trust by rejecting it. It was not the
+Jesuits he feared, but the girl herself. He foreboded no good
+therefrom, thought that the angel might be an angel of darkness, and
+feared that the Evil One under the shape of a gentle girl would deal
+his blows with all the more baleful effect.
+
+But he could not see her without feeling somewhat reassured. She
+seemed so very simple, so pleased at length to have a safe, steady
+person, on whom she might lean. The continual wavering in which she
+had been kept by Girard, had caused her the greatest suffering. On the
+first day she spoke more than she had done for a month past, told him
+of her life, her sufferings, her devotions, and her visions. Night
+itself, a hot night in mid-September, did not stop her. In her room
+everything was open, the windows, and the three doors. She went on
+even to daybreak, while her brethren lay near her asleep. On the
+morrow she resumed her tale under the vine-bower. The Carmelite was
+amazed, and asked himself if the Devil could ever be so earnest in
+praise of God.
+
+Her innocence was clear. She seemed a nice obedient girl, gentle as a
+lamb, frolicsome as a puppy. She wanted to play at bowls, a common
+game in those country-places, nor did he for his part refuse to join
+her.
+
+If there was a spirit in her, it could not at any rate be called the
+spirit of lying. On looking at her closely for a long time, you could
+not doubt that her wounds now and then did really bleed. He took care
+to make no such immodest scrutiny of them as Girard had done,
+contenting himself with a look at the wound upon her foot. Of her
+trances he saw quite enough. On a sudden, a burning heat would diffuse
+itself everywhere from her heart. Losing her consciousness, she went
+into convulsions and talked wildly.
+
+The Carmelite clearly perceived that in her were two persons, the
+young woman and the Demon. The former was honest, nay, very fresh of
+heart; ignorant, for all that had been done to her; little able to
+understand the very things that had brought her into such sore
+trouble. When, before confession, she spoke of Girard’s kisses, the
+Carmelite roughly said, “But those are very great sins.”
+
+“O God!” she answered, weeping, “I am lost indeed, for he has done
+much more than that to me!”
+
+The bishop came to see. For him the country-house was only the length
+of a walk. She answered his questions artlessly, told him at least how
+things began. The bishop was angry, mortified, very wroth. No doubt he
+guessed the remainder. There was nought to keep him from raising a
+great outcry against Girard. Not caring for the danger of a struggle
+with the Jesuits, he entered thoroughly into the Carmelite’s views,
+allowed that she was bewitched, and added that _Girard himself was the
+wizard_. He wanted to lay him that very moment under a solemn ban, to
+bring him to disgrace and ruin. Cadière prayed for him who had done
+her so much wrong; vengeance she would not have. Falling on her knees
+before the bishop, she implored him to spare Girard, to speak no more
+of things so sorrowful. With touching humility, she said, “It is
+enough for me to be enlightened at last, to know that I was living in
+sin.” Her Jacobin brother took her part, foreseeing the perils of such
+a war, and doubtful whether the bishop would stand fast.
+
+Her attacks of disorder were now fewer. The season had changed. The
+burning summer was over. Nature at length showed mercy. It was the
+pleasant month of October. The bishop had the keen delight of feeling
+that she had been saved by him. No longer under Girard’s influence in
+the stifling air of Ollioules, but well cared-for by her family, by
+the brave and honest monk, protected, too, by the bishop, who never
+grudged his visits, and who shielded her with his steady countenance,
+the young girl became altogether calm.
+
+For seven weeks or so she seemed quite well-behaved. The bishop’s
+happiness was so great that he wanted the Carmelite, with Cadière’s
+help, to look after Girard’s other penitents, and bring them also back
+to their senses. They should go to the country-house; how unwillingly,
+and with how ill a grace we can easily guess. In truth, it was
+strangely ill-judged to bring those women before the bishop’s ward, a
+girl so young still, and but just delivered from her own ecstatic
+ravings.
+
+The state of things became ridiculous and sorely embittered. Two
+parties faced each other, Girard’s women and those of the bishop. On
+the side of the latter were a German lady and her daughter, dear
+friends of Cadière’s. On the other side were the rebels, headed by the
+Guiol. With her the bishop treated, in hopes of getting her to enter
+into relations with the Carmelite, and bring her friends over to him.
+He sent her his own clerk, and then a solicitor, an old lover of
+Guiol’s. All this failing of any effect, the bishop came to his last
+resource, determined to summon them all to his palace. Here they
+mostly denied those trances and mystic marks of which they had made
+such boast. One of them, Guiol, of course, astonished him yet more by
+her shamelessly treacherous offer to prove to him, on the spot, that
+they had no marks whatever about their bodies. They had deemed him
+wanton enough to fall into such a snare. But he kept clear of it very
+well, declining the offer with thanks to those who, at the cost of
+their own modesty, would have had him copy Girard, and provoke the
+laughter of all the town.
+
+The bishop was not lucky. On the one hand, these bold wenches made fun
+of him. On the other, his success with Cadière was now being undone.
+She had hardly entered her own narrow lane in gloomy Toulon, when she
+began to fall off. She was just in those dangerous and baleful centres
+where her illness began, on the very field of the battle waged by the
+two hostile parties. The Jesuits, whose rearguard everyone saw in the
+Court, had on their side the crafty, the prudent, the knowing. The
+Carmelite had none but the bishop with him, was not even backed by his
+own brethren, nor yet by the clergy. He had one weapon, however, in
+reserve. On the 8th November, he got out of Cadière a written power to
+reveal her confession in case of need.
+
+It was a daring, dauntless step, which made Girard shudder. He was
+not very brave, and would have been undone had his cause not been that
+of the Jesuits also. He cowered down in the depths of their college.
+But his colleague Sabatier, an old, sanguine, passionate fellow, went
+straight to the bishop’s palace. He entered into the prelate’s
+presence, like another Popilius, bearing peace or war in his gown. He
+pushed him to the wall, made him understand that a suit with the
+Jesuits would lead to his own undoing; that he would remain for ever
+Bishop of Toulon; would never rise to an archbishopric. Yet further,
+with the freedom of an apostle strong at Versailles, he assured him
+that if this affair exposed the morals of a Jesuit, it would shed no
+less light on the morals of a bishop. In a letter, clearly planned by
+Girard, it was pretended that the Jesuits held themselves ready in the
+background, to hurl dreadful recriminations against the prelate,
+declaring his way of life not only unepiscopal, but _abominable_
+withal. The sly, faithless Girard and the hot-headed Sabatier, swollen
+with rage and spitefulness, would have pressed the calumnious charge.
+They would not have failed to say that all this matter was about a
+girl; that if Girard had taken care of her when ill, the bishop had
+gotten her when she was well. What a commotion would be caused by such
+a scandal in the well-regulated life of the great worldly lord! It
+were too laughable a piece of chivalry to make war in revenge for the
+maidenhood of a weak little fool, to embroil oneself for her sake with
+all honest people! The Cardinal of Bonzi died indeed of grief at
+Toulouse, but that was on account of a fair lady, the Marchioness of
+Ganges. The bishop, on his part, risked his ruin, risked the chance of
+being overwhelmed with shame and ridicule, for the child of a
+retail-dealer in the Rue de l’Hôpital!
+
+Sabatier’s threatenings made all the greater impression, because the
+bishop himself clung less firmly to Cadière. He did not thank her for
+falling ill again; for giving the lie to his former success; for doing
+him a wrong by her relapse. He bore her a grudge for having failed to
+cure her. He said to himself that Sabatier was in the right; that he
+had better come to a compromise. The change was sudden--a kind of
+warning from above. All at once, like Paul on the way to Damascus, he
+beheld the light, and became a convert to the Jesuits.
+
+Sabatier would not let him go. He put paper before him, and made him
+write and sign a decree forbidding the Carmelite, his agent with
+Cadière, and another forbidding her brother, the Jacobin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE TRIAL OF CADIERE: 1730-1731.
+
+
+We can guess how this alarming blow was taken by the Cadière family.
+The sick girl’s attacks became frequent and fearful. By a cruel chance
+they brought on a kind of epidemic among her intimate friends. Her
+neighbour, the German lady, who had trances also, which she had
+hitherto deemed divine, now fell into utter fright, and fancied they
+came from hell. This worthy dame of fifty years remembered that she,
+too, had often had unclean thoughts: she believed herself given over
+to the Devil; saw nothing but devils about her; and escaping from her
+own house in spite of her daughter’s watchfulness, entreated shelter
+from the Cadières. From that time the house became unbearable;
+business could not be carried on. The elder Cadière inveighed
+furiously against Girard, crying, “He shall be served like Gauffridi:
+he, too, shall be burnt!” And the Jacobin added, “Rather would we
+waste the whole of our family estate!”
+
+On the night of the 17th November, Cadière screamed, and was like one
+choking. They thought she was going to die. The eldest Cadière, the
+tradesman, lost his wits, and called out to his neighbours from the
+window, “Help! the Devil is throttling my sister!” They came running
+up almost in their shirts. The doctors and surgeons wanted to apply
+the cupping-glasses to a case of what they called “suffocation of the
+womb.” While some were gone to fetch these, they succeeded in
+unlocking her teeth and making her swallow a drop of brandy, which
+brought her to herself. Meanwhile there also came to the girl some
+doctors of the soul; first an old priest confessor to Cadière’s
+mother, and then some parsons of Toulon. All this noise and shouting,
+the arrival of the priests in full dress, the preparations for
+exorcising, had brought everyone out into the street. The newcomers
+kept asking what was the matter. “Cadière has been bewitched by
+Girard,” was the continual reply. We may imagine the pity and the
+wrath of the people.
+
+Greatly alarmed, but anxious to cast the fear back on others, the
+Jesuits did a very barbarous thing. They returned to the bishop,
+ordered and insisted that Cadière should be brought to trial; that the
+attack should be made that very day; that justice should make an
+unforeseen descent on this poor girl, as she lay rattling in the
+throat after the last dreadful seizure.
+
+Sabatier never left the bishop until the latter had called his judge,
+his officer, the Vicar-general Larmedieu, and his prosecutor or
+episcopal advocate, Esprit Reybaud, and commanded them to go to work
+forthwith.
+
+By the Canon Law this was impossible, illegal. A _preliminary inquiry
+was needed_ into the facts, before the judicial business could begin.
+There was another difficulty: the spiritual judge had no right to make
+such an arrest save for _a rejection of the Sacrament_. The two
+church-lawyers must have made these objections. But Sabatier would
+hear of no excuses. If matters were allowed to drag in this cold legal
+way, he would miss his stroke of terror.
+
+Larmedieu was a compliant judge, a friend of the clergy. He was not
+one of your rude magistrates who go straight before them, like blind
+boars, on the high-road of the law, without seeing or respecting
+anyone. He had shown great regard for Aubany, the patron of Ollioules,
+during his trial; helping him to escape by the slowness of his own
+procedure. Afterwards, when he knew him to be at Marseilles, as if
+that was far from France, in the _ultima thule_ or _terra incognita_
+of ancient geographers, he would not budge any further. This, however,
+was a very different case: the judge who was so paralytic against
+Aubany, had wings, and wings of lightning, for Cadière. It was nine in
+the morning when the dwellers in the lane saw with much curiosity a
+grand procession arrive at the Cadières’ door, with Master Larmedieu
+and the episcopal advocate at the head, honoured by an escort of two
+clergymen, doctors of theology. The house was invaded: the sick girl
+was summoned before them. They made her swear to tell the truth
+against herself; swear to defame herself by speaking out in the ears
+of justice matters that touched her conscience and the confessional
+only.
+
+She might have dispensed with an answer, for none of the usual forms
+had been observed: but she would not raise the question. She took the
+oath that was meant to disarm and betray her. For, being once bound
+thereby, she told everything, even to those shameful and ridiculous
+details which it must be very painful for any girl to acknowledge.
+
+Larmedieu’s official statement and his first examination point to a
+clearly settled agreement between him and the Jesuits. Girard was to
+be brought forward as the dupe and prey of Cadière’s knavery. Fancy a
+man of sixty, a doctor, professor, director of nuns, being therewithal
+so innocent and credulous, that a young girl, a mere child, was enough
+to draw him into the snare! The cunning, shameless wanton had beguiled
+him with her visions, but failed to draw him into her own excesses.
+Enraged thereat, she endowed him with every baseness that the fancy of
+a Messalina could suggest to her!
+
+So far from giving grounds for any such idea, the examination brings
+out the victim’s gentleness in a very touching way. Evidently she
+accuses others only through constraint, under the pressure of her oath
+just taken. She is gentle towards her enemies, even to the faithless
+Guiol who, in her brother’s words, had betrayed her; had done her
+worst to corrupt her; had ruined her, last of all, by making her give
+up the papers which would have insured her safety.
+
+The Cadière brothers were frightened at their sister’s artlessness. In
+her regard for her oath she gave herself up without reserve to be
+vilified, alas! for ever; to have ballads sung about her; to be mocked
+by the very foes of Jesuits and silly scoffing libertines.
+
+The mischief done, they wanted at least to have it defined, to have
+the official report of the priests checked by some more serious
+measure. Seeming though she did to be the party accused, they made her
+the accuser, and prevailed on Marteli Chantard, the King’s Lieutenant
+Civil and Criminal, to come and take her deposition. In this document,
+short and clear, the fact of her seduction is clearly established;
+likewise the reproaches she uttered against Girard for his lewd
+endearments, reproaches at which he only laughed; likewise the advice
+he gave her, to let herself be possessed by the Demon; likewise the
+means he used for keeping her wounds open, and so on.
+
+The King’s officer, the Lieutenant, was bound to carry the matter
+before his own court. For the spiritual judge in his hurry had failed
+to go through the forms of ecclesiastic law, and so made his
+proceedings null. But the lay magistrate lacked the courage for this.
+He let himself be harnessed to the clerical inquiry, accepted
+Larmedieu for his colleague, went himself to sit and hear the evidence
+in the bishop’s court. The clerk of the bishopric wrote it down, and
+not the clerk of the King’s Lieutenant. Did he write it down
+faithfully? We have reason to doubt that, when we find him threatening
+the witnesses, and going every night to show their statements to the
+Jesuits.
+
+The two curates of Cadière’s parish, who were heard first, deposed
+drily, not in her favour, yet by no means against her, certainly not
+in favour of the Jesuits. These latter saw that everything was going
+amiss for them. Lost to all shame, at the risk of angering the people,
+they determined to break all down. They got from the bishop an order
+to imprison Cadière and the chief witnesses she wanted to be heard.
+These were the German lady and Batarelle. The girl herself was placed
+in the Refuge, a convent-prison; the ladies in a bridewell, the
+_Good-Shepherd_, where mad women and foul streetwalkers needing
+punishment were thrown. On the 26th November, Cadière was dragged from
+her bed and given over to the Ursulines, penitents of Girard’s, who
+laid her duly on some rotten straw.
+
+A fear of them thus established, the witnesses might now be heard.
+They began with two, choice and respectable. One was the Guiol,
+notorious for being Girard’s pander, a woman of keen and clever
+tongue, who was commissioned to hurl the first dart and open the wound
+of slander. The other was Laugier, the little seamstress, whom Cadière
+had supported and for whose apprenticeship she had paid. While she lay
+with child by Girard, this Laugier had cried out against him; now she
+washed away her fault by sneering at Cadière and defiling her
+benefactress, but in a very clumsy way, like the shameless wanton she
+was; ascribing to her impudent speeches quite contrary to her known
+habits. Then came Mdlle. Gravier and her cousin Reboul--all the
+_Girardites_, in short, as they were called in Toulon.
+
+But, do as they would, the light would burst forth now and then. The
+wife of a purveyor in the house where these Girardites met together,
+said, with cruel plainness, that she could not abide them, that they
+disturbed the whole house; she spoke of their noisy bursts of
+laughter, of their suppers paid for out of the money collected for the
+poor, and so forth.
+
+They were sore afraid lest the nuns should speak out for Cadière. The
+bishop’s clerk told them, as if from the bishop himself, that those
+who spoke evil should be chastised. As a yet stronger measure, they
+ordered back from Marseilles the gay Father Aubany, who had some
+ascendant over the nuns. His affair with the girl he had violated was
+got settled for him. Her parents were made to understand that justice
+could do nothing in their case. The child’s good name was valued at
+eight hundred livres, which were paid on Aubany’s account. So, full of
+zeal, he returned, a thorough Jesuit, to his troop at Ollioules. The
+poor troop trembled indeed, when this worthy father told them of his
+commission to warn them that, if they did not behave themselves, “they
+should be put to the torture.”
+
+For all that, they could not get as much as they wanted from these
+fifteen nuns. Two or three at most were on Girard’s side, but all
+stated facts, especially about the 7th July, which bore directly
+against him.
+
+In despair the Jesuits came to an heroic decision, in order to make
+sure of their witnesses. They stationed themselves in an outer hall
+which led into the court. There they stopped those going in, tampered
+with them, threatened them, and, if they were against Girard, coolly
+debarred their entrance by thrusting them out of doors.
+
+Thus the clerical judge and the King’s officer were only as puppets in
+the Jesuits’ hands. The whole town saw this and trembled. During
+December, January, and February, the Cadière family drew up and
+diffused a complaint touching the way in which justice was denied them
+and witnesses suborned. The Jesuits themselves felt that the place
+would no longer hold them. They evoked help from a higher quarter.
+This seemed best available in the shape of a decree of the Great
+Council, which would have brought the matter before itself and hushed
+up everything, as Mazarin had done in the Louviers affair. But the
+Chancellor was D’Aguesseau; and the Jesuits had no wish to let the
+matter go up to Paris. They kept it still in Provence. On the 16th
+January, 1731, they got the King to determine that the Parliament of
+Provence, where they had plenty of friends, should pass sentence on
+the inquiry which two of its councillors were conducting at Toulon.
+
+M. Faucon, a layman, and M. de Charleval, a councillor of the Church,
+came in fact and straightway marched down among the Jesuits. These
+eager commissioners made so little secret of their loud and bitter
+partiality, as to toss out an order for Cadière’s remand, just as they
+might have done to an accused prisoner; whilst Girard was most
+politely called up and allowed to go free, to keep on saying mass and
+hearing confessions. And so the plaintiff was kept under lock and key,
+in her enemies’ hands, exposed to all manner of cruelty from Girard’s
+devotees.
+
+From these honest Ursulines she met with just such a reception as if
+they had been charged to bring about her death. The room they gave her
+was the cell of a mad nun who made everything filthy. In the nun’s old
+straw, in the midst of a frightful stench, she lay. Her kinsmen on the
+morrow had much ado to get in a coverlet and mattress for her use. For
+her nurse and keeper she was allowed a poor tool of Girard’s, a
+lay-sister, daughter to that very Guiol who had betrayed her; a girl
+right worthy of her mother, capable of any wickedness, a source of
+danger to her modesty, perhaps even to her life. They submitted her to
+a course of penance in her case specially painful, refusing her the
+right of confessing herself or taking the sacrament. She relapsed into
+her illness from the time she was debarred the latter privilege. Her
+fierce foe, the Jesuit Sabatier, came into her cell, and formed a new
+and startling scheme to win her by a bribe of the holy wafer. The
+bargaining began. They offered her terms: she should communicate if
+she would only acknowledge herself a slanderer, unworthy of
+communicating. In her excessive humbleness she might have done so.
+But, while ruining herself, she would also have ruined the Carmelite
+and her own brethren.
+
+Reduced to Pharisaical tricks, they took to expounding her speeches.
+Whatever she uttered in a mystic sense they feigned to accept in its
+material hardness. To free herself from such snares she displayed,
+what they had least expected, very great presence of mind.
+
+A yet more treacherous plan for robbing her of the public sympathy and
+setting the laughers against her, was to find her a lover. They
+pretended that she had proposed to a young blackguard that they should
+set off together and roam the world.
+
+The great lords of that day, being fond of having children and little
+pages to wait on them, readily took in the better-mannered of their
+peasant’s sons. In this way had the bishop dealt with the boy of one
+of his tenants. He washed his face, as it were; made him tidy.
+Presently, when the favourite grew up, he gave him the tonsure,
+dressed him up like an abbé, and dubbed him his chaplain at the age of
+twenty. This person was the Abbé Camerle. Brought up with the footmen
+and made to do everything, he was, like many a half-scrubbed country
+youth, a sly, but simple lout. He saw that the prelate since his
+arrival at Toulon had been curious about Cadière and far from friendly
+to Girard. He thought to please and amuse his master by turning
+himself, at Ollioules, into a spy on their suspected intercourse. But
+after the bishop changed through fear of the Jesuits, Camerle became
+equally zealous in helping Girard with active service against Cadière.
+
+He came one day, like another Joseph, to say that Mdlle. Cadière had,
+like Potiphar’s wife, been tempting him, and trying to shake his
+virtue. Had this been true, it was all the more cowardly of him thus
+to punish her for a moment’s weakness, to take so mean an advantage of
+some light word. But his education as page and seminarist was not such
+as to bring him either honour or the love of women.
+
+She extricated herself with spirit and success, covering him with
+shame. The two angry commissioners saw her making so triumphant an
+answer, that they cut the investigation short, and cut down the number
+of her witnesses. Out of the sixty-eight she summoned, they allowed
+but thirty-eight to appear. Regardless alike of the delays and the
+forms of justice, they hurried forward the confronting of witnesses.
+Yet nothing was gained, thereby. On the 25th and again on the 26th
+February, she renewed her crushing declarations.
+
+Such was their rage thereat, that they declared their regret at the
+want of torments and executioners in Toulon, “who might have made her
+sing out a little.” These things formed their _ultima ratio_. They
+were employed, by the Parliaments through all that century. I have
+before me a warm defence of torture,[114] written in 1780, by a
+learned member of Parliament, who also became a member of the Great
+Council; it was dedicated to the King, Louis XVI., and crowned with
+the flattering approval of His Holiness Pius VI.
+
+    [114] Muyart de Vouglans, in the sequel to his _Loix
+    Criminelles_, 1780.
+
+But, in default of the torture that would have made her sing, she was
+made to speak by a still better process. On the 27th February, Guiol’s
+daughter, the lay-sister who acted as her jailer, came to her at an
+early hour with a glass of wine. She was astonished: she was not at
+all thirsty: she never drank wine, especially pure wine, of a morning.
+The lay-sister, a rough, strong menial, such as they keep in convents
+to manage crazy or refractory women, and to punish children,
+overwhelmed the feeble sufferer with remonstrances that looked like
+threats. Unwilling as she was, she drank. And she was forced to drink
+it all, to the very dregs, which she found unpleasantly salt.
+
+What was this repulsive draught? We have already seen how clever these
+old confessors of nuns were at remedies of various kinds. In this case
+the wine alone would have done for so weakly a patient. It had been
+quite enough to make her drunk, to draw from her at once some
+stammering speeches, which the clerk might have moulded into a
+downright falsehood. But a drug of some kind, perhaps some wizard’s
+simple, which would act for several days, was added to the wine, in
+order to prolong its effects and leave her no way of disproving
+anything laid to her charge.
+
+In her declaration of the 27th February, how sudden and entire a
+change! It is nothing but a defence of Girard! Strange to say, the
+commissioners make no remark on so abrupt a change. The strange,
+shameful sight of a young girl drunk causes no astonishment, fails to
+put them on their guard. She is made to own that all which had passed
+between herself and Girard was merely the offspring of her own
+diseased fancy; that all she had spoken of as real, at the bidding of
+her brethren and the Carmelite, was nothing more than a dream. Not
+content with whitening Girard, she must blacken her own friends, must
+crush them, and put the halter round their necks.
+
+Especially wonderful is the clearness of her deposition, the neat way
+in which it is worded. The hand of the skilful clerk peeps out
+therefrom. It is very strange, however, that now they are in so fair a
+way, they do not follow it up. From the 27th to the 6th of March there
+is no further questioning.
+
+On the 28th, the poison having doubtless done its work, and plunged
+her into a perfect stupor, or else a kind of Sabbatic frenzy, it was
+impossible to bring her forth. After that, while her head was still
+disordered, they could easily give her other potions of which she
+would know and remember nothing. What happened during those six days
+seems to have been so shocking, so sad for poor Cadière, that neither
+she nor her brother had the heart to speak of it twice. Nor would they
+have spoken at all, had not the brethren themselves incurred a
+prosecution aiming at their own lives.
+
+Having won his cause through Cadière’s falsehood, Girard dared to come
+and see her in her prison, where she lay stupefied or in despair,
+forsaken alike of earth and heaven, and if any clear thoughts were
+left her, possessed with the dreadful consciousness of having by her
+last deposition murdered her own near kin. Her own ruin was complete
+already. But another trial, that of her brothers and the bold
+Carmelite, would now begin. She may in her remorse have been tempted
+to soften Girard, to keep him from proceeding against them, above all
+to save herself from being put to the torture. Girard, at any rate,
+took advantage of her utter weakness, and behaved like the determined
+scoundrel he really was.
+
+Alas! her wandering spirit came but slowly back to her. It was on the
+6th March that she had to face her accusers, to renew her former
+admissions, to ruin her brethren beyond repair. She could not speak;
+she was choking. The commissioners had the kindness to tell her that
+the torture was there, at her side; to describe to her the wooden
+horse, the points of iron, the wedges for jamming fast her bones. Her
+courage failed her, so weak she was now of body. She submitted to be
+set before her cruel master, who might laugh triumphant now that he
+had debased not only her body, but yet more her conscience, by making
+her the murderess of her own friends.
+
+No time was lost in profiting by her weakness. They prevailed
+forthwith on the Parliament of Aix to let the Carmelite and the two
+brothers be imprisoned, that they might undergo a separate trial for
+their lives, as soon as Cadière should have been condemned.
+
+On the 10th March, she was dragged from the Ursulines of Toulon to
+Sainte-Claire of Ollioules. Girard, however, was not sure of her yet.
+He got leave to have her conducted, like some dreaded highway robber,
+between some soldiers of the mounted police. He demanded that she
+should be carefully locked up at Sainte-Claire. The ladies were moved
+to tears at the sight of a poor sufferer who could not drag herself
+forward, approaching between those drawn swords. Everyone pitied her.
+Two brave men, M. Aubin, a solicitor, and M. Claret, a notary, drew up
+for her the deeds in which she withdrew her late confession, fearful
+documents that record the threats of the commissioners and of the
+Ursuline prioress, and above all, the fact of the drugged wine she had
+been forced to drink.
+
+At the same time these daring men drew up for the Chancellor’s court
+at Paris a plea of error, as it is called, exposing the irregular and
+blameable proceedings, the wilful breaches of the law, effected in the
+coolest way, first by the bishop’s officer and the King’s Lieutenant,
+secondly by the two commissioners. The Chancellor D’Aguesseau showed
+himself very slack and feeble. He let these foul proceedings stand;
+left the business in charge of the Parliament of Aix, sullied as it
+already seemed to be by the disgrace with which two of its members had
+just been covering themselves.
+
+So once more they laid hands on their victim, and had her dragged, in
+charge as before of the mounted police, from Ollioules to Aix. In
+those days people slept at a public house midway. Here the corporal
+explained that, by virtue of his orders, he would sleep in the young
+girl’s room. They pretended to believe that an invalid unable to walk,
+might flee away by jumping out of window. Truly, it was a most
+villanous device, to commit such a one to the chaste keeping of the
+heroes of the _dragonnades_.[115] Happily, her mother had come to see
+her start, had followed her in spite of everything, and they did not
+dare to beat her away with their butt-ends. She stayed in the room,
+kept watch--neither of them, indeed, lying down--and shielded her
+child from all harm.
+
+    [115] Alluding to the cruelties dealt on the Huguenots by the
+    French dragoons, at the close of Louis the Fourteenth’s
+    reign.--TRANS.
+
+Cadière was forwarded to the Ursulines of Aix, who had the King’s
+command to take her in charge. But the prioress pretended that the
+order had not yet come. We may see here how savage a woman who was
+once impassioned will grow, until she has lost all her woman’s nature.
+She kept the other four hours at her street-door, as if she were a
+public show. There was time to fetch a mob of Jesuits’ followers, of
+honest Church artizans, to hoot and hiss, while children might help by
+throwing stones. For these four hours she was in the pillory. Some,
+however, of the more dispassionate passers-by asked if the Ursulines
+had gotten orders to let them kill the girl. We may guess what tender
+jailers their sick prisoner would find in these good sisters!
+
+The ground was prepared with admirable effect. By a spirited concert
+between Jesuit magistrates and plotting ladies, a system of deterring
+had been set on foot. No pleader would ruin himself by defending a
+girl thus heavily aspersed. No one would digest the poisonous things
+stored up by her jailers, for him who should daily show his face in
+their parlour to await an interview with Cadière. The defence in that
+case would devolve on M. Chaudon, syndic of the Aix bar. He did not
+decline so hard a duty. And yet he was so uneasy as to desire a
+settlement, which the Jesuits refused. Thereupon he showed what he
+really was, a man of unswerving honesty, of amazing courage. He
+exposed, with the learning of a lawyer, the monstrous character of the
+whole proceeding. So doing, he would for ever embroil himself with
+the Parliament no less than the Jesuits. He brought into sharp outline
+the spiritual incest of the confessor, though he modestly refrained
+from specifying how far he had carried his profligacy. He also
+withheld himself from speaking of Girard’s girls, the loose-lived
+devotees, as a matter well-known, but to which no one would have liked
+to bear witness. In short, he gave Girard the best case he could by
+assailing him _as a wizard_. People laughed, made fun of the advocate.
+He undertook to prove the existence of demons by a series of sacred
+texts, beginning with the Gospels. This made them laugh the louder.
+
+The case had been cleverly disfigured by the turning of an honest
+Carmelite into Cadière’s lover, and the weaver of a whole chain of
+libels against Girard and the Jesuits. Thenceforth the crowd of
+idlers, of giddy worldlings, scoffers and philosophers alike, made
+merry with either side, being thoroughly impartial as between
+Carmelite and Jesuit, and exceedingly rejoiced to see this battle of
+monk with monk. Those who were presently to be called _Voltairites_,
+were even better inclined towards the polished Jesuits, those men of
+the world, than towards any of the old mendicant orders.
+
+So the matter became more and more tangled. Jokes kept raining down,
+but raining mostly on the victim. They called it a love-intrigue. They
+saw in it nothing but food for fun. There was not a scholar nor a
+clerk who did not turn a ditty on Girard and his pupil, who did not
+hash up anew the old provincial jokes about Madeline in the Gauffridi
+affair, her six thousand imps, their dread of a flogging, and the
+wonderful chastening-process whereby Cadière’s devils were put to
+flight.
+
+On this latter point the friends of Girard had no difficulty in
+proving him clean. He had acted by his right as director, in
+accordance with the common wont. The rod is the symbol of fatherhood.
+He had treated his penitent with a view to the healing of her soul.
+They used to thrash demoniacs, to thrash the insane and sufferers in
+other ways. This was the favourite mode of hunting out the enemy,
+whether in the shape of devil or disease. With the people it was a
+very common idea. One brave workman of Toulon, who had witnessed
+Cadière’s sad plight, declared that a bull’s sinew was the poor
+sufferer’s only cure.
+
+Thus strongly supported, Girard had only to act reasonably. He would
+not take the trouble. His defence is charmingly flippant. He never
+deigns even to agree with his own depositions. He gives the lie to his
+own witnesses. He seems to be jesting, and says, with the coolness of
+a great lord of the Regency, that if, as they charge him, he was ever
+shut up with her, “it could only have happened nine times.”
+
+“And why did the good father do so,” would his friends say, “save to
+watch, to consider, to search out the truth concerning her? ’Tis the
+confessor’s duty in all such cases. Read the life of the most holy
+Catherine of Genoa. One evening her confessor hid himself in her room,
+waiting to see the wonders she would work, and to catch her in the act
+miraculous. But here, unhappily, the Devil, who never sleeps, had laid
+a snare for this lamb of God, had belched forth this devouring monster
+of a she-dragon, this mixture of maniac and demoniac, to swallow him
+up, to overwhelm him in a cataract of slander.”
+
+It was an old and excellent custom to smother monsters in the cradle.
+Then why not later also? Girard’s ladies charitably advised the
+instant using against her of fire and sword. “Let her perish!” cried
+the devotees. Many of the great ladies also wished to have her
+punished, deeming it rather too bad that such a creature should have
+dared to enter such a plea, to bring into court the man who had done
+her but too great an honour.
+
+Some determined Jansenists there were in the Parliament, but these
+were more inimical to the Jesuits than friendly to the girl. And they
+might well be downcast and discouraged, seeing they had against them
+at once the terrible Society of Jesus, the Court of Versailles, the
+Cardinal Minister (Fleury), and, lastly, the drawing-rooms of Aix.
+Should they be bolder than the head of the law, the Chancellor
+D’Aguesseau, who had proved so very slack? The Attorney-General did
+not waver at all: being charged with the indictment of Girard, he
+avowed himself his friend, advised him how to meet the charges
+against him.
+
+There was, indeed, but one question at issue, to ascertain by what
+kind of reparation, of solemn atonement, of exemplary chastening, the
+plaintiff thus changed into the accused might satisfy Girard and the
+Company of Jesus. The Jesuits, with all their good-nature, affirmed
+the need of an example, in the interests of religion, by way of some
+slight warning both to the Jansenist Convulsionaries and the
+scribbling philosophers who were beginning to swarm.
+
+There were two points by which Cadière might be hooked, might receive
+the stroke of the harpoon.
+
+Firstly, she had borne false witness. But, then, by no law could
+slander be punished with death. To gain that end you must go a little
+further, and say, “The old Roman text, _De famosis libellis_,
+pronounces death on those who have uttered libels hurtful to the
+Emperor or to _the religion_ of the Empire. The Jesuits represent that
+religion. Therefore, a memorial against a Jesuit deserves the last
+penalty.”
+
+A still better handle, however, was their second. At the opening of
+the trial the episcopal judge, the prudent Larmedieu, had asked her if
+she had never _divined_ the secrets of many people, and she had
+answered yes. Therefore they might charge her with the practice named
+in the list of forms employed in trials for witchcraft, as _Divination
+and imposture_. This alone in ecclesiastic law deserved the stake.
+They might, indeed, without much effort, call her a _Witch_, after
+the confession made by the Ollioules ladies, that at one same hour of
+the night she used to be in several cells together. Their infatuation,
+the surprising tenderness that suddenly came over them, had all the
+air of an enchantment.
+
+What was there to prevent her being burnt? They were still burning
+everywhere in the eighteenth century. In one reign only, that of
+Philip V., sixteen hundred people were burnt in Spain: one Witch was
+burnt as late as 1782. In Germany one was burnt in 1751; in
+Switzerland one also in 1781. Rome was always burning her victims, on
+the sly indeed, in the dark holes and cells of the Inquisition.[116]
+
+    [116] This fact comes to us from an adviser to the Holy
+    Office, still living.
+
+“But France, at least, is surely more humane?” She is very
+inconsistent. In 1718, a Wizard is burnt at Bordeaux.[117] In 1724 and
+1726, the faggots were lighted in Grève for offences which passed as
+schoolboy jokes at Versailles. The guardians of the Royal child, the
+Duke and Fleury, who are so indulgent to the Court, are terrible to
+the town. A donkey-driver and a noble, one M. des Chauffours, are
+burnt alive. The advent of the Cardinal Minister could not be
+celebrated more worthily than by a moral reformation, by making a
+severe example of those who corrupted the people. Nothing more timely
+than to pass some terrible and solemn sentence on this infernal girl,
+who made so heinous an assault on the innocent Girard!
+
+    [117] I am not speaking of executions done by the people of
+    their own accord. A hundred years ago, in a village of
+    Provence, an old woman on being refused alms by a landowner,
+    said in her fury, “You will be dead to-morrow.” He was
+    smitten and died. The whole village, high and low, seized the
+    old woman, and set her on a bundle of vine-twigs. She was
+    burnt alive. The Parliament made a feint of inquiring, but
+    punished nobody.--[In 1751 an old couple of Tring, in
+    Hertfordshire, according to Wright, were tortured, kicked,
+    and beaten to death, on the plea of witchcraft, by a maddened
+    country mob.--TRANS.]
+
+Observe what was needed to wash that father clean. It was needful to
+show that, even if he had done wrong and imitated Des Chauffours, he
+had been the sport of some enchantment. The documents were but too
+plain. By the wording of the Canon Law, and after these late decrees,
+somebody ought to be burnt. Of the five magistrates on the bench, two
+only would have burnt Girard. Three were against Cadière. They came to
+terms. The three who formed the majority would not insist on burning
+her, would forego the long, dreadful scene at the stake, would content
+themselves with a simple award of death.
+
+In the name of these five, it was settled, pending the final assent of
+Parliament, “That Cadière, having first been put to the torture in
+both kinds, should afterwards be removed to Toulon, and suffer death
+by hanging on the Place des Prêcheurs.”
+
+This was a dreadful blow. An immense revulsion of feeling at once took
+place. The worldlings, the jesters ceased to laugh: they shuddered.
+Their love of trifling did not lead them to slur over a result so
+horrible. That a girl should be seduced, ill-used, dishonoured,
+treated as a mere toy, that she should die of grief, or of frenzy,
+they had regarded as right and good; with all that they had no
+concern. But when it was a case of punishment, when in fancy they saw
+before them the woeful victim, with rope round her neck, by the
+gallows where she was about to hang, their hearts rose in revolt. From
+all sides went forth the cry, “Never, since the world began, was there
+seen so villanous a reversal of things; the law of rape administered
+the wrong way, the girl condemned for having been made a tool, the
+victim hanged by her seducer!”
+
+In this town of Aix, made up of judges, priests, and the world of
+fashion, a thing unforeseen occurred: a whole people suddenly rose, a
+violent popular movement was astir. A crowd of persons of every class
+marched in one close well-ordered body straight towards the Ursulines.
+Cadière and her mother were bidden to show themselves. “Make yourself
+easy, mademoiselle,” they shouted: “we stand by you: fear nothing!”
+
+The grand eighteenth century, justly called by Hegel the “reign of
+mind,” was still grander as the “reign of humanity.” Ladies of
+distinction, such as the granddaughter of Mde. de Sévigné, the
+charming Madame de Simiane, took possession of the young girl and
+sheltered her in their bosoms.
+
+A thing yet prettier and more touching was it, to see the Jansenist
+ladies, elsewhile so sternly pure, so hard towards each other, in
+their austerities so severe, now in this great conjuncture offer up
+Law on the altar of Mercy, by flinging their arms round the poor
+threatened child, purifying her with kisses on the forehead, baptizing
+her anew in tears.
+
+If Provence be naturally wild, she is all the more wonderful in these
+wild moments of generosity and real greatness. Something of this was
+later seen in the earliest triumphs of Mirabeau, when he had a million
+of men gathered round him at Marseilles. But here already was a great
+revolutionary scene, a vast uprising against the stupid Government of
+the day, and Fleury’s pets the Jesuits: a unanimous uprising in behalf
+of humanity, of compassion, in defence of a woman, a very child, thus
+barbarously offered up. The Jesuits fancied that among their own
+rabble, among their clients and their beggars, they might array a kind
+of popular force, armed with handbells and staves to beat back the
+party of Cadière. This latter, however, included almost everyone.
+Marseilles rose up as one man to bear in triumph the son of the
+Advocate Chaudon. Toulon went so far for the sake of her poor
+townswoman, as to think of burning the Jesuit college.
+
+The most touching of all these tokens in Cadière’s favour, reached
+her from Ollioules. A simple boarder, Mdlle. Agnes, for all her
+youthful shyness, followed the impulse of her own heart, threw herself
+into the press of pamphlets, and published a defence of Cadière.
+
+So widespread and deep a movement had its effect on the Parliament
+itself. The foes of the Jesuits raised their heads, took courage to
+defy the threats of those above, the influence of the Jesuits, and the
+bolts that Fleury might hurl upon them from Versailles.[118]
+
+    [118] There is a laughable tale which expresses the state of
+    Parliament with singular nicety. The Recorder was reading his
+    comments on the trial, on the share the Devil might have had
+    therein, when a loud noise was heard. A black man fell down
+    the chimney. In their fright they all ran away, save the
+    Recorder only, who, being entangled in his robe, could not
+    move. The man made some excuse. It was simply a chimneysweep
+    who had mistaken his chimney.
+
+The very friends of Girard, seeing their numbers fall off, their
+phalanx grow thin, were eager for the sentence. It was pronounced on
+the 11th October, 1731.
+
+In sight of the popular feeling, no one dared to follow up the savage
+sentence of the bench, by getting Cadière hanged. Twelve councillors
+sacrificed their honour, by declaring Girard innocent. Of the twelve
+others, some Jansenists condemned him to the flames as a wizard; and
+three or four, with better reason, condemned him to death as a
+scoundrel. Twelve being against twelve, the President Lebret had to
+give the casting vote. He found for Girard. Acquitted of the capital
+crime of witchcraft, the latter was then made over, as priest and
+confessor, to the Toulon magistrate, his intimate friend Larmedieu,
+for trial in the bishop’s court.
+
+The great folk and the indifferent ones were satisfied. And so little
+heed was given to this award, that even in these days it has been said
+that “both were _acquitted_.” The statement is not correct. Cadière
+was treated as a slanderer, was condemned to see her memorials and
+other papers burnt by the hand of the executioner.
+
+There was still a dreadful something in the background. Cadière being
+so marked, so branded for the use of calumny, the Jesuits were sure to
+keep pushing underhand their success with Cardinal Fleury, and to urge
+her being punished in some secret, arbitrary way. Such was the notion
+imbibed by the town of Aix. It felt that, instead of sending her home,
+Parliament would rather _yield her up_. This caused so fearful a rage,
+such angry menaces, against President Lebret, that he asked to have
+the regiment of Flanders sent thither.
+
+Girard was fleeing away in a close carriage, when they found him out
+and would have killed him, had he not escaped into the Jesuits’
+Church. There the rascal betook himself to saying mass. After his
+escape thence he returned to Dôle, to reap honour and glory from the
+Society. Here, in 1733, he died, _in the perfume of holiness_. The
+courtier Lebret died in 1735.
+
+Cardinal Fleury did whatever the Jesuits pleased. At Aix, Toulon,
+Marseilles, many were banished, or cast into prison. Toulon was
+specially guilty, as having borne Girard’s effigy to the doors of his
+_Girardites_, and carried about the thrice holy standard of the
+Jesuits.
+
+According to the terms of the award, Cadière should have been free to
+return home, to live again with her mother. But I venture to say that
+she was never allowed to re-enter her native town, that flaming
+theatre wherein so many voices had been raised in her behalf.
+
+If only to feel an interest in her was a crime deserving imprisonment,
+we cannot doubt but that she herself was presently thrown into prison;
+that the Jesuits easily obtained a special warrant from Versailles to
+lock up the poor girl, to hush up, to bury with her an affair so
+dismal for themselves. They would wait, of course, until the public
+attention was drawn off to something else. Thereon the fatal clutch
+would have caught her anew; she would have been buried out of sight in
+some unknown convent, snuffed out in some dark _In pace_.
+
+She was but one-and-twenty at the time of the award, and she had
+always hoped to die soon. May God have granted her that mercy![119]
+
+    [119] Touching this matter, Voltaire is very flippant: he
+    scoffs at both parties, especially the Jansenists. The
+    historians of our own day, MM. Cabasse, Fabre, Méry, not
+    having read the _Trial_, believe themselves impartial, while
+    they are bearing down the victim.
+
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE.
+
+
+A woman of genius, in a burst of noble tenderness, has figured to
+herself the two spirits whose strife moulded the Middle Ages, as
+coming at last to recognise each other, to draw together, to renew
+their olden friendship. Looking closer at each other, they discern,
+though somewhat late, the marks of a common parentage. How if they
+were indeed brethren, and this long battle nought but a mistake? Their
+hearts speak, and they are softened. The haughty outlaw and the gentle
+persecutor have forgotten everything: they dart forward and throw
+themselves into each other’s arms.--(_Consuelo._)
+
+A charming, womanly idea. Others, too, have dreamed the same dream.
+The sweet Montanelli turned it into a beautiful poem. Ay, who would
+not welcome the delightful hope of seeing the battle here hushed down
+and finished by an embrace so moving?
+
+What does the wise Merlin think of it? In the mirror of his lake,
+whose depths are known to himself only, what did he behold? What said
+he in the colossal epic produced by him in 1860? Why, that Satan will
+not disarm, if disarm he ever do, until the Day of Judgment. Then,
+side by side, at peace with each other, the two will fall asleep in a
+common death.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is not so hard, indeed, to bend them into a kind of compromise. The
+weakening, relaxing effects of so long a battle allow of their
+mingling in a certain way. In the last chapter we saw two shadows
+agreeing to form an alliance in deceit; the Devil appearing as the
+friend of Loyola, devotees and demoniacs marching abreast, Hell
+touched to softness in the Sacred Heart.
+
+It is a quiet time now, and people hate each other less than formerly.
+They hate few indeed but their own friends. I have seen Methodists
+admiring Jesuits. Those lawyers and physicians whom the Church in the
+Middle Ages called the children of Satan, I have seen making shrewd
+covenant with the old conquered Spirit.
+
+But get we away from these pretences. They who gravely propose that
+Satan should make peace and settle down, have they thought much about
+the matter?
+
+There is no hindrance as regards ill-will. The dead are dead. The
+millions of former victims sleep in peace, be they Albigenses,
+Vaudois, or Protestants, Moors, Jews, or American Indians. The Witch,
+universal martyr of the Middle Ages, has nought to say. Her ashes have
+been scattered to the winds.
+
+Know you, then, what it is that raises a protest, that keeps these two
+spirits steadily apart, preventing them from coming nearer? It is a
+huge reality, born five hundred years ago; a gigantic creation
+accursed by the Church, even that mighty fabric of science and modern
+institutions, which she excommunicated stone by stone, but which with
+every anathema has grown a storey higher. You cannot name one science
+which has not been itself a rebellion.
+
+There is but one way of reconciling the two spirits, of joining into
+one the two churches. Demolish the younger, that one which from its
+first beginning was pronounced guilty and doomed as such. Let us, if
+we can, destroy the natural sciences, the observatory, the museum, the
+botanical garden, the schools of medicine, and all the modern
+libraries. Let us burn our laws, our bodies of statutes, and return to
+the Canon Law.
+
+All these novelties came of Satan. Each step forward has been a crime
+of his doing.
+
+He was the wicked logician who, despising the clerical law, preserved
+and renewed that of jurists and philosophers, grounded on an impious
+faith, on the freedom of the will.
+
+He was that dangerous magician who, while men were discussing the sex
+of angels and other questions of like sublimity, threw himself
+fiercely on realities, and created chemistry, physics, mathematics--ay,
+even mathematics. He sought to revive them, and that was rebellion.
+People were burnt for saying that three made three.
+
+Medicine especially was a Satanic thing, a rebellion against disease,
+the scourge so justly dealt by God. It was clearly sinful to check the
+soul on its way towards heaven, to plunge it afresh into life!
+
+What atonement shall we make for all this? How are we to put down, to
+overthrow, this pile of insurrections, whereof at this moment all
+modern life is made up? Will Satan destroy his work, that he may tread
+once more the way of angels? That work rests on three everlasting
+rocks, Reason, Right, and Nature.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So great is the triumph of the new spirit, that he forgets his
+battles, hardly at this moment deigns to remember that he has won.
+
+It were not amiss to remind him of his wretched beginnings, how
+coarsely mean, how rude and painfully comic were the shapes he wore in
+the season of persecution, when through a woman, even the unhappy
+Witch, he made his first homely flights in science. Bolder than the
+heretic, the half-Christian reasoner, the scholar who kept one foot
+within the sacred circle, this woman eagerly escaped therefrom, and
+under the open sunlight tried to make herself an altar of rough
+moorland stones.
+
+She has perished, as she was certain to perish. By what means? Chiefly
+by the progress of those very sciences which began with her, through
+the physician, the naturalist, for whom she had once toiled.
+
+The Witch has perished for ever, but not the Fay. She will reappear in
+the form that never dies.
+
+Busied in these latter days with the affairs of men, Woman has in
+return given up her rightful part, that of the physician, the
+comforter, the healing Fairy. Herein lies her proper priesthood--a
+priesthood that does belong to her, whatever the Church may say.
+
+Her delicate organs, her fondness for the least detail, her tender
+consciousness of life, all invite her to become Life’s shrewd
+interpreter in every science of observation. With her tenderly pitiful
+heart, her power of divining goodness, she goes of her own accord to
+the work of doctoring. There is but small difference between children
+and sick people. For both of them we need the Woman.
+
+She will return into the paths of science, whither, as a smile of
+nature, gentleness and humanity will enter by her side.
+
+The Anti-natural is growing dim, nor is the day far off when its
+eclipse will bring back daylight to the earth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The gods may vanish, but God is still there. Nay, but the less we see
+of them, the more manifest is He. He is like a lighthouse eclipsed at
+moments, but alway shining again more clearly than before.
+
+It is a remarkable thing to see Him discussed so fully, even in the
+journals themselves. People begin to feel that all questions of
+education, government, childhood, and womanhood, turn on that one
+ruling and underlying question. As God is, so must the world be.
+
+From this we gather that the times are ripe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So near, indeed, is that religious dayspring that I seemed momently to
+see it breaking over the desert where I brought this book to an end.
+
+How full of light, how rough and beautiful looked this desert of mine!
+I had made my nest on a rock in the mighty roadstead of Toulon, in a
+lowly villa surrounded with aloe and cypress, with the prickly pear
+and the wild rose. Before me was a spreading basin of sparkling sea;
+behind me the bare-topt amphitheatre, where, at their ease, might sit
+the Parliament of the world.
+
+This spot, so very African, bedazzles you in the daytime with
+flashings as of steel. But of a winter morning, especially in
+December, it seemed full of a divine mystery. I was wont to rise
+exactly at six o’clock, when the signal for work was boomed from the
+Arsenal gun. From six to seven I enjoyed a delicious time of it. The
+quick--may I call it piercing?--twinkle of the stars made the moon
+ashamed, and fought against the daybreak. Before its coming, and
+during the struggle between two lights, the wonderful clearness of the
+air would let things be seen and heard at incredible distances. Two
+leagues away I could make everything out. The smallest detail about
+the distant mountains, a tree, a cliff, a house, a bend in the ground,
+was thrown out with the most delicate sharpness. New senses seemed to
+be given me. I found myself another being, released from bondage, free
+to soar away on my new wings. It was an hour of utter purity, all hard
+and clear. I said to myself, “How is this? Am I still a man?”
+
+An unspeakable bluish hue, respected, left untouched by the rosy dawn,
+hung round me like a sacred ether, a spirit that made all things
+spiritual.
+
+One felt, however, a forward movement, through changes soft and slow.
+The great marvel was drawing nearer, to shine forth and eclipse all
+other things. It came on in its own calm way: you felt no wish to
+hurry it. The coming transfiguration, the expected witcheries of the
+light, took not a whit away from the deep enjoyment of being still
+under the divinity of night, still, as it were, half-hidden, and slow
+to emerge from so wonderful a spell.... Come forth, O Sun! We worship
+thee while yet unseen, but will reap all of good we yet may from these
+last moments of our dream!
+
+He is about to break forth. In hope let us await his welcome.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF LEADING AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+Graesse, _Bibliotheca Magiæ_, Leipsic, 1843.
+
+_Magie Antique_--as edited by Soldan, A. Maury, &c.
+
+Calcagnini, _Miscell., Magia Amatoria Antiqua_, 1544.
+
+J. Grimm, _German Mythology_.
+
+_Acta Sanctorum._--Acta SS. Ordinis S. Benedicti.
+
+Michael Psellus, _Energie des Démons_, 1050.
+
+Cæsar of Heisterbach, _Illustria Miracula_, 1220.
+
+_Registers of the Inquisition_, 1307-1326, in Limburch; and the
+extracts given by Magi, Llorente, Lamothe-Langon, &c.
+
+_Directorium._ Eymerici, 1358.
+
+Llorente, _The Spanish Inquisition_.
+
+Lamothe-Langon, _Inquisition de France_.
+
+_Handbooks of the Monk-Inquisitors of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth
+Centuries_: Nider’s _Formicarius_; Sprenger’s _Malleus_.
+
+C. Bernardus’s _Lucerna_; Spina, Grillandus, &c.
+
+H. Corn. Agrippæ _Opera_, Lyons.
+
+Paracelsi _Opera_.
+
+Wyer, _De Prestigiis Dæmonum_, 1569.
+
+Bodin, _Démonomanie_, 1580.
+
+Remigius, _Demonolatria_, 1596.
+
+Del Rio, _Disquisitiones Magicæ_, 1599.
+
+Boguet, _Discours des Sorciers_, Lyons, 1605.
+
+Leloyer, _Histoire des Spectres_, Paris, 1605.
+
+Lancre, _Inconstance_, 1612: _Incredulité_, 1622.
+
+Michaëlis, _Histoire d’une Pénitente, &c._, 1613.
+
+Tranquille, _Relation de Loudun_, 1634.
+
+_Histoire des Diables de Loudun_ (by Aubin), 1716.
+
+_Histoire de Madeleine Bavent_, de Louviers, 1652.
+
+_Examen de Louviers. Apologie de l’Examen_ (by Yvelin), 1643.
+
+_Procès du P. Girard et de la Cadière_; Aix, 1833.
+
+_Pièces relatives à ce Procès_; 5 vols., Aix, 1833.
+
+_Factum, Chansons, relatifs, &c._ MSS. in the Toulon Library.
+
+Eugène Salverte, _Sciences Occultes_, with Introduction by Littré.
+
+A. Maury, _Les Fées_, 1843; _Magie_, 1860.
+
+Soldan, _Histoire des Procès de Sorcellerie_, 1843.
+
+Thos. Wright, _Narratives of Sorcery, &c._, 1851.
+
+L. Figuier, _Histoire du Merveilleux_, 4 vols.
+
+Ferdinand Denis, _Sciences Occultes: Monde Enchanté_.
+
+_Histoire des Sciences au Moyen Age_, by Sprenger, Pouchet, Cuvier, &c.
+
+
+Printed by Woodfall and Kinder, Angel Court, Skinner Street, London.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of La Sorcière: The Witch of the Middl
+ Ages, by Jules Michelet
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diff --git a/31420-0.zip b/31420-0.zip
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of La Sorci�re: The Witch of the Middle Ages, by 
+Jules Michelet
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: La Sorci�re: The Witch of the Middle Ages
+
+Author: Jules Michelet
+
+Translator: Lionel James Trotter
+
+Release Date: February 27, 2010 [EBook #31420]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LA SORCI�RE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Irma Spehar and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+LA SORCI�RE.
+
+J. MICHELET.
+
+LONDON:
+PRINTED BY WOODFALL AND KINDER,
+ANGEL COURT, SKINNER STREET.
+
+
+
+
+THE WITCH OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
+
+FROM THE FRENCH OF J. MICHELET.
+
+BY L. J. TROTTER.
+
+
+(_The only Authorized English Translation._)
+
+
+LONDON:
+SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, AND CO.,
+STATIONERS' HALL COURT.
+MDCCCLXIII.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+In this translation of a work rich in the raciest beauties and defects
+of an author long since made known to the British public, the present
+writer has striven to recast the trenchant humour, the scornful
+eloquence, the epigrammatic dash of Mr. Michelet, in language not all
+unworthy of such a word-master. How far he has succeeded others may be
+left to judge. In one point only is he aware of having been less true
+to his original than in theory he was bound to be. He has slurred or
+slightly altered a few of those passages which French readers take as
+a thing of course, but English ones, because of their different
+training, are supposed to eschew. A Frenchman, in short, writes for
+men, an Englishman rather for drawing-room ladies, who tolerate
+grossness only in the theatres and the columns of the newspapers. Mr.
+Michelet's subject, and his late researches, lead him into details,
+moral and physical, which among ourselves are seldom mixed up with
+themes of general talk. The coarsest of these have been pruned away,
+but enough perhaps remain to startle readers of especial prudery. The
+translator, however, felt that he had no choice between shocking
+these and sinning against his original. Readers of a larger culture
+will make allowance for such a strait, will not be so very frightened
+at an amount of plain-speaking, neither in itself immoral, nor, on the
+whole, impertinent. Had he docked his work of everything condemned by
+prudish theories, he might have made it more conventionally decent;
+but Michelet would have been puzzled to recognize himself in the poor
+maimed cripple that would then have borne his name.
+
+Nor will a reader of average shrewdness mistake the religious drift of
+a book suppressed by the Imperial underlings in the interests neither
+of religion nor of morals, but merely of Popery in its most outrageous
+form. If its attacks on Rome seem, now and then, to involve
+Christianity itself, we must allow something for excess of warmth, and
+something for the nature of inquiries which laid bare the rotten
+outgrowths of a religion in itself the purest known among men. In
+studying the so-called Ages of Faith, the author has only found them
+worthy of their truer and older title, the Ages of Darkness. It is
+against the tyranny, feudal and priestly, of those days, that he
+raises an outcry, warranted almost always by facts which a more
+mawkish philosophy refuses to see. If he is sometimes hasty and
+onesided; if the Church and the Feudal System of those days had their
+uses for the time being; it is still a gain to have the other side of
+the subject kept before us by way of counterpoise to the doctrines
+now in vogue. We need not be intolerant; but Rome is yet alive.
+
+Taken as a whole, Mr. Michelet's book cannot be called unchristian.
+Like most thoughtful minds of the day, he yearns for some nobler and
+larger creed than that of the theologians; for a creed which,
+understanding Nature, shall reconcile it with Nature's God. Nor may he
+fairly be called irreverent for talking, Frenchman like, of things
+spiritual with the same freedom as he would of things temporal.
+Perhaps in his heart of hearts he has nearly as much religious
+earnestness as they who call Dr. Colenso an infidel, and shake their
+heads at the doubtful theology of Frederic Robertson. At any rate, no
+translator who should cut or file away so special a feature of French
+feeling would be doing justice to so marked an original.
+
+For English readers who already know the concise and sober volumes of
+their countryman, Mr. Wright, the present work will offer mainly an
+interesting study of the author himself. It is a curious compound of
+rhapsody and sound reason, of history and romance, of coarse realism
+and touching poetry, such as, even in France, few save Mr. Michelet
+could have produced. Founded on truth and close inquiry, it still
+reads more like a poem than a sober history. As a beautiful
+speculation, which has nearly, but not quite, grasped the physical
+causes underlying the whole history of magic and illusion in all ages,
+it may be read with profit as well as pleasure in this age of vulgar
+spirit-rapping. But the true history of Witchcraft has yet to be
+written by some cooler hand.
+
+                                          L. T.
+
+  _May 11th, 1863._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+
+INTRODUCTION                                                        1
+  To One Wizard Ten Thousand Witches                                1
+  The Witch was the sole Physician of the People                    4
+  Terrorism of the Middle Ages                                      5
+  The Witch was the Offspring of Despair                            9
+  She in her Turn created Satan                                    12
+  Satan, Prince of the World, Physician, Innovator                 13
+  His School--of Witches, Shepherds, and Headsmen                  15
+  His Decline                                                      16
+
+
+BOOK I.
+
+CHAPTER I.--THE DEATH OF THE GODS                                  19
+  Christianity thought the World was Dying                         20
+  The World of Demons                                              24
+  The Bride of Corinth                                             26
+
+CHAPTER II.--WHY THE MIDDLE AGES FELL INTO DESPAIR                 30
+  The People make their own Legends                                31
+  But are forbidden to do so any more                              35
+  The People guard their Territory                                 38
+  But are made Serfs                                               40
+
+CHAPTER III.--THE LITTLE DEVIL OF THE FIRESIDE                     43
+  Ancient Communism of the _Villa_                                 43
+  The Hearth made independent                                      44
+  The Wife of the Serf                                             45
+  Her Loyalty to the Olden Gods                                    46
+  The Goblin                                                       53
+
+CHAPTER IV.--TEMPTATIONS                                           57
+  The Serf invokes the Spirit of Hidden Treasures                  58
+  Feudal Raids                                                     59
+  The Wife turns her Goblin into a Devil                           66
+
+CHAPTER V.--POSSESSION                                             69
+  The Advent of Gold in 1300                                       69
+  The Woman makes Terms with the Demon of Gold                     71
+  Impure Horrors of the Middle Ages                                75
+  The Village Lady                                                 78
+  Hatred of the Lady of the Castle                                 84
+
+CHAPTER VI.--THE COVENANT                                          88
+  The Woman-serf gives Herself up to the Devil                     90
+  The Moor and the Witch                                           93
+
+CHAPTER VII.--THE KING OF THE DEAD                                 96
+  The dear Dead are brought back to Earth                          97
+  The Idea of Satan is softened                                   103
+
+CHAPTER VIII.--THE PRINCE OF NATURE                               106
+  The Thaw in the Middle Ages                                     108
+  The Witch calls forth the East                                  109
+  She conceives Nature                                            112
+
+CHAPTER IX.--THE DEVIL A PHYSICIAN                                116
+  Diseases of the Middle Ages                                     116
+  The _Comforters_, or Solane�                                    121
+  The Middle Ages anti-natural                                    128
+
+CHAPTER X.--CHARMS AND PHILTRES                                   131
+  Blue-Beard and Griselda                                         133
+  The Witch consulted by the Castle                               137
+  Her Malice                                                      141
+
+CHAPTER XI.--THE REBELS' COMMUNION--SABBATHS--THE BLACK MASS      143
+  The old Half-heathen Sabasies                                   144
+  The Four Acts of the Black Mass                                 150
+  Act I. The Introit, the Kiss, the Banquet                       151
+  Act II. The Offering: the Woman as Altar and Host               153
+
+CHAPTER XII.--THE SEQUEL--LOVE AND DEATH--SATAN DISAPPEARS        157
+  Act III. Love of near Kindred                                   158
+  Act IV. Death of Satan and the Witch                            165
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+CHAPTER I.--THE WITCH IN HER DECLINE--SATAN MULTIPLIED AND MADE
+    COMMON                                                        168
+  Witches and Wizards employed by the Great                       172
+  The Wolf-lady                                                   174
+  The last Philtre                                                179
+
+CHAPTER II.--PERSECUTIONS                                         180
+  The Hammer for Witches                                          181
+  Satan Master of the World                                       193
+
+CHAPTER III.--CENTURY OF TOLERATION IN FRANCE: REACTION           198
+  Spain begins when France stops short                            199
+  Reaction: French Lawyers burn as many as the Priests            203
+
+CHAPTER IV.--THE WITCHES OF THE BASQUE COUNTRY                    207
+  They give Instructions to their own Judges                      212
+
+CHAPTER V.--SATAN TURNS PRIEST                                    218
+  Jokes of the Modern Sabbath                                     221
+
+CHAPTER VI.--GAUFFRIDI: 1610                                      228
+  Wizard Priests prosecuted by Monks                              232
+  Jealousies of the Nuns                                          234
+
+CHAPTER VII.--THE DEMONIACS OF LOUDUN: URBAN GRANDIER             255
+  The Vicar a fine Speaker, and a Wizard                          263
+  Sickly Rages of the Nuns                                        264
+
+CHAPTER VIII.--THE DEMONIACS OF LOUVIERS--MADELINE BAVENT         277
+  Illuminism: the Devil a Quietist                                277
+  Fight between the Devil and the Doctor                          285
+
+CHAPTER IX.--THE DEVIL TRIUMPHS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY        294
+
+CHAPTER X.--FATHER GIRARD AND LA CADI�RE                          303
+
+CHAPTER XI.--CADI�RE IN THE CONVENT                               339
+
+CHAPTER XII.--TRIAL OF CADI�RE                                    367
+
+EPILOGUE                                                          395
+  Can Satan and Jesus be reconciled?                              396
+  The Witch is dead, but the Fairy will live again                399
+  Oncoming of the Religious Revival                               399
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+It was said by Sprenger, before the year 1500, "_Heresy of witches_,
+not of wizards, must we call it, for these latter are of very small
+account." And by another, in the time of Louis XIII.: "To one wizard,
+ten thousand witches."
+
+"Witches they are by nature." It is a gift peculiar to woman and her
+temperament. By birth a fay, by the regular recurrence of her ecstasy
+she becomes a sibyl. By her love she grows into an enchantress. By her
+subtlety, by a roguishness often whimsical and beneficent, she becomes
+a Witch; she works her spells; does at any rate lull our pains to rest
+and beguile them.
+
+All primitive races have the same beginning, as so many books of
+travel have shown. While the man is hunting and fighting, the woman
+works with her wits, with her imagination: she brings forth dreams and
+gods. On certain days she becomes a seeress, borne on boundless wings
+of reverie and desire. The better to reckon up the seasons, she
+watches the sky; but her heart belongs to earth none the less. Young
+and flower-like herself, she looks down toward the enamoured flowers,
+and forms with them a personal acquaintance. As a woman, she beseeches
+them to heal the objects of her love.
+
+In a way so simple and touching do all religion and all science begin.
+Ere long everything will get parcelled out; we shall mark the
+beginning of the professional man as juggler, astrologer, or prophet,
+necromancer, priest, physician. But at first the woman is everything.
+
+A religion so strong and hearty as that of Pagan Greece begins with
+the Sibyl to end in the Witch. The former, a lovely maiden in the
+broad daylight, rocked its cradle, endowed it with a charm and glory
+of its own. Presently it fell sick, lost itself in the darkness of the
+Middle Ages, and was hidden away by the Witch in woods and wilds:
+there, sustained by her compassionate daring, it was made to live
+anew. Thus, of every religion woman is the mother, the gentle
+guardian, the faithful nurse. With her the gods fare like men: they
+are born and die upon her bosom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Alas! her loyalty costs her dear. Ye magian queens of Persia;
+bewitching Circe; sublime Sibyl! Into what have ye grown, and how
+cruel the change that has come upon you! She who from her throne in
+the East taught men the virtues of plants and the courses of the
+stars; who, on her Delphic tripod beamed over with the god of light,
+as she gave forth her oracle to a world upon its knees;--she also it
+is whom, a thousand years later, people hunt down like a wild beast;
+following her into the public places, where she is dishonoured,
+worried, stoned, or set upon the burning coals!
+
+For this poor wretch the priesthood can never have done with their
+faggots, nor the people with their insults, nor the children with
+their stones. The poet, childlike, flings her one more stone, for a
+woman the cruellest of all. On no grounds whatever, he imagines her to
+have been always old and ugly. The word "witch" brings before us the
+frightful old women of _Macbeth_. But their cruel processes teach us
+the reverse of that. Numbers perished precisely for being young and
+beautiful.
+
+The Sibyl foretold a fortune, the Witch accomplishes one. Here is the
+great, the true difference between them. The latter calls forth a
+destiny, conjures it, works it out. Unlike the Cassandra of old, who
+awaited mournfully the future she foresaw so well, this woman herself
+creates the future. Even more than Circe, than Medea, does she bear in
+her hand the rod of natural miracle, with Nature herself as sister and
+helpmate. Already she wears the features of a modern Prometheus. With
+her industry begins, especially that queen-like industry which heals
+and restores mankind. As the Sibyl seemed to gaze upon the morning, so
+she, contrariwise, looks towards the west; but it is just that gloomy
+west, which long before dawn--as happens among the tops of the
+Alps--gives forth a flush anticipant of day.
+
+Well does the priest discern the danger, the bane, the alarming
+rivalry, involved in this priestess of nature whom he makes a show of
+despising. From the gods of yore she has conceived other gods. Close
+to the Satan of the Past we see dawning within her a Satan of the
+Future.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The only physician of the people for a thousand years was the Witch.
+The emperors, kings, popes, and richer barons had indeed their doctors
+of Salerno, their Moors and Jews; but the bulk of people in every
+state, the world as it might well be called, consulted none but the
+_Saga_, or wise-woman. When she could not cure them, she was insulted,
+was called a Witch. But generally, from a respect not unmixed with
+fear, she was called good lady or fair lady (_belle dame_--_bella
+donna_[1]), the very name we give to the fairies.
+
+    [1] Whence our old word _Beldam_, the more courteous meaning
+    of which is all but lost in its ironical one.--TRANS.
+
+Soon there came upon her the lot which still befalls her favourite
+plant, belladonna, and some other wholesome poisons which she employed
+as antidotes to the great plagues of the Middle Ages. Children and
+ignorant passers-by would curse those dismal flowers before they knew
+them. Affrighted by their questionable hues, they shrink back, keep
+far aloof from them. And yet among them are the _comforters_
+(Solane�) which, when discreetly employed, have cured so many, have
+lulled so many sufferings to sleep.
+
+You find them in ill-looking spots, growing all lonely and ill-famed
+amidst ruins and rubbish-heaps. Therein lies one other point of
+resemblance between these flowers and her who makes use of them. For
+where else than in waste wildernesses could live the poor wretch whom
+all men thus evilly entreated; the woman accursed and proscribed as a
+poisoner, even while she used to heal and save; as the betrothed of
+the Devil and of evil incarnate, for all the good which, according to
+the great physician of the Renaissance, she herself had done? When
+Paracelsus, at Basle, in 1527, threw all medicine into the fire,[2] he
+avowed that he knew nothing but what he had learnt from witches.
+
+    [2] Alluding to the bonfire which Paracelsus, as professor of
+    medicine, made of the works of Galen and Avicenna.--TRANS.
+
+This was worth a requital, and they got it. They were repaid with
+tortures, with the stake. For them new punishments, new pangs, were
+expressly devised. They were tried in a lump; they were condemned by a
+single word. Never had there been such wastefulness of human life. Not
+to speak of Spain, that classic land of the faggot, where Moor and Jew
+are always accompanied by the Witch, there were burnt at Tr�ves seven
+thousand, and I know not how many at Toulouse; five hundred at Geneva
+in three months of 1513; at Wurtzburg eight hundred, almost in one
+batch, and fifteen hundred at Bamberg; these two latter being very
+small bishoprics! Even Ferdinand II., the savage Emperor of the Thirty
+Years' War, was driven, bigot as he was, to keep a watch on these
+worthy bishops, else they would have burned all their subjects. In the
+Wurtzburg list I find one Wizard a schoolboy, eleven years old; a
+Witch of fifteen: and at Bayonne two, infernally beautiful, of
+seventeen years.
+
+Mark how, at certain seasons, hatred wields this one word _Witch_, as
+a means of murdering whom she will. Woman's jealousy, man's greed,
+take ready hold of so handy a weapon. Is such a one wealthy? _She is a
+Witch._ Is that girl pretty? _She is a Witch._ You will even see the
+little beggar-woman, La Murgui, leave a death-mark with that fearful
+stone on the forehead of a great lady, the too beautiful dame of
+Lancinena.
+
+The accused, when they can, avert the torture by killing themselves.
+Remy, that excellent judge of Lorraine, who burned some eight hundred
+of them, crows over this very fear. "So well," said he, "does my way
+of justice answer, that of those who were arrested the other day,
+sixteen, without further waiting, strangled themselves forthwith."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Over the long track of my History, during the thirty years which I
+have devoted to it, this frightful literature of witchcraft passed to
+and fro repeatedly through my hands. First I exhausted the manuals of
+the Inquisition, the asinine foolings of the Dominicans. (_Scourges_,
+_Hammers_, _Ant-hills_, _Floggings_, _Lanterns_, &c., are the titles
+of their books.) Next, I read the Parliamentarists, the lay judges who
+despised the monks they succeeded, but were every whit as foolish
+themselves. One word further would I say of them here: namely, this
+single remark, that, from 1300 to 1600, and yet later, but one kind of
+justice may be seen. Barring a small interlude in the Parliament of
+Paris, the same stupid savagery prevails everywhere, at all hours.
+Even great parts are of no use here. As soon as witchcraft comes into
+question, the fine-natured De Lancre, a Bordeaux magistrate and
+forward politician under Henry IV., sinks back to the level of a
+Nider, a Sprenger; of the monkish ninnies of the fifteenth century.
+
+It fills one with amazement to see these different ages, these men of
+diverse culture, fail in taking the least step forward. Soon, however,
+you begin clearly to understand how all were checked alike, or let us
+rather say blinded, made hopelessly drunk and savage, by the poison of
+their guiding principle. That principle lies in the statement of a
+radical injustice: "On account of one man all are lost; are not only
+punished but worthy of punishment; _depraved and perverted
+beforehand_, dead to God even before their birth. The very babe at the
+breast is damned."
+
+Who says so? Everyone, even Bossuet himself. A leading doctor in Rome,
+Spina, a Master of the Holy Palace, formulates the question neatly:
+"Why does God suffer the innocent to die?--For very good reasons:
+even if they do not die on account of their own sins, they are always
+liable to death as guilty of the original sin." (_De Strigibus_, ch.
+9.)
+
+From this atrocity spring two results, the one pertaining to justice,
+the other to logic. The judge is never at fault in his work: the
+person brought before him is certainly guilty, the more so if he makes
+a defence. Justice need never beat her head, or work herself into a
+heat, in order to distinguish the truth from the falsehood. Everyhow
+she starts from a foregone conclusion. Again, the logician, the
+schoolman, has only to analyse the soul, to take count of the shades
+it passes through, of its manifold nature, its inward strifes and
+battles. He had no need, as we have, to explain how that soul may grow
+wicked step by step. At all such niceties and groping efforts, how, if
+even he could understand them, would he laugh and wag his head! And,
+oh! how gracefully then would quiver those splendid ears which deck
+his empty skull!
+
+Especially in treating of the _compact with the Devil_, that awful
+covenant whereby, for the poor profit of one day, the spirit sells
+itself to everlasting torture, we of another school would seek to
+trace anew that road accursed, that frightful staircase of mishaps and
+crimes, which had brought it to a depth so low. Much, however, cares
+our fine fellow for all that! To him soul and Devil seem born for each
+other, insomuch that on the first temptation, for a whim, a desire, a
+passing fancy, the soul will throw itself at one stroke into so
+horrible an extremity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Neither do I find that the moderns have made much inquiry into the
+moral chronology of witchcraft. They cling too much to the connection
+between antiquity and the Middle Ages; connection real indeed, but
+slight, of small importance. Neither from the magician of old, nor the
+seeress of Celts and Germans, comes forth the true Witch. The harmless
+"Sabasies" (from Bacchus Sabasius), and the petty rural "Sabbath" of
+the Middle Ages, have nothing to do with the Black Mass of the
+fourteenth century, with the grand defiance then solemnly given to
+Jesus. This fearful conception never grew out of a long chain of
+tradition. It leapt forth from the horrors of the day.
+
+At what date, then, did the Witch first appear? I say unfalteringly,
+"In the age of despair:" of that deep despair which the gentry of the
+Church engendered. Unfalteringly do I say, "The Witch is a crime of
+their own achieving."
+
+I am not to be taken up short by the excuses which their sugary
+explanations seem to furnish. "Weak was that creature, and giddy, and
+pliable under temptation. She was drawn towards evil by her lust."
+Alas! in the wretchedness, the hunger of those days, nothing of that
+kind could have ruffled her even into a hellish rage. An amorous
+woman, jealous and forsaken, a child hunted out by her step-mother, a
+mother beaten by her son (old subjects these of story), if such as
+they were ever tempted to call upon the Evil Spirit, yet all this
+would make no Witch. These poor creatures may have called on Satan,
+but it does not follow that he accepted them. They are still far, ay,
+very far from being ripe for him. They have not yet learned to hate
+God.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For the better understanding of this point, you should read those
+hateful registers which remain to us of the Inquisition, not only in
+the extracts given by Llorente, by Lamothe-Langon, &c., but in what
+remains of the original registers of Toulouse. Read them in all their
+flatness, in all their dryness, so dismal, so terribly savage. At the
+end of a few pages you feel yourself stricken with a chill; a cruel
+shiver fastens upon you; death, death, death, is traceable in every
+line. Already you are in a bier, or else in a stone cell with mouldy
+walls. Happiest of all are the killed. The horror of horrors is the
+_In pace_. This phrase it is which comes back unceasingly, like an
+ill-omened bell sounding again and again the heart's ruin of the
+living dead: always we have the same word, "Immured."
+
+Frightful machinery for crushing and flattening; most cruel press for
+shattering the soul! One turn of the screw follows another, until, all
+breathless, and with a loud crack, it has burst forth from the machine
+and fallen into the unknown world.
+
+On her first appearance the Witch has neither father nor mother, nor
+son, nor husband, nor family. She is a marvel, an aerolith, alighted
+no one knows whence. Who, in Heaven's name, would dare to draw near
+her?
+
+Her place of abode? It is in spots impracticable, in a forest of
+brambles, on a wild moor where thorn and thistle intertwining forbid
+approach. The night she passes under an old cromlech. If anyone finds
+her there, she is isolated by the common dread; she is surrounded, as
+it were, by a ring of fire.
+
+And yet--would you believe it?--she is a woman still. This very life
+of hers, dreadful though it be, tightens and braces her woman's
+energy, her womanly electricity. Hence, you may see her endowed with
+two gifts. One is the _inspiration of lucid frenzy_, which in its
+several degrees, becomes poesy, second-sight, depth of insight,
+cunning simplicity of speech, the power especially of believing in
+yourself through all your delusions. Of such a gift the man, the
+wizard, knows nothing. On his side no beginning would have been made.
+
+From this gift flows that other, the sublime power of _unaided
+conception_, that parthenogenesis which our physiologists have come to
+recognise, as touching fruitfulness of the body in the females of
+several species; and which is not less a truth with regard to the
+conceptions of the spirit.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By herself did she conceive and bring forth--what? A second self, who
+resembles her in his self-delusions. The son of her hatred, conceived
+upon her love; for without love can nothing be created. For all the
+alarm this child gave her, she has become so well again, is so happily
+engrossed with this new idol, that she places it straightway upon her
+altar, to worship it, yield her life up to it, and offer herself up as
+a living and perfect sacrifice. Very often she will even say to her
+judge, "There is but one thing I fear; that I shall not suffer enough
+for him."--(_Lancre._)
+
+Shall I tell you what the child's first effort was? It was a fearful
+burst of laughter. Has he not cause for mirth on his broad prairie,
+far away from the Spanish dungeons and the "immured" of Toulouse? The
+whole world is his _In pace_. He comes, and goes, and walks to and
+fro. His is the boundless forest, his the desert with its far
+horizons, his the whole earth, in the fulness of its teeming girdle.
+The Witch in her tenderness calls him "_Robin mine_," the name of that
+bold outlaw, the joyous Robin Hood, who lived under the green bowers.
+She delights too in calling him fondly by such names as _Little
+Green_, _Pretty-Wood_, _Greenwood_; after the little madcap's
+favourite haunts. He had hardly seen a thicket when he took to playing
+the truant.[3]
+
+    [3] Here, as in some other passages, the play of words in the
+    original is necessarily lost.--TRANS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What astounds one most is, that at one stroke the Witch should have
+achieved an actual Being. He bears about him every token of reality.
+We have heard and seen him; anyone could draw his likeness.
+
+The Saints, those darling sons of the house, with their dreams and
+meditations make but little stir; _they look forward waitingly_, as
+men assured of their part in Elysium. What little energy they have is
+all centred in the narrow round of _Imitation_; a word which condenses
+the whole of the Middle Ages. He on the other hand--this accursed
+bastard whose only lot is the scourge--has no idea of waiting. He is
+always seeking and will never rest. He busies himself with all things
+between earth and heaven. He is exceedingly curious; will dig, dive,
+ferret, and poke his nose everywhere. At the _consummatum est_ he only
+laughs, the little scoffer! He is always saying "Further," or
+"Forward." Moreover, he is not hard to please. He takes every rebuff;
+picks up every windfall. For instance, when the Church throws out
+nature as impure and doubtworthy, Satan fastens on her for his own
+adornment. Nay, more; he employs her, and makes her useful to him as
+the fountain-head of the arts; thus accepting the awful name with
+which others would brand him; to wit, the _Prince of the World_.
+
+Some one rashly said, "Woe to those who laugh." Thus from the first
+was Satan intrusted with too pretty a part; he had the sole right of
+laughing, and of declaring it an _amusement_--rather let us say _a
+necessity_; for laughing is essentially a natural function. Life
+would be unbearable if we could not laugh, at least in our
+afflictions.
+
+Looking on life as nothing but a trial, the Church is careful not to
+prolong it. Her medicine is resignation, the looking for and the hope
+of death. A broad field this for Satan! He becomes the physician, the
+healer of the living. Better still, he acts as comforter: he is good
+enough to shew us our dead, to call up the shades of our beloved.
+
+One more trifle the Church rejected, namely, logic or free reason.
+Here was a special dainty, to which _the other_ greedily helped
+himself. The Church had carefully builded up a small _In pace_,
+narrow, low-roofed, lighted by one dim opening, a mere cranny. That
+was called _The School_. Into it were turned loose a few shavelings,
+with this commandment, "Be free." They all fell lame. In three or four
+centuries the paralysis was confirmed, and Ockham's standpoint is the
+very same as Ab�lard's.[4]
+
+    [4] Ab�lard flourished in the twelfth, William of Ockham
+    (pupil of Duns Scotus) in the fourteenth century.--TRANS.
+
+It is pleasant to track the Renaissance up to such a point. The
+Renaissance took place indeed, but how? Through the Satanic daring of
+those who pierced the vault, through the efforts of the damned who
+were bent on seeing the sky. And it took place yet more largely away
+from the schools and the men of letters, in the _School of the Bush_,
+where Satan had set up a class for the Witch and the shepherd.
+
+Perilous teaching it was, if so it happened; but the very dangers of
+it heightened the eager passion, the uncontrollable yearning to see
+and to know. Thus began those wicked sciences, physic debarred from
+poisoning, and that odious anatomy. There, along with his survey of
+the heavens, the shepherd who kept watch upon the stars applied also
+his shameful nostrums, made his essays upon the bodies of animals. The
+Witch would bring out a corpse stolen from the neighbouring cemetery;
+and, for the first time, at risk of being burned, you might gaze upon
+that heavenly wonder, "which men"--as M. Serres has well said--"are
+foolish enough to bury, instead of trying to understand."
+
+Paracelsus, the only doctor whom Satan admitted there, saw yet a third
+worker, who, stealing at times into that dark assembly, displayed
+there his surgical art. This was the surgeon of those happy days, the
+headsman stout of hand, who could play patly enough with the fire,
+could break bones and set them again; who if he killed, would
+sometimes save, by hanging one only for a certain time.
+
+By the more sacrilegious of its essays this convict university of
+witches, shepherds, and headsmen, emboldened the other, obliged its
+rival to study. For everyone wanted to live. The Witch would have got
+hold of everything: people would for ever have turned their backs on
+the doctor. And so the Church was fain to suffer, to countenance these
+crimes. She avowed her belief in _good poisons_ (Grillandus). She
+found herself driven and constrained to allow of public dissections.
+In 1306 one woman, in 1315 another, was opened and dissected by the
+Italian Mondino. Here was a holy revelation, the discovery of a
+greater world than that of Christopher Columbus! Fools shuddered or
+howled; but wise men fell upon their knees.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With such conquests the Devil was like enough to live on. Never could
+the Church alone have put an end to him. The stake itself was useless,
+save for some political objects.
+
+Men had presently the wit to cleave Satan's realm in twain. Against
+the Witch, his daughter, his bride, they armed his son, the doctor.
+Heartily, utterly as the Church loathed the latter, yet to extinguish
+the Witch, she established his monopoly nevertheless. In the
+fourteenth century she proclaimed, that any woman who dared to heal
+others _without having duly studied_, was a witch and should therefore
+die.
+
+But how was she to study in public? Fancy what a scene of mingled fun
+and horror would have occurred, if the poor savage had risked an
+entrance into the schools! What games and merry-makings there would
+have been! On Midsummer Day they used to chain cats together and burn
+them in the fire. But to tie up a Witch in that hell of caterwaulers,
+a Witch yelling and roasting, what fun it would have been for that
+precious crew of monklings and cowlbearers!
+
+In due time we shall see the decline of Satan. Sad to tell, we shall
+find him pacified, turned into _a good old fellow_. He will be robbed
+and plundered, until of the two masks he wore at the Sabbath, the
+dirtiest is taken by Tartuffe. His spirit is still everywhere, but of
+his bodily self, in losing the Witch he lost all. The wizards were
+only wearisome.
+
+Now that we have hurled him so far downwards, are we fully aware of
+what has happened? Was he not an important actor, an essential item in
+the great religious machine just now slightly out of gear? All
+organisms that work properly are twofold, twosided. Life can otherwise
+not go on at all. It is a kind of balance between two forces,
+opposite, symmetrical, but unequal; the lower answering to the other
+as its counterpoise. The higher chafes at it, seeks to put it down. So
+doing, it is all wrong.
+
+When Colbert, in 1672, got rid of Satan, with very little ceremony, by
+forbidding the judges to entertain pleas of witchcraft, the sturdy
+Parliament of Normandy with its sound Norman logic pointed out the
+dangerous drift of such a decision. The Devil is nothing less than a
+dogma holding on to all the rest. If you meddle with the Eternally
+Conquered, are you not meddling with the Conqueror likewise? To doubt
+the acts of the former, leads to doubting the acts of the second, the
+miracles he wrought for the very purpose of withstanding the Devil.
+The pillars of heaven are grounded in the Abyss. He who thoughtlessly
+removes that base infernal, may chance to split up Paradise itself.
+
+Colbert could not listen, having other business to mind. But the Devil
+perhaps gave heed and was comforted. Amidst such minor means of
+earning a livelihood as spirit-rapping or table-turning, he grows
+resigned, and believes at least that he will not die alone.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE DEATH OF THE GODS.
+
+
+Certain authors have declared that, shortly before the triumph of
+Christianity, a voice mysterious ran along the shores of the �gean
+Sea, crying, "Great Pan is dead!" The old universal god of nature was
+no more; and great was the joy thereat. Men fancied that with the
+death of nature temptation itself was dead. After the troublings of so
+long a storm, the soul of man was at length to find rest.
+
+Was it merely a question touching the end of that old worship, its
+overthrow, and the eclipse of old religious rites? By no means.
+Consult the earliest Christian records, and in every line you may read
+the hope, that nature is about to vanish, life to be extinguished;
+that the end of the world, in short, is very near. It is all over with
+the gods of life, who have spun out its mockeries to such a length.
+Everything is falling, breaking up, rushing down headlong. The whole
+is becoming as nought: "Great Pan is dead!"
+
+It was nothing new that the gods must perish. Many an ancient worship
+was grounded in that very idea. Osiris, Adonis die indeed in order to
+rise again. On the stage itself, in plays which were only acted for
+the feast days of the gods, �schylus expressly averred by the mouth of
+Prometheus, that some day they should suffer death: but how? As
+conquered and laid low by the Titans, the ancient powers of nature.
+
+Here, however, things are quite otherwise. Alike in generals and
+particulars, in the past and the future, would the early Christians
+have cursed Nature herself. So utterly did they condemn her, as to
+find the Devil incarnate in a flower. Swiftly may the angels come
+again, who erst overwhelmed the cities of the Dead Sea! Oh, that they
+may sweep off, may crumple up as a veil the hollow frame of this
+world; may at length deliver the saints from their long trial!
+
+The Evangelist said, "The day is coming:" the Fathers, "It is coming
+immediately." From the breaking-up of the Empire and the invasion of
+the Barbarians, St. Augustin draws the hope that very soon no city
+would remain but the city of God.
+
+And yet, how hard of dying is the world; how stubbornly bent on
+living! Like Hezekiah, it begs a respite, one turn more of the dial.
+Well, then, be it so until the year one thousand. But thereafter, not
+one day.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Are we quite sure of what has been so often repeated, that the gods of
+old had come to an end, themselves wearied and sickened of living;
+that they were so disheartened as almost to send in their resignation;
+that Christianity had only to blow upon these empty shades?
+
+They point to the gods in Rome; they point out those in the Capitol,
+admitted there only by a kind of preliminary death, on the surrender,
+I might say, of all their local pith; as having disowned their
+country, as having ceased to be the representative spirits of the
+nations. In order to receive them, indeed, Rome had performed on them
+a cruel operation: they were enervated, bleached. Those great
+centralized deities became in their official life the mournful
+functionaries of the Roman Empire. But the decline of that Olympian
+aristocracy had in no wise drawn down the host of home-born gods, the
+mob of deities still keeping hold of the boundless country-sides, of
+the woods, the hills, the fountains; still intimately blended with the
+life of the country. These gods abiding in the heart of oaks, in
+waters deep and rushing, could not be driven therefrom.
+
+Who says so? The Church. She rudely gainsays her own words. Having
+proclaimed their death, she is indignant because they live. Time after
+time, by the threatening voice of her councils[5] she gives them
+notice of their death--and lo! they are living still.
+
+    [5] See Mansi, Baluze; Council of Arles, 442; of Tours, 567;
+    of Leptines, 743; the Capitularies, &c., and even Gerson,
+    about 1400.
+
+"They are devils."--Then they must be alive. Failing to make an end of
+them, men suffer the simple folk to clothe, to disguise them. By the
+help of legends they come to be baptized, even to be foisted upon the
+Church. But at least they are converted? Not yet. We catch them
+stealthily subsisting in their own heathen character.
+
+Where are they? In the desert, on the moor, in the forest? Ay; but,
+above all, in the house. They are kept up by the most intimate
+household usages. The wife guards and hides them in her household
+things, even in her bed. With her they have the best place in the
+world, better than the temple,--the fireside.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Never was revolution so violent as that of Theodosius. Antiquity shows
+no trace of such proscription of any worship. The Persian
+fire-worshipper might, in the purity of his heroism, have insulted the
+visible deities, but he let them stand nevertheless. He greatly
+favoured the Jews, protecting and employing them. Greece, daughter of
+the light, made merry with the gods of darkness, the tunbellied
+Cabiri; but yet she bore with them, adopted them as workmen, even to
+shaping out of them her own Vulcan. Rome in her majesty welcomed not
+only Etruria, but even the rural gods of the old Italian labourer. She
+persecuted the Druids, but only as the centre of a dangerous national
+resistance.
+
+Christianity conquering sought and thought to slay the foe. It
+demolished the schools, by proscribing logic and uprooting the
+philosophers, whom Valens slaughtered. It razed or emptied the
+temples, shivered to pieces the symbols. The new legend would have
+been propitious to the family, had the father not been cancelled in
+Saint Joseph; had the mother been set up as an educatress, as having
+morally brought forth Jesus. A fruitful road there was, but abandoned
+at the very outset through the effort to attain a high but barren
+purity.
+
+So Christianity turned into that lonely path where the world was going
+of itself; the path of a celibacy in vain opposed by the laws of the
+emperors. Down this slope it was hurled headlong by the establishment
+of monkery.
+
+But in the desert was man alone? The Devil kept him company with all
+manner of temptations. He could not help himself, he was driven to
+create anew societies, nay whole cities of anchorites. We all know
+those dismal towns of monks which grew up in the Thebaid; how wild,
+unruly a spirit dwelt among them; how deadly were their descents on
+Alexandria. They talked of being troubled, beset by the Devil; and
+they told no lie.
+
+A huge gap was made in the world; and who was to fill it? The
+Christians said, The Devil, everywhere the Devil: _ubique d�mon_.[6]
+
+    [6] See the Lives of the Desert Fathers, and the authors
+    quoted by A. Maurie, _Magie_, 317. In the fourth century, the
+    Messalians, thinking themselves full of devils, spat and blew
+    their noses without ceasing; made incredible efforts to spit
+    them forth.
+
+Greece, like all other nations, had her _energumens_, who were sore
+tried, possessed by spirits. The relation there is quite external; the
+seeming likeness is really none at all. Here we have no spirits of any
+kind: they are but black children of the Abyss, the ideal of
+waywardness. Thenceforth we see them everywhere, those poor
+melancholics, loathing, shuddering at their own selves. Think what it
+must be to fancy yourself double, to believe in that _other_, that
+cruel host who goes and comes and wanders within you, making you roam
+at his pleasure among deserts, over precipices! You waste and weaken
+more and more; and the weaker grows your wretched body, the more is it
+worried by the devil. In woman especially these tyrants dwell, making
+her blown and swollen. They fill her with an infernal _wind_, they
+brew in her storms and tempests, play with her as the whim seizes
+them, drive her to wickedness, to despair.
+
+And not ourselves only, but all nature, alas! becomes demoniac. If
+there is a devil in the flower, how much more in the gloomy forest!
+The light we think so pure teems with children of the night. The
+heavens themselves--O blasphemy!--are full of hell. That divine
+morning star, whose glorious beams not seldom lightened a Socrates, an
+Archimedes, a Plato, what is it now become? A devil, the archfiend
+Lucifer. In the eventime again it is the devil Venus who draws me into
+temptation by her light so soft and mild.
+
+That such a society should wax wroth and terrible is not surprising.
+Indignant at feeling itself so weak against devils, it persecutes them
+everywhere, in the temples, at the altars once of the ancient worship,
+then of the heathen martyrs. Let there be more feasts?--they will
+likely be so many gatherings of idolaters. The Family itself becomes
+suspected: for custom might bring it together round the ancient Lares.
+And why should there be a family?--the empire is an empire of monks.
+
+But the individual man himself, thus dumb and isolated though he be,
+still watches the sky, still honours his ancient gods whom he finds
+anew in the stars. "This is he," said the Emperor Theodosius, "who
+causes famines and all the plagues of the empire." Those terrible
+words turned the blind rage of the people loose upon the harmless
+Pagan. Blindly the law unchained all its furies against the law.
+
+Ye gods of Eld, depart into your tombs! Get ye extinguished, gods of
+Love, of Life, of Light! Put on the monk's cowl. Maidens, become nuns.
+Wives, forsake your husbands; or, if ye will look after the house, be
+unto them but cold sisters.
+
+But is all this possible? What man's breath shall be strong enough to
+put out at one effort the burning lamp of God? These rash endeavours
+of an impious piety may evoke miracles strange and monstrous. Tremble,
+guilty that ye are!
+
+Often in the Middle Ages will recur the mournful tale of the Bride of
+Corinth. Told at a happy moment by Phlegon, Adrian's freedman, it
+meets us again in the twelfth, and yet again in the sixteenth century,
+as the deep reproof, the invincible protest of nature herself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"A young man of Athens went to Corinth, to the house of one who had
+promised him his daughter. Himself being still a heathen, he knew not
+that the family which he thought to enter had just turned Christian.
+It is very late when he arrives. They are all gone to rest, except the
+mother, who serves up for him the hospitable repast and then leaves
+him to sleep. Dead tired, he drops down. Scarce was he fallen asleep,
+when a figure entered the room: 'tis a girl all clothed and veiled in
+white; on her forehead a fillet of black and gold. She sees him. In
+amazement she lifts her white hand: 'Am I, then, such a stranger in
+the house already? Alas, poor recluse!... But I am ashamed, and
+withdraw. Sleep on.'
+
+"'Stay, fair maiden! Here are Bacchus, Ceres, and with thee comes
+Love. Fear not, look not so pale!'
+
+"'Ah! Away from me, young man! I have nothing more to do with
+happiness. By a vow my mother made in her sickness my youth and my
+life are bound for ever. The gods have fled, and human victims now are
+our only sacrifices.'
+
+"'Ha! can it be thou, thou, my darling betrothed, who wast given me
+from my childhood? The oath of our fathers bound us for evermore under
+the blessing of heaven. Maiden, be mine!'
+
+"'No, my friend, not I. Thou shalt have my younger sister. If I moan
+in my chilly dungeon, do thou in her arms think of me, of me wasting
+away and thinking only of thee; of me whom the earth is about to cover
+again.'
+
+"'Nay, I swear by this flame, the torch of Hymen, thou shalt come home
+with me to my father. Rest thee, my own beloved.'
+
+"As a wedding-gift he offers her a cup of gold. She gives him her
+chain, but instead of the cup desires a curl of his hair.
+
+"It is the hour of spirits; her pale lip drinks up the dark blood-red
+wine. He too drinks greedily after her. He calls on the god of Love.
+She still resisted, though her poor heart was dying thereat. But he
+grows desperate, and falls weeping on the couch. Anon she throws
+herself by his side.
+
+"'Oh! how ill thy sorrow makes me! Yet, if thou wast to touch me----
+Oh, horror!--white as the snow, and cold as ice, such, ah me! is thy
+bride.'
+
+"'I will warm thee again: come to me, wert thou come from the very
+grave.'
+
+"Sighs and kisses many do they exchange.
+
+"'Dost thou feel how warm I am?'
+
+"Love twines and holds them fast. Tears mingle with their joy. She
+changes with the fire she drinks from his mouth: her icy blood is
+aglow with passion; but the heart in her bosom will not beat.
+
+"But the mother was there listening. Soft vows, cries of wailing and
+of pleasure.
+
+"'Hush, the cock is crowing: to-morrow night!' Then with kiss on kiss
+they say farewell.
+
+"In wrath the mother enters; sees what? Her daughter. He would have
+hidden her, covered her up. But freeing herself from him, she grew
+from the couch up to the roof.
+
+"'O mother, mother, you grudge me a pleasant night; you would drive me
+from this cosy spot! Was it not enough to have wrapped me in my
+winding-sheet and borne me to the grave? A greater power has lifted up
+the stone. In vain did your priests drone over the trench they dug for
+me. Of what use are salt and water, where burns the fire of youth? The
+earth cannot freeze up love. You made a promise; I have just reclaimed
+my own.
+
+"'Alas, dear friend, thou must die: thou wouldst but pine and dry up
+here. I have thy hair; it will be white to-morrow.... Mother, one last
+prayer! Open my dark dungeon, set up a stake, and let the loving one
+find rest in the flames. Let the sparks fly upward and the ashes
+redden. We will go to our olden gods.'"[7]
+
+    [7] Here I have suppressed a shocking phrase. Goethe, so
+    noble in the form, is not so in the spirit of his poem. He
+    spoils the marvel of the legend by sullying the Greek
+    conception with a horrible Slavish idea. As they are weeping,
+    he turns the maiden into a vampire. She comes because she
+    thirsts for blood, that she may suck the blood from his
+    heart. And he makes her coldly say this impious and unclean
+    thing: "When I have done with him, I will pass on to others:
+    the young blood shall fall a prey to my fury."
+
+    In the Middle Ages this story put on a grotesque garb, by way
+    of frightening us with the _Devil Venus_. On the finger of
+    her statue a young man imprudently places a ring, which she
+    clasps tight, guarding it like a bride, and going in the
+    night to his couch, to assert her rights. He cannot rid
+    himself of his infernal spouse without an exorcism. The same
+    tale, foolishly applied to the Virgin, is found in the
+    _Fabliaux_. If my memory does not mislead me, Luther also, in
+    his "Table Talk," takes up the old story in a very coarse
+    way, till you quite smell the body. The Spanish Del Rio
+    shifts the scene of it to Brabant. The bride dies shortly
+    before her marriage; the death-bells are rung. The bridegroom
+    rushed wildly over the country. He hears a wail. It is she
+    herself wandering about the heath. "Seest thou not"--she
+    says--"who leads me?" But he catches her up and bears her
+    home. At this point the story threatened to become too
+    moving; but the hard inquisitor, Del Rio, cuts the thread.
+    "On lifting her veil," says he, "they found only a log of
+    wood covered with the skin of a corpse." The Judge le Loyer,
+    silly though he be, has restored the older version.
+
+    Thenceforth these gloomy taletellers come to an end. The
+    story is useless when our own age begins; for then the bride
+    has triumphed. Nature comes back from the grave, not by
+    stealth, but as mistress of the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+WHY THE MIDDLE AGES FELL INTO DESPAIR.
+
+
+"Be ye as newborn babes (_quasi modo geniti infantes_); be thoroughly
+childlike in the innocence of your hearts; peaceful, forgetting all
+disputes, calmly resting under the hand of Christ." Such is the kindly
+counsel tendered by the Church to this stormy world on the morning
+after the great fall. In other words: "Volcanoes, ruins, ashes, and
+lava, become green. Ye parched plains, get covered with flowers."
+
+One thing indeed gave promise of the peace that reneweth: the schools
+were all shut up, the way of logic forsaken. A method infinitely
+simple for the doing away with argument, offered all men a gentle
+slope, down which they had nothing to do but go. If the creed was
+doubtful, the life was all traced out in the pathway of the legend.
+From first to last but the one word _Imitation_.
+
+"Imitate, and all will go well. Rehearse and copy." But is this the
+way to that true childhood which quickens the heart of man, which
+leads back to its fresh and fruitful springs? In this world that is to
+make us young and childlike, I see at first nothing but the tokens of
+age; only cunning, slavishness, want of power. What kind of
+literature is this, confronted with the glorious monuments of Greeks
+and Jews? We have just the same literary fall as happened in India
+from Brahminism to Buddhism; a twaddling flow of words after a noble
+inspiration. Books copy from books, churches from churches, until they
+cannot so much as copy. They pillage from each other: Aix-la-Chapelle
+is adorned with the marbles torn from Ravenna. It is the same with all
+the social life of those days. The bishop-king of a city, the savage
+king of a tribe, alike copy the Roman magistrates. Original as one
+might deem them, our monks in their monasteries simply restored their
+ancient _Villa_, as Chateaubriand well said. They had no notion either
+of forming a new society or of fertilizing the old. Copying from the
+monks of the East, they wanted their servants at first to be
+themselves a barren race of monkling workmen. It was in spite of them
+that the family in renewing itself renewed the world.
+
+Seeing how fast these oldsters keep on oldening; how in one age we
+fall from the wise monk St. Benedict down to the pedantic Benedict of
+Aniane;[8] we feel that such gentry were wholly guiltless of that
+great popular creation which bloomed amidst ruins; namely, the Lives
+of the Saints. If the monks wrote, it was the people made them. This
+young growth might throw out some leaves and flowers from the crannies
+of an old Roman ruin turned into a convent: but most assuredly not
+thence did it first arise. Its roots go deep into the ground: sown by
+the people and cultivated by the family, it takes help from every
+hand, from men, from women, from children. The precarious, troubled
+life of those days of violence, made these poor folk imaginative,
+prone to believe in their own dreams, as being to them full of
+comfort: strange dreams withal, rich in marvels, in fooleries; absurd,
+but charming.
+
+    [8] Benedict founded a convent at Aniane in Languedoc, in the
+    reign of Charlemagne.
+
+These families, isolated in forests and mountains, as we still see
+them in the Tyrol or the Higher Alps, and coming down thence but once
+a week, never wanted for illusions in the desert. One child had seen
+this, some woman had dreamed that. A new saint began to rise. The
+story went abroad in the shape of a ballad with doggrel rhymes. They
+sang and danced to it of an evening at the oak by the fountain. The
+priest, when he came on Sunday to perform service in the woodland
+chapel, found the legendary chant already in every mouth. He said to
+himself, "After all, history is good, is edifying.... It does honour
+to the Church. _Vox populi, vox Dei!_--But how did they light upon
+it?" He could be shown the true, the irrefragable proofs of it in some
+tree or stone which had witnessed the apparition, had marked the
+miracle. What can he say to that?
+
+Brought back to the abbey, the tale will find a monk good for nothing,
+who can only write; who is curious, believes everything, no matter
+how marvellous. It is written out, broidered with his dull rhetoric,
+and spoilt a little. But now it has come forth, confirmed and
+consecrated, to be read in the refectory, ere long in the church.
+Copied, loaded and overloaded with ornaments chiefly grotesque, it
+will go on from age to age, until at last it comes to take high rank
+in the Golden Legend.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When those fair stories are read again to us in these days, even as we
+listen to the simple, grave, artless airs into which those rural
+peoples threw all their young heart, we cannot help marking a great
+inspiration; and we are moved to pity as we reflect upon their fate.
+
+They had taken literally the touching advice of the Church: "Be ye as
+newborn babes." But they gave to it a meaning, the very last that one
+would dream of finding in the original thought. As much as
+Christianity feared and hated Nature, even so much did these others
+cherish her, deeming her all guileless, hallowing her even in the
+legends wherewith they mingled her up.
+
+Those _hairy_ animals, as the Bible sharply calls them, animals
+mistrusted by the monks who fear to find devils among them, enter in
+the most touching way into these beautiful stories; as the hind, for
+instance, who refreshes and comforts Genevi�ve of Brabant.
+
+Even outside the life of legends, in the common everyday world, the
+humble friends of his hearth, the bold helpmates of his work, rise
+again in man's esteem. They have their own laws,[9] their own
+festivals. If in God's unbounded goodness there is room for the
+smallest creatures, if He seems to show them a pitying preference,
+"Wherefore," says the countryman, "should my ass not have entered the
+church? Doubtless, he has his faults, wherein he only resembles me the
+more. He is a rough worker, but has a hard head; is intractable,
+stubborn, headstrong; in short, just like myself."
+
+    [9] See J. Grimm, _Rechts Alterth�mer_, and my _Origines du
+    Droit_.
+
+Thence come those wonderful feasts, the fairest of the Middle Ages;
+feasts of _Innocents_, of _Fools_, of the _Ass_. It is the people
+itself, moreover, which, in the shape of an ass, draws about its own
+image, presents itself before the altar, ugly, comical, abased.
+Verily, a touching sight! Led by Balaam, he enters solemnly between
+Virgil and the Sibyl;[10] enters that he may bear witness. If he
+kicked of yore against Balaam, it was that before him he beheld the
+sword of the ancient law. But here the law is ended, and the world of
+grace seems opening its two-leaved gate to the mean and to the simple.
+The people innocently believes it all. Thereon comes that lofty hymn,
+in which it says to the ass what it might have said to itself:--
+
+    "Down on knee and say _Amen_!
+    Grass and hay enough hast eaten.
+    Leave the bad old ways, and go!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    For the new expels the old:
+    Shadows fly before the noon:
+    Light hath hunted out the night."
+
+    [10] According to the ritual of Rouen. See Ducange on the
+    words _Festum_ and _Kalend�_: also Mart�ne, iii. 110. The
+    Sibyl was crowned and followed by Jews and Gentiles, by
+    Moses, the Prophets, Nebuchadnezzar, &c. From a very early
+    time, and continually from the seventh to the seventeenth
+    century, the Church strove to proscribe the great people's
+    feasts of the Ass, of Innocents, of Children, and of Fools.
+    It never succeeded until the advent of the modern spirit.
+
+How bold and coarse ye are! Was it this we asked of you, children rash
+and wayward, when we told you to be as children? We offered you milk;
+you are drinking wine. We led you softly, bridle in hand, along the
+narrow path. Mild and fearful, ye hesitated to go forward: and now,
+all at once, the bridle is broken; the course is cleared at a single
+bound. Ah! how foolish we were to let you make your own saints; to
+dress out the altar; to deck, to burden, to cover it up with flowers!
+Why, it is hardly distinguishable! And what we do see is the old
+heresy condemned of the Church, _the innocence of nature_: what am I
+saying?--a new heresy, not like to end to-morrow, _the independence of
+man_.
+
+Listen and obey!--You are forbidden to invent, to create. No more
+legends, no more new saints: we have had enough of them. You are
+forbidden to introduce new chants in your worship: inspiration is not
+allowed. The martyrs you would bring to light should stay modestly
+within their tombs, waiting to be recognised by the Church. The
+clergy, the monks are forbidden to grant the tonsure of civil freedom
+to husbandmen and serfs. Such is the narrow fearful spirit that fills
+the Church of the Carlovingian days.[11] She unsays her words, she
+gives herself the lie, she says to the children, "Be old!"
+
+    [11] See the Capitularies, _passim_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A fall indeed! But is this earnest? They had bidden us all be
+young.--Ah! but priest and people are no longer one. A divorce without
+end begins, a gulf unpassable divides them for ever. The priest
+himself, a lord and prince, will come out in his golden cope, and
+chant in the royal speech of that great empire which is no more. For
+ourselves, a mournful company, bereft of human speech, of the only
+speech that God would care to hear, what else can we do but low and
+bleat with the guileless friends who never scorn us, who, in
+winter-time will keep us warm in their stable, or cover us with their
+fleeces? We will live with dumb beasts, and be dumb ourselves.
+
+In sooth there is less need than before for our going to church. But
+the church will not hold us free: she insists on our returning to hear
+what we no longer understand. Thenceforth a mighty fog, a fog heavy
+and dun as lead, enwraps the world. For how long? For a whole
+millennium of horror. Throughout ten centuries, a languor unknown to
+all former times seizes upon the Middle Ages, even in part on those
+latter days that come midway betwixt sleep and waking, and holds them
+under the sway of a visitation most irksome, most unbearable; that
+convulsion, namely, of mental weariness, which men call a fit of
+yawning.
+
+When the tireless bell rings at the wonted hours, they yawn; while the
+nasal chant is singing in the old Latin words, they yawn. It is all
+foreseen, there is nothing to hope for in the world, everything will
+come round just the same as before. The certainty of being bored
+to-morrow sets one yawning from to-day; and the long vista of
+wearisome days, of wearisome years to come, weighs men down, sickens
+them from the first with living. From brain to stomach, from stomach
+to mouth, the fatal fit spreads of its own accord, and keeps on
+distending the jaws without end or remedy. An actual disease the pious
+Bretons call it, ascribing it, however, to the malice of the Devil. He
+keeps crouching in the woods, the peasants say: if anyone passes by
+tending his cattle, he sings to him vespers and other rites, until he
+is dead with yawning.[12]
+
+    [12] An illustrious Breton, the last man of the Middle Ages,
+    who had gone on a bootless errand to convert Rome, received
+    there some brilliant offers. "What do you want?" said the
+    Pope.--"Only one thing: to have done with the Breviary."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_To be old_ is to be weak. When the Saracens, when the Norsemen
+threaten us, what will come to us if the people remain old?
+Charlemagne weeps, and the Church weeps too. She owns that her relics
+fail to guard her altars from these Barbarian devils.[13] Had she not
+better call upon the arm of that wayward child whom she was going to
+bind fast, the arm of that young giant whom she wanted to paralyse?
+This movement in two opposite ways fills the whole ninth century. The
+people are held back, anon they are hurled forward: we fear them and
+we call on them for aid. With them and by means of them we throw up
+hasty barriers, defences that may check the Barbarians, while
+sheltering the priests and their saints escaped thither from their
+churches.
+
+    [13] The famous avowal made by Hincmar.
+
+In spite of the Bald Emperor's[14] command not to build, there grows
+up a tower on the mountain. Thither comes the fugitive, crying, "In
+God's name, take me in, at least my wife and children! Myself with my
+cattle will encamp in your outer enclosure." The tower emboldens him
+and he feels himself a man. It gives him shade, and he in his turn
+defends, protects his protector.
+
+    [14] Charles the Bald.--TRANS.
+
+Formerly in their hunger the small folk yielded themselves to the
+great as serfs; but here how great the difference! He offers himself
+as a _vassal_, one who would be called brave and valiant.[15] He gives
+himself up, and keeps himself, and reserves to himself the right of
+going elsewhere. "I will go further: the earth is large: I, too, like
+the rest, can rear my tower yonder. If I have defended the outworks, I
+can surely look after myself within."
+
+    [15] A difference too little felt by those who have spoken of
+    the _personal recommendation_, &c.
+
+Thus nobly, thus grandly arose the feudal world. The master of the
+tower received his vassals with some such words as these: "Thou shalt
+go when thou willest, and if need be with my help; at least, if thou
+shouldst sink in the mire, I myself will dismount to succour thee."
+These are the very words of the old formula.[16]
+
+    [16] Grimm, _Rechts Alterth�mer_, and my _Origines du Droit_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But, one day, what do I see? Can my sight be grown dim? The lord of
+the valley, as he rides about, sets up bounds that none may overleap;
+ay, and limits that you cannot see. "What is that? I don't
+understand." That means that the manor is shut in. "The lord keeps it
+all fast under gate and hinge, between heaven and earth."
+
+Most horrible! By virtue of what law is this _vassus_ (or _valiant_
+one) held to his power? People will thereon have it, that _vassus_ may
+also mean _slave_. In like manner the word _servus_, meaning a
+_servant_, often indeed a proud one, even a Count or Prince of the
+Empire, comes in the case of the weak to signify a _serf_, a wretch
+whose life is hardly worth a halfpenny.
+
+In this damnable net are they caught. But down yonder, on his ground,
+is a man who avers that his land is free, a _freehold_, a _fief of the
+sun_. Seated on his boundary-stone, with hat pressed firmly down, he
+looks at Count or Emperor passing near. "Pass on, Emperor; go thy
+ways! If thou art firm on thy horse, yet more am I on my pillar. Thou
+mayest pass, but so will not I: for I am Freedom."
+
+But I lack courage to say what becomes of this man. The air grows
+thick around him: he breathes less and less freely. He seems to be
+_under a spell_: he cannot move: he is as one paralysed. His very
+beasts grow thin, as if a charm had been thrown over them. His
+servants die of hunger. His land bears nothing now; spirits sweep it
+clean by night.
+
+Still he holds on: "The poor man is a king in his own house." But he
+is not to be let alone. He gets summoned, must answer for himself in
+the Imperial Court. So he goes, like an old-world spectre, whom no one
+knows any more. "What is he?" ask the young. "Ah, he is neither a
+lord, nor a serf! Yet even then is he nothing?"
+
+"Who am I? I am he who built the first tower, he who succoured you, he
+who, leaving the tower, went boldly forth to meet the Norse heathens
+at the bridge. Yet more, I dammed the river, I tilled the meadow,
+creating the land itself by drawing it God-like out of the waters.
+From this land who shall drive me?"
+
+"No, my friend," says a neighbour--"you shall not be driven away. You
+shall till this land, but in a way you little think for. Remember, my
+good fellow, how in your youth, some fifty years ago, you were rash
+enough to wed my father's little serf, Jacqueline. Remember the
+proverb, 'He who courts my hen is my cock.' You belong to my
+fowl-yard. Ungird yourself; throw away your sword! From this day forth
+you are my serf."
+
+There is no invention here. The dreadful tale recurs incessantly
+during the Middle Ages. Ah, it was a sharp sword that stabbed him. I
+have abridged and suppressed much, for as often as one returns to
+these times, the same steel, the same sharp point, pierces right
+through the heart.
+
+There was one among them who, under this gross insult, fell into so
+deep a rage that he could not bring up a single word. It was like
+Roland betrayed. His blood all rushed upwards into his throat. His
+flaming eyes, his mouth so dumb, yet so fearfully eloquent, turned all
+the assembly pale. They started back. He was dead: his veins had
+burst. His arteries spurted the red blood over the faces of his
+murderers.[17]
+
+    [17] This befell the Count of Avesnes when his freehold was
+    declared a mere fief, himself a mere vassal, a serf of the
+    Earl of Hainault. Read, too, the dreadful story of the Great
+    Chancellor of Flanders, the first magistrate of Bruges, who
+    also was claimed as a serf.--Gualterius, _Scriptores Rerum
+    Francicarum_, viii. 334.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The doubtful state of men's affairs, the frightfully slippery descent
+by which the freeman becomes a vassal, the vassal a servant, and the
+servant a serf,--in these things lie the great terror of the Middle
+Ages, and the depth of their despair. There is no way of escape
+therefrom; for he who takes one step is lost. He is an _alien_, a
+_stray_, a _wild beast of the chase_. The ground grows slimy to catch
+his feet, roots him, as he passes, to the spot. The contagion in the
+air kills him; he becomes a thing _in mortmain_, a dead creature, a
+mere nothing, a beast, a soul worth twopence-halfpenny, whose murder
+can be atoned for by twopence-halfpenny.
+
+These are outwardly the two great leading traits in the wretchedness
+of the Middle Ages, through which they came to give themselves up to
+the Devil. Meanwhile let us look within, and sound the innermost
+depths of their moral life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE LITTLE DEVIL OF THE FIRESIDE.
+
+
+There is an air of dreaming about those earlier centuries of the
+Middle Ages, in which the legends were self-conceived. Among
+countryfolk so gently submissive, as these legends show them, to the
+Church, you would readily suppose that very great innocence might be
+found. This is surely the temple of God the Father. And yet the
+_penitentiaries_, wherein reference is made to ordinary sins, speak of
+strange defilements, of things afterwards rare enough under the rule
+of Satan.
+
+These sprang from two causes, from the utter ignorance of the times,
+and from the close intermingling of near kindred under one roof. They
+seem to have had but a slight acquaintance with our modern ethics.
+Those of their day, all counterpleas notwithstanding, resemble the
+ethics of the patriarchs, of that far antiquity which regarded
+marriage with a stranger as immoral, and allowed only of marriage
+amongst kinsfolk. The families thus joined together became as one. Not
+daring to scatter over the surrounding deserts, tilling only the
+outskirts of a Merovingian palace or a monastery, they took shelter
+every evening under the roof of a large homestead (_villa_). Thence
+arose unpleasant points of analogy with the ancient _ergastulum_,
+where the slaves of an estate were all crammed together. Many of these
+communities lasted through and even beyond the Middle Ages. About the
+results of such a system the lord would feel very little concern. To
+his eyes but one family was visible in all this tribe, this multitude
+of people "who rose and lay down together, ... who ate together of the
+same bread, and drank out of the same mug."
+
+Amidst such confusion the woman was not much regarded. Her place was
+by no means lofty. If the virgin, the ideal woman, rose higher from
+age to age, the real woman was held of little worth among these
+boorish masses, in this medley of men and herds. Wretched was the doom
+of a condition which could only change with the growth of separate
+dwellings, when men at length took courage to live apart in hamlets,
+or to build them huts in far-off forest-clearings, amidst the fruitful
+fields they had gone out to cultivate. From the lonely hearth comes
+the true family. It is the nest that forms the bird. Thenceforth they
+were no more things, but men; for then also was the woman born.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a very touching moment, the day she entered _her own home_.
+Then at last the poor wretch might become pure and holy. There, as she
+sits spinning alone, while her goodman is in the forest, she may brood
+on some thought and dream away. Her damp, ill-fastened cabin, through
+which keeps whistling the winter wind, is still, by way of a
+recompense, calm and silent. In it are sundry dim corners where the
+housewife lodges her dreams.
+
+And by this time she has some property, something of her own. The
+_distaff_, the _bed_, and the _trunk_, are all she has, according to
+the old song.[18] We may add a table, a seat, perhaps two stools. A
+poor dwelling and very bare; but then it is furnished with a living
+soul! The fire cheers her, the blessed box-twigs guard her bed,
+accompanied now and again by a pretty bunch of vervein. Seated by her
+door, the lady of this palace spins and watches some sheep. We are not
+yet rich enough to keep a cow; but to that we may come in time, if
+Heaven will bless our house. The wood, a bit of pasture, and some bees
+about our ground--such is our way of life! But little corn is
+cultivated as yet, there being no assurance of a harvest so long of
+coming. Such a life, however needy, is anyhow less hard for the woman:
+she is not broken down and withered, as she will be in the days of
+large farming. And she has more leisure withal. You must never judge
+of her by the coarse literature of the Fabliaux and the Christmas
+Carols, by the foolish laughter and license of the filthy tales we
+have to put up with by and by. She is alone; without a neighbour. The
+bad, unwholesome life of the dark, little, walled towns, the mutual
+spyings, the wretched dangerous gossipings, have not yet begun. No old
+woman comes of an evening, when the narrow street is growing dark, to
+tempt the young maiden by saying how for the love of her somebody is
+dying. She has no friend but her own reflections; she converses only
+with her beasts or the tree in the forest.
+
+    [18]
+
+    "Trois pas du c�t� du banc,
+    Et trois pas du c�t� du lit;
+    Trois pas du c�t� du coffre,
+    Et trois pas---- Revenez ici."
+
+    (_Old Song of the Dancing Master._)
+
+Such things speak to her, we know of what. They recall to her mind the
+saws once uttered by her mother and grandmother; ancient saws handed
+down for ages from woman to woman. They form a harmless reminder of
+the old country spirits, a touching family religion which doubtless
+had little power in the blustering hurly-burly of a great common
+dwellinghouse, but now comes back again to haunt the lonely cabin.
+
+It is a singular, a delicate world of fays and hobgoblins, made for a
+woman's soul. When the great creation of the saintly Legend gets
+stopped and dried up, that other older, more poetic legend comes in
+for its share of welcome; reigns privily with gentle sway. It is the
+woman's treasure; she worships and caresses it. The fay, too, is a
+woman, a fantastic mirror wherein she sees herself in a fairer guise.
+
+Who were these fays? Tradition says, that of yore some Gaulish queens,
+being proud and fanciful, did on the coming of Christ and His Apostles
+behave so insolently as to turn their backs upon them. In Brittany
+they were dancing at the moment, and never stopped dancing. Hence
+their hard doom; they are condemned to live until the Day of
+Judgment.[19] Many of them were turned into mice or rabbits; as the
+Kow-riggwans for instance, or Elves, who meeting at night round the
+old Druidic stones entangle you in their dances. The same fate befell
+the pretty Queen Mab, who made herself a royal chariot out of a
+walnut-shell. They are all rather whimsical, and sometimes
+ill-humoured. But can we be surprised at them, remembering their
+woeful lot? Tiny and odd as they are, they have a heart, a longing to
+be loved. They are good and they are bad and full of fancies. On the
+birth of a baby they come down the chimney, to endow it and order its
+future. They are fond of good spinning-women--they even spin divinely
+themselves. Do we not talk of _spinning like a fairy_?
+
+    [19] All passages bearing on this point have been gathered
+    together in two learned works by M. Maury (_Les F�es_, 1843;
+    and _La Magie_, 1860). See also Grimm.
+
+The fairy-tales, stripped of the absurd embellishments in which the
+latest compilers muffled them up, express the heart of the people
+itself. They mark a poetic interval between the gross communism of the
+primitive _villa_, and the looseness of the time when a growing
+burgess-class made our cynical Fabliaux.[20]
+
+    [20] A body of tales by the Trouv�res of the twelfth and
+    thirteenth centuries.--TRANS.
+
+These tales have an historical side, reminding us, in the ogres, &c.,
+of the great famines. But commonly they soar higher than any history,
+on the _Blue Bird's_ wing, in a realm of eternal poesy; telling us our
+wishes which never vary, the unchangeable history of the heart.
+
+The poor serf's longing to breathe, to rest, to find a treasure that
+may end his sufferings, continually returns. More often, through a
+lofty aspiration, this treasure becomes a soul as well, a treasure of
+love asleep, as in _The Sleeping Beauty_: but not seldom the charming
+person finds herself by some fatal enchantment hidden under a mask.
+Hence that touching trilogy, that admirable _crescendo_ of _Riquet
+with the Tuft_, _Ass's Skin_, and _Beauty and the Beast_. Love will
+not be discouraged. Through all that ugliness it follows after and
+gains the hidden beauty. In the last of these tales that feeling
+touches the sublime, and I think that no one has ever read it without
+weeping.
+
+A passion most real, most sincere, lurks beneath it--that unhappy,
+hopeless love, which unkind nature often sets between poor souls of
+very different ranks in life. On the one hand is the grief of the
+peasant maid at not being able to make herself fair enough to win the
+cavalier's fancy; on the other the smothered sighs of the serf, when
+along his furrow he sees passing, on a white horse, too exquisite a
+glory, the beautiful, the majestic Lady of the Castle. So in the East
+arises the mournful idyll of the impossible loves of the Rose and the
+Nightingale. Nevertheless, there is one great difference: the bird and
+the flower are both beautiful; nay, are alike in their beauty. But
+here the humbler being, doomed to a place so far below, avows to
+himself that he is ugly and monstrous. But amidst his wailing he feels
+in himself a power greater than the East can know. With the will of a
+hero, through the very greatness of his desire, he breaks out of his
+idle coverings. He loves so much, this monster, that he is loved, and,
+in return, through that love grows beautiful.
+
+An infinite tenderness pervades it all. This soul enchanted thinks not
+of itself alone. It busies itself in saving all nature and all society
+as well. Victims of every kind, the child beaten by its step-mother,
+the youngest sister slighted, ill-used by her elders, are the surest
+objects of its liking. Even to the Lady of the Castle does its
+compassion extend; it mourns her fallen into the hands of so fierce a
+lord as Blue-Beard. It yearns with pity towards the beasts; it seeks
+to console them for being still in the shape of animals. Let them be
+patient, and their day will come. Some day their prisoned souls shall
+put on wings, shall be free, lovely, and beloved. This is the other
+side of _Ass's Skin_ and such like stories. There especially we are
+sure of finding a woman's heart. The rude labourer in the fields may
+be hard enough to his beasts, but to the woman they are no beasts. She
+regards them with the feeling of a child. To her fancy all is human,
+all is soul: the whole world becomes ennobled. It is a beautiful
+enchantment. Humble as she is, and ugly as she thinks herself, she
+has given all her beauty, all her grace to the surrounding universe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Is she, then, so ugly, this little peasant-wife, whose dreaming fancy
+feeds on things like these? I tell you she keeps house, she spins and
+minds the flock, she visits the forest to gather a little wood. As yet
+she has neither the hard work nor the ugly looks of the countrywoman
+as afterwards fashioned by the prevalent culture of grain crops. Nor
+is she like the fat townswife, heavy and slothful, about whom our
+fathers made such a number of fat stories. She has no sense of safety;
+she is meek and timid, and feels herself, as it were, in God's hand.
+On yonder hill she can see the dark frowning castle, whence a thousand
+harms may come upon her. Her husband she holds in equal fear and
+honour. A serf elsewhere, by her side he is a king. For him she saves
+of her best, living herself on nothing. She is small and slender like
+the women-saints of the Church. The poor feeding of those days must
+needs make women fine-bred, but lacking also in vital strength. The
+children die off in vast numbers: those pale roses are all nerves.
+Hence, will presently burst forth the epileptic dances of the
+fourteenth century. Meanwhile, towards the twelfth century, there come
+to be two weaknesses attached to this state of half-grown youth: by
+night somnambulism; in the daytime seeing of visions, trance, and the
+gift of tears.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This woman, for all her innocence, still has a secret which the Church
+may never be told. Locked up in her heart she bears the pitying
+remembrance of those poor old gods who have fallen into the state of
+spirits;[21] and spirits, you must know, are not exempt from
+suffering. Dwelling in rocks, and in hearts of oak, they are very
+unhappy in winter; being particularly fond of warmth. They ramble
+about houses; they are sometimes seen in stables warming themselves
+beside the beasts. Bereft of incense and burnt-offerings, they
+sometimes take of the milk. The housewife being thrifty, will not
+stint her husband, but lessens her own share, and in the evening
+leaves a little cream.
+
+    [21] This loyalty of hers is very touching indeed. In the
+    fifth century the peasants braved persecution by parading the
+    gods of the old religion in the shape of small dolls made of
+    linen or flour. Still the same in the eighth century. The
+    _Capitularies_ threaten death in vain. In the twelfth
+    century, Burchard, of Worms, attests their inutility. In
+    1389, the Sorbonne inveighs against certain traces of
+    heathenism, while in 1400, Gerson talks of it as still a
+    lively superstition.
+
+Those spirits who only appear at night, regret their banishment from
+the day and are greedy of lamplight. By night the housewife starts on
+her perilous trip, bearing a small lantern, to the great oak where
+they dwell, or to the secret fountain whose mirror, as it multiplies
+the flame, may cheer up those sorrowful outlaws.
+
+But if anyone should know of it, good heavens! Her husband is canny
+and fears the Church: he would certainly give her a beating. The
+priest wages fierce war with the sprites, and hunts them out of every
+place. Yet he might leave them their dwelling in the oaks! What harm
+can they do in the forest? Alas! no: from council to council they are
+hunted down. On set days the priest will go even to the oak, and with
+prayers and holy water drive away the spirits.
+
+How would it be if no kind soul took pity on them? This woman,
+however, will take them under her care. She is an excellent Christian,
+but will keep for them one corner of her heart. To them alone can she
+entrust those little natural affairs, which, harmless as they are in a
+chaste wife's dwelling, the Church at any rate would count as
+blameworthy. They are the confidants, the confessors of these touching
+womanly secrets. Of them she thinks, when she puts the holy log on the
+fire. It is Christmastide; but also is it the ancient festival of the
+Northern spirits, the _Feast of the Longest Night_. So, too, the Eve
+of May-day is the _Pervigilium of Maia_, when the tree is planted. So,
+too, with the Eve of St. John, the true feast-day of life, of flowers,
+and newly-awakened love. She who has no children makes it her especial
+duty to cherish these festivals, and to offer them a deep devotion. A
+vow to the Virgin would perhaps be of little avail, it being no
+concern of Mary's. In a low whisper, she prefers addressing some
+ancient _genius_, worshipped in other days as a rustic deity, and
+afterwards by the kindness of some local church transformed into a
+saint.[22] And thus it happens that the bed, the cradle, all the
+sweetest mysteries on which the chaste and loving soul can brood,
+belong to the olden gods.
+
+    [22] A. Maury, _Magie_, 159.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nor are the sprites ungrateful. One day she awakes, and without having
+stirred a finger, finds all her housekeeping done. In her amazement
+she makes the sign of the cross and says nothing. When the good man
+goes she questions herself, but in vain. It must have been a spirit.
+"What can it be? How came it here? How I should like to see it! But I
+am afraid: they say it is death to see a spirit."--Yet the cradle
+moves and swings of itself. She is clasped by some one, and a voice so
+soft, so low that she took it for her own, is heard saying, "Dearest
+mistress, I love to rock your babe, because I am myself a babe." Her
+heart beats, and yet she takes courage a little. The innocence of the
+cradle gives this spirit also an innocent air, causing her to believe
+it good, gentle, suffered at least by God.
+
+From that day forth she is no longer alone. She readily feels its
+presence, and it is never far from her. It rubs her gown, and she
+hears the grazing. It rambles momently about her, and plainly cannot
+leave her side. If she goes to the stable, it is there; and she
+believes that the other day it was in the churn.[23]
+
+    [23] This is a favourite haunt of the little rogue's. To this
+    day the Swiss, knowing his tastes, make him a present of some
+    milk. His name among them is _troll_ (_dr�le_); among the
+    Germans _kobold_, _nix_. In France he is called _follet_,
+    _goblin_, _lutin_; in England, _Puck_, _Robin Goodfellow_.
+    Shakespeare says, he does sleepy servants the kindness to
+    pinch them black and blue, in order to rouse them.
+
+Pity she cannot take it up and look at it! Once, when she suddenly
+touched the brands, she fancied she saw the tricksy little thing
+tumbling about in the sparks; another time she missed catching it in a
+rose. Small as it is, it works, sweeps, arranges, saves her a thousand
+cares.
+
+It has its faults, however; is giddy, bold, and if she did not hold it
+fast, might perhaps shake itself free. It observes and listens too
+much. It repeats sometimes of a morning some little word she had
+whispered very, very softly on going to bed, when the light was put
+out. She knows it to be very indiscreet, exceedingly curious. She is
+irked with feeling herself always followed about, complains of it, and
+likes complaining. Sometimes, having threatened him and turned him
+off, she feels herself quite at ease. But just then she finds herself
+caressed by a light breathing, as it were a bird's wing. He was under
+a leaf. He laughs: his gentle voice, free from mocking, declares the
+joy he felt in taking his chaste young mistress by surprise. On her
+making a show of great wrath, "No, my darling, my little pet," says
+the monkey, "you are not a bit sorry to have me here."
+
+She feels ashamed and dares say nothing more. But she guesses now that
+she loves him overmuch. She has scruples about it, and loves him yet
+more. All night she seems to feel him creeping up to her bed. In her
+fear she prays to God, and keeps close to her husband. What shall she
+do? She has not the strength to tell the Church. She tells her
+husband, who laughs at first incredulously. Then she owns to a little
+more,--what a madcap the goblin is, sometimes even overbold. "What
+matters? He is so small." Thus he himself sets her mind at ease.
+
+Should we too feel reassured, we who can see more clearly? She is
+quite innocent still. She would shrink from copying the great lady up
+there who, in the face of her husband, has her court of lovers and her
+page. Let us own, however, that to that point the goblin has already
+smoothed the way. One could not have a more perilous page than he who
+hides himself under a rose; and, moreover, he smacks of the lover.
+More intrusive than anyone else, he is so tiny that he can creep
+anywhere.
+
+He glides even into the husband's heart, paying him court and winning
+his good graces. He looks after his tools, works in his garden, and of
+an evening, by way of reward, curls himself up in the chimney, behind
+the babe and the cat. They hear his small voice, just like a
+cricket's; but they never see much of him, save when a faint glimmer
+lights a certain cranny in which he loves to stay. Then they see, or
+think they see, a thin little face; and cry out, "Ah! little one, we
+have seen you at last!"
+
+In church they are told to mistrust the spirits, for even one that
+seems innocent, and glides about like a light breeze, may after all be
+a devil. They take good care not to believe it. His size begets a
+belief in his innocence. Whilst he is there, they thrive. The husband
+holds to him as much as the wife, and perhaps more. He sees that the
+tricksy little elf makes the fortune of the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+TEMPTATIONS.
+
+
+I have kept this picture clear of those dreadful shadows of the hour
+by which it would have been sadly overdarkened. I refer especially to
+the uncertainty attending the lot of these rural households, to their
+constant fear and foreboding of some casual outrage which might at any
+moment descend on them from the castle.
+
+There were just two things which made the feudal rule a hell: on one
+hand, its _exceeding steadfastness_, man being nailed, as it were, to
+the ground, and emigration made impossible; on the other, a very great
+degree of _uncertainty_ about his lot.
+
+The optimist historians who say so much about fixed rents, charters,
+buying of immunities, forget how slightly all this was guaranteed. So
+much you were bound to pay the lord, but all the rest he could take if
+he chose; and this was very fitly called the _right of seizure_. You
+may work and work away, my good fellow! But while you are in the
+fields, yon dreaded band from the castle will fall upon your house and
+carry off whatever they please "for their lord's service."
+
+Look again at that man standing with his head bowed gloomily over the
+furrow! And thus he is always found, his face clouded, his heart
+oppressed, as if he were expecting some evil news. Is he meditating
+some wrongful deed? No; but there are two ideas haunting him, two
+daggers piercing him in turn. The one is, "In what state shall I find
+my house this evening?" The other, "Would that the turning up of this
+sod might bring some treasure to light! O that the good spirit would
+help to buy us free!"
+
+We are assured that, after the fashion of the Etruscan spirit which
+one day started up from under the ploughshare in the form of a child,
+a dwarf or gnome of the tiniest stature would sometimes on such an
+appeal come forth from the ground, and, setting itself on the furrow,
+would say, "What wantest thou?" But in his amazement the poor man
+would ask for nothing; he would turn pale, cross himself, and
+presently go quite away.
+
+Did he never feel sorry afterwards? Said he never to himself, "Fool
+that you are, you will always be unlucky?" I readily believe he did;
+but I also think that a barrier of dread invincible stopped him short.
+I cannot believe with the monks who have told us all things concerning
+witchcraft, that the treaty with Satan was the light invention of a
+miser or a man in love. On the contrary, nature and good sense alike
+inform us that it was only the last resource of an overwhelming
+despair, under the weight of dreadful outrages and dreadful
+sufferings.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But those great sufferings, we are told, must have been greatly
+lightened about the time of St. Louis, who forbade private wars among
+the nobles. My own opinion is quite the reverse. During the fourscore
+or hundred years that elapsed between his prohibition and the wars
+with England (1240-1340), the great lords being debarred from the
+accustomed sport of burning and plundering their neighbours' lands,
+became a terror to their own vassals. For the latter such a peace was
+simply war.
+
+The spiritual, the monkish lords, and others, as shown in the _Journal
+of Eudes Rigault_, lately published, make one shudder. It is a
+repulsive picture of profligacy at once savage and uncontrolled. The
+monkish lords especially assail the nunneries. The austere Rigault,
+Archbishop of Rouen, confessor of the holy king, conducts a personal
+inquiry into the state of Normandy. Every evening he comes to a
+monastery. In all of them he finds the monks leading the life of great
+feudal lords, wearing arms, getting drunk, fighting duels, keen
+huntsmen over all the cultivated land; the nuns living among them in
+wild confusion, and betraying everywhere the fruits of their shameless
+deeds.
+
+If things are so in the Church, what must the lay lords have been?
+What like was the inside of those dark towers which the folk below
+regarded with so much horror? Two tales, undoubtedly historical,
+namely, _Blue-Beard_ and _Griselda_, tell us something thereanent. To
+his vassals, his serfs, what indeed must have been this devotee of
+torture who treated his own family in such a way? He is known to us
+through the only man who was brought to trial for such deeds; and that
+not earlier than the fifteenth century,--Gilles de Retz, who kidnapped
+children.
+
+Sir Walter Scott's Front de Boeuf, and the other lords of melodramas
+and romances, are but poor creatures in the face of these dreadful
+realities. The Templar also in _Ivanhoe_, is a weak artificial
+conception. The author durst not assay the foul reality of celibate
+life in the Temple, or within the castle walls. Few women were taken
+in there, being accounted not worth their keep. The romances of
+chivalry altogether belie the truth. It is remarkable, indeed, how
+often the literature of an age expresses the very opposite of its
+manners, as, for instance, the washy theatre of eclogues after
+Florian,[24] during the years of the Great Terror.
+
+    [24] A writer of eclogues, fables and dramas; in youth a
+    friend of Voltaire, afterwards imprisoned during the
+    Terror.--TRANS.
+
+The rooms in these castles, in such at least as may be seen to-day,
+speak more plainly than any books. Men-at-arms, pages, footmen,
+crammed together of nights under low-vaulted roofs, in the daytime
+kept on the battlements, on narrow terraces, in a state of most
+sickening weariness, lived only in their pranks down below; in feats
+no longer of arms on the neighbouring domains, but of hunting, ay, and
+hunting of men; insults, I may say, without number, outrages untold on
+families of serfs. The lord himself well knew that such an army of
+men, without women, could only be kept in order by letting them loose
+from time to time.
+
+The awful idea of a hell wherein God employs the very guiltiest of the
+wicked spirits to torture the less guilty delivered over to them for
+their sport,--this lovely dogma of the Middle Ages was exemplified to
+the last letter. Men felt that God was not among them. Each new raid
+betokened more and more clearly the kingdom of Satan, until men came
+to believe that thenceforth their prayers should be offered to him
+alone.
+
+Up in the castle there was laughing and joking. "The women-serfs were
+too ugly." There is no question raised as to their beauty. The great
+pleasure lay in deeds of outrage, in striking and making them weep.
+Even in the seventeenth century the great ladies died with laughing,
+when the Duke of Lorraine told them how, in peaceful villages, his
+people went about harrying and torturing all the women, even to the
+old.
+
+These outrages fell most frequently, as we might suppose, on families
+well to do and comparatively distinguished among the serfs; the
+families, namely, of those serf-born mayors, who already in the
+twelfth century appear at the head of the village. By the nobles they
+were hated, jeered, cruelly plagued. Their newborn moral dignity was
+not to be forgiven. Their wives and daughters were not allowed to be
+good and wise: they had no right to be held in any respect. Their
+honour was not their own. _Serfs of the body_, such was the cruel
+phrase cast for ever in their teeth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In days to come people will be slow to believe, that the law among
+Christian nations went beyond anything decreed concerning the olden
+slavery; that it wrote down as an actual right the most grievous
+outrage that could ever wound man's heart. The lord spiritual had this
+foul privilege no less than the lord temporal. In a parish outside
+Bourges, the parson, as being a lord, expressly claimed the
+firstfruits of the bride, but was willing to sell his rights to the
+husband.[25]
+
+    [25] Lauriere, ii. 100 (on the word _Marquette_). Michelet,
+    _Origines du Droit_, 264.
+
+It has been too readily believed that this wrong was formal, not real.
+But the price laid down in certain countries for getting a
+dispensation, exceeded the means of almost every peasant. In Scotland,
+for instance, the demand was for "several cows:" a price immense,
+impossible. So the poor young wife was at their mercy. Besides, the
+Courts of B�arn openly maintain that this right grew up naturally:
+"The eldest-born of the peasant is accounted the son of his lord, for
+he perchance it was who begat him."[26]
+
+    [26] When I published my _Origines_ in 1837, I could not have
+    known this work, published in 1842.
+
+All feudal customs, even if we pass over this, compel the bride to go
+up to the castle, bearing thither the "wedding-dish." Surely it was a
+cruel thing to make her trust herself amongst such a pack of celibate
+dogs, so shameless and so ungovernable.
+
+A shameful scene we may well imagine it to have been. As the young
+husband is leading his bride to the castle, fancy the laughter of
+cavaliers and footmen, the frolics of the pages around the wretched
+poor! But the presence of the great lady herself will check them? Not
+at all. The lady in whose delicate breeding the romances tell us to
+believe,[27] but who, in her husband's absence, ruled his men,
+judging, chastising, ordaining penalties, to whom her husband himself
+was bound by the fiefs she brought him,--such a lady would be in no
+wise merciful, especially towards a girl-serf who happened also to be
+good-looking. Since, according to the custom of those days, she openly
+kept her gentleman and her page, she would not be sorry to sanction
+her own libertinism by that of her husband.
+
+    [27] This delicacy appears in the treatment these ladies
+    inflicted on their poet Jean de Meung, author of the _Roman
+    de la Rose_.
+
+Nothing will she do to hinder the fun, the sport they are making out
+of yon poor trembler who has come to redeem his bride. They begin by
+bargaining with him; they laugh at the pangs endured by "the miserly
+peasant;" they suck the very blood and marrow of him. Why all this
+fury? Because he is neatly clad; is honest, settled; is a man of mark
+in the village. Why, indeed? Because she is pious, chaste, and pure;
+because she loves him; because she is frightened and falls a-weeping.
+Her sweet eyes plead for pity.
+
+In vain does the poor wretch offer all he has, even to her dowry: it
+is all too little. Angered at such cruel injustice, he will say
+perhaps that "his neighbour paid nothing." The insolent fellow! he
+would argue with us! Thereon they gather round him, a yelling mob:
+sticks and brooms pelt upon him like hail. They jostle him, they throw
+him down. "You jealous villain, you Lent-faced villain!" they cry; "no
+one takes your wife from you; you shall have her back to-night, and to
+enhance the honour done you ... your eldest child will be a baron!"
+Everyone looks out of window at the absurd figure of this dead man in
+wedding garments. He is followed by bursts of laughter, and the noisy
+rabble, down to the lowest scullion, give chase to the "cuckold."[28]
+
+    [28] The old tales are very sportive, but rather monotonous.
+    They turn on three jokes only: the despair of the _cuckold_,
+    the cries of the _beaten_, the wry faces of the _hanged_. The
+    first is amusing, the second laughable, the third, as crown
+    of all, makes people split their sides. And the three have
+    one point in common: it is the weak and helpless who is
+    ill-used.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The poor fellow would have burst, had he nothing to hope for from the
+Devil. By himself he returns: is the house empty as well as desolate?
+No, there is company waiting for him there: by the fireside sits
+Satan.
+
+But soon his bride comes back, poor wretch, all pale and undone. Alas!
+alas! for her condition. At his feet she throws herself and craves
+forgiveness. Then, with a bursting heart, he flings his arms round her
+neck. He weeps, he sobs, he roars, till the house shakes again.
+
+But with her comes back God. For all her suffering, she is pure,
+innocent, holy still. Satan for that nonce will get no profit: the
+treaty is not yet ripe.
+
+Our silly Fabliaux, our absurd tales, assume with regard to this
+deadly outrage and all its further issues, that the woman sides with
+her oppressors against her husband; they would have us believe that
+her brutal treatment by the former makes her happy and transports her
+with delight. A likely thing indeed! Doubtless she might be seduced by
+rank, politeness, elegant manners. But no pains are ever taken to that
+end. Great would be the scoffing at anyone who made true-love's wooing
+towards a serf. The whole gang of men, to the chaplain, the butler,
+even the footmen, would think they honoured her by deeds of outrage.
+The smallest page thought himself a great lord, if he only seasoned
+his love with insolence and blows.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One day, the poor woman, having just been ill-treated during her
+husband's absence, begins weeping, and saying quite aloud, the while
+she is tying up her long hair, "Ah, those unhappy saints of the woods,
+what boots it to offer them my vows? Are they deaf, or have they grown
+too old? Why have I not some protecting spirit, strong and
+mighty--wicked even, if it need be? Some such I see in stone at the
+church-door; but what do they there? Why do they not go to their
+proper dwelling, the castle, to carry off and roast those sinners? Oh,
+who is there will give me power and might? I would gladly give myself
+in exchange. Ah, me, what is it I would give? What have I to give on
+my side? Nothing is left me. Out on this body, out on this soul, a
+mere cinder now! Why, instead of this useless goblin, have I not some
+spirit, great, strong, and mighty, to help me?"
+
+"My darling mistress! If I am small, it is your fault; and bigger I
+cannot grow. And besides, if I were very big, neither you nor your
+husband would have borne with me. You would have driven me away with
+your priests and your holy water. I can be strong, however, if you
+please. For, mistress mine, the spirits in themselves are neither
+great nor small, neither weak nor strong. For him who wishes it, the
+smallest can become a giant."
+
+"In what way?"
+
+"Why, nothing can be simpler. To make him a giant, you must grant him
+only one gift."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"A lovely woman-soul."
+
+"Ah, wicked one! What then art thou, and what wouldst thou have?"
+
+"Only what you give me every day.... Would you be better than the lady
+up yonder? She has pledged her soul to her husband and to her lover,
+and yet she yields it whole to her page. I am more than a page to you,
+more than a servant. In how many matters have I not been your little
+handmaid! Do not blush, nor be angry. Let me only say, that I am all
+about you, and already perhaps in you. Else, how could I know your
+thoughts, even those which you hide from yourself? Who am I, then?
+Your little soul, which speaks thus openly to the great one. We are
+inseparable. Do you know how long I have been with you? Some thousand
+years, for I belonged to your mother, to hers, to your ancestors. I am
+the Spirit of the Fireside."
+
+"Tempter! What wilt thou do?"
+
+"Why, thy husband shall be rich, thyself mighty, and men shall fear
+thee."
+
+"Where am I? Surely thou art the demon of hidden treasures!"
+
+"Why call me demon, if I do deeds of justice, of goodness, of piety?
+God cannot be everywhere--He cannot be always working. Sometimes He
+likes to rest, leaving us other spirits here to carry on the smaller
+husbandry, to remedy the ills which his providence passed over, which
+his justice forgot to handle.
+
+"Of this your husband is an example. Poor, deserving workman, he is
+killing himself and gaining nought in return. Heaven has had no time
+to look after him. But I, though rather jealous of him, still love my
+kind host. I pity him: his strength is going, he can bear up no
+longer. He will die, like your children, already dead of misery. This
+winter he was ill; what will become of him the next?"
+
+Thereon, her face in her hands, she wept two, three hours, and even
+more. And when she had poured out all her tears--her bosom still
+throbbing hard--the other said, "I ask nothing: only, I pray, save
+him."
+
+She had promised nothing, but from that hour she became his.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+POSSESSION.
+
+
+A dreadful age was the age of gold; for thus do I call that hard time
+when gold first came into use. This was in the year 1300, during the
+reign of that Fair King[29] who never spake a word; the great king who
+seemed to have a dumb devil, but a devil with mighty arm, strong
+enough to burn the Temple, long enough to reach Rome, and with glove
+of iron to deal the first good blow at the Pope.
+
+    [29] Philip the Fair of France, who put down the Templar in
+    Paris, and first secured the liberties of the Gallican
+    Church.--TRANS.
+
+Gold thereupon becomes a great pope, a mighty god, and not without
+cause. The movement began in Europe with the Crusades: the only wealth
+men cared for was that which having wings could lend itself to their
+enterprise; the wealth, namely, of swift exchanges. To strike blows
+afar off the king wants nothing but gold. An army of gold, a fiscal
+army, spreads over all the land. The lord, who has brought back with
+him his dreams of the East, is always longing for its wonders, for
+damascened armour, carpets, spices, valuable steeds. For all such
+things he needs gold. He pushes away with his foot the serf who
+brings him corn. "That is not all; I want gold!"
+
+On that day the world was changed. Theretofore in the midst of much
+evil there had always been a harmless certainty about the tax.
+According as the year was good or bad, the rent followed the course of
+nature and the measure of the harvest. If the lord said, "This is
+little," he was answered, "My lord, Heaven has granted us no more."
+
+But the gold, alas! where shall we find it? We have no army to seize
+it in the towns of Flanders. Where shall we dig the ground to win him
+his treasure? Oh, that the spirit of hidden treasures would be our
+guide![30]
+
+    [30] The devils trouble the world all through the Middle
+    Ages; but not before the thirteenth century does Satan put on
+    a settled shape. "_Compacts_," says M. Maury, "are very rare
+    before that epoch;" and I believe him. How could they treat
+    with one who as yet had no real existence? Neither of the
+    treating parties was yet ripe for the contract. Before the
+    will could be reduced to the dreadful pass of selling itself
+    for ever, it must be made thoroughly desperate. It is not the
+    unhappy who falls into despair, but the truly wretched, who
+    being quite conscious of his misery, and having yet more to
+    suffer, can find no escape therefrom. The wretched in this
+    way are the men of the fourteenth century, from whom they ask
+    a thing so impossible as payments in gold. In this and the
+    following chapter I have touched on the circumstances, the
+    feelings, the growing despair, which brought about the
+    enormity of _compacts_, and, worse still than these, the
+    dreadful character of the _Witch_. If the name was freely
+    used, the thing itself was then rare, being no less than a
+    marriage and a kind of priesthood. For ease of illustration,
+    I have joined together the details of so delicate a scrutiny
+    by a thread of fiction. The outward body of it matters
+    little. The essential point is to remember that such things
+    were not caused, as they try to persuade us, by _human
+    fickleness, by the inconstancy of our fallen nature, by the
+    chance persuasions of desire_. There was needed the deadly
+    pressure of an age of iron, of cruel needs: it was needful
+    that Hell itself should seem a shelter, an asylum, by
+    contrast with the hell below.
+
+While all are desperate, the woman with the goblin is already seated
+on her sacks of corn in the little neighbouring village. She is alone,
+the rest being still at their debate in the village.
+
+She sells at her own price. But even when the rest come up, everything
+favours her, some strange magical allurement working on her side. No
+one bargains with her. Her husband, before his time, brings his rent
+in good sounding coin to the feudal elm. "Amazing!" they all say, "but
+the Devil is in her!"
+
+They laugh, but she does not. She is sorrowful and afraid. In vain she
+tries to pray that night. Strange prickings disturb her slumber.
+Fantastic forms appear before her. The small gentle sprite seems to
+have grown imperious. He waxes bold. She is uneasy, indignant, eager
+to rise. In her sleep she groans, and feels herself dependent, saying,
+"No more do I belong to myself!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Here is a sensible countryman," says the lord; "he pays beforehand!
+You charm me: do you know accounts?"--"A little."--"Well then, you
+shall reckon with these folk. Every Saturday you shall sit under the
+elm and receive their money. On Sunday, before mass, you shall bring
+it up to the castle."
+
+What a change in their condition! How the wife's heart beats when of a
+Saturday she sees her poor workman, serf though he be, seated like a
+lordling under the baronial shades. At first he feels giddy, but in
+time accustoms himself to put on a grave air. It is no joking matter,
+indeed; for the lord commands them to show him due respect. When he
+has gone up to the castle, and the jealous ones look like laughing and
+designing to pay him off, "You see that battlement," says the lord,
+"the rope you don't see, but it is also ready. The first man who
+touches him shall be set up there high and quick."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This speech is repeated from one to another; until it has spread
+around these two as it were an atmosphere of terror. Everybody doffs
+his hat to them, bowing very low indeed. But when they pass by, folk
+stand aloof, and get out of the way. In order to shirk them they turn
+up cross roads, with backs bended, with eyes turned carefully down.
+Such a change makes them first savage, but afterwards sorrowful. They
+walk alone through all the district. The wife's shrewdness marks the
+hostile scorn of the castle, the trembling hate of those below. She
+feels herself fearfully isolated between two perils. No one to defend
+her but her lord, or rather the money they pay him: but then to find
+that money, to spur on the peasant's slowness, and overcome his
+sluggish antagonism, to snatch somewhat even from him who has nothing,
+what hard pressure, what threats, what cruelty, must be employed! This
+was never in the goodman's line of business. The wife brings him to
+the mark by dint of much pushing: she says to him, "Be rough; at need
+be cruel. Strike hard. Otherwise you will fall short of your
+engagements; and then we are undone."
+
+This suffering by day, however, is a trifle in comparison with the
+tortures of the night. She seems to have lost the power of sleeping.
+She gets up, walks to and fro, and roams about the house. All is
+still; and yet how the house is altered; its old innocence, its sweet
+security all for ever gone! "Of what is that cat by the hearth
+a-thinking, as she pretends to sleep, and 'tweenwhiles opens her green
+eyes upon me? The she-goat with her long beard, looking so discreet
+and ominous, knows more about it than she can tell. And yon cow which
+the moon reveals by glimpses in her stall, why does she give me such a
+sidelong look? All this is surely unnatural!"
+
+Shivering, she returns to her husband's side. "Happy man, how deep his
+slumber! Mine is over; I cannot sleep, I never shall sleep again." In
+time, however, she falls off. But oh, what suffering visits her then!
+The importunate guest is beside her, demanding and giving his orders.
+If one while she gets rid of him by praying or making the sign of the
+cross, anon he returns under another form. "Get back, devil! What
+durst thou? I am a Christian soul. No, thou shalt not touch me!"
+
+In revenge he puts on a hundred hideous forms; twining as an adder
+about her bosom, dancing as a frog upon her stomach, anon like a bat,
+sharp-snouted, covering her scared mouth with dreadful kisses. What is
+it he wants? To drive her into a corner, so that conquered and crushed
+at last, she may yield and utter the word "Yes." Still she is resolute
+to say "No." Still she is bent on braving the cruel struggles of every
+night, the endless martyrdom of that wasting strife.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"How far can a spirit make himself withal a body? What reality can
+there be in his efforts and approaches? Would she be sinning in the
+flesh, if she allowed the intrusions of one who was always roaming
+about her? Would that be sheer adultery?" Such was the sly roundabout
+way in which sometimes he stayed and weakened her resistance. "If I am
+only a breath, a smoke, a thin air, as so many doctors call me, why
+are you afraid, poor fearful soul, and how does it concern your
+husband?"
+
+It is the painful doom of the soul in these Middle Ages, that a number
+of questions which to us would seem idle, questions of pure
+scholastics, disturb, frighten, and torment it, taking the guise of
+visions, sometimes of devilish debatings, of cruel dialogues carried
+on within. The Devil, fierce as he shows himself in the demoniacs,
+remains always a spirit throughout the days of the Roman Empire, even
+in the time of St. Martin or the fifth century. With the Barbarian
+inroads he waxes barbarous, and takes to himself a body. So great a
+body does he become, that he amuses himself in breaking with stones
+the bell of the convent of St. Benedict. More and more fleshly is he
+made to appear, by way of frightening the plunderers of ecclesiastical
+goods. People are taught to believe that sinners will be tormented not
+in the spirit only, but even bodily in the flesh; that they will
+suffer material tortures, not those of ideal flames, but in very deed
+such exquisite pangs as burning coals, gridirons, and red-hot spits
+can awaken.
+
+This conception of the torturing devils inflicting material agonies on
+the souls of the dead, was a mine of gold to the Church. The living,
+pierced with grief and pity, asked themselves "if it were possible to
+redeem these poor souls from one world to another; if to these, too,
+might be applied such forms of expiation, by atonement and compromise,
+as were practised upon earth?" This bridge between two worlds was
+found in Cluny, which from its very birth, about 900, became at once
+among the wealthiest of the monastic orders.
+
+So long as God Himself dealt out his punishments, _making heavy his
+hand_, or striking _with the sword of the Angel_, according to the
+grand old phrase, there was much less of horror; if his hand was heavy
+as that of a judge, it was still the hand of a Father. The Angel who
+struck remained pure and clean as his own sword. Far otherwise is it
+when the execution is done by filthy demons, who resemble not the
+angel that burned up Sodom, but the angel that first went forth
+therefrom. In that place they stay, and their hell is a kind of Sodom,
+wherein these spirits, fouler than the sinners yielded into their
+charge, extract a horrible joy from the tortures they are inflicting.
+Such was the teaching to be found in the simple carvings hung out at
+the doors of churches. By these men learned the horrible lesson of the
+pleasures of pain. On pretence of punishing, the devils wreaked upon
+their victims the most outrageous whims. Truly an immoral and most
+shameful idea was this, of a sham justice that befriended the worse
+side, deepening its wickedness by the present of a plaything, and
+corrupting the Demon himself!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Cruel times indeed! Think how dark and low a heaven it was, how
+heavily it weighed on the head of man! Fancy the poor little children
+from their earliest years imbued with such awful ideas, and trembling
+within their cradles! Look at the pure innocent virgin believing
+herself damned for the pleasure infused in her by the spirit! And the
+wife in her marriage-bed tortured by his attacks, withstanding him,
+and yet again feeling him within her!--a fearful feeling known to
+those who have suffered from t�nia. You feel in yourself a double
+life; you trace the monster's movements, now boisterous, anon soft and
+waving, and therein the more troublesome, as making you fancy yourself
+on the sea. Then you rush off in wild dismay, terrified at yourself,
+longing to escape, to die.
+
+Even at such times as the demon was not raging against her, the woman
+into whom he had once forced his way would wander about as one
+burdened with gloom. For thenceforth she had no remedy. He had taken
+fast hold of her, like an impure steam. He is the Prince of the Air,
+of storms, and not least of the storms within. All this may be seen
+rudely but forcefully presented under the great doorway of Strasburg
+Cathedral. Heading the band of _Foolish Virgins_, the wicked woman who
+lures them on to destruction is filled, blown out by the Devil, who
+overflows ignobly and passes out from under her skirts in a dark
+stream of thick smoke.
+
+This blowing-out is a painful feature in the _possession_; at once her
+punishment and her pride. This proud woman of Strasburg bears her
+belly well before her, while her head is thrown far back. She triumphs
+in her size, delights in being a monster.
+
+To this, however, the woman we are following has not yet come. But
+already she is puffed up with him, and with her new and lofty lot.
+The earth has ceased to bear her. Plump and comely in these better
+days, she goes down the street with head upright, and merciless in her
+scorn. She is feared, hated, admired.
+
+In look and bearing our village lady says, "I ought to be the great
+lady herself. And what does she up yonder, the shameless sluggard,
+amidst all those men, in the absence of her lord?" And now the rivalry
+is set on foot. The village, while it loathes her, is proud thereat.
+"If the lady of the castle is a baroness, our woman is a queen; and
+more than a queen,--we dare not say what." Her beauty is a dreadful, a
+fantastic beauty, killing in its pride and pain. The Demon himself is
+in her eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He has her and yet has her not. She is still _herself_, and preserves
+_herself_. She belongs neither to the Demon nor to God. The Demon may
+certainly invade her, may encompass her like a fine atmosphere. And
+yet he has gained nothing at all; for he has no will thereto. She is
+_possessed_, _bedevilled_, and she does not belong to the Devil.
+Sometimes he uses her with dreadful cruelty, and yet gains nothing
+thereby. He places a coal of fire on her breast, or within her bowels.
+She jumps and writhes, but still says, "No, butcher, I will stay as I
+am."
+
+"Take care! I will lash you with so cruel a scourge of vipers, I will
+smite you with such a blow, that you will afterwards go weeping and
+rending the air with your cries."
+
+The next night he will not come. In the morning--it was Sunday--her
+husband went up to the castle. He came back all undone. The lord had
+said: "A brook that flows drop by drop cannot turn the mill. You bring
+me a halfpenny at a time, which is good for nought. I must set off in
+a fortnight. The king marches towards Flanders, and I have not even a
+war-horse, my own being lame ever since the tourney. Get ready for
+business: I am in want of a hundred pounds."
+
+"But, my lord, where shall I find them?"
+
+"You may sack the whole village, if you will; I am about to give you
+men enough. Tell your churls, if the money is not forthcoming they are
+lost men; yourself especially--you shall die. I have had enough of
+you: you have the heart of a woman; you are slack and sluggish. You
+shall die--you shall pay for your cowardice, your effeminacy. Stay; it
+makes but very small difference whether you go down now, or whether I
+keep you here. This is Sunday: right loudly would the folk yonder
+laugh to see you dangling your legs from my battlements."
+
+All this the unhappy man tells again to his wife; and preparing
+hopelessly for death, commends his soul to God. She being just as
+frightened, can neither lie down nor sleep. What is to be done? How
+sorry she is now to have sent the spirit away! If he would but come
+back! In the morning, when her husband rises, she sinks crushed upon
+the bed. She has hardly done so, when she feels on her chest a heavy
+weight. Gasping for breath, she is like to choke. The weight falls
+lower till it presses on her stomach, and therewithal on her arms she
+feels the grasp as of two steel hands.
+
+"You wanted me, and here I am. So, at last, stubborn one, I have your
+soul--at last!"
+
+"But oh, sir, is it mine to give away? My poor husband! you used to
+love him--you said so: you promised----"
+
+"Your husband! You forget. Are you sure your thoughts were always kept
+upon him? Your soul! I ask for it as a favour; but it is already
+mine."
+
+"No, sir," she says--her pride once more returning to her, even in so
+dire a strait--"no, sir; that soul belongs to me, to my husband, to
+our marriage rites."
+
+"Ah, incorrigible little fool! you would struggle still, even now that
+you are under the goad! I have seen your soul at all hours; I know it
+better than you yourself. Day by day did I mark your first
+reluctances, your pains, and your fits of despair. I saw how
+disheartened you were when, in a low tone, you said that no one could
+be held to an impossibility. And then I saw you growing more resigned.
+You were beaten a little, and you cried out not very loud. As for me,
+I ask for your soul simply because you have already lost it.
+Meanwhile, your husband is dying. What is to be done? I am sorry for
+you: I have you in my power; but I want something more. You must
+grant it frankly and of free will, or else he is a dead man."
+
+She answered very low, in her sleep, "Ah me! my body and my miserable
+flesh, you may take them to save my husband; but my heart, never. No
+one has ever had it, and I cannot give it away."
+
+So, all resignedly she waited there. And he flung at her two words:
+"Keep them, and they will save you." Therewith she shuddered, felt
+within her a horrible thrill of fire, and, uttering a loud cry, awoke
+in the arms of her astonished husband, to drown him in a flood of
+tears.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She tore herself away by force, and got up, fearing lest she should
+forget those two important words. Her husband was alarmed; for,
+without looking even at him, she darted on the wall a glance as
+piercing as that of Medea. Never was she more handsome. In her dark
+eye and the yellowish white around it played such a glimmer as one
+durst not face--a glimmer like the sulphurous jet of a volcano.
+
+She walked straight to the town. The first word was "_Green_." Hanging
+at a tradesman's door she beheld a green gown--the colour of the
+Prince of the World--an old gown, which as she put it on became new
+and glossy. Then she walked, without asking anyone, straight to the
+door of a Jew, at which she knocked loudly. It was opened with great
+caution. The poor Jew was sitting on the ground, covered over with
+ashes. "My dear, I must have a hundred pounds."
+
+"Oh, madam, how am I to get them? The Prince-bishop of the town has
+just had my teeth drawn to make me say where my gold lies.[31] Look at
+my bleeding mouth."
+
+    [31] This was a common way of extracting help from the Jews.
+    King John Lackland often tried it.
+
+"I know, I know; but I come to obtain from you the very means of
+destroying your Bishop. When the Pope gets a cuffing, the Bishop will
+not hold out long."
+
+"Who says so?"
+
+"_Toledo._"[32]
+
+    [32] Toledo seems to have been the holy city of Wizards, who
+    in Spain were numberless. These relations with the civilized
+    Moors, with the Jews so learned and paramount in Spain, as
+    managers of the royal revenues, had given them a very high
+    degree of culture, and in Toledo they formed a kind of
+    University. In the sixteenth century, it was christianised,
+    remodelled, reduced to mere _white magic_. See the
+    _Deposition of the Wizard Achard, Lord of Beaumont, a
+    Physician of Poitou_. Lancre, _Incredulit�_, p. 781.
+
+He hung his head. She spoke and blew: within her was her own soul and
+the Devil to boot. A wondrous warmth filled the room: he himself was
+aware of a kind of fiery fountain. "Madam," said he, looking at her
+from under his eyes, "poor and ruined as I am, I had some pence still
+in store to sustain my poor children."
+
+"You will not repent of it, Jew. I will swear to you the _great oath_
+that kills whoso breaks it. What you are about to give me, you shall
+receive back in a week, at an early hour in the morning. This I swear
+by your _great oath_ and by mine, which is yet greater: '_Toledo_.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A year went by. She had grown round and plump; had made herself one
+mass of gold. Men were amazed at her power of charming. Every one
+admired and obeyed her. By some devilish miracle the Jew had grown so
+generous as to lend at the slightest signal. By herself she maintained
+the castle, both through her own credit in the town, and through the
+fear inspired in the village by her rough extortion. The all-powerful
+green gown floated to and fro, ever newer and more beautiful. Her own
+beauty grew, as it were, colossal with success and pride. Frightened
+at a result so natural, everyone said, "At her time of life how tall
+she grows!"
+
+Meanwhile we have some news: the lord is coming home. The lady, who
+for a long time had not dared to come forth, lest she might meet the
+face of this other woman down below, now mounted her white horse.
+Surrounded by all her people, she goes to meet her husband; she stops
+and salutes him.
+
+And, first of all, she says, "How long I have been looking for you!
+Why did you leave your faithful wife so long a languishing widow? And
+yet I will not take you in to-night, unless you grant me a boon."
+
+"Ask it, ask it, fair lady," says the gentleman laughing; "but make
+haste, for I am eager to embrace you. How beautiful you have grown!"
+
+She whispered in his ear, so that no one knew what she said. Before
+going up to the castle the worthy lord dismounts by the village
+church, and goes in. Under the porch, at the head of the chief people,
+he beholds a lady, to whom without knowing her he offers a low salute.
+With matchless pride she bears high over the men's heads the towering
+horned bonnet (_hennin_[33]) of the period; the triumphal cap of the
+Devil, as it was often called, because of the two horns wherewith it
+was embellished. The real lady, blushing at her eclipse, went out
+looking very small. Anon she muttered, angrily, "There goes your serf.
+It is all over: everything has changed places: the ass insults the
+horse."
+
+    [33] The absurd head-dress of the women, with its one and
+    often two horns sloping back from the head, in the fourteenth
+    century.--TRANS.
+
+As they are going off, a bold page, a pet of the lady's, draws from
+his girdle a well-sharpened dagger, and with a single turn cleverly
+cuts the fine robe along her loins.[34] The crowd was astonished, but
+began to make it out when it saw the whole of the Baron's household
+going off in pursuit of her. Swift and merciless about her whistled
+and fell the strokes of the whip. She flies, but slowly, being already
+grown somewhat heavy. She has hardly gone twenty paces when she
+stumbles; her best friend having put a stone in her way to trip her
+up. Amidst roars of laughter she sprawls yelling on the ground. But
+the ruthless pages flog her up again. The noble handsome greyhounds
+help in the chase and bite her in the tenderest places. At last, in
+sad disorder, amidst the terrible crowd, she reaches the door of her
+house. It is shut. There with hands and feet she beats away, crying,
+"Quick, quick, my love, open the door for me!" There hung she, like
+the hapless screech-owl whom they nail up on a farm-house door; and
+still as hard as ever rained the blows. Within the house all is deaf.
+Is the husband there? Or rather, being rich and frightened, does he
+dread the crowd, lest they should sack his house?
+
+    [34] Such cruel outrages were common in those days. By the
+    French and Anglo-Saxon laws, lewdness was thus punished.
+    Grimm, 679, 711. Sternhook, 19, 326. Ducange, iii. 52.
+    Michelet, _Origines_, 386, 389. By and by, the same rough
+    usage is dealt out to honest women, to citizen's wives, whose
+    pride the nobles seek to abase. We know the kind of ambush
+    into which the tyrant Hagenbach drew the honourable ladies of
+    the chief burghers in Alsace, probably in scorn of their rich
+    and royal costume, all silks and gold. In my _Origines_ I
+    have also related the strange claim made by the Lord of Pac�,
+    in Anjou, on the pretty (and honest) women of the
+    neighbourhood. They were to bring to the castle fourpence and
+    a chaplet of flowers, and to dance with his officers: a
+    dangerous trip, in which they might well fear some such
+    affronts as those offered by Hagenbach. They were forced to
+    obey by the threat of being stripped and pricked with a goad
+    bearing the impress of the lord's arms.
+
+And now she has borne such misery, such strokes, such sounding
+buffets, that she sinks down in a swoon. On the cold stone threshold
+she finds herself seated, naked, half-dead, her bleeding flesh covered
+with little else than the waves of her long hair. Some one from the
+castle says, "No more now! We do not want her to die."
+
+They leave her alone, to hide herself. But in spirit she can see the
+merriment going on at the castle. The lord however, somewhat dazed,
+said that he was sorry for it. But the chaplain says, in his meek way,
+"If this woman is _bedevilled_, as they say, my lord, you owe it to
+your good vassals, you owe it to the whole country, to hand her over
+to Holy Church. Since all that business with the Templars and the
+Pope, what way the Demon is making! Nothing but fire will do for him."
+Upon which a Dominican says, "Your reverence has spoken right well.
+This devilry is a heresy in the highest degree. The bedevilled, like
+the heretic, should be burnt. Some of our good fathers, however, do
+not trust themselves now even to the fire. Wisely they desire that,
+before all things, the soul may be slowly purged, tried, subdued by
+fastings; that it may not be burnt in its pride, that it shall not
+triumph at the stake. If you, madam, in the greatness of your piety,
+of your charity, would take the trouble to work upon this woman,
+putting her for some years _in pace_ in a safe cell, of which you
+only should have the key,--by thus keeping up the chastening process
+you might be doing good to her soul, shaming the Devil, and giving
+herself up meek and humble into the hands of the Church."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE COVENANT.
+
+
+Nothing was wanting but the victim. They knew that to bring this woman
+before her was the most charming present she could receive. Tenderly
+would she have acknowledged the devotion of anyone who would have
+given her so great a token of his love, by delivering that poor
+bleeding body into her hands.
+
+But the prey was aware of the hunters. A few minutes later and she
+would have been carried off, to be for ever sealed up beneath the
+stone. Wrapping herself in some rags found by chance in the stable,
+she took to herself wings of some kind, and before midnight gained
+some out-of-the-way spot on a lonely moor all covered with briars and
+thistles. It was on the skirts of a wood, where by the uncertain light
+she might gather a few acorns, to swallow them like a beast. Ages had
+elapsed since evening; she was utterly changed. Beauty and queen of
+the village no more, she seemed with the change in her spirit to have
+changed her postures also. Among her acorns she squatted like a boar
+or a monkey. Thoughts far from human circled within her as she heard,
+or seemed to hear the hooting of an owl, followed by a burst of
+shrill laughter. She felt afraid, but perhaps it was the merry
+mockbird mimicking all those sounds, according to its wonted fashion.
+
+But the laughter begins again: whence comes it? She can see nothing.
+Apparently it comes from an old oak. Distinctly, however, she hears
+these words: "So, here you are at last! You have come with an ill
+grace; nor would you have come now, if you had not tried the full
+depth of your last need. You were fain first to run the gauntlet of
+whips; to cry out and plead for mercy, haughty as you were; to be
+mocked, undone, forsaken, unsheltered even by your husband. Where
+would you have been this night, if I had not been charitable enough to
+show you the _in pace_ getting ready for you in the tower? Late, very
+late, you are in coming to me, and only after they have called you the
+_old woman_. In your youth you did not treat me well, when I was your
+wee goblin, so eager to serve you. Now take your turn, if so I wish
+it, to serve me and kiss my feet.
+
+"You were mine from birth through your inborn wickedness, through
+those devilish charms of yours. I was your lover, your husband. Your
+own has shut his door against you: I will not shut mine. I welcome you
+to my domains, my free prairies, my woods. How am I the gainer, you
+may say? Could I not long since have had you at any hour? Were you
+not invaded, possessed, filled with my flame? I changed your blood
+and renewed it: not a vein in your body where I do not flow. You know
+not yourself how utterly you are mine. But our wedding has yet to be
+celebrated with all the forms. I have some manners, and feel rather
+scrupulous. Let us be one for everlasting."
+
+"Oh! sir, in my present state, what should I say? For a long, long
+while back have I felt, too truly felt, that you were all my fate.
+With evil intent you caressed me, loaded me with favours, and made me
+rich, in order at length to cast me down. Yesterday, when the black
+greyhound bit my poor naked flesh, its teeth scorched me, and I said,
+''Tis he!' At night when that daughter of Herodias with her foul
+language scared the company, somebody put them up to the promising her
+my blood; and that was you!"
+
+"True; but 'twas I who saved you and brought you hither. I did
+everything, as you have guessed. I ruined you, and why? That I might
+have you all to myself. To speak frankly, I was tired of your husband.
+You took to haggling and pettifogging: far otherwise do I go to work;
+I want all or none. This is why I have moulded and drilled you,
+polished and ripened you, for my own behoof. Such, you see, is my
+delicacy of taste. I don't take, as people imagine, those foolish
+souls who would give themselves up at once. I prefer the choicer
+spirits, who have reached a certain dainty stage of fury and despair.
+Stop: I must let you know how pleasant you look at this moment. You
+are a great beauty, a most desirable soul. I have loved you ever so
+long, but now I am hungering for you.
+
+"I will do things on a large scale, not being one of those husbands
+who reckon with their betrothed. If you wanted only riches, you should
+have them in a trice. If you wanted to be queen in the stead of Joan
+of Navarre, that too, though difficult, should be done, and the King
+would not lose much thereby in the matter of pride and haughtiness. My
+wife is greater than a queen. But, come, tell me what you wish."
+
+"Sir, I ask only for the power of doing evil."
+
+"A delightful answer, very delightful! Have I not cause to love you?
+In reality those words contain all the law and all the prophets. Since
+you have made so good a choice, all the rest shall be thrown in, over
+and above. You shall learn all my secrets. You shall see into the
+depths of the earth. The whole world shall come and pour out gold at
+thy feet. See here, my bride, I give you the true diamond,
+_Vengeance_. I know you, rogue; I know your most hidden desires. Ay,
+our hearts on that point understand each other well! Therein at least
+shall I have full possession of you. You shall behold your enemy on
+her knees at your feet, begging and praying for mercy, and only too
+happy to earn her release by doing whatever she has made you do. She
+will burst into tears; and you will graciously say, _No_: whereon she
+will cry, 'Death and damnation!' ... Come, I will make this my special
+business."
+
+"Sir, I am at your service. I was thankless indeed, for you have
+always heaped favours on me. I am yours, my master, my god! None other
+do I desire. Sweet are your endearments, and very mild your service."
+
+And so she worships him, tumbling on all-fours. At first she pays him,
+after the forms of the Temple, such homage as betokens the utter
+abandonment of the will. Her master, the Prince of this World, the
+Prince of the Winds, breathes upon her in his turn, like an eager
+spirit. She receives at once the three sacraments, in reverse
+order--baptism, priesthood, and marriage. In this new Church, the
+exact opposite of the other, everything must be done the wrong way.
+Meekly, patiently, she endures the cruel initiation,[35] borne up by
+that one word, "Vengeance!"
+
+    [35] This will be explained further on. We must guard against
+    the pedantic additions of the sixteenth century writers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Far from being crushed or weakened by the infernal thunderbolt, she
+arose with an awful vigour and flashing eyes. The moon, which for a
+moment had chastely covered herself, took flight on seeing her again.
+Blown out to an amazing degree by the hellish vapour, filled with
+fire, with fury, and with some new ineffable desire, she grew for a
+while enormous with excess of fulness, and displayed a terrible
+beauty. She looked around her, and all nature was changed. The trees
+had gotten a tongue, and told of things gone by. The herbs became
+simples. The plants which yesterday she trod upon as so much hay, were
+now as people discoursing on the art of medicine.
+
+She awoke on the morrow far, very far, from her enemies, in a state of
+thorough security. She had been sought after, but they had only found
+some scattered shreds of her unlucky green gown. Had she in her
+despair flung herself headlong into the torrent? Or had she been
+carried off alive by the Devil? No one could tell. Either way she was
+certainly damned, which greatly consoled the lady for having failed to
+find her.
+
+Had they seen her they would hardly have known her again, she was so
+changed. Only the eyes remained, not brilliant, but armed with a very
+strange and a rather deterring glimmer. She herself was afraid of
+frightening: she never lowered them, but looked sideways, so that the
+full force of their beams might be lost by slanting them. From the
+sudden browning of her hue people would have said that she had passed
+through the flame. But the more watchful felt that the flame was
+rather in herself, that she bore about her an impure and scorching
+heat. The fiery dart with which Satan had pierced her was still
+there, and, as through a baleful lamp, shot forth a wild, but
+fearfully witching sheen. Shrinking from her, you would yet stand
+still, with a strange trouble filling your every sense.
+
+She saw herself at the mouth of one of those troglodyte caves, such as
+you find without number in the hills of the Centre and the West of
+France. It was in the borderland, then wild, between the country of
+Merlin and the country of Melusina. Some moors stretching out of sight
+still bear witness to the ancient wars, the unceasing havoc, the many
+horrors, which prevented the country being peopled again. There the
+Devil was in his home. Of the few inhabitants most were his zealous
+worshippers. Whatever attractions he might have found in the rough
+brakes of Lorraine, the black pine-forests of the Jura, or the briny
+deserts of Burgos, his preferences lay, perhaps, in our western
+marches. There might be found not only the visionary shepherd, that
+Satanic union of the goat and the goatherd, but also a closer
+conspiracy with nature, a deeper insight into remedies and poisons, a
+mysterious connection, whose links we know not, with Toledo the
+learned, the University of the Devil.
+
+The winter was setting in: its breath having first stripped the trees,
+had heaped together the leaves and small boughs of dead wood. All this
+she found prepared for her at the mouth of her gloomy den. By a wood
+and moor, half a mile across, you came down within reach of some
+villages, which had grown up beside a watercourse. "Behold your
+kingdom!" said the voice within her. "To-day a beggar, to-morrow you
+shall be queen of the whole land."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE KING OF THE DEAD.
+
+
+At first she was not much affected by promises like these. A lonely
+hermitage without God, amidst the great monotonous breezes of the
+West, amidst memories all the more ruthless for that mighty solitude,
+of such heavy losses, such sharp affronts; a widowhood so hard and
+sudden, away from the husband who had left her to her shame--all this
+was enough to bow her down. Plaything of fate, she seemed like the
+wretched weed upon the moor, having no root, but tossed to and fro,
+lashed and cruelly cut by the north-east winds; or rather, perhaps,
+like the grey, many-cornered coral, which only sticks fast to get more
+easily broken. The children trampled on her; the people said, with a
+laugh, "She is the bride of the winds."
+
+Wildly she laughed at herself when she thought on the comparison. But,
+from the depth of her dark cave, she heard,--
+
+"Ignorant and witless, you know not what you say. The plant thus
+tossing to and fro may well look down upon the rank and vulgar herbs.
+If it tosses, it is, at least, all self-contained--itself both flower
+and seed. Do thou be like it; be thine own root, and even in the
+whirlwind thou wilt still bear thy blossom: our own flowers for
+ourselves, as they come forth from the dust of tombs and the ashes of
+volcanoes.
+
+"To thee, first flower of Satan, do I this day grant the knowledge of
+my former name, my olden power. I was, I am, the _King of the Dead_.
+Ay, have I not been sadly slandered? 'Tis I who alone can make them
+reappear; a boon untold, for which I surely deserved an altar."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To pierce the future and to call up the past, to forestal and to live
+again the swift-flying moments, to enlarge the present with that which
+has been and that which will be--these are the two things forbidden to
+the Middle Ages; but forbidden in vain. Nature is invincible; nothing
+can be gained in such a quarter. He who thus errs is _a man_. It is
+not for him to be rooted to his furrow, with eyes cast down, looking
+nowhere beyond the steps he takes behind his oxen. No: we will go
+forward with head upraised, looking further and looking deeper! This
+earth that we measure out with so much care, we kick our feet upon
+withal, and keep ever saying to it, "What dost thou hold in thy
+bowels? What secrets lie therein? Thou givest us back the grain we
+entrust to thee; but not that human seed, those beloved dead, we have
+lent into thy charge. Our friends, our loves, that lie there, will
+they never bud again? Oh, that we might see them, if only for one
+hour, if only for one moment!
+
+"Some day we ourselves shall reach the unknown land, whither they have
+already gone. But shall we see them again there? Shall we dwell with
+them? Where are they, and what are they doing? They must be kept very
+close prisoners, these dear dead of mine, to give me not one token!
+And how can I make them hear me? My father, too, whose only hope I
+was, who loved me with so mighty a love, why comes he never to me? Ah,
+me! on either side is bondage, imprisonment, mutual ignorance; a
+dismal night, where we look in vain for one glimmer!"[36]
+
+    [36] The glimmer shines forth in Dumesnil's _Immortalit�_,
+    and _La Foi Nouvelle_, in the _Ciel et Terre_ of Reynaud,
+    Henry Martin, &c.
+
+These everlasting thoughts of Nature, from having in olden times been
+simply mournful, became in the Middle Ages painful, bitter, weakening,
+and the heart thereby grew smaller. It seems as if they had reckoned
+on flattening the soul, on pressing and squeezing it down to the
+compass of a bier. The burial of the serf between four deal boards was
+well suited to such an end: it haunted one with the notion of being
+smothered. A person thus enclosed, if ever he returned in one's
+dreams, would no longer appear as a thin luminous shadow encircled by
+a halo of Elysium, but only as the wretched sport of some hellish
+griffin-cat. What a hateful and impious idea, that my good, kind
+father, my mother so revered by all, should become the plaything of
+such a beast! You may laugh now, but for a thousand years it was no
+laughing matter: they wept bitterly. And even now the heart swells
+with wrath, the very pen grates angrily upon the paper, as one writes
+down these blasphemous doings.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Moreover, it was surely a cruel device to transfer the Festival of the
+Dead from the Spring, where antiquity had placed it, to November. In
+May, where it fell at first, they were buried among the flowers. In
+March, wherein it was afterwards placed, it became the signal for
+labour and the lark. The dead and the seed of corn entered the earth
+together with the same hope. But in November, when all the work is
+done, the weather close and gloomy for many days to come; when the
+folk return to their homes; when a man, re-seating himself by the
+hearth, looks across on that place for evermore empty--ah, me! at such
+a time how great the sorrow grows! Clearly, in choosing a moment
+already in itself so funereal, for the obsequies of Nature, they
+feared that a man would not find cause enough of sorrow in himself!
+
+The coolest, the busiest of men, however taken up they be with life's
+distracting cares, have, at least, their sadder moments. In the dark
+wintry morning, in the night that comes on so swift to swallow us up
+in its shadow, ten years, nay, twenty years hence, strange feeble
+voices will rise up in your heart: "Good morning, dear friend, 'tis
+we! You are alive, are working as hard as ever. So much the better!
+You do not feel our loss so heavily, and you have learned to do
+without us; but we cannot, we never can, do without you. The ranks are
+closed, the gap is all but filled. The house that was ours is full,
+and we have blessed it. All is well, is better than when your father
+carried you about; better than when your little girl said, in her
+turn, to you, 'Papa, carry me.' But, lo! you are in tears. Enough,
+till we meet again!"
+
+Alas, and are they gone? That wail was sweet and piercing: but was it
+just? No. Let me forget myself a thousand times rather than I should
+forget them! And yet, cost what it will to say so, say it we must,
+that certain traces are fading off, are already less clear to see;
+that certain features are not indeed effaced, but grown paler and more
+dim. A hard, a bitter, a humbling thought it is, to find oneself so
+weak and fleeting, wavering as unremembered water; to feel that in
+time one loses that treasure of grief which one had hoped to preserve
+for ever. Give it me back, I pray: I am too much bounden to so rich a
+fountain of tears. Trace me again, I implore you, those features I
+love so well. Could you not help me at least to dream of them by
+night?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+More than one such prayer is spoken in the month of November. And
+amidst the striking of the bells and the dropping of the leaves, they
+clear out of church, saying one to another in low tones: "I say,
+neighbour; up there lives a woman of whom folk speak well and ill.
+For myself, I dare say nothing; but she has power over the world
+below. She calls up the dead, and they come. Oh, if she might--without
+sin, you know, without angering God--make my friends come to me! I am
+alone, as you must know, and have lost everything in this world. But
+who knows what this woman is, whether of hell or heaven? I won't go
+(he is dying of curiosity all the while); I won't. I have no wish to
+endanger my soul: besides, the wood yonder is haunted. Many's the time
+that things unfit to see have been found on the moor. Haven't you
+heard about Jacqueline, who was there one evening looking for one of
+her sheep? Well, when she returned, she was crazy. I won't go."
+
+Thus unknown to each other, many of the men at least went thither. For
+as yet the women hardly dared so great a risk. They remark the dangers
+of the road, ask many questions of those who return therefrom. The new
+Pythoness is not like her of Endor, who raised up Samuel at the prayer
+of Saul. Instead of showing you the ghosts, she gives you cabalistic
+words and powerful potions to bring them back in your dreams. Ah, how
+many a sorrow has recourse to these! The grandmother herself,
+tottering with her eighty years, would behold her grandson again. By
+an unwonted effort, yet not without a pang of shame at sinning on the
+edge of the grave, she drags herself to the spot. She is troubled by
+the savage look of a place all rough with yews and thorns, by the
+rude, dark beauty of that relentless Proserpine. Prostrate,
+trembling, grovelling on the ground, the poor old woman weeps and
+prays. Answer there is none. But when she dares to lift herself up a
+little, she sees that Hell itself has been a-weeping.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is simply Nature recovering herself. Proserpine blushes
+self-indignantly thereat. "Degenerate soul!" she calls herself, "why
+this weakness? You came hither with the firm desire of doing nought
+but evil. Is this your master's lesson? How he will laugh at you for
+this!"
+
+"Nay! Am I not the great shepherd of the shades, making them come and
+go, opening unto them the gate of dreams? Your Dante, when he drew my
+likeness, forgot my attributes. When he gave me that useless tail, he
+did not see that I held the shepherd's staff of Osiris; that from
+Mercury I had inherited his caduceus. In vain have they thought to
+build up an insurmountable wall between the two worlds; I have wings
+to my heels, I have flown over. By a kindly rebellion of that
+slandered Spirit, of that ruthless monster, succour has been given to
+those who mourned; mothers, lovers, have found comfort. He has taken
+pity on them in defiance of their new god."
+
+The scribes of the Middle Ages, being all of the priestly class, never
+cared to acknowledge the deep but silent changes of the popular mind.
+It is clear that from thenceforth compassion goes over to Satan's
+side. The Virgin herself, ideal as she is of grace, makes no answer
+to such a want of the heart. Neither does the Church, who expressly
+forbids the calling up of the dead. While all books delight in keeping
+up either the swinish demon of earlier times, or the griffin butcher
+of the second period, Satan has changed his shape for those who cannot
+write. He retains somewhat of the ancient Pluto; but his pale nor
+wholly ruthless majesty, that permitted the dead to come back, the
+living once more to see the dead, passes ever more and more into the
+nature of his father, or his grandfather, Osiris, the shepherd of
+souls.
+
+Through this one change come many others. Men with their mouths
+acknowledge the hell official and the boiling caldrons; but in their
+hearts do they truly believe therein? Would it be so easy to win these
+infernal favours for hearts beset with hateful traditions of a hell of
+torments? The one idea neutralizes without wholly effacing the other,
+and between them grows up a vague mixed image, resembling more and
+more nearly the hell of Virgil. A mighty solace was here offered to
+the human heart. Blessed above all was the relief thus given to the
+poor women, whom that dreadful dogma about the punishment of their
+loved dead had kept drowned in tears and inconsolable. The whole of
+their lifetime had been but one long sigh.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Sibyl was musing over her master's words, when a very light step
+became audible. The day has scarcely dawned: it is after Christmas,
+about the first day of the new year. Over the crisp and rimy grass
+approaches a small, fair woman, all a-trembling, who has no sooner
+reached the spot, than she swoons and loses her breath. Her black gown
+tells plainly of her widowhood. To the piercing gaze of Medea, without
+moving or speaking, she reveals all: there is no mystery about her
+shrinking figure. The other says to her with a loud voice: "You need
+not tell me, little dumb creature, for you would never get to the end
+of it. I will speak for you. Well, you are dying of love!" Recovering
+a little, she clasps her hands together, and sinking almost on her
+knees, tells everything, making a full confession. She had suffered,
+wept, prayed, and would have silently suffered on. But these winter
+feasts, these family re-unions, the ill-concealed happiness of other
+women who, without pity for her, showed off their lawful loves, had
+driven the burning arrow again into her heart. Alas, what could she
+do? If he might but return and comfort her for one moment! "Be it even
+at the cost of my life; let me die, but only let me see him once
+more!"
+
+"Go back to your house: shut the door carefully: put up the shutter
+even against any curious neighbour. Throw off your mourning, and put
+on your wedding-clothes; place a cover for him on the table; but yet
+he will not come. You will sing the song he made for you, and sang to
+you so often, but yet he will not come. Then you shall draw out of
+your box the last dress he wore, and, kissing it, say, 'So much the
+worse for thee if thou wilt not come!' And presently when you have
+drunk this wine, bitter, but very sleepful, you will lie down as a
+wedded bride. Then assuredly he will come to you."
+
+The little creature would have been no woman, if next morning she had
+not shown her joy and tenderness by owning the miracle in whispers to
+her best friend. "Say nought of it, I beg. But he himself told me,
+that if I wore this gown and slept a deep sleep every Sunday, he would
+return."
+
+A happiness not without some danger. Where would the rash woman be, if
+the Church learned that she was no longer a widow; that re-awakened by
+her love, the spirit came to console her?
+
+But strange to tell, the secret is kept. There is an understanding
+among them all, to hide so sweet a mystery. For who has no concern
+therein? Who has not lost and mourned? Who would not gladly see this
+bridge created between two worlds? "O thou beneficent Witch! Blessed
+be thou, spirit of the nether world!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE PRINCE OF NATURE.
+
+
+Hard is the long sad winter of the North-west. Even after its
+departure it renews its visits, like a drowsy sorrow which ever and
+again comes back and rages afresh. One morning everything wakes up
+decked with bright needles. In this cruel mocking splendour that makes
+one shiver through and through, the whole vegetable world seems turned
+mineral, loses its sweet diversity, and freezes into a mass of rough
+crystals.
+
+The poor Sibyl, as she sits benumbed by her hearth of leaves, scourged
+by the flaying north-east winds, feels at her heart a cruel pang, for
+she feels herself all alone. But that very thought again brings her
+relief. With returning pride returns a vigour that warms her heart and
+lights up her soul. Intent, quick, and sharp, her sight becomes as
+piercing as those needles; and the world, the cruel world that caused
+her suffering, is to her transparent as glass. Anon she rejoices over
+it, as over a conquest of her making.
+
+For is she not a queen, a queen with courtiers of her own? The crows
+have clearly some connection with her. In grave, dignified body they
+come like ancient augurs, to talk to her of passing things. The
+wolves passing by salute her timidly with sidelong glances. The bear,
+then oftener seen than now, would sometimes, in his heavily
+good-natured way, seat himself awkwardly at the threshold of her den,
+like a hermit calling on a fellow-hermit, just as we often see him in
+the Lives of the Desert Fathers.
+
+All those birds and beasts with whom men only made acquaintance in
+hunting or slaying them, were outlawed as much as she. With all these
+she comes to an understanding; for Satan as the chief outlaw, imparts
+to his own the pleasures of natural freedom, the wild delight of
+living in a world sufficient unto itself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rough freedom of loneliness, all hail! The whole earth seems still
+clothed in a white shroud, held in bondage by a load of ice, of
+pitiless crystals, so uniform, sharp, and agonizing. After the year
+1200 especially, the world is shut in like a transparent tomb, wherein
+all things look terribly motionless, hard, and stiff.
+
+The Gothic Church has been called a "crystallization;" and so it truly
+is. About 1300, architecture gave up all its old variety of form and
+living fancies, to repeat itself for evermore, to vie with the
+monotonous prisms of Spitzbergen, to become the true and awful
+likeness of that hard crystal city, in which a dreadful dogma thought
+to bury all life away.
+
+But for all the props, buttresses, flying-buttresses, that keep the
+monument up, one thing there is that makes it totter. There is no loud
+battering from without, but a certain softness in the very
+foundations, which attacks the crystal with an imperceptible thaw.
+What thing do I mean? The humble stream of warm tears shed by a whole
+world, until they have become a very sea of wailings. What do I call
+it? A breath of the future, a stirring of the natural life, which
+shall presently rise again in irresistible might. The fantastic
+building of which more than one side is already sinking, says, not
+without terror, to itself, "It is the breath of Satan."
+
+Beneath this Hecla-glacier lies a volcano which has no need of
+bursting out; a mild, slow, gentle heat, which caresses it from below,
+and, calling it nearer, says in a whisper, "Come down."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Witch has something to laugh at, if from the gloom she can see how
+utterly Dante and St. Thomas,[37] in the bright light yonder, ignore
+the true position of things. They fancy that the Devil wins his way by
+cunning or by terror. They make him grotesque and coarse, as in his
+childhood, when Jesus could still send him into the herd of swine. Or
+else they make him subtle as a logician of the schools, or a
+fault-finding lawyer. If he had been no better than this compound of
+beast and disputant,--if he had only lived in the mire or on
+fine-drawn quibbles about nothing, he would very soon have died of
+hunger.
+
+    [37] St. Thomas Aquinas, the "Angelic Doctor," who died in
+    1274.--TRANS.
+
+People were too ready to crow over him, when he was shewn by
+Bartolus[38] pleading against the woman--that is, the Virgin--who gets
+him nonsuited and condemned with costs. At that time, indeed, the very
+contrary was happening on earth. By a master-stroke of his he had won
+over the plaintiff herself, his fair antagonist, the Woman; had
+seduced her, not indeed by verbal pleadings, but by arguments not less
+real than they were charming and irresistible. He put into her hands
+the fruits of science and of nature.
+
+    [38] Bartolus or Bartoli, a lawyer and law-writer of the
+    fourteenth century.--TRANS.
+
+No need for controversies, for pleas of any kind: he simply shows
+himself. In the East, the new-found Paradise, he begins to work. From
+that Asian world, which men had thought to destroy, there springs
+forth a peerless day-dawn, whose beams travel afar until they pierce
+the deep winter of the West. There dawns on us a world of nature and
+of art, accursed of the ignorant indeed, but now at length come
+forward to vanquish its late victors in a pleasant war of love and
+motherly endearments. All are conquered, all rave about it; they will
+have nothing but Asia herself. With her hands full she comes to meet
+us. Her tissues, shawls, her carpets so agreeably soft, so wondrously
+harmonized, her bright and well-wrought blades, her richly damascened
+arms, make us aware of our own barbarism. Moreover, little as that may
+seem, these accursed lands of the "miscreant," ruled by Satan, are
+visibly blessed with the fairest fruits of nature, that elixir of the
+powers of God; with _the first of vegetables_, coffee; with _the first
+of beasts_, the Arab horse. What am I saying?--with a whole world of
+treasures, silk, sugar, and a host of herbs all-powerful to relieve
+the heart, to soothe and lighten our sufferings.
+
+All this breaks upon our view about the year 1300. Spain herself,
+whose brain is wholly fashioned out of Moors and Jews, for all that
+she is again subdued by the barbarous children of the Goth, bears
+witness in behalf of those _miscreants_. Wherever the Mussulman
+children of the Devil are at work, all is prosperous, the springs well
+forth, the ground is covered with flowers. A right worthy and harmless
+travail decks it with those wondrous vineyards, through which men
+recruit themselves, drowning all care, and seeming to drink in
+draughts of very goodness and heavenly compassion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To whom does Satan bring the foaming cup of life? In this fasting
+world, which has so long been fasting from reason, what man was there
+strong enough to take all this in without growing giddy, without
+getting drunken and risking the loss of his wits?
+
+Is there yet a brain so far from being petrified or crystallized by
+the teaching of St. Thomas, as to remain open to the living world, to
+its vegetative forces? Three magicians, Albert the Great, Roger Bacon,
+Arnaud of Villeneuve,[39] by strong efforts make their way to Nature's
+secrets; but those lusty intellects lack flexibility and popular
+power. Satan falls back on his own Eve. The woman is still the most
+natural thing in the world; still keeps her hold on those traits of
+roguish innocence one sees in a kitten or a child of very high spirit.
+Besides, she figures much better in that world-comedy, that mighty
+game wherewith the universal Proteus disports himself.
+
+    [39] Three eminent schoolmen of the thirteenth century, whose
+    scientific researches pointed the way to future
+    discoveries.--TRANS.
+
+But being light and changeful, she is all the less liable to be carked
+and hardened by pain! This woman, whom we have seen outlawed from the
+world, and rooted on her wild moor, affords a case in point. Have we
+yet to learn whether, bruised and soured as she is, with her heart
+full of hate, she will re-enter the natural world and the pleasant
+paths of life? Assuredly her return thither will not find her in good
+tune, will happen mainly through a round of ill. In the coming and
+going of the storm she is all the more scared and violent for being so
+very weak.
+
+When in the mild warmth of spring, from the air, the depths of the
+earth, from the flowers and their languages, a new revelation rises
+round her on every side, she is taken dizzy at the first. Her
+swelling bosom overflows. The Sibyl of science has her tortures, like
+her of Cum� or of Delphi. The schoolmen find their fun in saying, "It
+is the wind and nought else that blows her out. Her lover, the Prince
+of the Air, fills her with dreams and delusions, with wind, with
+smoke, with emptiness." Foolish irony! So far from this being the true
+cause of her drunkenness, it is nothing empty, it is a real, a
+substantial thing, which has loaded her bosom all too quickly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Have you ever seen the agave, that hard wild African shrub, so sharp,
+bitter, and tearing, with huge bristles instead of leaves? Ten years
+through it loves and dies. At length one day the amorous shoot, which
+has so long been gathering in the rough thing, goes off with a noise
+like gunfire, and darts skyward. And this shoot becomes a whole tree,
+not less than thirty feet high, and bristling with sad flowers.
+
+Some such analogy does the gloomy Sibyl feel, when one morning of a
+spring-time, late in coming, and therefore impetuous at the last,
+there takes place all around her a vast explosion of life.
+
+And all things look at her, and all things bloom for her. For every
+thing that has life says softly, "Whoso understands me, I am his."
+
+What a contrast! Here is the wife of the desert and of despair, bred
+up in hate and vengeance, and lo! all these innocent things agree to
+smile upon her! The trees, soothed by the south wind, pay her gentle
+homage. Each herb of the field, with its own special virtue of scent,
+or remedy, or poison--very often the three things are one--offers
+itself to her, saying, "Gather me."
+
+All things are clearly in love. "Are they not mocking me? I had been
+readier for hell than for this strange festival. O spirit, art thou
+indeed that spirit of dread whom once I knew, the traces of whose
+cruelty I bear about me--what am I saying, and where are my
+senses?--the wound of whose dealing scorches me still?
+
+"Ah, no! 'Tis not the spirit whom I hoped for in my rage; '_he who
+always says, No!_' This other one utters a yes of love, of drunken
+dizziness. What ails him? Is he the mad, the dazed soul of life?
+
+"They spoke of the great Pan as dead. But here he is in the guise of
+Bacchus, of Priapus, eager with long-delayed desire, threatening,
+scorching, teeming. No, no! Be this cup far from me! Trouble only
+should I drink from it,--who knows? A despair yet sharper than my past
+despairs."
+
+Meanwhile wherever the woman appears, she becomes the one great object
+of love. She is followed by all, and for her sake all despise their
+own proper kind. What they say about the black he-goat, her pretended
+favourite, may be applied to all. The horse neighs for her, breaking
+everything and putting her in danger. The awful king of the prairie,
+the black bull, bellows with grief, should she pass him by at a
+distance. And, behold, yon bird despondingly turns away from his hen,
+and with whirring wings hastes to convince the woman of his love!
+
+Such is the new tyranny of her master, who, by the funniest hap of
+all, foregoes the part accredited to him as king of the dead, to burst
+forth a very king of life.
+
+"No!" she says; "leave me to my hatred: I ask for nothing more. Let me
+be feared and fearful! The beauty I would have, is only that which
+dwells in these black serpents of my hair, in this countenance
+furrowed with grief, and the scars of thy thunderbolt." But the Lord
+of Evil replies with cunning softness: "Oh, but you are only the more
+beautiful, the more impressible, for this fiery rage of yours! Ay,
+call out and curse on, beneath one and the same goad! 'Tis but one
+storm calling another. Swift and smooth is the passage from wrath to
+pleasure."
+
+Neither her fury nor her pride would have saved her from such
+allurements. But she is saved by the boundlessness of her desire.
+There is nought will satisfy her. Each kind of life for her is all too
+bounded, wanting in power. Away from her, steed and bull and loving
+bird! Away, ye creatures all! for one who desires the Infinite, how
+weak ye are!
+
+She has a woman's longing; but for what? Even for the whole, the great
+all-containing whole. Satan did not foresee that no one creature would
+content her.
+
+That which he could not do, is done for her in some ineffable way.
+Overcome by a desire so wide and deep, a longing boundless as the sea,
+she falls asleep. At such a moment, all else forgot, no touch of hate,
+no thought of vengeance left in her, she slumbers on the plain,
+innocent in her own despite, stretched out in easy luxuriance like a
+sheep or a dove.
+
+She sleeps, she dreams; a delightful dream! It seemed as if the
+wondrous might of universal life had been swallowed up within her; as
+if life and death and all things thenceforth lay fast in her bowels;
+as if in return for all her suffering, she was teeming at last with
+Nature herself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE DEVIL A PHYSICIAN.
+
+
+That still and dismal scene of the Bride of Corinth, is repeated
+literally from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. While it was
+yet night, just before the daybreak, the two lovers, Man and Nature,
+meet again, embrace with rapture, and, at that same moment--horrible
+to tell!--behold themselves attacked by fearful plagues. We seem still
+to hear the loved one saying to her lover, "It is all over: thy hair
+will be white to-morrow. I am dead, and thou too wilt die."
+
+Three dreadful blows happen in these three centuries. In the first we
+have a loathsome changing of the outer man, diseases of the skin,
+above all, leprosy. In the second, the evil turns inwards, becomes a
+grotesque excitement of the nerves, a fit of epileptic dancing. Then
+all grows calm, but the blood is changed, and ulcers prepare the way
+for syphilis, the scourge of the fifteenth century.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Among the chief diseases of the Middle Ages, so far as one can look
+therein, to speak generally, had been hunger, weakness, poverty of
+blood, that kind of consumption which is visible in the sculptures of
+that time. The blood was like clear water, and scrofulous ailments
+were rife everywhere. Barring the well-paid doctors, Jew or Arab, of
+the kings, the art of medicine was practised only with, holy water at
+the church door. Thither on Sundays, after the service, would come a
+crowd of sick, to whom words like these were spoken: "You have sinned
+and God has afflicted you. Be thankful: so much the less will you
+suffer in the next world. Resign yourselves to suffer and to die. The
+Church has prayers for the dead." Weak, languishing, hopeless, with no
+desire to live, they followed this counsel faithfully, and let life go
+its way.
+
+A fatal discouragement, a wretched state of things, that would have
+prolonged without end these ages of lead, and debarred them from all
+progress! Worst of all things is it to resign oneself so readily, to
+welcome death with so much docility, to have strength for nothing, to
+desire nothing. Of more worth was that new era, that close of the
+Middle Ages, which at the cost of cruel sufferings first enabled us to
+regain our former energy; namely, _the resurrection of desire_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Some Arab writers have asserted that the widespread eruption of
+skin-diseases which marks the thirteenth century, was caused by the
+taking of certain stimulants to re-awaken and renew the defaults of
+passion. Undoubtedly the burning spices brought over from the East,
+tended somewhat to such an issue. The invention of distilling and of
+divers fermented drinks may also have worked in the same direction.
+
+But a greater and far more general fermentation was going on. During
+the sharp inward struggle between two worlds and two spirits, a third
+surviving silenced both. As the fading faith and the newborn reason
+were disputing together, somebody stepping between them caught hold of
+man. You ask who? A spirit unclean and raging, the spirit of sour
+desires, bubbling painfully within.
+
+Debarred from all outlet, whether of bodily enjoyment, or the free
+flow of soul, the sap of life thus closely rammed together, was sure
+to corrupt itself. Bereft of light, of sound, of speech, it spoke
+through pains and ominous excrescences. Then happened a new and
+dreadful thing. The desire put off without being diminished, finds
+itself stopped short by a cruel enchantment, a shocking
+metamorphosis.[40] Love was advancing blindly with open arms. It
+recoils groaning; but in vain would it flee: the fire of the blood
+keeps raging; the flesh eats itself away in sharp titillations, and
+sharper within rages the coal of fire, made fiercer by despair.
+
+    [40] Leprosy has been traced to Asia and the Crusades; but
+    Europe had it in herself. The war declared by the Middle Ages
+    against the flesh and all cleanliness bore its fruits. More
+    than one saint boasted of having never washed even his hands.
+    And how much did the rest wash? To have stripped for a moment
+    would have been sinful. The worldlings carefully follow the
+    teaching of the monks. This subtle and refined society, which
+    sacrificed marriage and seemed inspired only with the poetry
+    of adultery, preserved a strange scruple on a point so
+    harmless. It dreaded all cleansing, as so much defilement.
+    There was no bathing for a thousand years!
+
+What remedy does Christian Europe find for this twofold ill? Death and
+captivity; nothing more. When the bitter celibacy, the hopeless love,
+the passion irritable and ever-goading, bring you into a morbid state;
+when your blood is decomposing, then you shall go down into an _In
+pace_, or build your hut in the desert. You must live with the
+handbell in your hand, that all may flee before you. "No human being
+must see you: no consolation may be yours. If you come near, 'tis
+death."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Leprosy is the last stage, the _apogee_ of this scourge; but a
+thousand other ills, less hideous but still cruel, raged everywhere.
+The purest and the most fair were stricken with sad eruptions, which
+men regarded as sin made visible, or the chastisement of God. Then
+people did what the love of life had never made them do: they forsook
+the old sacred medicine, the bootless holy water, and went off to the
+Witch. From habit and fear as well, they still repaired to church; but
+thenceforth their true church was with her, on the moor, in the
+forest, in the desert. To her they carried their vows.
+
+Prayers for healing, prayers for pleasure. On the first effervescing
+of their heated blood, folk went to the Sibyl, in great secrecy, at
+uncertain hours. "What shall I do? and what is this I feel within me?
+I burn: give me some lenitive. I burn: grant me that which causes my
+intolerable desire."
+
+A bold, a blamable journey, for which they reproach themselves at
+night. Let this new fatality be never so urgent, this fire be never so
+torturing, the Saints themselves never so powerless; still, have not
+the indictment of the Templars and the proceedings of Pope Boniface
+unveiled the Sodom lying hid beneath the altar? But a wizard Pope, a
+friend of the Devil, who also carried him away, effects a change in
+all their ideas. Was it not with the Demon's help that John XXII., the
+son of a shoemaker, a Pope no more of Rome, succeeded in amassing in
+his town of Avignon more gold than the Emperor and all the kings? As
+the Pope is, so is the bishop. Did not Guichard, Bishop of Troyes,
+procure from the Devil the death of the King's daughters? No death we
+ask for--we; but pleasant things--for life, for health, for beauty,
+and for pleasure: the things of God which God refuses. What shall we
+do? Might we but win them through the grace of the _Prince of this
+World_!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the great and mighty doctor of the Renaissance, Paracelsus, cast
+all the wise books of ancient medicine into the fire, Latin, and
+Jewish, and Arabic, all at once, he declared that he had learned none
+but the popular medicine, that of the _good women_,[41] the
+_shepherds_, and the _headsmen_, the latter of whom made often good
+horse-doctors and clever surgeons, resetting bones broken or put out
+of joint.
+
+    [41] The name given in fear and politeness to the witches.
+
+I make no doubt but that his admirable and masterly work on _The
+Diseases of Women_--the first then written on a theme so large, so
+deep, so tender--came forth from his special experience of those women
+to whom others went for aid; of the witches, namely, who always acted
+as the midwives: for never in those days was a male physician admitted
+to the woman's side, to win her trust in him, to listen to her
+secrets. The witches alone attended her, and became, especially for
+women, the chief and only physician.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What we know for surest with regard to their medicinal practice is,
+that for ends the most different, alike to stimulate and to soothe,
+they made use of one large family of doubtful and very dangerous
+plants, called, by reason of the services they rendered, _The
+Comforters_, or Solane�.[42]
+
+    [42] Man's ingratitude is painful to see. A thousand other
+    plants have come into use: a hundred exotic vegetables have
+    become the fashion. But the good once done by these poor
+    _Comforters_ is clean forgotten!--Nay, who now remembers or
+    even acknowledges the old debt of humanity to harmless
+    nature? The _Asclepias acida_, _Sarcostemma_, or flesh-plant,
+    which for five thousand years was the _Holy Wafer_ of the
+    East, its very palpable God, eaten gladly by five hundred
+    millions of men,--this plant, in the Middle Ages called the
+    Poison-queller (_vince-venenum_), meets with not one word of
+    historical comment in our books of Botany. Perhaps two
+    thousand years hence they will forget the wheat. See Langlois
+    on the _Soma_ of India and the _Hom_ of Persia. _Mem. de
+    l'Acad�mie des Inscriptions_, xix. 326.
+
+A vast and popular family, many kinds of which abound to excess under
+our feet, in the hedges, everywhere--a family so numerous that of one
+kind alone we have eight hundred varieties.[43] There is nothing
+easier, nothing more common, to find. But these plants are mostly
+dangerous in the using. It needs some boldness to measure out a dose,
+the boldness, perhaps, of genius.
+
+    [43] M. d'Orbigny's _Dictionary of Natural History_, article
+    _Morelles_.
+
+Let us, step by step, mount the ladder of their powers.[44] The first
+are simply pot-herbs, good for food, such as the mad-apples and the
+tomatoes, miscalled "love-apples." Other, of the harmless kinds, are
+sweetness and tranquillity itself, as the white mullens, or lady's
+fox-gloves, so good for fomentations.
+
+    [44] I have found this ladder nowhere else. It is the more
+    important, because the witches who made these essays at the
+    risk of passing for poisoners, certainly began with the
+    weakest, and rose gradually to the strongest. Each step of
+    power thus gives its relative date, and helps us in this dark
+    subject to set up a kind of chronology. I shall complete it
+    in the following chapters, when I come to speak of the
+    Mandragora and the Datura. I have chiefly followed Pouchet's
+    _Solan�es_ and _Botanique G�n�rale_.
+
+Going higher up, you come on a plant already suspicious, which many
+think a poison, a plant which at first seems like honey and afterwards
+tastes bitter, reminding one of Jonathan's saying, "I have eaten a
+little honey, and therefore shall I die." But this death is
+serviceable, a dying away of pain. The "bittersweet" should have been
+the first experiment of that bold homoeopathy which rose, little by
+little, up to the most dangerous poisons. The slight irritation and
+the tingling which it causes might point it out as a remedy for the
+prevalent diseases of that time, those, namely, of the skin.
+
+The pretty maiden who found herself woefully adorned with uncouth red
+patches, with pimples, or with ringworm, would come crying for such
+relief. In the case of an elder woman the hurt would be yet more
+painful. The bosom, most delicate thing in nature, with its innermost
+vessels forming a matchless flower, becomes, through its injective and
+congestive tendencies, the most perfect instrument for causing pain.
+Sharp, ruthless, restless are the pains she suffers. Gladly would she
+accept all kinds of poison. Instead of bargaining with the Witch, she
+only puts her poor hard breast between her hands.
+
+From the bittersweet, too weak for such, we rise to the dark
+nightshades, which have rather more effect. For a few days the woman
+is soothed. Anon she comes back weeping. "Very well, to-night you may
+come again. I will fetch you something, as you wish me; but it will be
+a strong poison."
+
+It was a heavy risk for the Witch. At that time they never thought
+that poisons could act as remedies, if applied outwardly or taken in
+very weak doses. The plants they compounded together under the name of
+_witches' herbs_, seemed to be but ministers of death. Such as were
+found in her hands would have proved her, in their opinion, a poisoner
+or a dealer in accursed charms. A blind crowd, all the more cruel for
+its growing fears, might fell her with a shower of stones, or make her
+undergo the trial by water--the _noyade_. Or even--most dreadful doom
+of all!--they might drag her with a rope round her neck to the
+churchyard, where a pious festival was held and the people edified by
+seeing her thrown to the flames.
+
+However, she runs the risk, and fetches home the dreadful plant. The
+other woman comes back to her abode by night or morning, whenever she
+is least afraid of being met. But a young shepherd, who saw her there,
+told the village, "If you had seen her as I did, gliding among the
+rubbish of the ruined hut, looking about her on all sides, muttering I
+know not what! Oh, but she has frightened me very much! If she had
+seen me, I was a lost man. She would have changed me into a lizard, a
+toad, or a bat. She took a paltry herb--the paltriest I ever saw--of a
+pale sickly yellow, with red and black marks, like the flames, as they
+say, of hell. The horror of the thing is, that the whole stalk was
+hairy like a man, with long, black, sticky hairs. She plucked it
+roughly, with a grunt, and suddenly I saw her no more. She could not
+have run away so quick; she must have flown. What a dreadful thing
+that woman is! How dangerous to the whole country!"
+
+Certainly the plant inspires dread. It is the henbane, a cruel and
+dangerous poison, but a powerful emollient, a soft sedative poultice,
+which melts, unbends, lulls to sleep the pain, often taking it quite
+away.
+
+Another of these poisons--the Belladonna, so called, undoubtedly, in
+thankful acknowledgment, had great power in laying the convulsions
+that sometimes supervened in childbirth, and added a new danger, a new
+fear, to the danger and the fear of that most trying moment. A
+motherly hand instilled the gentle poison, casting the mother herself
+into a sleep, and smoothing the infant's passage, after the manner of
+the modern chloroform, into the world.[45]
+
+    [45] Madame La Chapelle and M. Chaussier have renewed to good
+    purpose these practices of the older medicine. Pouchet,
+    _Solan�es_.
+
+Belladonna cures the dancing-fits while making you dance. A daring
+homoeopathy this, which at first must frighten: it is _medicine
+reversed_, contrary in most things to that which alone the Christians
+studied, which alone they valued, after the example of the Jews and
+Arabs.
+
+How did men come to this result? Undoubtedly by the simple effect of
+the great Satanic principle, that _everything must be done the wrong
+way_, the very opposite way to that followed by the holy people. These
+latter have a dread of poisons. Satan uses them and turns them into
+remedies. The Church thinks by spiritual means, by sacraments and
+prayers, to act even on the body. Satan, on the other hand, uses
+material means to act even upon the soul, making you drink of
+forgetfulness, love, reverie, and every passion. To the blessing of
+the priest he opposes the magnetic passes made by the soft hands of
+women, who cheat you of your pains.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By a change of system, and yet more of dress, as in the substitution
+of linen for wool, the skin-diseases lost their intensity. Leprosy
+abated, but seemed to go inwards and beget deeper ills. The fourteenth
+century wavered between three scourges--the epileptic dancings, the
+plague, and the sores which, according to Paracelsus, led the way to
+syphilis.
+
+The first danger was not the least. About 1350 it broke out in a
+frightful manner with the dance of St. Guy, and was singular
+especially in this, that it did not act upon each person separately.
+As if carried on by one same galvanic current, the sick caught each
+other by the hand, formed immense chains, and spun and spun round till
+they died. The spectators, who laughed at first, presently catching
+the contagion, let themselves go, fell into the mighty current,
+increased the terrible choir.
+
+What would have happened if the evil had held on as long as leprosy
+did even in its decline?
+
+It was the first step, as it were, towards epilepsy. If that
+generation of sufferers had not been cured, it would have begotten
+another decidedly epileptic. What a frightful prospect! Think of
+Europe covered with fools, with idiots, with raging madmen! We are not
+told how the evil was treated and checked. The remedy prescribed by
+most, the falling upon these jumpers with kicks and cuffings, was
+entirely fitted to increase the frenzy and turn it into downright
+epilepsy.[46] Doubtless there was some other remedy, of which people
+were loth to speak. At the time when witchcraft took its first great
+flight, the widespread use of the _Solane�_, above all, of belladonna,
+vulgarized the medicine which really checked those affections. At the
+great popular gatherings of the Sabbath, of which we shall presently
+speak, the _witches' herb_, mixed with mead, beer, cider,[47] or perry
+(the strong drinks of the West), set the multitude dancing a dance
+luxurious indeed, but far from epileptic.
+
+    [46] We should think that few physicians would quite agree
+    with M. Michelet.--TRANS.
+
+    [47] Cider was first made in the twelfth century.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But the greatest revolution caused by the witches, the greatest step
+_the wrong way_ against the spirit of the Middle Ages, was what may be
+called the re�nfeoffment of the stomach and the digestive organs. They
+had the boldness to say, "There is nothing foul or unclean."
+Thenceforth the study of matter was free and boundless. Medicine
+became a possibility.
+
+That this principle was greatly abused, we do not deny; but the
+principle is none the less clear. There is nothing foul but moral
+evil. In the natural world all things are pure: nothing may be
+withheld from our studious regard, nothing be forbidden by an idle
+spiritualism, still less by a silly disgust.
+
+It was here especially that the Middle Ages showed themselves in their
+true light, as _anti-natural_, out of Nature's oneness drawing
+distinctions of castes, of priestly orders. Not only do they count the
+spirit _noble_, and the body _ignoble_; but even parts of the body are
+called noble, while others are not, being evidently plebeian. In like
+manner heaven is noble, and hell is not; but why?--"Because heaven is
+high up." But in truth it is neither high nor low, being above and
+beneath alike. And what is hell? Nothing at all. Equally foolish are
+they about the world at large and the smaller world of men.
+
+This world is all one piece: each thing in it is attached to all the
+rest. If the stomach is servant of the brain and feeds it, the brain
+also works none the less for the stomach, perpetually helping to
+prepare for it the digestive _sugar_.[48]
+
+    [48] This great discovery was made by Claude Bernard.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was no lack of injurious treatment. The witches were called
+filthy, indecent, shameless, immoral. Nevertheless, their first steps
+on that road may be accounted as a happy revolution in things most
+moral, in charity and kindness. With a monstrous perversion of ideas
+the Middle Ages viewed the flesh in its representative,
+woman,--accursed since the days of Eve--as a thing impure. The Virgin,
+exalted as _Virgin_ more than as _Our Lady_, far from lifting up the
+real woman, had caused her abasement, by setting men on the track of a
+mere scholastic puritanism, where they kept rising higher and higher
+in subtlety and falsehood.
+
+Woman herself ended by sharing in the hateful prejudice and deeming
+herself unclean. She hid herself at the hour of childbed. She blushed
+at loving and bestowing happiness on others. Sober as she mostly was
+in comparison with man, living as she mostly did on herbs and fruits,
+sharing through her diet of milk and vegetables the purity of the most
+innocent breeds, she almost besought forgiveness for being born, for
+living, for carrying out the conditions of her life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The medical art of the Middle Ages busied itself peculiarly about the
+man, a being noble and pure, who alone could become a priest, alone
+could make God at the altar. It also paid some attention to the
+beasts, beginning indeed with them; but of children it thought seldom:
+of women not at all.
+
+The romances, too, with their subtleties pourtray the converse of the
+world. Outside the courts and highborn adulterers, which form the
+chief topic of these romances, the woman is always a poor Griselda,
+born to drain the cup of suffering, to be often beaten, and never
+cared for.
+
+In order to mind the woman, to trample these usages under foot, and to
+care for her in spite of herself, nothing less would serve than the
+Devil, woman's old ally, her trusty friend in Paradise, and the Witch,
+that monster who deals with everything the wrong way, exactly
+contrariwise to that of the holier people. The poor creature set such
+little store by herself. She would shrink back, blushing, and loth to
+say a word. The Witch being clever and evil-hearted, read her to the
+inmost depths. Ere long she won her to speak out, drew from her her
+little secret, overcame her refusals, her modest, humble hesitations.
+Rather than undergo the remedy, she was willing almost to die. But the
+cruel sorceress made her live.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+CHARMS AND PHILTRES.
+
+
+Let no one hastily conclude from the foregoing chapter that I attempt
+to whiten, to acquit entirely, the dismal bride of the Devil. If she
+often did good, she could also do no small amount of ill. There is no
+great power which is not abused. And this one had three centuries of
+actual reigning, in the interlude between two worlds, the older dying
+and the new struggling painfully to begin. The Church, which in the
+quarrels of the sixteenth century will regain some of her strength, at
+least for fighting, in the fourteenth is down in the mire. Look at the
+truthful picture drawn by Cl�mangis. The nobles, so proudly arrayed in
+their new armour, fall all the more heavily at Cr�cy, Poitiers,
+Agincourt. All who survive end by being prisoners in England. What a
+theme for ridicule! The citizens, the very peasants make merry and
+shrug their shoulders. This general absence of the lords gave, I
+fancy, no small encouragement to the Sabbath gatherings which had
+always taken place, but at this time might first have grown into vast
+popular festivals.
+
+How mighty the power thus wielded by Satan's sweetheart, who cures,
+foretels, divines, calls up the souls of the dead; who can throw a
+spell upon you, turn you into a hare or wolf, enable you to find a
+treasure, and, best of all, ensure your being beloved! It is an awful
+power which combines all others. How could a stormy soul, a soul most
+commonly gangrened, and sometimes grown utterly wayward, have helped
+employing it to wreak her hate and revenge; sometimes even out of a
+mere delight in malice and uncleanness?
+
+All that once was told the confessor, is now imparted to her: not only
+the sins already done, but those also which folk purpose doing. She
+holds each by her shameful secret, by the avowal of her uncleanest
+desires. To her they entrust both their bodily and mental ills; the
+lustful heats of a blood inflamed and soured; the ceaseless prickings
+of some sharp, urgent, furious desire.
+
+To her they all come: with her there is no shame. In plain blunt words
+they beseech her for life, for death, for remedies, for poisons.
+Thither comes a young woman, to ask through her tears for the means of
+saving her from the fruits of her sin. Thither comes the
+step-mother--a common theme in the Middle Ages--to say that the child
+of a former marriage eats well and lives long. Thither comes the
+sorrowing wife whose children year by year are born only to die. And
+now, on the other hand, comes a youth to buy at any cost the burning
+draught that shall trouble the heart of some haughty dame, until,
+forgetful of the distance between them, she has stooped to look upon
+her little page.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In these days there are but two types, two forms of marriage, both of
+them extreme and outrageous.
+
+The scornful heiress of a fief, who brings her husband a crown or a
+broad estate, an Eleanor of Guyenne for instance, will, under her
+husband's very eyes, hold her court of lovers, keeping herself under
+very slight control. Let us leave romances and poems, to look at the
+reality in its dread march onward to the unbridled rage of the
+daughters of Philip the Fair, of the cruel Isabella, who by the hands
+of her lovers impaled Edward II. The insolence of the feudal women
+breaks out diabolically in the triumphant two-horned bonnet and other
+brazen-faced fashions.
+
+But in this century, when classes are beginning to mingle slightly,
+the woman of a lower rank, when she marries a lord, has to fear the
+hardest trials. So says the truthful history of the humble, the meek,
+the patient Griselda. In a more popular form it becomes the tale of
+_Blue-Beard_, a tale which seems to me quite earnest and historical.
+The wife so often killed and replaced by him could only have been his
+vassal. He would have reckoned wholly otherwise with the daughter or
+sister of a baron, who might avenge her. If I am not misled by a
+specious conjecture, we must believe that this tale is of the
+fourteenth century, and not of those preceding, in which the lord
+would never have deigned to take a wife below himself.
+
+Specially remarkable in the moving tale of _Griselda_ is the fact,
+that throughout her heavy trials, she never seeks support in being
+devout or in loving another. She is evidently faithful, chaste, and
+pure. It never comes into her mind to love elsewhere.
+
+Of the two feudal women, the Heiress and Griselda, it is peculiarly
+the first who has her household of gentlemen, her courts of love, who
+shows favour to the humblest lovers, encouraging them, delivering, as
+Eleanor did, the famous sentence, soon to become quite classical:
+"There can be no love between married folk."
+
+Thereupon a secret hope, but hot and violent withal, arises in more
+than one young heart. If he must give himself to the Devil, he will
+rush full tilt on this adventurous intrigue. Let the castle be never
+so surely closed, one fine opening is still left for Satan. In a game
+so perilous, what chance of success reveals itself? Wisdom answers,
+None. But what if Satan said, Yes?
+
+We must remember how great a distance feudal pride set between the
+nobles themselves. Words are misleading: one _cavalier_ might be far
+below another.
+
+The knight banneret, who brought a whole army of vassals to his king's
+side, would look with utter scorn from one end of his long table on
+the poor _lackland_ knights seated at the other. How much greater his
+scorn for the simple varlets, grooms, pages, &c., fed upon his
+leavings! Seated at the lowermost end of the tables close to the door,
+they scraped the dishes sent down to them, often empty, from the
+personages seated above beside the hearth. It never would cross the
+great lord's mind, that those below would dare to lift eyes of fancy
+towards their lovely mistress, the haughty heiress of a fief, sitting
+near her mother, "crowned by a chaplet of white roses." Whilst he bore
+with wondrous patience the love of some stranger knight, appointed by
+his lady to bear her colours, he would have savagely punished the
+boldness of any servant who looked so high. Of this kind was the
+raging jealousy shown by the Lord of Fayel, who was stirred to deadly
+wrath, not because his wife had a lover, but because that lover was
+one of his household, the castellan or simple constable of his castle
+of Coucy.
+
+The deeper and less passable seemed the gulf between the great
+heiress, lady of the manor, and the groom or page who, barring his
+shirt, had nothing, not even his coat, but what belonged to his
+master, the stronger became love's temptation to overleap that gulf.
+
+The youth was buoyed up by the very impossibility. At length, one day
+that he managed to get out of the tower, he ran off to the Witch and
+asked her advice. Would a philtre serve as a spell to win her? Or,
+failing that, must he make an express covenant? He never shrank at all
+from the dreadful idea of yielding himself to Satan. "We will take
+care for that, young man: but hie thee up again; you will find some
+change already."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The change, however, is in himself. He is stirred by some ineffable
+hope, that escapes in spite of him from a deep downcast eye, scored by
+an ever-darting flame. Somebody, we may guess who, having eyes for him
+alone, is moved to throw him, as she passes, a word of pity. Oh,
+rapture! Kind Satan! Charming, adorable Witch!
+
+He cannot eat nor drink until he has been to see the latter again.
+Respectfully kissing her hand, he almost falls at her feet. Whatever
+she may ask him, whatever she may bid him do, he will obey her. That
+moment, if she wishes it, he will give her his golden chain, will give
+her the ring upon his finger, though he had it from a dying mother.
+But the Witch, in her native malice, in her hatred of the Baron, feels
+an especial comfort in dealing him a secret blow.
+
+Already a vague anxiety disturbs the castle. A dumb tempest, without
+lightning or thunder, broods over it, like an electric vapour on a
+marsh. All is silence, deep silence; but the lady is troubled. She
+suspects that some supernatural power has been at work. For why indeed
+be thus drawn to this youth, more than to some one else, handsomer,
+nobler, renowned already for deeds of arms? There is something toward,
+down yonder! Has that woman cast a spell upon her, or worked some
+hidden charm? The more she asks herself these questions, the more her
+heart is troubled.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Witch has something to wreak her malice upon at last. In the
+village she was a queen; but now the castle comes to her, yields
+itself up to her on that side where its pride ran the greatest risk.
+For us this passion has a peculiar interest, as the rush of one soul
+towards its ideal against every social harrier, against the unjust
+decree of fate. To the Witch, on her side, it holds out the deep, keen
+delight of humbling the lady's pride, and revenging perhaps her own
+wrongs; the delight of serving the lord as he served his vassals, of
+levying upon him, through the boldness of a mere child, the
+firstfruits of his outrageous wedding-rights. Undoubtedly, in these
+intrigues where the Witch had to play her part, she often acted from a
+depth of levelling hatred natural to a peasant.
+
+Already it was something gained to have made the lady stoop to love a
+menial. We should not be misled by such examples as John of Saintr�
+and Cherubin. The serving-boy filled the lowest offices in the
+household. The footman proper did not then exist, while on the other
+hand, few, if any maidservants lived in military strongholds. Young
+hands did everything, and were not disgraced thereby. The service,
+specially the body-service of the lord and lady, honoured and raised
+them up. Nevertheless, it often placed the highborn page in situations
+sorrowful enough, prosaic, not to say ridiculous. The lord never
+distresses himself about that. And the lady must indeed be charmed by
+the Devil, not to see what every day she saw, her well-beloved
+employed in servile and unsuitable tasks.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the Middle Ages the very high and the very low are continually
+brought together. That which is hidden by the poems, we can catch a
+glimpse of otherwhere. With those ethereal passions, many gross things
+were clearly blended.
+
+All we know of the charms and philtres used by the witches is very
+fantastic, not seldom marked by malice, and recklessly mixed up with
+things that seem to us the least likely to have awakened love. By
+these methods they went a long way without the husband's perceiving in
+his blindness the game they made of him.
+
+These philtres were of various kinds. Some were for exciting and
+troubling the senses, like the stimulants so much abused in the East.
+Others were dangerous, and often treacherous draughts to whose
+illusions the body would yield itself without the will. Others again
+were employed as tests when the passion was defied, when one wished to
+see how far the greediness of desire might derange the senses, making
+them receive as the highest and holiest of favours, the most
+disagreeable services done by the object of their love.
+
+The rude way in which a castle was constructed, with nothing in it but
+large halls, led to an utter sacrifice of the inner life. It was long
+enough before they took to building in one of the turrets a closet or
+recess for meditation and the saying of prayers. The lady was easily
+watched. On certain days set or waited for, the bold youth would
+attempt the stroke, recommended him by the Witch, of mingling a
+philtre with her drink.
+
+This, however, was a dangerous matter, not often tried. Less difficult
+was it to purloin from the lady things which escaped her notice, which
+she herself despised. He would treasure up the very smallest paring of
+a nail; he would gather up respectfully one or two beautiful hairs
+that might fall from her comb. These he would carry to the Witch, who
+often asked, as our modern sleep-wakers do, for something very
+personal and strongly redolent of the person, but obtained without her
+leave; as, for instance, some threads torn out of a garment long worn
+and soiled with the traces of perspiration. With much kissing, of
+course, and worshipping, the lover was fain reluctantly to throw these
+treasures into the fire, with a view to gathering up the ashes
+afterwards. By and by, when she came to look at her garment, the fine
+lady would remark the rent, but guessing at the cause, would only sigh
+and hold her tongue. The charm had already begun to work.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Even if she hesitated from regard for her marriage-vow, certain it is
+that life in a space so narrow, where they were always in each
+other's sight, so near and yet so far, became a downright torment. And
+even when she had once shown her weakness, still before her husband
+and others equally jealous the moments of happiness would assuredly be
+rare. Hence sprang many a foolish outbreak of unsatisfied desire. The
+less they came together, the more deeply they longed to do so. A
+disordered fancy sought to attain that end by means grotesque,
+unnatural, utterly senseless. So by way of establishing a means of
+secret correspondence between the two, the Witch had the letters of
+the alphabet pricked on both their arms. If one of them wanted to send
+a thought to the other, he brightened and brought out by sucking the
+blood-red letters of the wished-for word. Immediately, so it is said,
+the corresponding letters bled on the other's arm.
+
+Sometimes in these mad fits they would drink each of the other's
+blood, so as to mingle their souls, it was said, in close communion.
+The devouring of Coucy's heart, which the lady "found so good that she
+never ate again," is the most tragical instance of these monstrous
+vows of loving cannibalism. But when the absent one did not die, but
+only the love within him, then the lady would seek counsel of the
+Witch, begging of her the means of holding him, of bringing him back.
+
+The incantations used by the sorceress of Theocritus and Virgil,
+though employed also in the Middle Ages, were seldom of much avail. An
+attempt was made to win back the lover by a spell seemingly copied
+from antiquity, by means of a cake, of a _confarreatio_[49] like that
+which, both in Asia and Europe, had always been the holiest pledge of
+love. But in this case it is not the soul only, it is the flesh also
+they seek to bind; there must be so true an identity established
+between the two, that, dead to all other women, he shall live only for
+her. It was a cruel ceremony on the woman's side. "No haggling,
+madam," says the Witch. Suddenly the proud dame grows obedient, even
+to letting herself be stripped bare: for thus indeed it must be.
+
+    [49] One form of wedding among the Romans, in which the
+    bride-cake was broken between the pair, in token of their
+    union.--TRANS.
+
+What a triumph for the Witch! And if this lady were the same as she
+who had once made her "run the gauntlet," how meet the vengeance, how
+dread the requital now! But it is not enough to have stripped her thus
+naked. About her loins is fastened a little shelf, on which a small
+oven is set for the cooking of the cake. "Oh, my dear, I cannot bear
+it longer! Make haste, and relieve me."
+
+"You must bear it, madam; you must feel the heat. When the cake is
+done, he will be warmed by you, by your flame."
+
+It is over; and now we have the cake of antiquity, of the Indian and
+the Roman marriage, but spiced and warmed up by the lecherous spirit
+of the Devil. She does not say with Virgil's wizard,[50]
+
+    "Ducite ab urbe domum, mea carmina, ducite Daphnin!"
+
+    [50] "Hither, ye spells of mine, bring Daphnis home from the
+    city!"--_Virgil_, Eclogue viii.
+
+But she takes him the cake, steeped, as it were, in the other's
+suffering, and kept warm by her love. He has hardly bitten it when he
+is overtaken by an odd emotion, by a feeling of dizziness. Then as the
+blood rushes up to his heart he turns red and hot. Passion fastens
+anew on him, and inextinguishable desire.[51]
+
+    [51] I am wrong in saying inextinguishable. Fresh philtres
+    were often needed; and the blame of this must lie with the
+    lady, from whom the Witch in her mocking, malignant rage
+    exacted the most humiliating observances.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+THE REBELS' COMMUNION--SABBATHS--THE BLACK MASS.
+
+
+We must now speak of the _Sabbaths_; a word which at different times
+clearly meant quite different things. Unhappily, we have no detailed
+accounts of these gatherings earlier than the reign of Henry IV.[52]
+By that time they were nothing more than a great lewd farce carried on
+under the cloak of witchcraft. But these very descriptions of a thing
+so greatly corrupted are marked by certain antique touches that tell
+of the successive periods and the different forms through which it had
+passed.
+
+    [52] The least bad of these is by Lancre, a man of some wit,
+    whose evident connection with some young witches gave him
+    something to say. The accounts of the Jesuit Del Rio and the
+    Dominican Micha�lis are the absurd productions of two
+    credulous and silly pedants.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We may set out with this firm idea that, for many centuries, the serf
+led the life of a wolf or a fox; that he was _an animal of the night_,
+moving about, I may say, as little as possible in the daytime, and
+truly living in the night alone.
+
+Still, up to the year 1000, so long as the people made their own
+saints and legends, their daily life was not to them uninteresting.
+Their nightly Sabbaths were only a slight relic of paganism. They
+held in fear and honour the Moon, so powerful over the good things of
+earth. Her chief worshippers, the old women, burn small candles to
+_Dianom_--the Diana of yore, whose other names were Luna and Hecate.
+The Lupercal (or wolf-man) is always following the women and children,
+disguised indeed under the dark face of ghost Hallequin (Harlequin).
+The Vigil of Venus was kept as a holiday precisely on the first of
+May. On Midsummer Day they kept the Sabaza by sacrificing the he-goat
+of Bacchus Sabasius. In all this there was no mockery; nothing but a
+harmless carnival of serfs.
+
+But about the year 1000 the church is well-nigh shut against the
+peasant through the difference between his language and hers. By 1100
+her services became quite unintelligible. Of the mysteries played at
+the church-doors, he has retained chiefly the comic side, the ox and
+the ass, &c. On these he makes Christmas carols, which grow ever more
+and more burlesque, forming a true Sabbatic literature.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Are we to suppose that the great and fearful risings of the twelfth
+century had no influence on these mysteries, on this night-life of the
+_wolf_, the _game bird_, the _wild quarry_. The great sacraments of
+rebellion among the serfs, when they drank of each other's blood, or
+ate of the ground by way of solemn pledge,[53] may have been
+celebrated at the Sabbaths. The "Marseillaise" of that time, sung by
+night rather than day, was perhaps a Sabbatic chant:--
+
+    "Nous sommes hommes commes ils sont!
+    Tout aussi grand coeur nous avons!
+    Tout autant souffrir nous pouvons!"[54]
+
+    [53] At the battle of Courtray. See also Grimm and my
+    _Origines_.
+
+    [54]
+
+    "We are fashioned of one clay:
+    Big as theirs our hearts are aye:
+    We can bear as much as they."--TRANS.
+
+But the tombstone falls again in 1200. Seated thereon the Pope and the
+King, with their enormous weight, have sealed up man. Has he now his
+old life by night? More than ever. The old pagan dances must by this
+time have waxed furious. Our negroes of the Antilles, after a dreadful
+day of heat and hard work, would go and dance away some four leagues
+off. So it was with the serf too. But with his dances there must have
+mingled a merriment born of revenge, satiric farces, burlesques and
+caricatures of the baron and the priest: a whole literature of the
+night indeed, that knew not one word of the literature of the day,
+that knew little even of the burgher Fabliaux.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of such a nature were the Sabbaths before 1300. Before they could take
+the startling form of open warfare against the God of those days, much
+more was needed still, and especially these two things: not only a
+descending into the very depths of despair, but also _an utter losing
+of respect for anything_.
+
+To this pass they do not come until the fourteenth century, under the
+Avignon popes, and during the Great Schism; when the Church with two
+heads seems no longer a church; when the king and all his nobles,
+being in shameful captivity to the English, are extorting the means of
+ransom from their oppressed and outraged people. Then do the Sabbaths
+take the grand and horrible form of the _Black Mass_, of a ritual
+upside down, in which Jesus is defied and bidden to thunder on the
+people if He can. In the thirteenth century this devilish drama was
+still impossible, through the horror it would have caused. And later
+again, in the fifteenth, when everything, even suffering itself, had
+become exhausted, so fierce an outburst could not have issued forth;
+so monstrous an invention no one would have essayed. It could only
+have belonged to the age of Dante.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It took place, I fancy, at one gush; an explosion as it were of genius
+raving, bringing impiety up to the height of a great popular
+passion-fit. To understand the nature of these bursts of rage, we must
+remember that, far from imagining the fixedness of God's laws, a
+people brought up by their own clergy to believe and depend on
+miracles, had for ages past been hoping and waiting for nothing else
+than a miracle which never came. In vain they demanded one in the
+desperate hour of their last worst strait. Heaven thenceforth appeared
+to them as the ally of their savage tormentors, nay, as itself a
+tormentor too.
+
+Thereon began the _Black Mass_ and the _Jacquerie_.[55]
+
+    [55] The Peasants' war which raged in France in 1364.
+
+In the elastic shell of the Black Mass, a thousand variations of
+detail may afterwards have been inserted; but the shell itself was
+strongly made and, in my opinion, all of one piece.
+
+This drama I succeeded in reproducing in my "History of France," in
+the year 1857. There was small difficulty in casting it anew in its
+four acts. Only at that time I left in it too many of the grotesque
+adornments which clothed the Sabbath of a later period; nor did I
+clearly enough define what belonged to the older shell, so dark and
+dreadful.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Its date is strongly marked by certain savage tokens of an age
+accursed, and yet more by the ruling place therein assigned to woman,
+a fact most characteristic of the fourteenth century.
+
+It is strange to mark how, at that period, the woman who enjoys so
+little freedom still holds her royal sway in a hundred violent
+fashions. At this time she inherits fiefs, brings her kingdoms to the
+king. On the lower levels she has still her throne, and yet more in
+the skies. Mary has supplanted Jesus. St. Francis and St. Dominic have
+seen the three worlds in her bosom. By the immensity of her grace she
+washes away sin; ay, and sometimes helps the sinner,--as in the story
+of a nun whose place the Virgin took in the choir, while she herself
+was gone to meet her lover.
+
+Up high, and down very low, we see the woman. Beatrice reigns in
+heaven among the stars, while John of Meung in the _Romaunt of the
+Rose_ is preaching the community of women. Pure or sullied, the woman
+is everywhere. We might say of her what Raymond Lulle said of God:
+"What part has He in the world? The whole."
+
+But alike in heaven and in poetry the true heroine is not the fruitful
+mother decked out with children; but the Virgin, or some barren
+Beatrice, who dies young.
+
+A fair English damsel passed over into France, it is said, about the
+year 1300, to preach the redemption of women. She looked on herself as
+their Messiah.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In its earliest phase the Black Mass seemed to betoken this redemption
+of Eve, so long accursed of Christianity. The woman fills every office
+in the Sabbath. She is priestess, altar, pledge of holy communion, by
+turns. Nay, at bottom, is she not herself as God?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Many popular traits may be found herein, and yet it comes not wholly
+from the people. The peasant who honoured strength alone, made small
+account of the woman; as we see but too clearly in our old laws and
+customs. From him the woman would not have received the high place she
+holds here. It is by her own self the place is won.
+
+I would gladly believe that the Sabbath in its then shape was woman's
+work, the work of such a desperate woman as the Witch was then. In the
+fourteenth century she saw open before her a horrible career of
+torments lighted up for three or four hundred years by the stake.
+After 1300 her medical knowledge is condemned as baleful, her remedies
+are proscribed as if they were poisons. The harmless drawing of lots,
+by which lepers then thought to better their luck, brought on a
+massacre of those poor wretches. Pope John XXII. ordered the burning
+of a bishop suspected of Witchcraft. Under a system of such blind
+repression there was just the same risk in daring little as in daring
+much. Danger itself made people bolder; and the Witch was able to dare
+anything.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Human brotherhood, defiance of the Christian heaven, a distorted
+worship of nature herself as God--such was the purport of the Black
+Mass.
+
+They decked an altar to the arch-rebel of serfs, _to Him who had been
+so wronged_, the old outlaw, unfairly hunted out of heaven, "the
+Spirit by whom earth was made, the Master who ordained the budding of
+the plants." Such were the names of honour given him by his
+worshippers, the _Luciferians_, and also, according to a very likely
+opinion, by the Knights of the Temple.
+
+The greatest miracle of those unhappy times is, the greater abundance
+found at the nightly communion of the brotherhood, than was to be
+found elsewhere by day. By incurring some little danger the Witch
+levied her contributions from those who were best off, and gathered
+their offerings into a common fund. Charity in a Satanic garb grew
+very powerful, as being a crime, a conspiracy, a form of rebellion.
+People would rob themselves of their food by day for the sake of the
+common meal at night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Figure to yourself, on a broad moor, and often near an old Celtic
+cromlech, at the edge of a wood, this twofold scene: on one side a
+well-lit moor and a great feast of the people; on the other, towards
+yon wood, the choir of that church whose dome is heaven. What I call
+the choir is a hill commanding somewhat the surrounding country.
+Between these are the yellow flames of torch-fires, and some red
+brasiers emitting a fantastic smoke. At the back of all is the Witch,
+dressing up her Satan, a great wooden devil, black and shaggy. By his
+horns, and the goatskin near him, he might be Bacchus; but his manly
+attributes make him a Pan or a Priapus. It is a darksome figure, seen
+differently by different eyes; to some suggesting only terror, while
+others are touched by the proud melancholy wherein the Eternally
+Banished seems absorbed.[56]
+
+    [56] This is taken from Del Rio, but is not, I think,
+    peculiar to Spain. It is an ancient trait, and marked by the
+    primitive inspiration.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Act First. The magnificent _In troit_ taken by Christendom from
+antiquity, that is, from those ceremonies where the people in long
+train streamed under the colonnades on their way to the sanctuary, is
+now taken back for himself by the elder god upon his return to power.
+The _Lavabo_, likewise borrowed from the heathen lustrations,
+reappears now. All this he claims back by right of age.
+
+His priestess is always called, by way of honour, the Elder; but she
+would sometimes have been young. Lancre tells of a witch of seventeen,
+pretty, and horribly savage.
+
+The Devil's bride was not to be a child: she must be at least thirty
+years old, with the form of a Medea, with the beauty that comes of
+pain; an eye deep, tragic, lit up by a feverish fire, with great
+serpent tresses waving at their will: I refer to the torrent of her
+black untamable hair. On her head, perhaps, you may see the crown of
+vervein, the ivy of the tomb, the violets of death.
+
+When she has had the children taken off to their meal, the service
+begins: "I will come before thine altar; but save me, O Lord, from the
+faithless and violent man (from the priest and the baron)."
+
+Then come the denial of Jesus, the paying of homage to the new master,
+the feudal kiss, like the greetings of the Temple, when all was
+yielded without reserve, without shame, or dignity, or even purpose;
+the denial of an olden god being grossly aggravated by a seeming
+preference for Satan's back.
+
+It is now his turn to consecrate his priestess. The wooden deity
+receives her in the manner of an olden Pan or Priapus. Following the
+old pagan form she sits a moment upon him in token of surrender, like
+the Delphian seeress on Apollo's tripod. After receiving the breath of
+his spirit, the sacrament of his love, she purifies herself with like
+formal solemnity. Thenceforth she is a living altar.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Introit over, the service is interrupted for the feast. Contrary
+to the festive fashion of the nobles, who all sit with their swords
+beside them, here, in this feast of brethren, are no arms, not even a
+knife.
+
+As a keeper of the peace, each has a woman with him. Without a woman
+no one is admitted. Be she a kinswoman or none, a wife or none; be she
+old or young, a woman he must bring with him.
+
+What were the drinks passed round among them? Mead, or beer, or wine;
+strong cider or perry? The last two date from the twelfth century.
+
+The illusive drinks, with their dangerous admixture of belladonna, did
+they already appear at that board? Certainly not. There were children
+there. Besides, an excess of commotion would have prevented the
+dancing.
+
+This whirling dance, the famous _Sabbath-round_, was quite enough to
+complete the first stage of drunkenness. They turned back to back,
+their arms behind them, not seeing each other, but often touching each
+other's back. Gradually no one knew himself, nor whom he had by his
+side. The old wife then was old no more. Satan had wrought a miracle.
+She was still a woman, desirable, after a confused fashion beloved.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Act Second. Just as the crowd, grown dizzy together, was led, both by
+the attraction of the women and by a certain vague feeling of
+brotherhood, to imagine itself one body, the service was resumed at
+the _Gloria_. The altar, the host, became visible. These were
+represented by the woman herself. Prostrate, in a posture of extreme
+abasement, her long black silky tresses lost in the dust; she, this
+haughty Proserpine, offered up herself. On her back a demon
+officiated, saying the _Credo_, and making the offering.[57]
+
+    [57] This important fact of the woman being her own altar, is
+    known to us by the trial of La Voisin, which M. Ravaisson,
+    Sen., is about to publish with the other _Papers of the
+    Bastille_.
+
+At a later period this scene came to be immodest. But at this time,
+amidst the calamities of the fourteenth century, in the terrible days
+of the Black Plague, and of so many a famine, in the days of the
+Jacquerie and those hateful brigands, the Free Lances,--on a people
+thus surrounded by danger, the effect was more than serious. The whole
+assembly had much cause to fear a surprise. The risk run by the Witch
+in this bold proceeding was very great, even tantamount to the
+forfeiting of her life. Nay, more; she braved a hell of suffering, of
+torments such as may hardly be described. Torn by pincers, and broken
+alive; her breasts torn out; her skin slowly singed, as in the case
+of the wizard bishop of Cahors; her body burned limb by limb on a
+small fire of red-hot coal, she was like to endure an eternity of
+agony.
+
+Certainly all were moved when the prayer was spoken, the
+harvest-offering made, upon this devoted creature who gave herself up
+so humbly. Some wheat was offered to the _Spirit of the Earth_, who
+made wheat to grow. A flight of birds, most likely from the woman's
+bosom, bore to the _God of Freedom_ the sighs and prayers of the
+serfs. What did they ask? Only that we, their distant descendants,
+might become free.[58]
+
+    [58] This grateful offering of wheat and birds is peculiar to
+    France. In Lorraine, and no doubt in Germany, black beasts
+    were offered, as the black cat, the black goat, or the black
+    bull.
+
+What was the sacrament she divided among them? Not the ridiculous
+pledge we find later in the reign of Henry IV., but most likely that
+_confarreatio_ which we saw in the case of the philtres, the hallowed
+pledge of love, a cake baked on her own body, on the victim who,
+perhaps, to-morrow would herself be passing through the fire. It was
+her life, her death, they ate there. One sniffs already the scorching
+flesh.
+
+Last of all they set upon her two offerings, seemingly of flesh; two
+images, one of _the latest dead_, the other of the newest-born in the
+district. These shared in the special virtue assigned to her who acted
+as altar and Host in one, and on these the assembly made a show of
+receiving the communion. Their Host would thus be threefold, and
+always human. Under a shadowy likeness of the Devil the people
+worshipped none other than its own self.
+
+The true sacrifice was now over and done. The woman's work was ended,
+when she gave herself up to be eaten by the multitude. Rising from her
+former posture, she would not withdraw from the spot until she had
+proudly stated, and, as it were, confirmed the lawfulness of her
+proceedings by an appeal to the thunderbolt, by an insolent defiance
+of the discrowned God.
+
+In mockery of the _Agnus Dei_, and the breaking of the Christian Host,
+she brought a toad dressed up, and pulled it to pieces. Then rolling
+her eyes about in a frightful way she raised them to heaven, and
+beheading the toad, uttered these strange words: "Ah, _Philip_,[59] if
+I had you here, you should be served in the same manner!"
+
+    [59] Lancre, 136. Why "Philip," I cannot say. By Satan Jesus
+    is always called John or _Janicot_ (Jack). Was she speaking
+    of Philip of Valois, who brought on the wasting hundred
+    years' war with England?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No answer being outwardly given to her challenge, no thunderbolt
+hurled upon her head, they imagine that she has triumphed over the
+Christ. The nimble band of demons seized their moment to astonish the
+people with various small wonders which amazed and overawed the more
+credulous. The toads, quite harmless in fact, but then accounted
+poisonous, were bitten and torn between their dainty teeth. They
+jumped over large fires and pans of live coal, to amuse the crowd and
+make them laugh at the fires of Hell.
+
+Did the people really laugh after a scene so tragical, so very bold? I
+know not. Assuredly there was no laughing on the part of her who first
+dared all this. To her these fires must have seemed like those of the
+nearest stake. Her business rather lay in forecasting the future of
+that devilish monarchy, in creating the Witch to be.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE SEQUEL--LOVE AND DEATH--SATAN DISAPPEARS.
+
+
+And now the multitude is made free, is of good cheer. For some hours
+the serf reigns in short-lived freedom. His time indeed is scant
+enough. Already the sky is changing, the stars are going down. Another
+moment, and the cruel dawn remits him to his slavery, brings him back
+again under hostile eyes, under the shadow of the castle, beneath the
+shadow of the church; back again to his monotonous toiling, to the old
+unending weariness of heart, governed as it were by two bells, whereof
+one keeps saying "Always," the other "Never." Anon they will be seen
+coming each out of his own house, heavily, humbly, with an air of calm
+composure.
+
+Let them at least enjoy the one short moment! Let each of these
+disinherited, for once fulfil his fancy, for once indulge his musings.
+What soul is there so all unhappy, so lost to all feeling, as never to
+have one good dream, one fond desire; never to say, "If this would
+only happen!"
+
+The only detailed accounts we have, as I said before, are modern,
+belonging to a time of peace and well-doing, when France was blooming
+afresh, in the latter years of Henry VI., years of thriving luxury,
+entirely different from that dark age when the Sabbath was first set
+going.
+
+No thanks to Mr. Lancre and others, if we refrain from pourtraying the
+Third Act as like the Church-Fair of Rubens, a very miscellaneous
+orgie, a great burlesque ball, which allowed of every kind of union,
+especially between near kindred. According to those authors, who would
+make us groan with horror, the main end of the Sabbath, the explicit
+doctrine taught by Satan, was incest; and in those great gatherings,
+sometimes of two thousand souls, the most startling deeds were done
+before the whole world.
+
+This is hard to believe; and the same writers tell of other things
+which seem quite opposed to a view so cynical. They say that people
+went to those meetings only in pairs, that they sat down to the feast
+by twos, that even if one person came alone, she was assigned a young
+demon, who took charge of her, and did the honours of the feast. They
+say, too, that jealous lovers were not afraid to go thither in company
+with the curious fair.
+
+We also find that the most of them came by families, children and all.
+The latter were sent off only during the first act, not during the
+feast, nor the services, nor yet while this third act was going on; a
+fact which proves that some decency was observed. Moreover, the scene
+was twofold. The household groups stayed on the moor in a blaze of
+light. It was only beyond the fantastic curtain of torch-smoke that
+the darker spaces, where people could roam in all directions, began.
+
+The judges, the inquisitors, for all their enmity, are fain to allow
+the existence here of a general spirit of peace and mildness. Of the
+three things that startle us in the feasts of nobles, there is not one
+here; no swords, no duels, no tables reeking blood. No faithless
+gallantries here bring dishonour on some intimate friend. Unknown,
+unneeded here, for all they say, is the unclean brotherhood of the
+Temple; in the Sabbath, woman is everything.
+
+The question of incest needs explaining. All alliances between
+kinsfolk, even those most allowable in the present day, were then
+regarded as a crime. The modern law, which is charity itself,
+understands the heart of man and the well-being of families.[60] It
+allows the widower to marry his wife's sister, the best mother his
+children could have. Above all, it allows a man to wed his cousin,
+whom he knows and may trust fully, whom he has loved perhaps from
+childhood, his playfellow of old, regarded by his mother with special
+favour as already the adopted of her own heart. In the Middle Ages all
+this was incestuous.
+
+    [60] Of course the allusion here, as shown in the next
+    following sentence, is to French law in particular. As for
+    the marriage of cousins, there is much to say on both sides
+    of the question.--TRANS.
+
+The peasant being fondest of his own family was driven to despair. It
+was a monstrous thing for him to marry a cousin, even in the sixth
+degree. It was impossible for him to get married in his own village
+where the question of kinship stood so much in his way. He had to look
+for a wife elsewhere, afar off. But in those days there was not much
+intercourse or acquaintance between different places, and each hated
+its own neighbours. On feast days one village would fight another
+without knowing the reason why, as may sometimes still be seen in
+countries never so thinly peopled. No one durst go seek a wife in the
+very spot where men had been fighting together, where he himself would
+have been in great danger.
+
+There was another difficulty. The lord of the young serf forbade his
+marrying in the next lordship. Becoming the serf of his wife's lord he
+would have been wholly lost to his own. Thus he was debarred by the
+priest from his cousin, by the lord from a stranger; and so it
+happened that many did not marry at all.
+
+The result was just what they pretended to avoid. In the Sabbath the
+natural sympathies sprang forth again. There the youth found again her
+whom he had known and loved at first, her whose "little husband" he
+had been called at ten years old. Preferring her as he certainly did,
+he paid but little heed to canonical hindrances.
+
+When we come to know the Medi�val Family better, we give up believing
+the declamatory assumptions of a general mingling together of the
+people forming so great a crowd. On the contrary, we feel that each
+small group is so closely joined together, as to be utterly barred to
+the entrance of a stranger.
+
+The serf was not jealous towards his own kin, but his poverty and
+wretchedness made him exceedingly afraid of worsening his lot by
+multiplying children whom he could not support. The priest and the
+lord on their part wished to increase the number of their
+serfs--wanted the woman to be always bearing; and the strangest
+sermons were often delivered on this head,[61] varied sometimes with
+threats and cruel reproaches. All the more resolute was the prudence
+of the man. The woman, poor creature, unable to bear children fit to
+live on such conditions, bearing them only to her sorrow, had a horror
+of being made big. She never would have ventured to one of these night
+festivals without being first assured, again and again, that no woman
+ever came away pregnant.[62]
+
+    [61] The ingenious M. G�nin has very recently collected the
+    most curious information on this point.
+
+    [62] Boguet, Lancre, and other authors, are agreed on this
+    question.
+
+They were drawn thither by the banquet, the dancing, the lights, the
+amusements; in nowise by carnal pleasure. The last thing they cared
+for was to heighten their poverty, to bring one more wretch into the
+world, to give another serf to their lord.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Cruel indeed was the social system of those days. Authority bade men
+marry, but rendered marriage nearly impossible, at once by the
+excessive misery of most, and the senseless cruelty of the canonical
+prohibitions.
+
+The result was quite opposed to the purity thus preached. Under a show
+of Christianity existed the patriarchate of Asia alone.
+
+Only the firstborn married. The younger brothers and sisters worked
+under him and for him. In the lonely farms of the mountains of the
+South, far from all neighbours and every woman, brothers and sisters
+lived together, the latter serving and in all ways belonging to the
+former; a way of life analogous to that in Genesis, to the marriages
+of the Parsees, to the customs still obtaining in certain shepherd
+tribes of the Himalayas.
+
+The mother's fate was still more revolting. She could not marry her
+son to a kinswoman, and thus secure to herself a kindly-affected
+daughter-in-law. Her son married, if he could, a girl from a distant
+village, an enemy often, whose entrance proved baneful either to the
+children of a former marriage, or to the poor mother, who was often
+driven away by the stranger wife. You may not think it, but the fact
+is certainly so. At the very least she was ill-used; banished from the
+fireside, from the very table.
+
+There is a Swiss law forbidding the removal of the mother from her
+place by the chimney-corner.
+
+She was exceedingly afraid of her son's marrying. But her lot was
+little happier if he did not marry. None the less servant was she of
+the young master of the house, who succeeded to all his father's
+rights, even to that of beating her. This impious custom I have seen
+still followed in the South: a son of five-and-twenty chastising his
+mother when she got drunk.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+How much greater her suffering in those days of savagery! Then it was
+rather he who came back from the feast half-drunken, hardly knowing
+what he was about. But one room, but one bed, was all they had between
+them. She was by no means free from fear. He had seen his friends
+married, and felt soured thereat. Thenceforth her way is marked by
+tears, by utter weakness, by a woful self-surrender. Threatened by her
+only God, her son, heart-broken at finding herself in a plight so
+unnatural, she falls desperate. She tries to drown all her memories in
+sleep. At length comes an issue for which neither of them can fairly
+account, an issue such as nowadays will often happen in the poorer
+quarters of large towns, where some poor woman is forced, frightened,
+perhaps beaten, into bearing every outrage. Thus conquered, and, spite
+of her scruples, far too resigned, she endured thenceforth a pitiable
+bondage; a life of shame and sorrow, and abundant anguish, growing
+with the yearly widening difference between their several ages. The
+woman of six-and-thirty might keep watch over a son of twenty years:
+but at fifty, alas! or still later, where would he be? From the great
+Sabbath where thronged the people of far villages, he would be
+bringing home a strange woman for his youthful mistress, a woman hard,
+heartless, devoid of ruth, who would rob her of her son, her seat by
+the fire, her bed, of the very house which she herself had made.
+
+To believe Lancre and others, Satan accounted the son for
+praiseworthy, if he kept faithful to his mother, thus making a virtue
+of a crime. If this be true, we must assume that the woman was
+protected by a woman, that the Witch sided with the mother, to defend
+her hearth against a daughter-in-law who, stick in hand, would have
+sent her forth to beg.
+
+Lancre further maintains that "never was good Witch, but she sprang
+from the love of a mother for her son." In this way, indeed, was born
+the Persian soothsayer, the natural fruit, they say, of so hateful a
+mystery; and thus the secrets of the magical art were kept confined to
+one family which constantly renewed itself.
+
+An impious error led them to imitate the harmless mystery of the
+husbandman, the unceasing vegetable round whereby the corn resown in
+the furrow, brings forth its corn.
+
+The less monstrous unions of brother with sister, so common in the
+East, and in Greece, were cold and rarely fruitful. They were wisely
+abandoned; nor would people ever have returned to them, but for that
+rebellious spirit which, being aroused by absurd restrictions, flung
+itself foolishly into the opposite extreme. Thus from unnatural laws,
+hatred begot unnatural customs.
+
+A cruel, an accursed time, a time big with despair!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We have been long discoursing; but the dawn is well-nigh come. In a
+moment the hour will strike for the spirits to take themselves away.
+The Witch feels her dismal flowers already withering on her brow.
+Farewell, her royalty, perhaps her life! Where would they be, if the
+day still found her there?
+
+Of Satan, what shall she make? A flame, a cinder? He asks for nothing
+better; knowing well, in his craftiness, that the only way to live and
+to be born again, is first to die.
+
+And will he die, he who as the mighty summoner of the dead, granted to
+them that mourn their only joy on earth, the love they had lost, the
+dream they had cherished? Ah, no! he is very sure to live.
+
+Will he die, he that mighty spirit who, finding Creation accurst, and
+Nature lying cold upon the ground, flung thither like a dirty
+foster-child from off the Church's garment, gathered her up and placed
+her on his bosom? In truth it cannot be.
+
+Will he die, he the one great physician of the Middle Ages, of a
+world that, falling sick, was saved by his poisons and bidden, poor
+fool, to live?
+
+As the gay rogue is sure of living, he dies wholly at his ease. He
+shuffles out of himself, cleverly burns up his fine goatskin, and
+disappears in a blaze of dawn.
+
+But _she_ who made Satan, who made all things, good or ill, whose
+countenance was given to so many forms of love, of devotion, and of
+crime,--to what end will she come? Behold her all lonely on her waste
+moorland.
+
+She is not, as they say, the dread of all. Many will bless her. More
+than one have found her beautiful, would sell their share in Paradise
+to dare be near her. But all around her is a wide gulf. They who
+admire, are none the less afraid of this all-powerful Medea, with her
+fair deep eyes, and the thrilling adders of her dark overflowing hair.
+
+To her thus lonely for ever, for evermore without love, what is there
+left? Nothing but the Demon who had suddenly disappeared.
+
+"'Tis well, good Devil, let us go. I am utterly loath to stay here any
+more. Hell itself is far preferable. Farewell to the world!"
+
+She must live but a very little longer, to play out the dreadful drama
+she had herself begun. Near her, ready saddled by the obedient Satan,
+stood a huge black horse, the fire darting from his eyes and nostrils.
+She sprang upon him with one bound.
+
+They follow her with their eyes. The good folk say with alarm, "What
+is to become of her?" With a frightful burst of laughter, she goes
+off, vanishing swift as an arrow. They would like much to know what
+becomes of the poor woman, but that they never will.[63]
+
+    [63] See the end of the Witch of Berkeley, as told by William
+    of Malmesbury.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE WITCH IN HER DECLINE--SATAN MULTIPLIED AND MADE COMMON.
+
+
+The Devil's delicate fondling, the lesser Witch, begotten of the Black
+Mass after the greater one's disappearance, came and bloomed in all
+her malignant cat-like grace. This woman is quite the reverse of the
+other: refined and sidelong in manner, sly and purring demurely, quick
+also at setting up her back. There is nothing of the Titan about her,
+to be sure. Far from that, she is naturally base; lewd from her cradle
+and full of evil daintinesses. Her whole life is the expression of
+those unclean thoughts which sometimes in a dream by night may assail
+him who would shrink with horror from any such by day.
+
+She who is born with such a secret in her blood, with such instinctive
+mastery of evil, she who has looked so far and so low down, will have
+no religion, no respect for anything or person in the world; none even
+for Satan, since he is a spirit still, while she has a particular
+relish for all things material.
+
+In her childhood she spoiled everything. Tall and pretty she startled
+all by her slovenly habits. With her Witchcraft becomes a mysterious
+cooking up of some mysterious chemistry. From an early date she
+delights to handle repulsive things, to-day a drug, to-morrow an
+intrigue. Among diseases and love-affairs she is in her element. She
+will make a clever go-between, a bold and skilful empiric. War will be
+made against her as a fancied murderer, as a woman who deals in
+poisons. And yet she has small taste for such things, is far from
+murderous in her desires. Devoid of goodness, she yet loves life,
+loves to work cures, to prolong others' lives. She is dangerous in two
+ways: on the one hand by selling receipts for barrenness, and even for
+abortion; while on the other, her headlong libertine fancy leads her
+to compass a woman's fall with her cursed potions, to triumph in the
+wicked deeds of love.
+
+Different, indeed, is this one from the other! She is a manufacturer:
+the other was the ungodly one, the demon, the great rebellion, the
+wife, we might almost say, the mother of Satan; for out of her and her
+inward strength he grew up. But this one is the Devil's daughter
+notwithstanding. Two things she derives from him, her uncleanness, her
+love of handling life. These are her allotted walk, in these she is
+quite an artist; an artist already trading in her lore, and we are
+admitted into the business.
+
+It was said that she would perpetuate herself by the incest from which
+she sprang. But she has no need of that: numberless little ones will
+she beget without help from another. In less than fifty years, at the
+opening of the fifteenth century, under Charles VI., a mighty
+contagion was spread abroad. Whoever thought he had any secrets or any
+receipts, whoever fancied himself a seer, whoever dreamed and
+travelled in his dreams, would call himself a pet of Satan. Every
+moonstruck woman adopted the awful name of Witch!
+
+A perilous, profitable name, cast at her in their hatred by people who
+alternately insult and implore the unknown power. It is none the less
+accepted, nay, is often claimed. To the children who follow her, to
+the woman who, with threatening fists, hurl the name at her like a
+stone, she turns round, saying proudly, "'Tis true, you have said
+well!"
+
+The business improves, and men are mingled in it. Hence another fall
+for the art. Still the least of the witches retains somewhat of the
+Sibyl. Those other frowsy charlatans, those clownish jugglers,
+mole-catchers, ratkillers, who throw spells over beasts, who sell
+secrets which they have not, defiled these times with the stench of a
+dismal black smoke, of fear and foolery. Satan grows enormous, gets
+multiplied without end. 'Tis a poor triumph, however, for him. He
+grows dull and sick at heart. Still the people keep flowing towards
+him, bent on having no other God than he. Himself only is to himself
+untrue.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In spite of two or three great discoveries, the fifteenth century is,
+to my thinking, none the less a century tired out, a century of few
+ideas.
+
+It opened right worthily with the Sabbath Royal of St. Denis, the wild
+and woful ball given by Charles VI. in the abbey so named, to
+commemorate the burial of Du Guesclin, which had taken place so many
+years before. For three days and nights was Sodom wallowing among the
+graves. The foolish king, not yet grown quite an idiot, compelled his
+royal forefathers to share in the ball, by making their dry bones
+dance in their biers. Death, becoming a go-between whether he would or
+no, lent a sharp spur to the voluptuous revel. Then broke out those
+unclean fashions of an age when ladies made themselves taller by
+wearing the Devil's horned-bonnet, and gloried in dressing as if they
+were all with child.[64] To this fashion they clung for the next forty
+years. The younger folk on their side, not to be behind in
+shamelessness, eclipsed them in the display of naked charms. The woman
+wore Satan on her forehead in the shape of a horned head-dress: on the
+feet of the bachelor and the page he was visible in the tapering
+scorpion-like tips of their shoes. Under the mask of animals they
+represented the lowest side of brute nature. The famous child stealer,
+Retz, here took his first flight in villany. The great feudal ladies,
+unbridled Jezebels, with less sense of shame in them than the men,
+scorned all disguise whatever; displayed themselves with face
+uncovered. In their sensual rages, in their mad parade of debauchery,
+the king, the whole company might see the bottomless pit itself
+yawning for the life, the feeling, the body, and the soul of each.
+
+    [64] Even in a very mystic theme, in a work of such genius as
+    the _Lamb_ of Van Eyck (says John of Bruges), all the Virgins
+    seem big. It was only the quaint fashion of the fifteenth
+    century.
+
+Out of such doings come forth the conquered of Agincourt, a poor
+generation of effete nobles, in whose miniatures you shiver to see the
+falling away of their sorry limbs, as shown through the treacherous
+tightness of their clothes.[65]
+
+    [65] This wasting away of a used-up, enervated race, mars the
+    effect of all those splendid miniatures of the Court of
+    Burgundy, the Duke of Berry, &c. No amount of clever handling
+    could make good works of art out of subjects so very
+    pitiable.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Much to be pitied is the Witch who, when the great lady came home from
+that royal feast, became her bosom-counsellor and agent charged with
+the doing of impossible things.
+
+In her own castle, indeed, the lady is almost, if not all alone,
+amidst a crowd of single men. To judge from romances you would think
+she delighted in girding herself with an array of fair girls. Far
+otherwise are we taught by history and common sense. Eleanor is not
+so silly as to match herself against Rosamond. With all their own
+rakishness, those queens and great ladies could be frightfully
+jealous; witness she who is said by Henry Martin to have caused the
+death of a girl admired by her husband, under the outrageous handling
+of his soldiery. The power wielded by the lady's love depends, we
+repeat, on her being alone. Whatever her age and figure, she becomes
+the dream of all. The Witch takes mischievous delight in making her
+abuse her goddesship, in tempting her to make game of the men she
+humbles and befools. She goes to all lengths of boldness, even
+treating them like very beasts. Look at them being transformed! Down
+on all fours they tumble, like fawning monkeys, absurd bears, lewd
+dogs, or swine eager to follow their contemptuous Circ�.
+
+Her pity rises thereat? Nay, but she grows sick of it all, and kicks
+those crawling beasts with her foot. The thing is impure, but not
+heinous enough. An absurd remedy is found for her complaint. These
+others being so nought, she is to have something yet more
+nought--namely, a little sweetheart. The advice is worthy of the
+Witch. Love's spark shall be lighted before its time in some young
+innocent, sleeping the pure sleep of childhood! Here you have the ugly
+tale of little John of Saintr�, pink of cherubim, and other paltry
+puppets of the Age of Decay.
+
+Through all those pedantic embellishments and sentimental
+moralizings, one clearly marks the vile cruelty that lies below. The
+fruit was killed in the flower. Here, in a manner, is the very "eating
+of children," which was laid so often to the Witch's charge. Anyhow,
+she drained their lives. The fair lady who caresses one in so tender
+and motherly a way, what is she but a vampire, draining the blood of
+the weak? The upshot of such atrocities we may gather from the tale
+itself. Saintr� becomes a perfect knight, but so utterly frail and
+weak as to be dared and defied by the lout of a peasant priest, in
+whom the lady, become better advised, has seen something that will
+suit her best.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Such idle whimsies heighten the surfeit, the mad rage of an empty
+mind. Circ� among her beasts grows so weary and heartsick that she
+would be a beast herself. She fancies herself wild, and locks herself
+up. From her tower she casts an evil eye towards the gloomy forest.
+She fancies herself a prisoner, and rages like a wolf chained fast.
+"Let the old woman come this moment: I want her. Run!" Two minutes
+later again: "What! is she not come yet?"
+
+At last she is come. "Hark you: I have a sore longing--invincible, as
+you know--to choke you, to drown you, or to give you up to the bishop,
+who already claims you. You have but one way of escape, that is, to
+satisfy another longing of mine by changing me into a wolf. I feel
+wretchedly bored, weary of keeping still. I want, by night at least,
+to run free about the forest. Away with stupid servants, with dogs
+that stun me with their noise, with clumsy horses that kick out and
+shy at a thicket."
+
+"But if you were caught, my lady----"
+
+"Insolent woman! You would rather die, then?"
+
+"At least you have heard the story of the woman-wolf, whose paw was
+cut off.[66] But, oh! how sorry I should be."
+
+    [66] Among the great ladies imprisoned in their castles, this
+    dreadful fancy was not rare. They hungered and thirsted for
+    freedom, for savage freedom. Boguet mentions how, among the
+    hills of Auvergne, a hunter one night drew his sword upon a
+    she-wolf, but missing her, cut off her paw. She fled away
+    limping. He came to a neighbouring castle to seek the
+    hospitality of him who dwelt there. The gentleman, on seeing
+    him, asked if he had had good sport. By way of answer he
+    thought to draw out of his pouch the she-wolf's paw; but what
+    was his amazement to find instead of the paw a hand, and on
+    one of the fingers a ring, which the gentleman recognized as
+    belonging to his wife! Going at once in search of her, he
+    found her hurt and hiding her fore-arm. To the arm which had
+    lost its hand he fitted that which the hunter had brought
+    him, and the lady was fain to own that she it was, who in the
+    likeness of a wolf had attacked the hunter, and afterwards
+    saved herself by leaving a paw on the battle-field. The
+    husband had the cruelty to give her up to justice, and she
+    was burnt.
+
+"That is my concern. I will hear nothing more, I am in a hurry--have
+been barking already. What happiness, to hunt all by myself in the
+clear moonlight; by myself to fasten on the hind, or man likewise if
+he comes near me; to attack the tender children, and, above all, to
+set my teeth in the women; ay, the women, for I hate them all--not one
+like yourself. Don't start, I won't bite you--you are not to my taste,
+and besides, you have no blood in you! 'Tis blood I crave--blood!"
+
+She can no longer refuse. "Nothing easier, my lady. To-night, at nine
+o'clock, you will drink this. Lock yourself up, and then turning into
+a wolf, while they think you are still here, you can scour the
+forest."
+
+It is done; and next morning the lady finds herself worn out and
+depressed. In one night she must have travelled some thirty leagues.
+She has been hunting and slaying until she is covered with blood. But
+the blood, perhaps, comes from her having torn herself among the
+brambles.
+
+A great triumph and danger also for her who has wrought this miracle.
+From the lady, however, whose command provoked it, she receives but a
+gloomy welcome. "Witch, 'tis a fearful power you have; I should never
+have guessed it. But now I fear and dread you. Good cause, indeed,
+they have to hate you. A happy day will it be when you are burnt. I
+can ruin you when I please. One word of mine about last night, and my
+peasants would this evening whet their scythes upon you. Out, you
+black-looking, hateful old hag!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The great folk, her patrons, launch her into strange adventures. For
+what can she refuse to her terrible protectors, when nothing but the
+castle saves her from the priest, from the faggot? If the baron, on
+his return from a crusade, being bent on copying the manners of the
+Turks, sends for her, and orders her to steal him a few children, what
+can she do? Raids such as those grand ones in which two thousand pages
+were sometimes carried off from Greek ground to enter the seraglio,
+were by no means unknown to the Christians; were known from the tenth
+century to the barons of England, at a later date to the knights of
+Rhodes and Malta. The famous Giles of Retz, the only one brought to
+trial, was punished, not for having stolen his small serfs, a crime
+not then uncommon, but for having sacrificed them to Satan. She who
+actually stole them, and was ignorant, doubtless, of their future lot,
+found herself between two perils: on the one hand the peasant's fork
+and scythe; on the other, those torments which awaited her, when
+recusant, within the tower. Retz's terrible Italian would have made
+nothing of pounding her in a mortar.[67]
+
+    [67] See my _History of France_, and still more the learned
+    and careful account by the lamented Armand Gu�raud: _Notice
+    sur Gilles de Rais_, Nantes, 1855. We there find that the
+    purveyors of that horrible child's charnel-house were mostly
+    men.
+
+On all sides the perils and the profits went together. A position more
+frightfully corrupting could not have been found. The Witches
+themselves did not deny the absurd powers imputed to them by the
+people. They averred that by means of a doll stuck over with needles
+they could weave their spells around whomever they pleased, making him
+waste away until he died. They averred that mandragora, torn from
+beneath the gallows by the teeth of a dog, who invariably died
+therefrom, enabled them to pervert the understanding; to turn men into
+beasts, to give women over to idiotcy and madness. Still more dreadful
+was the furious frenzy caused by the Thorn-apple, or Datura, which
+made men dance themselves to death, and go through a thousand shameful
+antics, without their own knowledge or remembrance.[68]
+
+    [68] Pouchet, on the _Solane� and General Botany_. Nysten,
+    _Dictionary of Medicine_, article _Datura_. The robbers
+    employed these potions but too often. A butcher of Aix and
+    his wife, whom they wanted to rob of their money, were made
+    to drink of some such, and became so maddened thereby, that
+    they danced all one night naked in a cemetery.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hence there grew up against them a feeling of boundless hatred,
+mingled with as extreme a fear. Sprenger, who wrote the _Hammer for
+Witches_, relates with horror how, in a season of snow, when all the
+roads were broken up, he saw a wretched multitude, wild with terror,
+and spell-bound by evils all too real, fill up all the approaches to a
+little German town. "Never," says he, "did you behold so mighty a
+pilgrimage to our Lady of Grace, or her of the wilderness. All these
+people, who hobbled, crawled, and stumbled among the quagmires, were
+on their way to the Witch, to beseech the grace of the Devil upon
+themselves. How proud and excited must the old woman have felt at
+seeing so large a concourse prostrate before her feet!"[69]
+
+    [69] The Witch delighted in causing the noble and the great
+    to undergo the most outrageous trials of their love. We know
+    that queens and ladies of rank (in Italy even to the last
+    century) held their court at times the most forbidding, and
+    exacted the most unpleasant services from their favourites.
+    There was nothing too mean, too repulsive, for the domestic
+    brute--the _cicisbeo_, the priest, the half-witted page--to
+    undergo, in the stupid belief that the power of a philtre
+    increased with its nastiness. This was sad enough when the
+    ladies were neither young, nor beautiful, nor witty. But what
+    of that other astounding fact, that a Witch, who was neither
+    a great lady, nor young, nor fair, but poor, and perhaps a
+    serf, clad only in dirty rags, could still by her malice, by
+    the strange power of her raging lewdness, by some
+    bewitchingly treacherous spell, stupefy the gravest
+    personages, and abase them to so low a depth? Some monks of a
+    monastery on the Rhine, wherein, as in many other German
+    convents, none but a noble of four hundred years' standing
+    could gain admission, sorrowfully owned to Sprenger that they
+    had seen three of their brethren bewitched in turn, and a
+    fourth killed by a woman, who boldly said, "I did it, and
+    will do so again: they cannot escape me, for they have
+    eaten," &c. (Sprenger, _Malleus maleficarum_, _qu�stio_, vii.
+    p. 84.) "The worst of it is," says Sprenger, "that we have no
+    means of punishing or examining her: _so she lives still_."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE HAMMER FOR WITCHES.
+
+
+The witches took small care to hide their game. Rather they boasted of
+it; and it was, indeed, from their own lips that Sprenger picked up
+the bulk of the tales that grace his handbook. It is a pedantic work,
+marked out into the absurd divisions and subdivisions employed by the
+followers of St. Thomas Aquinas; but a work sincere withal, and
+frank-spoken, written by a man so thoroughly frightened by this
+dreadful duel between God and the Devil, wherein God _generally_
+allows the Devil to win, that the only remedy he can discern is to
+pursue the latter fire in hand, and burn with all speed those bodies
+which he had chosen for his dwelling-place.
+
+Sprenger's sole merit is the fact of his having written a complete
+book, which crowns a mighty system, a whole literature. To the old
+_Penitentiaries_, handbooks of confessors for the inquisition of sin,
+succeeded the _Directories_ for the inquisition of heresy, the
+greatest sin of all. But for Witchcraft, the greatest of all heresies,
+special handbooks or directories were appointed. Hammers for Witches,
+to wit. These handbooks, continually enriched by the zeal of the
+Dominicans, attained perfection in the _Malleus_ of Sprenger, the
+book by which he himself was guided during his great mission to
+Germany, and which for a century after served as a guide and light for
+the courts of the Inquisition.
+
+How was Sprenger led to the study of these things? He tells us that
+being in Rome, at a refectory where the monks were entertaining some
+pilgrims, he saw two from Bohemia; one a young priest, the other his
+father. The father sighing prayed for a successful journey. Touched
+with a kindly feeling Sprenger asked him why he sorrowed. Because his
+son was _possessed_: at great cost and with much trouble he had
+brought him to the tomb of the saints, at Rome.
+
+"Where is this son of yours?" said the monk.
+
+"By your side."
+
+"At this answer I shrank back alarmed. I scanned the young priest's
+figure, and was amazed to see him eat with so modest an air, and
+answer with so much gentleness. He informed me that, on speaking
+somewhat sharply to an old woman, she had laid him under a spell, and
+that spell was under a tree. What tree? The Witch steadily refused to
+say."
+
+Sprenger's charity led him to take the possessed from church to
+church, from relic to relic. At every halting-place there was an
+exorcism, followed by furious cries, contortions, jabbering in every
+language, and gambols without number: all this before the people, who
+followed the pair with shuddering admiration. The devils, so abundant
+in Germany, were scarcer among the Italians. For some days Rome talked
+of nothing else. The noise made by this affair doubtless brought the
+Dominican into public notice. He studied, collected all the _Mallei_,
+and other manuscript handbooks, and became a first-rate authority in
+the processes against demons. His _Malleus_ was most likely composed
+during the twenty years between this adventure and the important
+mission entrusted to Sprenger by Pope Innocent VIII., in 1484.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For that mission to Germany a clever man was specially needed; a man
+of wit and ability, who might overcome the dislike of honest German
+folk for the dark system it would be his care to introduce. In the Low
+Countries Rome had suffered a rude check, which brought the
+Inquisition into vogue there, and consequently closed France against
+it: Toulouse alone, as being the old Albigensian country, having
+endured the Inquisition. About the year 1460 a Penitentiary[70] of
+Rome, being made Dean of Arras, thought to strike an awe-inspiring
+blow at the _Chambers of Rhetoric_, literary clubs which had begun to
+handle religious questions. He had one of these Rhetoricians burnt for
+a wizard, and along with him some wealthy burgesses, and even a few
+knights. The nobles were angry at this near approach to themselves:
+the public voice was raised in violent outcry. The Inquisition was
+cursed and spat upon, especially in France. The Parliament of Paris
+roughly closed its doors upon it; and thus by her awkwardness did Rome
+lose her opportunity of establishing that Reign of Terror throughout
+the North.
+
+    [70] Officer charged with the absolution of
+    penitents.--TRANS.
+
+About 1484 the time seemed better chosen. The Inquisition had grown to
+so dreadful a height in Spain, setting itself even above the king,
+that it seemed already confirmed as a conquering institution, able to
+move forward alone, to make its way everywhere, and seize upon
+everything. In Germany, indeed, it was hindered by the jealous
+antagonism of the spiritual princes, who, having courts of their own,
+and holding inquisitions by themselves, would never agree to accept
+that of Rome. But the position of these princes towards the popular
+movements by which they were then so greatly disquieted, soon rendered
+them more manageable. All along the Rhine, and throughout Swabia, even
+on the eastern side towards Salzburg, the country seemed to be
+undermined. At every moment burst forth some fresh revolt of the
+peasantry. A vast underground volcano, an invisible lake of fire,
+showed itself, as it were, from place to place, in continual spouts of
+flame. More dreaded than that of Germany, the foreign Inquisition
+appeared at a most seasonable hour for spreading terror through the
+country, and crushing the rebellious spirits, by roasting, as the
+wizards of to-day, those who might else have been the insurgents of
+to-morrow. It was a beautiful _derivative_, an excellent popular
+weapon for putting down the people. This time the storm got turned
+upon the Wizards, as in 1349, and on many other occasions it had been
+launched against the Jews.
+
+Only the right man was needed. He who should be the first to set up
+his judgment-seat in sight of the jealous courts of Mentz and Cologne,
+in presence of the mocking mobs of Strazburg or Frankfort, must indeed
+be a man of ready wit. He would need great personal cleverness to
+atone for, to cause a partial forgetfulness of his hateful mission.
+Rome, too, has always plumed herself on choosing the best men for her
+work. Caring little for questions, and much for persons, she thought
+rightly enough that the successful issue of her affairs depended on
+the special character of her several agents abroad. Was Sprenger the
+right man? He was a German to begin with, a Dominican enjoying
+beforehand the support of that dreaded order through all its convents,
+through all its schools. Need was there of a worthy son of the
+schools, a good disputant, of a man well skilled in the _Sum_,[71]
+grounded firm in his St. Thomas, able at any moment to quote texts.
+All this Sprenger certainly was: and best of all, he was a fool.
+
+    [71] A medi�val text-book on theology.--TRANS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It has been often said that _diabolus_ comes from _dia_, 'two,' and
+_bolus_, 'a pill or ball,' because devouring alike soul and body, he
+makes but one pill, one mouthful of the two. But"--he goes on to say
+with the gravity of _Sganarelle_--"in Greek etymology _diabolus_ means
+'shut up in a house of bondage,' or rather 'flowing down' (Teufel?),
+that is to say, falling, because he fell from heaven."
+
+Whence comes the word sorcery (_mal�fice_)? From _maleficiendo_, which
+means _male de fide sentiendo_.[72] A curious etymology, but one that
+will hold a great deal. Once trace a resemblance between witchcraft
+and evil opinions, and every wizard becomes a heretic, every doubter a
+wizard. All who think wrongly can be burnt for wizards. This was done
+at Arras; and they long to establish the same rule, little by little,
+everywhere else.
+
+    [72] "Thinking ill of the faith."--TRANS.
+
+Herein lies the once sure merit of Sprenger. A fool, but a fearless
+one, he boldly lays down the most unwelcome theses. Others would have
+striven to shirk, to explain away, to diminish, the objections that
+might be made. Not he, however. From the first page he puts plainly
+forward, one by one, the natural manifest reasons for not believing in
+the Satanic miracles. To these he coldly adds: "_They are but so many
+heretical mistakes_." And without stopping to refute those reasons, he
+copies you out the adverse passages found in the Bible, St. Thomas, in
+books of legends, in the canonists, and the scholiasts. Having first
+shown you the right interpretation, he grinds it to powder by dint of
+authority.
+
+He sits down satisfied, calm as a conqueror; seeming to say, "Well,
+what say you now? Will you dare use your reason again? Go and doubt
+away then; doubt, for instance, that the Devil delights in setting
+himself between wife and husband, although the Church and all the
+canonists repeatedly admit this reason for a divorce!"
+
+Of a truth this is unanswerable: nobody will breathe so much as a
+whisper in reply. Since Sprenger heads his handbook for judges by
+declaring the slightest doubt _heretical_, the judge stands bound
+accordingly; he feels that he cannot stumble, that if unhappily he
+should ever be tempted by an impulse of doubt or humanity, he must
+begin by condemning himself and delivering his own body to the flames.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The same method prevails everywhere: first the sensible meaning, which
+is then confronted openly, without reserve, by the negation of all
+good sense. Some one, for instance, might be tempted to say that as
+love is in the soul, there is no need to account for it by the
+mysterious working of the Devil. That is surely specious, is it not?
+
+"By no means," says Sprenger.
+
+"I mark a difference. He who cuts wood does not cause it to burn: he
+only does so indirectly. The woodcutter is Love; see Denis the
+Areopagite, Origen, John of Damascus. Therefore, love is but the
+indirect cause of love."
+
+What a thing, you see, to have studied! No weak school could have
+turned out such a man. Only Paris, Louvain, or Cologne, had machinery
+fit to mould the human brain. The school of Paris was mighty: for
+dog-Latin who can be matched with the _Janotus_ of Gargantua?[73] But
+mightier yet was Cologne, glorious queen of darkness, whence Hutten
+drew the type of his _Obscuri viri_, that thriving and fruitful race
+of obscurantists and ignoramuses.[74]
+
+    [73] A character in Rabelais. "Date nobis clochas nostras,
+    &c."--_Gargantua_, ch. 19.--TRANS.
+
+    [74] Ulrich von Hutten, friend of Luther, and author of the
+    witty _Epistol� obscurorum virorum_.--TRANS.
+
+This massive logician, so full of words, so devoid of meaning, sworn
+foe of nature as well as reason, takes his seat with a proud reliance
+on his books and gown, on his dirt and dust. On one side of his
+judgement-table lies the _Sum_, on the other the _Directory_. Beyond
+these he never goes: at all else he only smiles. On such a man as he
+there is no imposing: he is not the man to utter anent astrology or
+alchemy nonsense not so foolish but that others might be led thereby
+to observe truly. And yet Sprenger is a freethinker: he is sceptical
+about old receipts! Albert the Great may aver, that some sage in a
+spring of water will suffice to raise a storm, but Sprenger only
+shakes his head. Sage indeed! Tell that to others, I beg. For all my
+little experience, I see herein the craft of One who would put us on
+the wrong scent, that cunning Prince of the Air; but he will fare
+ill, for he has to deal with a doctor more subtle than the Subtle One
+himself.
+
+I should have liked to see face to face this wonderful specimen of a
+judge, and the people who were brought before him. The creatures that
+God might bring together from two different worlds would not be more
+unlike, more strange to each other, more utterly wanting in a common
+language. The old hag, a skeleton in tatters, with an eye flashing
+forth evil things, a being thrice cooked in hell-fire; and the
+ill-looking hermit shepherd of the Black Forest or the upper Alpine
+wastes--such are the savages offered to the leaden gaze of a
+scholarling, to the judgement of a schoolman.
+
+Not long will they let him toil in his judgment-seat. They will tell
+all without being tortured. Come the torture will indeed, but
+afterwards, by way of complement and crown to the law-procedure. They
+explain and relate to order whatever they have done. The Devil is the
+Witch's bedfellow, the shepherd's intimate friend. She, for her part,
+smiles triumphantly, feels a manifest joy in the horror of those
+around.
+
+Truly, the old woman is very mad, and equally so the shepherd. Are
+they foolish? Not at all, but far otherwise. They are refined, subtle,
+skilled in growing herbs, and seeing through walls. Still more clearly
+do they see those monumental ass's ears that overshadow the doctor's
+cap. Clearest of all is the fear he has of them, for in vain does he
+try to bear him boldly; he does nought but tremble. He himself owns
+that, if the priest who adjures the demon does not take care, the
+Devil will change his lodging only to pass into the priest himself,
+feeling all the more proud of dwelling in a body dedicated to God. Who
+knows but these simple Devils of Witches and shepherds might even
+aspire to inhabit an inquisitor? He is far from easy in mind when in
+his loudest voice he says to the old woman, "If your master is so
+mighty, why do I not feel his blows?"
+
+"And, indeed I felt them but too strongly," says the poor man in his
+book. "When I was in Ratisbon, how often he would come knocking at my
+windowpanes! How often he stuck pins in my cap! A hundred visions too
+did I have of dogs, monkeys," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The dearest delight of that great logician, the Devil, is, by the
+mouth of the seeming old woman, to push the doctor with awkward
+arguments, with crafty questions, from which he can only escape by
+acting like the fish who saves himself by troubling the water and
+turning it black as ink. For instance, "The Devil does no more than
+God allows him: why, then, punish his tools?" Or again, "We are not
+free. As in the case of Job, the Devil is allowed by God to tempt and
+beset us, to urge us on by blows. Should we, then, punish him who is
+not free?" Sprenger gets out of that by saying, "We are free beings."
+Here come plenty of texts. "You are made serfs only by covenant with
+the Evil One." The answer to this would be but too ready: "If God
+allows the Evil One to tempt us into making covenants, he renders
+covenants possible," &c.
+
+"I am very good," says he, "to listen to yonder folk. He is a fool who
+argues with the Devil." So say all the rest likewise. They all cheer
+the progress of the trial: all are strongly moved, and show in murmurs
+their eagerness for the execution. They have seen enough of men
+hanged. As for the Wizard and the Witch, 'twill be a curious treat to
+see those two faggots crackling merrily in the flames.
+
+The judge has the people on his side, so he is not embarrassed.
+According to his _Directory_ three witnesses would be enough. Are not
+three witnesses readily found, especially to witness a falsehood? In
+every slanderous town, in every envious village teeming with the
+mutual hate of neighbours, witnesses abound. Besides, the _Directory_
+is a superannuated book, a century old. In that century of light, the
+fifteenth, all is brought to perfection. If witnesses are wanting, we
+are content with the _public voice_, the general clamour.[75]
+
+    [75] Faustin H�lie, in his learned and luminous _Trait� de
+    l'Instruction Criminelle_ (vol. i. p. 398), has clearly
+    explained the manner in which Pope Innocent III., about 1200,
+    suppressed the safeguards theretofore required in any
+    prosecution, especially the risk incurred by prosecutors of
+    being punished for slander. Instead of these were established
+    the dismal processes of _Denunciation and Inquisition_. The
+    frightful levity of these latter methods is shown by Soldan.
+    Blood was shed like water.
+
+A genuine outcry, born of fear; the piteous cry of victims, of the
+poor bewitched. Sprenger is greatly moved thereat. Do not fancy him
+one of those unfeeling schoolmen, the lovers of a dry abstraction. He
+has a heart: for which very reason he is so ready to kill. He is
+compassionate, full of lovingkindness. He feels pity for yon weeping
+woman, but lately pregnant, whose babe the witch had smothered by a
+look. He feels pity for the poor man whose land she wasted with hail.
+He pities the husband, who though himself no wizard, clearly sees his
+wife to be a witch, and drags her with a rope round her neck before
+Sprenger, who has her burnt.
+
+From a cruel judge escape was sometimes possible; but from our worthy
+Sprenger it was hopeless. His humanity is too strong: it needs great
+management, a very large amount of ready wit, to avoid a burning at
+his hands. One day there was brought before him the plaint of three
+good ladies of Strasburg who, at one same hour of the same day, had
+been struck by an arm unseen. Ah, indeed! They are fain to accuse a
+man of evil aspect, of having laid them under a spell. On being
+brought before the inquisitor, the man vows and swears by all the
+saints that he knows nothing about these ladies, has never so much as
+seen them. The judge is hard of believing: nor tears nor oaths avail
+aught with him. His great compassion for the ladies made him
+inexorable, indignant at the man's denials. Already he was rising from
+his seat. The man would have been tortured into confessing his guilt,
+as the most innocent often did. He got leave to speak, and said: "I
+remember, indeed, having struck some one yesterday at the hour named;
+but whom? No Christian beings, but only three cats which came
+furiously biting at my legs." The judge, like a shrewd fellow, saw the
+whole truth of the matter; the poor man was innocent; the ladies were
+doubtless turned on certain days into cats, and the Evil One amused
+himself by sending them at the legs of Christian folk, in order to
+bring about the ruin of these latter by making them pass for wizards.
+
+A judge of less ability would never have hit upon this. But such a man
+was not always to be had. It was needful to have always handy on the
+table of the Inquisition a good fool's guide, to reveal to simple and
+inexperienced judges the tricks of the Old Enemy, the best way of
+baffling him, the clever and deep-laid tactics employed with such
+happy effect by the great Sprenger in his campaigns on the Rhine. To
+that end the _Malleus_, which a man was required to carry in his
+pocket, was commonly printed in small 18mo, a form at that time
+scarce. It would not have been seemly for a judge in difficulties to
+open a folio on the table before his audience. But his handbook of
+folly he might easily squint at from the corner of his eye, or turn
+over its leaves as he held it under the table.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This _Malleus_ (or Mallet), like all books of the same class, contains
+a singular avowal, namely, that the Devil is gaining ground; in other
+words, that God is losing it; that mankind, after being saved by
+Christ, is becoming the Devil's prey. Too clearly indeed does he step
+forward from legend to legend. What a way he has made between the time
+of the Gospels, when he was only too glad to get into the swine, and
+the days of Dante, when, as lawyer and divine, he argues with the
+saints, pleads his cause, and by way of closing a successful
+syllogism, bears away the soul he was fighting for, saying, with a
+triumphant laugh, "You didn't know that I was a logician!"
+
+In the earlier days of the Middle Ages he waits till the last pangs to
+seize the soul and bear it off. Saint Hildegarde, about 1100, thinks
+that "_he cannot enter the body of a living man_, for else his limbs
+would fly off in all directions: it is but the shadow and the smoke of
+the Devil which pass therein." That last gleam of good sense vanishes
+in the twelfth century. In the thirteenth we find a suppliant so
+afraid of being caught alive that he has himself watched day and night
+by two hundred armed men.
+
+Then begins a period of increasing terror, in which men trust
+themselves less and ever less to God's protection. The Demon is no
+longer a stealthy sprite, no longer a thief by night, gliding through
+the gloom. He becomes the fearless adversary, the daring ape of
+Heaven, who in broad daylight mimics God's creation under God's own
+sun. Is it the legends tell us this? Nay, it is the greatest of the
+doctors. "The Devil," says Albert the Great, "transforms all living
+things." St. Thomas goes yet further. "All changes that may occur
+naturally by means of seeds, can be copied by the Devil." What an
+astounding concession, which coming from the mouth of so grave a
+personage, means nothing short of setting up one Creator face to face
+with another! "But in things done without the germinal process," he
+adds, "such as the changing of men into beasts or the resurrection of
+the dead, there the Devil can do nothing." Thus to God is left the
+smaller part of His work! He may only perform miracles, a kind of
+action alike singular and infrequent. But the daily miracle of life is
+not for Him alone: His copyist, the Devil, shares with Him the world
+of nature!
+
+For man himself, whose weak eyes see no difference between nature as
+sprung from God and nature as made by the Devil, here is a world split
+in twain! A dreadful uncertainty hangs over everything. Nature's
+innocence is gone. The clear spring, the pale flower, the little bird,
+are these indeed of God, or only treacherous counterfeits, snares laid
+out for man? Back! all things look doubtful! The better of the two
+creations, being suspiciously like the other, becomes eclipsed and
+conquered. The shadow of the Devil covers up the day, spreads over all
+life. To judge by appearances and the fears of men, he has ceased to
+share the world; he has taken it all to himself.
+
+So matters stand in the days of Sprenger. His book teems with saddest
+avowals of God's weakness. "These things," he says, "are done with
+God's leave." To permit an illusion so entire, to let people believe
+that God is nought and the Devil everything, is more than mere
+_permission_; is tantamount to decreeing the damnation of countless
+souls whom nothing can save from such an error. No prayers, no
+penances, no pilgrimages, are of any avail; nor even, so it is said,
+the sacrament of the altar. Strange and mortifying avowal! The very
+nuns who have just confessed themselves, declare _while the host is
+yet in their mouths_, that even then they feel the infernal lover
+troubling them without fear or shame, troubling and refusing to leave
+his hold. And being pressed with further questions, they add, through
+their tears, that he has a body _because he has a soul_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Manichees of old, and the more modern Albigenses, were charged
+with believing in the Power of Evil struggling side by side with Good,
+with making the Devil equal to God. Here, however, he is more than
+equal; for if God through His holy sacrament has still no power for
+good, the Devil certainly seems superior.
+
+I am not surprised at the wondrous sight then offered by the world.
+Spain with a darksome fury, Germany with the frightened pedantic rage
+certified in the _Malleus_, assail the insolent conqueror through the
+wretches in whom he chooses to dwell. They burn, they destroy the
+dwellings in which he has taken up his abode. Finding him too strong
+for men's souls, they try to hunt him out of their bodies. But what is
+the good of it all? You burn one old woman and he settles himself in
+her neighbour. Nay, more; if Sprenger may be trusted, he fastens
+sometimes on the exorcising priest, and triumphs over his very judge.
+
+Among other expedients, the Dominicans advised recourse to the
+intercession of the Virgin, by a continual repeating of the _Ave
+Maria_. Sprenger, for his part, always averred that such a remedy was
+but a momentary one. You might be caught between two prayers. Hence
+came the invention of the rosary, the chaplet of beads, by means of
+which any number of aves might be mumbled through, whilst the mind was
+busied elsewhere. Whole populations adopted this first essay of an art
+thereafter to be used by Loyola in his attempt to govern the world, an
+art of which his _Exercises_ furnish the ingenious groundwork.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All this seems opposed to what was said in the foregoing chapter as to
+the decline of Witchcraft. The Devil is now popular and everywhere
+present. He seems to have come off conqueror: but has he gained by
+his victory? What substantial profit has he reaped therefrom?
+
+Much, as beheld in his new phase of a scientific rebellion which is
+about to bring forth the bright Renaissance. None, if beheld under his
+old aspect, as the gloomy Spirit of Witchcraft. The stories told of
+him in the sixteenth century, if more numerous, more widespread than
+ever, readily swing towards the grotesque. People tremble, but they
+laugh withal.[76]
+
+    [76] See my _Memoirs of Luther_, concerning the Kilcrops, &c.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+CENTURY OF TOLERATION IN FRANCE: REACTION.
+
+
+The Church forfeited the wizard's property to the judge and the
+prosecutor. Wherever the Canon Law was enforced the trials for
+witchcraft waxed numerous, and brought much wealth to the clergy.
+Wherever the lay tribunals claimed the management of these trials they
+grew scarce and disappeared, at least for a hundred years in France,
+from 1450 to 1550.
+
+The first gleam of light shot forth from France in the middle of the
+fifteenth century. The inquiry made by Parliament into the trial of
+Joan of Arc, and her after reinstalment, set people thinking on the
+intercourse of spirits, good and bad; on the errors, also, of the
+spiritual courts. She whom the English, whom the greatest doctors of
+the Council of Basil pronounced a Witch, appeared to Frenchmen a saint
+and sibyl. Her reinstalment proclaimed to France the beginning of an
+age of toleration. The Parliament of Paris likewise reinstalled the
+alleged Waldenses of Arras. In 1498 it discharged as mad one who was
+brought before it as a wizard. None such were condemned in the reigns
+of Charles VIII., Louis XII., and Francis I.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the contrary, Spain, under the pious Isabella (1506) and the
+Cardinal Ximenes, began burning witches. In 1515, Geneva, being then
+under a Bishop, burned five hundred in three months. The Emperor
+Charles V., in his German Constitutions, vainly sought to rule, that
+"Witchcraft, as causing damage to goods and persons, is a question for
+_civil_, not ecclesiastic law." In vain did he do away the right of
+confiscation, except in cases of treason. The small prince-bishops,
+whose revenues were largely swelled by trials for witchcraft, kept on
+burning at a furious rate. In one moment, as it were, six hundred
+persons were burnt in the infinitesimal bishopric of Bamberg, and nine
+hundred in that of Wurtzburg. The way of going to work was very
+simple. Begin by using torture against the witnesses; create witnesses
+for the prosecution by means of pain and terror; then, by dint of
+excessive kindliness, draw from the accused a certain avowal, and
+believe that avowal in the teeth of proven facts. A witch, for
+instance, owns to having taken from the graveyard the body of an
+infant lately dead, that she might use it in her magical compounds.
+Her husband bids them go the graveyard, for the child is there still.
+On being disinterred, the child is found all right in his coffin. But
+against the witness of his own eyes the judge pronounces it _an
+appearance_, a cheat of the Devil. He prefers the wife's confession to
+the fact itself; and she is burnt forthwith.[77]
+
+    [77] For this and other facts regarding Germany, see Soldan.
+
+So far did matters go among these worthy prince-bishops, that after a
+while, Ferdinand II., the most bigoted of all emperors, the emperor of
+the Thirty Years' War, was fain to interfere, to set up at Bamberg an
+imperial commissary, who should maintain the law of the empire, and
+see that the episcopal judge did not begin the trial with tortures
+which settled it beforehand, which led straight to the stake.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Witches were easily caught by their confessions, sometimes without the
+torture. Many of them were half mad. They would own to turning
+themselves into beasts. The Italian women often became cats, and
+gliding under the doors, sucked, they said, the blood of children. In
+the land of mighty forests, in Lorraine and on the Jura, the women, of
+their own accord, became wolves, and, if you could believe them,
+devoured the passers by, even when nobody had passed by. They were
+burnt. Some girls, who swore they had given themselves to the Devil,
+were found to be maidens still. They, too, were burnt. Several seemed
+in a great hurry, as if they wanted to be burnt. Sometimes it happened
+from raging madness, sometimes from despair. An Englishwoman being led
+to the stake, said to the people, "Do not blame my judges. I wanted to
+put an end to my own self. My parents kept aloof from me in their
+dread. My husband had disowned me. I could not have lived on without
+disgrace. I longed for death, and so I told a lie."
+
+The first words of open toleration against silly Sprenger, his
+frightful Handbook, and his Inquisitors, were spoken by Molitor, a
+lawyer of Constance. He made this sensible remark, that the
+confessions of witches should not be taken seriously, because it was
+the very Father of Lies who spoke by their mouths. He laughed at the
+miracles of Satan, affirming them to be all illusory. In an indirect
+way, such jesters as Hutten and Erasmus dealt violent blows at the
+Inquisition, through their satires on the Dominican idiots. Cardan[78]
+said, straightforwardly, "In order to obtain forfeit property, the
+same persons acted as accusers and judges, and invented a thousand
+stories in proof."
+
+    [78] A famous Italian physician, who lived through the
+    greater part of the sixteenth century.--TRANS.
+
+That apostle of toleration, Chatillon, who maintained against
+Catholics and Protestants both, that heretics should not be burnt,
+though he said nothing about wizards, put men of sense in a better
+way. Agrippa,[79] Lavatier, above all, Wyer[80]] the illustrious
+physician of Cl�ves, rightly said that if those wretched witches were
+the Devil's plaything, we must lay the blame on the Devil, not on
+them; must cure, instead of burning them. Some physicians of Paris
+soon pushed incredulity so far as to maintain that the possessed and
+the witches were simply knaves. This was going too far. Most of them
+were sufferers under the sway of an illusion.
+
+    [79] Cornelius Agrippa, of Cologne, born in 1486, sometime
+    Secretary of the Emperor Maximilian, and author of two works
+    famous in their day, _Vanity of the Sciences_, and _Occult
+    Philosophy_.--TRANS.
+
+    [80] A friend of Sir Philip Sydney, who sent for him when
+    dying.--TRANS.
+
+The dark reign of Henry II. and Diana of Poitiers ends the season of
+toleration. Under Diana, they burn heretics and wizards again. On the
+other hand, Catherine of Medici, surrounded as she was by astrologers
+and magicians, would have protected the latter. Their numbers
+increased amain. The wizard Trois-Echelles, who was tried in the reign
+of Charles IX., reckons them at a hundred thousand, declaring all
+France to be one Witch.
+
+Agrippa and others affirm, that all science is contained in magic. In
+white magic undoubtedly. But the fears of fools and their fanatic
+rage, put little difference between them. In spite of Wyer, in spite
+of those true philosophers, Light and Toleration, a strong reaction
+towards darkness set in from a quarter whence it was least expected.
+Our magistrates, who for nearly a century, had shown themselves
+enlightened and fair-dealing, now threw themselves into the Spanish
+Catholicon[81] and the fury of the Leaguists,[82] until they waxed
+more priest-like than the priests themselves. While scouting the
+Inquisition from France, they matched, and well-nigh eclipsed it by
+their own deeds: the Parliament of Toulouse alone sending four hundred
+human bodies at one time to the stake. Think of the horror, the black
+smoke of all that flesh, of the frightful melting and bubbling of the
+fat amidst those piercing shrieks and yells! So accursed, so sickening
+a sight had not been seen, since the Albigenses were broiled and
+roasted.
+
+    [81] Catholicon, or purgative panacea: _i. e._ the
+    Inquisition.--TRANS.
+
+    [82] The wars of the Catholic League against Henry of Navarre
+    began in 1576.--TRANS.
+
+But this is all too little for Bodin, lawyer of Angers, and a violent
+adversary to Wyer. He begins by saying that the wizards in Europe are
+numerous enough to match Xerxes' army of eighteen hundred thousand
+men. Then, like Caligula, he utters a prayer, that these two millions
+might be gathered together, so as he, Bodin, could sentence and burn
+them all at one stroke.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The new rivalry makes matters worse. The gentry of the Law begin to
+say that the priest, being too often connected with the wizard, is no
+longer a safe judge. In fact, for a moment, the lawyers seem to be yet
+more trustworthy. In Spain, the Jesuit pleader, Del Rio; in Lorraine,
+Remy (1596); Boguet (1602) on the Jura; Leloyer (1605) in Anjou; are
+all matchless persecutors, who would have made Torquemada[83] himself
+die of envy.
+
+    [83] The infamous Spanish Inquisitor, who died at the close
+    of the fifteenth century, after sixteen years of untold
+    atrocities against the heretics of Spain.--TRANS.
+
+In Lorraine there seemed to be quite a dreadful plague of wizards and
+visionaries. Driven to despair by the constant passing of troops and
+brigands, the multitude prayed to the Devil only. They were drawn on
+by the wizards. A number of villagers, frightened by a twofold dread
+of wizards on the one hand, and judges on the other, longed to leave
+their homes and flee elsewhither, if Remy, Judge of Nancy, may be
+believed. In the work he dedicated (1596) to the Cardinal of Lorraine,
+he owns to having burnt eight hundred witches, in sixteen years. "So
+well do I deal out judgements," he says, "that last year sixteen slew
+themselves to avoid passing through my hands."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The priests felt humbled. Could they have done better than the laity?
+Nay, even the monkish lords of Saint Claude asked for a layman, honest
+Boguet, to sit in judgment on their own people, who were much given to
+witchcraft. In that sorry Jura, a poor land of firs and scanty
+pasturage, the serf in his despair yielded himself to the Devil. They
+all worshipped the Black Cat.
+
+Boguet's book had immense weight. This Golden Book, by the petty judge
+of Saint Claude, was studied as a handbook by the worshipful members
+of Parliament. In truth, Boguet is a thorough lawyer, is even
+scrupulous in his own way. He finds fault with the treachery shown in
+these prosecutions; will not hear of barristers betraying their
+clients, of judges promising pardon only to ensure the death of the
+accused. He finds fault with the very doubtful tests to which the
+witches were still exposed. "Torture," he says, "is needless: it never
+makes them yield." Moreover, he is humane enough to have them
+strangled before throwing them to the flames, always except the
+werewolves, "whom you must take care to burn alive." He cannot believe
+that Satan would make a compact with children: "Satan is too sharp;
+knows too well that, under fourteen years, any bargain made with a
+minor, is annulled by default of years and due discretion." Then the
+children are saved? Not at all; for he contradicts himself, and holds,
+moreover, that such a leprosy cannot be purged away without burning
+everything, even to the cradles. Had he lived, he would have come to
+that. He made the country a desert: never was there a judge who
+destroyed people with so fine a conscience.
+
+But it is to the Parliament of Bourdeaux that the grand hurrah for lay
+jurisdiction is sent up in Lancre's book on _The Fickleness of
+Demons_. The author, a man of some sense, a counsellor in this same
+Parliament, tells with a triumphant air of his fight with the Devil in
+the Basque country, where, in less than three months, he got rid of I
+know not how many witches, and, better still, of three priests. He
+looks compassionately on the Spanish Inquisition, which at Logro�o,
+not far off, on the borders of Navarre and Castille, dragged on a
+trial for two years, ending in the poorest way by a small
+_auto-da-f�_, and the release of a whole crowd of women.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE WITCHES OF THE BASQUE COUNTRY: 1609.[84]
+
+    [84] The Basques of the Lower Pyrenees, the Aquitani of
+    C�sar, belonged to the old Iberian race which peopled Western
+    Europe before the Celtic era.--TRANS.
+
+
+That strong-handed execution of the priests shows M. Lancre to have
+been a man of independent spirit. In politics he is the same. In his
+book on _The Prince_ (1617), he openly declares "the law to be above
+the King."
+
+Never was the Basque character better drawn than in his book on _The
+Fickleness of Demons_. In France, as in Spain, the Basque people had
+privileges which almost made them a republic. On our side they owed
+the King no service but that of arms: at the first beat of drum they
+were bound to gather two thousand armed men commanded by Basque
+captains. They were not oppressed by their clergy, who seldom
+prosecuted wizards, being wizards themselves. The priests danced, wore
+swords, and took their mistresses to the Witches' Sabbath. These
+mistresses acted as their sextonesses or _b�n�dictes_, to keep the
+churches in order. The parson quarrelled with nobody, offered the
+White Mass to God by day, the Black by night to the Devil, and
+sometimes, according to Lancre, in the same church.
+
+The Basques of Bayonne and St. Jean de Luz, a race of men quaint,
+venturesome, and fabulously bold, left many widows, from their habit
+of sailing out into the roughest seas to harpoon whales. Leaving their
+wives to God or the Devil, they threw themselves in crowds into the
+Canadian settlements of Henry IV. As for the children, these honest
+worthy sailors would have thought about them more, if they had been
+clear as to their parentage. But on their return home they would
+reckon up the months of their absence, and they never found the
+reckoning right.
+
+The women, bold, beautiful, imaginative, spent their day seated on
+tombs in the grave-yards, talking of the Sabbath, whither they
+expected to go in the evening. This was their passion, their craze.
+
+They are born witches, daughters of the sea and of enchantment. They
+sport among the billows, swimming like fish. Their natural master is
+the Prince of the Air, King of Winds and Dreams, the same who inspired
+the Sibyl and breathed to her the future.
+
+The judge who burns them is charmed with them, nevertheless. "When you
+see them pass," says he, "their hair flowing in the breeze about their
+shoulders, they walk so trim, so bravely armed in that fair
+head-dress, that the sun playing through it as through a cloud, causes
+a mighty blaze which shoots forth hot lightning-flashes. Hence the
+fascination of their eyes, as dangerous in love as in witchcraft."
+
+This amiable Bordeaux magistrate, the earliest sample of those worldly
+judges who enlivened the gown in the seventeenth century, plays the
+lute between whiles, and even makes the witches dance before sending
+them to the stake. And he writes well, far more clearly than anyone
+else. But for all that, one discovers in his work a new source of
+obscurity, inherent to those times. The witches being too numerous for
+the judge to burn them all, the most of them have a shrewd idea that
+he will show some indulgence to those who enter deepest into his
+thoughts and passions! What passions? you ask. First, his love of the
+frightfully marvellous, a passion common enough; the delight of
+feeling afraid; and also, if it must be said, the enjoyment of
+unseemly pleasures. Add to these a touch of vanity: the more dreadful
+and enraged those clever women show the Devil to be, the greater the
+pride taken by the judge in subduing so mighty an adversary. He arrays
+himself as it were in his victory, enthrones himself in his
+foolishness, triumphs in his senseless twaddling.
+
+The prettiest thing of this kind is the report of the procedure in the
+Spanish _auto-da-f�_ of Logro�o, as furnished to us by Llorente.
+Lancre, while quoting him jealously and longing to disparage him, owns
+to the surpassing charm of the festival, the splendour of the sight,
+the moving power of the music. On one platform were the few condemned
+to the flames, on another a crowd of reprieved criminals. The
+confession of a repentant heroine who had dared all things, is read
+aloud. Nothing could be wilder. At the Sabbaths they ate children made
+into hash, and by way of second course, the bodies of wizards
+disentombed. Toads dance, and talk and complain lovingly of their
+mistresses, getting them scolded by the Devil. The latter politely
+escorts the witches home, lighting them with the arm of a child who
+died unchristened, &c.
+
+Among our Basques witchcraft put on a less fantastic guise. It seems
+that at this time the Sabbath was only a grand feast to which all, the
+nobles included, went for purposes of amusement. In the foremost line
+would be seen persons in veils and masks, by some supposed to be
+princes. "Once on a time," says Lancre, "none but idiots of the Landes
+appeared there: now people of quality are seen to go." To entertain
+these local grandees, Satan sometimes created a _Bishop of the
+Sabbath_. Such was the title he gave the young lord Lancinena, with
+whom the Devil in person was good enough to open the ball.
+
+So well supported, the witches held their sway, wielding over the land
+an amazing terrorism of the fancy. Numbers regarded themselves as
+victims, and became in fact seriously ill. Many were stricken with
+epilepsy, and barked like dogs. In one small town of Acqs were counted
+as many as forty of these barkers. The Witch had so fearful a hold
+upon them, that one lady being called as witness, began barking with
+uncontrollable fury as the Witch, unawares to herself, drew near.
+
+Those to whom was ascribed so terrible a power lorded it everywhere.
+No one would dare shut his door against them. One magistrate, the
+criminal assessor of Bayonne, allowed the Sabbath to be held in his
+own house. Urtubi, Lord of Saint P�, was forced to hold the festival
+in his castle. But his head was shaken to that degree, that he
+imagined a witch was sucking his blood. Emboldened, however, by his
+fear, he, with another gentleman, repaired to Bordeaux, and persuaded
+the Parliament to obtain from the King the commissioning of two of its
+members, Espagnet and Lancre, to try the wizards in the Basque
+country. This commission, absolute and without appeal, worked with
+unheard-of vigour; in four months, from May to August, 1609, condemned
+sixty or eighty witches, and examined five hundred more, who, though
+equally marked with the sign of the Devil, figured in the proceedings
+as witnesses only.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was no safe matter for two men and a few soldiers to carry on these
+trials amongst a violent, hot-headed people, a multitude of wild and
+daring sailors' wives. Another source of danger was in the priests,
+many of whom were wizards, needing to be tried by the lay
+commissioners, despite the lively opposition of the clergy.
+
+When the judges appeared, many persons saved themselves in the hills.
+Others boldly remained, saying, it was the judges who would be burnt.
+So little fear had the witches themselves, that before the audience
+they would sink into the Sabbatic slumber, and affirm on awaking that,
+even in court, they had enjoyed the blessedness of Satan. Many said,
+they only suffered from not being able to prove to him how much they
+burned to suffer for his sake.
+
+Those who were questioned said they could not speak. Satan rising into
+their throats blocked up their gullets. Lancre, who wrote this
+narrative, though the younger of the commissioners, was a man of the
+world. The witches guessed that, with a man of his sort, there were
+means of saving themselves. The league between them was broken. A
+beggar-girl of seventeen, La Murgui, or Margaret, who had found
+witchcraft gainful, and, while herself almost a child, had brought
+away children as offerings to the Devil, now betook herself, with
+another girl, Lisalda, of the same age, to denouncing all the rest. By
+word of mouth or in writing she revealed all; with the liveliness, the
+noise, the emphatic gestures of a Spaniard, entering truly or falsely
+into a hundred impure details. She frightened, amused, wheedled her
+judges, drawing them after her like fools. To this corrupt, wanton,
+crazy girl, they entrusted the right of searching about the bodies of
+girls and boys, for the spot whereon Satan had set his mark. This spot
+discovered itself by a certain numbness, by the fact that you might
+stick needles into it without causing pain. While a surgeon thus
+tormented the elder ones, she took in hand the young, who, though
+called as witnesses, might themselves be accused, if she pronounced
+them to bear the mark. It was a hateful thing to see this brazen-faced
+girl made sole mistress of the fate of those wretched beings,
+commissioned to prod them all over with needles, and able at will to
+assign those bleeding bodies to death!
+
+She had gotten so mighty a sway over Lancre, as to persuade him that,
+while he was sleeping in Saint P�, in his own house, guarded by his
+servants and his escort, the Devil came by night into his room, to say
+the Black Mass; while the witches getting inside his very curtains,
+would have poisoned him, had he not been well protected by God
+Himself. The Black Mass was offered by the Lady of Lancinena, to whom
+Satan made love in the very bedroom of the judge. We can guess the
+likely aim of this wretched tale: the beggar bore a grudge against the
+lady, who was good-looking, and, but for this slander, might have come
+to bear sway over the honest commissioner.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lancre and his colleague taking fright, went forward; never dared to
+draw back. They had their royal gallows set up on the very spots where
+Satan had held a Sabbath. People were alarmed thereat, deeming them
+strongly backed by the arm of royalty. Impeachments hailed about them.
+The women all came in one long string to accuse each other. Children
+were brought forward to impeach their mothers. Lancre gravely ruled
+that a child of eight was a good, sufficient, reputable witness!
+
+M. d'Espagnet could give but a few moments to this matter, having
+speedily to show himself in the Estates of B�arn. Lancre being pushed
+unwittingly forward by the violence of the younger informers, who
+would have fallen into great danger, if they had failed to get the old
+ones burnt, threw the reins on the neck of the business, and hurried
+it on at full gallop. A due amount of witches were condemned to the
+stake. These, too, on finding themselves lost, ended by impeaching
+others. When the first batch were brought to the stake, a frightful
+scene took place. Executioner, constables, and sergeants, all thought
+their last hour was come. The crowd fell savagely upon the carts,
+seeking to force the wretches to withdraw their accusations. The men
+put daggers to their throats: their furious companions were like to
+finish them with their nails.
+
+Justice, however, got out of the scrape with some credit; and then the
+commissioners went on to the harder work of sentencing eight priests
+whom they had taken up. The girls' confessions had brought these men
+to light. Lancre speaks of their morals like one who knew all about
+them of himself. He rebukes them, not only for their gay proceedings
+on Sabbath nights, but, most of all, for their sextonesses and female
+churchwardens. He even repeats certain tales about the priests having
+sent off the husbands to Newfoundland, and brought back Devils from
+Japan who gave up the wives into their hands.
+
+The clergy were deeply stirred: the Bishop of Bayonne would have made
+resistance. His courage failing him, he appointed his vicar-general to
+act as judge-assistant in his own absence. Luckily the Devil gave the
+accused more help than their Bishop. He opened all the doors, so that
+one morning five of the eight were found missing. The commissioners
+lost no time in burning the three still left to them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This happened about August, 1609. The Spanish inquisitors at Logro�o
+did not crown their proceedings with an _auto-da-f�_ before the 8th
+November, 1610. They had met with far more trouble than our own
+countrymen, owing to the frightful number of persons accused. How burn
+a whole people? They sought advice of the Pope, of the greatest
+doctors in Spain. The word was given to draw back. Only the wilful who
+persisted in denying their guilt, were to be burnt; while they who
+pleaded guilty should be let go. The same method had already been used
+to rescue priests in trials for loose living. According to Llorente,
+it was deemed sufficient, if they owned their crime, and went through
+a slight penance.
+
+The Inquisition, so deadly to heretics, so cruel to Moors and Jews,
+was much less so to wizards. These, being mostly shepherds, had no
+quarrel with the Church. The rejoicings of goatherds were too low, if
+not too brutish, to disturb the enemies of free thought.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lancre wrote his book mainly to show how much the justice of French
+Parliaments and laymen excelled the justice of the priests. It is
+written lightly, merrily, with flowing pen. It seems to express the
+joy felt by one who has come creditably out of a great risk. It is a
+gasconading, an over-boastful joy. He tells with pride how, the
+Sabbath following the first execution of the witches, their children
+went and wailed to Satan, who replied that their mothers had not been
+burnt, but were alive and happy. From the midst of the crowd the
+children thought they heard their mothers' voices saying how
+thoroughly blest they were. Satan was frightened nevertheless. He
+absented himself for four Sabbaths, sending a small commonplace devil
+in his stead. He did not show himself again till the 22nd July. When
+the wizards asked him the reason of his absence, he said, "I have been
+away, pleading your cause against _Little John_," the name by which he
+called Jesus. "I have won the suit, and they who are still in prison
+will not be burnt."
+
+The lie was given to the great liar. And the conquering magistrate
+avers that, while the last witch was burning, they saw a swarm of
+toads come out of her head. The people fell on them with stones, so
+that she was rather stoned than burnt. But for all their attacks, they
+could not put an end to one black toad which escaped from flames,
+sticks, and stones, to hide, like the Devil's imp it was, in some spot
+where it could never be found.[85]
+
+    [85] For a more detailed account of these Basque Witches, the
+    English reader may turn to Wright's _Narratives of Sorcery
+    and Magic_. Bentley, 1851.--TRANS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+SATAN TURNS PRIEST.
+
+
+Whatever semblance of Satanic fanaticism was still preserved by the
+witches, it transpires from the narratives of Lancre and other writers
+of the seventeenth century, that the Sabbath then was mainly an affair
+of money. They raised contributions almost by force, charged something
+for right of entrance, and extracted fines from those who stayed away.
+At Brussels and in Picardy, they had a fixed scale of payment for
+rewarding those who brought new members into the brotherhood.
+
+In the Basque country no mystery was kept up. The gatherings there
+would amount to twelve thousand persons, of all classes, rich or poor,
+priests and gentlemen. Satan, himself a gentleman, wore a hat upon his
+three horns, like a man of quality. Finding his old seat, the druidic
+stone, too hard for him, he treats himself to an easy well-gilt
+arm-chair. Shall we say he is growing old? More nimble now than when
+he was young, he frolics about, cuts capers, and leaps from the bottom
+of a large pitcher. He goes through the service head downwards, his
+feet in the air.
+
+He likes everything to go off quite respectably, and spares no cost
+in his scenic arrangements. Besides the customary flames, red, yellow,
+and blue, which entertain the eye, as they show forth or hide the
+flickering shadows, he charms the ear with strange music, mainly of
+little bells that tickle the nerves with something like the searching
+vibrations of musical-glasses. To crown this splendour Satan bids them
+bring out his silver plate. Even his toads give themselves airs,
+become fashionable, and, like so many lordlings, go about in green
+velvet.
+
+The general effect is that of a large fair, of a great masked ball
+with very transparent disguises. Satan, who understands his epoch,
+opens the ball with the Bishop of the Sabbath; or the King and Queen:
+offices devised in compliment to the great personages, wealthy or
+well-born, who honour the meeting by their presence.
+
+Here may be seen no longer the gloomy feast of rebels, the baleful
+orgie of serfs and boors, sharing by night the sacrament of love, by
+day the sacrament of death. The violent Sabbath-round is no more the
+one only dance of the evening. Thereto are now added the Moorish
+dances, lively or languishing, but always amorous and obscene, in
+which girls dressed up for the purpose, like _La Murgui_ or _La
+Lisalda_, feigned and showed off the most provoking characters. Among
+the Basques these dances formed, we are told, the invincible charm
+which sent the whole world of women, wives, daughters, widows--the
+last in great numbers--headlong into the Sabbath.
+
+Without such amusements and the accompanying banquet, one could hardly
+understand this general rage for these Sabbaths. It is a kind of love
+without love; a feast of barrenness undisguised. Boguet has settled
+that point to a nicety. Differing in one passage, where he dismisses
+the women as afraid of coming to harm, Lancre is generally at one with
+Boguet, besides being more sincere. The cruel and foul researches he
+pursues on the very bodies of witches, show clearly that he deemed
+them barren, and that a barren passive love underlay the Sabbath
+itself.
+
+The feast ought therefore to have been a dismal one, if the men had
+owned the smallest heart.
+
+The silly girls who went to dance and eat were victims in every way.
+But they were resigned to everything save the prospect of bearing
+children. They bore indeed a far heavier load of wretchedness than the
+men. Sprenger tells of the strange cry, which even in his day burst
+forth in the hour of love, "May the Devil have the fruits!" In his
+day, moreover, people could live for two _sous_ a day, while in the
+reign of Henry IV., about 1600, they could barely live for twenty.
+Through all that century the desire, the need for barrenness grew more
+and more.
+
+Under this growing dread of love's allurements the Sabbath would have
+become quite dull and wearisome, had not the conductresses cleverly
+made the most of its comic side, enlivening it with farcical
+interludes. Thus, the opening scene in which Satan, like the Priapus
+of olden times, bestowed his coarse endearments on the Witch, was
+followed by another game, a kind of chilly purification, which the
+sorceress underwent with much grimacing, and a great show of
+unpleasant shuddering. Then came another swinish farce, described by
+Lancre and Boguet, in which some young and pretty wife would take the
+Witch's place as Queen of the Sabbath, and submit her body to the
+vilest handling. A farce not less repulsive was the "Black Sacrament,"
+performed with a black radish, which Satan would cut into little
+pieces and gravely swallow.
+
+The last act of all, according to Lancre, or at least according to the
+two bold hussies who made him their fool, was an astounding event to
+happen in such crowded meetings. Since witchcraft had become
+hereditary in whole families, there was no further need of openly
+divulging the old incestuous ways of producing witches, by the
+intercourse of a mother with her son. Some sort of comedy perhaps was
+made out of the old materials, in the shape of a grotesque Semiramis
+or an imbecile Ninus. But the more serious game, which doubtless
+really took place, attests the existence of great profligacy in the
+upper walks of society: it took the form of a most hateful and
+barbarous hoax.
+
+Some rash husband would be tempted to the spot, so fuddled with a
+baleful draught of datura or belladonna, that, like one entranced, he
+came to lose all power of speech and motion, retaining only his
+sight. His wife, on the other hand, being so bewitched with erotic
+drinks as to lose all sense of what she was doing, would appear in a
+woeful state of nature, letting herself be caressed under the
+indignant eyes of one who could no longer help himself in the least.
+His manifest despair, his bootless efforts to unshackle his tongue,
+and set free his powerless limbs, his dumb rage and wildly rolling
+eyes, inspired beholders with a cruel joy, like that produced by some
+of Moli�re's comedies. The poor woman, stung with a real delight,
+yielded herself up to the most shameful usage, of which on the morrow
+neither herself nor her husband would have the least remembrance. But
+those who had seen or shared in the cruel farce, would they, too, fail
+to remember?
+
+In such heinous outrages an aristocratic element seems traceable. In
+no way do they remind us of the old brotherhood of serfs, of the
+original Sabbath, which, though ungodly, and foul enough, was still a
+free straightforward matter, in which all was done readily and without
+constraint.
+
+Clearly, Satan, depraved as he was from all time, goes on spoiling
+more and more. A polite, a crafty Satan is he now become, sweetly
+insipid, but all the more faithless and unclean. It is a new, a
+strange thing to see at the Sabbaths, his fellowship with priests. Who
+is yon parson coming along with his _B�n�dicte_, his sextoness, he who
+jobs the things of the Church, saying the White Mass of mornings, the
+Black at night? "Satan," says Lancre, "persuades him to make love to
+his daughters in the spirit, to debauch his fair penitents." Innocent
+magistrate! He pretends to be unaware that for a century back the
+Devil had been working away at the Church livings, like one who knew
+his business! He had made himself father-confessor; or, if you would
+rather have it so, the father-confessor had turned Devil.
+
+The worthy M. de Lancre should have remembered the trials that began
+in 1491, and helped perchance to bring the Parliament of Paris into a
+tolerant frame of mind. It gave up burning Satan, for it saw nothing
+of him but a mask.
+
+A good many nuns were conquered by his new device of borrowing the
+form of some favourite confessor. Among them was Jane Pothierre, a
+holy woman of Quesnoy, of the ripe age of forty-five, but still, alas!
+all too impressible. She owns her passion to her ghostly counsellor,
+who loth to listen to her, flies to Falempin, some leagues off. The
+Devil, who never sleeps, saw his advantage, and perceiving her, says
+the annalist, "goaded by the thorns of Venus, he slily took the shape
+of the aforesaid 'Father,' and returning every night to the convent,
+was so successful in befooling her, that she owned to having received
+him 434 times."[86] Great pity was felt for her on her repenting; and
+she was speedily saved from all need of blushing, being put into a
+fine walled-tomb built for her in the Castle of Selles, where a few
+days after she died the death of a good Catholic. Is it not a deeply
+moving tale? But this is nothing to that fine business of Gauffridi,
+which happened at Marseilles while Lancre was drawing up deeds at
+Bayonne.
+
+    [86] Mass�e, _Chronique du Monde_, 1540; and the Chroniclers
+    of Hainault, &c.
+
+The Parliament of Provence had no need to envy the success attained by
+that of Bordeaux. The lay authorities caught at the first occasion of
+a trial for witchcraft to institute a reform in the morals of the
+clergy. They sent forth a stern glance towards the close-shut
+convent-world. A rare opportunity was offered by the strange
+concurrence of many causes, by the fierce jealousies, the revengeful
+longings which severed priest from priest. But for those mad passions
+which ere long began to burst forth at every moment, we should have
+gained no insight into the real lot of that great world of women who
+died in those gloomy dwellings; not one word should we have heard of
+the things that passed behind those parlour gratings, within those
+mighty walls which only the confessor could overleap.
+
+The example of the Basque priest, whom Lancre presents to us as
+worldly, trifling, going with his sword upon him, and his deaconess by
+his side, to dance all night at the Sabbath, was not one to inspire
+fear. It was not such as he whom the Inquisition took such pains to
+screen, or towards whom a body so stern for others, proved itself, for
+once, indulgent. It is easy to see through all Lancre's reticences
+the existence of _something else_. And the States-General of 1614,
+affirming that priests should not be tried by priests, are also
+thinking of _something else_. This very mystery it is which gets torn
+in twain by the Parliament of Provence. The director of nuns gaining
+the mastery over them and disposing of them, body and soul, by means
+of witchcraft,--such is the fact which comes forth from the trial of
+Gauffridi; at a later date from the dreadful occurrences at Loudun and
+Louviers; and also in the scenes described by Llorente, Ricci, and
+several more.
+
+One common method was employed alike for reducing the scandal, for
+misleading the public, for hiding away the inner fact while it was
+busied with the outer aspects of it. On the trial of a priestly
+wizard, all was done to juggle away the priest by bringing out the
+wizard; to impute everything to the art of the magician, and put out
+of sight the natural fascination wielded by the master of a troop of
+women all abandoned to his charge.
+
+But there was no way of hushing up the first affair. It had been
+noised abroad in all Provence, in a land of light, where the sun
+pierces without any disguise. The chief scene of it lay not only in
+Aix and Marseilles, but also in Sainte-Baume, the famous centre of
+pilgrimage for a crowd of curious people, who thronged from all parts
+of France to be present at a deadly duel between two bewitched nuns
+and their demons. The Dominicans, who attacked the affair as
+inquisitors, committed themselves by the noise they made about it
+through their partiality for one of these nuns. For all the care
+Parliament presently took to hurry the conclusion, these monks were
+exceedingly anxious to excuse her and justify themselves. Hence the
+important work of the monk Micha�lis, a mixture of truth and fable;
+wherein he raises Gauffridi, the priest he had sent to the flames,
+into the Prince of Magicians, not only in France, but even in Spain,
+Germany, England, Turkey, nay, in the whole inhabited earth.
+
+Gauffridi seems to have been a talented, agreeable man. Born in the
+mountains of Provence, he had travelled much in the Low Countries and
+the East. He bore the highest character in Marseilles, where he served
+as priest in the Church of Acoules. His bishop made much of him: the
+most devout of the ladies preferred him for their confessor. He had a
+wondrous gift, they say, of endearing himself to all. Nevertheless, he
+might have preserved his fair reputation had not a noble lady of
+Provence, whom he had already debauched, carried her blind, doting
+fondness to the extent of entrusting him, perhaps for her religious
+training, with the care of a charming child of twelve, Madeline de la
+Palud, a girl of fair complexion and gentle nature. Thereon, Gauffridi
+lost his wits, and respected neither the youth nor the holy ignorance,
+the utter unreserve of his pupil.
+
+As she grew older, however, the young highborn girl discovered her
+misfortune, in loving thus beneath her, without hope of marriage. To
+keep his hold on her, Gauffridi vowed he would wed her before the
+Devil, if he might not wed her before God. He soothed her pride by
+declaring that he was the Prince of Magicians, and would make her his
+queen. He put on her finger a silver ring, engraved with magic
+characters. Did he take her to the Sabbath, or only make her believe
+she had been there, by confusing her with strange drinks and magnetic
+witcheries? Certain it is, at least, that torn by two different
+beliefs, full of uneasiness and fear, the girl thenceforth became mad
+at certain times, and fell into fits of epilepsy. She was afraid of
+being carried off alive by the Devil. She durst no longer stay in her
+father's house, and took shelter in the Ursuline Convent at
+Marseilles.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+GAUFFRIDI: 1610.
+
+
+The order of Ursuline nuns seemed to be the calmest, the least
+irrational of them all. They were not wholly idle, but found some
+little employment in the bringing up of young girls. The Catholic
+reaction which, aiming at a higher flight of ecstasy than was possible
+at that time even in Spain, had foolishly built a number of convents,
+Carmelite, Bernardine, and Capuchin, soon found itself at the end of
+its motive-powers. The girls of whom people got rid by shutting them
+up so strictly therein, died off immediately, and their swift decease
+led to frightful statements of the cruelty shown by their families.
+They perished, indeed, not by their excessive penances, but rather of
+heart-sickness and despair. After the first heats of zeal were over,
+the dreadful disease of the cloister, described by Cassieu as dating
+from the fifteenth century, that crushing, sickening sadness which
+came on of an afternoon--that tender listlessness which plunged them
+into a state of unutterable exhaustion, speedily wore them away. A few
+among them would turn as if raging mad, choking, as it were, with the
+exceeding strength of their blood.
+
+A nun who hoped to die decently, without bequeathing too large a share
+of remorse to her kindred, was bound to live on about ten years, the
+mean term of life in the cloister. She needed to be let gently down;
+and men of sense and experience felt that her days could only be
+prolonged by giving her something to do, by leaving her not quite
+alone. St. Francis of Sales[87] founded the Visitandine order, whose
+duty it was to visit the sick in pairs. C�sar of Bus and Romillion,
+who had established the Teaching Priests in connection with the
+Oratorians[88], afterwards ordained what might be called the Teaching
+Sisters, the Ursulines, who taught under the direction of the said
+priests. The whole thing was under the supervision of the bishops, and
+had very little of the monastic about it: the nuns were not shut up
+again in cloisters. The Visitandines went out; the Ursulines received,
+at any rate, their pupils' kinsfolk. Both of them had connection with
+the world under guardians of good repute. The result was a certain
+mediocrity. Though the Oratorians and the Doctrinaries numbered among
+them persons of high merit, the general character of the order was
+uniformly moderate, commonplace; it took care never to soar too high.
+Romillion, founder of the Ursulines, was an oldish man, a convert
+from Protestantism, who had roamed everywhere, and come back again to
+his starting point. He deemed his young Provencials wise enough
+already, and counted on keeping his little flock on the slender
+pasturage of an Oratorian faith, at once monotonous and rational. And
+being such, it came in time to be utterly wearisome. One fine morning
+all had disappeared.
+
+    [87] St. Francis of Sales, famous for his successful missions
+    among the Protestants, and Bishop of Geneva in his later
+    years, died in 1622.--TRANS.
+
+    [88] The Brethren of the Oratory, founded at Rome in
+    1564.--TRANS.
+
+Gauffridi, the mountaineer of Provence, the travelled mystic, the man
+of strong feelings and restless mind, had quite another effect upon
+them, when he came thither as Madeline's ghostly guide. They felt a
+certain power, and by those who had already passed out of their wild,
+amorous youth, were doubtless assured that it was nothing less than a
+power begotten of the Devil. All were seized with fear, and more than
+one with love also. Their imaginations soared high; their heads began
+to turn. Already six or seven may be seen weeping, shrieking, yelling,
+fancying themselves caught by the Devil. Had the Ursulines lived in
+cloisters, within high walls, Gauffridi, being their only director,
+might one way or another have made them all agree. As in the cloisters
+of Quesnoy, in 1491, so here also it might have happened that the
+Devil, who gladly takes the form of one beloved, had under that of
+Gauffridi made himself lover-general to the nuns. Or rather, as in
+those Spanish cloisters named by Llorente, he would have persuaded
+them that the priestly office hallowed those to whom the priest made
+love, that to sin with him, was only to be sanctified. A notion,
+indeed, ripe through France, and even in Paris, where the mistresses
+of priests were called "the hallowed ones."[89]
+
+    [89] Lestoile, edit. Michaud, p. 561.
+
+Did Gauffridi, thus master of all, keep to Madeline only? Did not the
+lover change into the libertine? We know not. The sentence points to a
+nun who never showed herself during the trial, but reappeared at the
+end, as having given herself up to the Devil and to him.
+
+The Ursuline convent was open to all visitors. The nuns were under the
+charge of their Doctrinaries, men of fair character, and jealous
+withal. The founder himself was there, indignant, desperate. How
+woeful a mishap for the rising order, just as it was thriving amain
+and spreading all over France! After all its pretensions to wisdom,
+calmness, good sense, thus suddenly to go mad! Romillion would have
+hushed up the matter if he could. He caused one of his priests to
+exorcise the maidens. But the demons laughed the exorciser to scorn.
+He who dwelt in the fair damsel, even the noble demon Beelzebub,
+Spirit of Pride, never deigned to unclose his teeth.
+
+Among the possessed was one sister from twenty to twenty-five years
+old, who had been specially adopted by Romillion; a girl of good
+culture, bred up in controversy; a Protestant by birth, but left an
+orphan, to fall into the hands of the Father, a convert like herself
+from Protestantism. Her name, Louisa Capeau, sounds plebeian. She
+showed herself but too clearly a girl of exceeding wit, and of a
+raging passion. Her strength, moreover, was fearful to see. For three
+months, in addition to the hellish storm within, she carried on a
+desperate struggle, which would have killed the strongest man in a
+week.
+
+She said she had three devils: Verrine, a good Catholic devil, a
+volatile spirit of the air; Leviathan, a wicked devil, an arguer and a
+Protestant; lastly, another, acknowledged by her to be the spirit of
+uncleanness. One other she forgot to name, the demon of jealousy.
+
+She bore a savage hate to the little fair-faced damsel, the favoured
+rival, the proud young woman of rank. This latter, in one of her fits,
+had said that she went to the Sabbath, where she was made queen, and
+received homage, and gave herself up, but only to the prince--"What
+prince?" To Louis Gauffridi, prince of magicians.
+
+Pierced by this revelation as by a dagger, Louisa was too wild to
+doubt its truth. Mad herself, she believed the mad woman's story in
+order to ruin her. Her own devil was backed by all the jealous demons.
+The women all exclaimed that Gauffridi was the very king of wizards.
+The report spread everywhere, that a great prize had been taken, a
+priest-king of magicians, even the prince of universal magic. Such was
+the dreadful diadem of steel and flame which these feminine demons
+drove into his brow.
+
+Everyone lost his head, even to old Romillion himself. Whether from
+hatred of Gauffridi, or fear of the Inquisition, he took the matter
+out of the bishop's hands, and brought his two bewitched ones, Louisa
+and Madeline, to the Convent of Sainte-Baume, whose prior was the
+Dominican Micha�lis, papal inquisitor in the Pope's domain of Avignon,
+and, as he himself pretended, over all Provence. The great point was
+to get them exorcised. But as the two women were obliged to accuse
+Gauffridi, the business ended in making him fall into the hands of the
+Inquisition.
+
+Micha�lis had to preach on Advent Sunday at Aix, before the
+Parliament. He felt how much so striking a drama would exalt him. He
+grasped at it with all the eagerness of a barrister in a Criminal
+Court, when a very dramatic murder, or a curious case of adultery
+comes before him.
+
+The right thing in matters of this sort was, to spin out the play
+through Advent, Christmas, Lent, and burn no one before the Holy Week,
+the vigil, as it were, of the great day of Easter. Micha�lis kept
+himself for the last act, entrusting the bulk of the business to a
+Flemish Dominican in his service, Doctor Dompt, from Louvain, who had
+already exorcised, was well-skilled in fooleries of that nature.
+
+The best thing the Fleming could do, was to do nothing. In Louisa, he
+found a terrible helpmate, with thrice as much zeal in her as the
+Inquisition itself, unquenchable in her rage, of a burning eloquence,
+whimsical, and sometimes very odd, but always raising a shudder; a
+very torch of Hell.
+
+The matter was reduced to a public duel between the two devils, Louisa
+and Madeline.
+
+Some simple folk who came thither on a pilgrimage to Sainte-Baume, a
+worthy goldsmith, for instance, and a draper, both from Troyes, in
+Champagne, were charmed to see Louisa's devil deal such cruel blows at
+the other demons, and give so sound a thrashing to the magicians. They
+wept for joy, and went away thanking God.
+
+It is a terrible sight, however, even in the dull wording of the
+Fleming's official statement, to look upon this unequal strife; to
+watch the elder woman, the strong and sturdy Provencial, come of a
+race hard as the flints of its native Crau, as day after day she
+stones, knocks down, and crushes her young and almost childish victim,
+who, wasted with love and shame, has already been fearfully punished
+by her own distemper, her attacks of epilepsy.
+
+The Fleming's volume, which, with the additions made by Micha�lis,
+reaches to four hundred pages in all, is one condensed epitome of the
+invectives, threats, and insults spewed forth by this young woman in
+five months; interspersed with sermons also, for she used to preach on
+every subject, on the sacraments, on the next coming of Antichrist, on
+the frailty of women, and so forth. Thence, on the mention of her
+devils, she fell into the old rage, and renewed twice a-day, the
+execution of the poor little girl; never taking breath, never for one
+minute staying the frightful torrent, until at least the other in her
+wild distraction, "with one foot in hell"--to use her own
+words--should have fallen into a convulsive fit, and begun beating the
+flags with her knees, her body, her swooning head.
+
+It must be acknowledged that Louisa herself is a trifle mad: no amount
+of mere knavishness would have enabled her to maintain so long a
+wager. But her jealousy points with frightful clearness to every
+opening by which she may prick or rend the sufferer's heart.
+
+Everything gets turned upside down. This Louisa, possessed of the
+Devil, takes the sacrament whenever she pleases. She scolds people of
+the highest authority. The venerable Catherine of France, the oldest
+of the Ursulines, came to see the wonder, asked her questions, and at
+the very outset caught her telling a flagrant and stupid falsehood.
+The impudent woman got out of the mess by saying in the name of her
+evil spirit, "The Devil is the Father of Lies."
+
+A sensible Minorite who was present, took up the word and said, "Now,
+thou liest." Turning to the exorcisers, he added, "Cannot ye make her
+hold her tongue?" Then he quoted to them the story of one Martha, a
+sham demoniac of Paris. By way of answer, she was made to take the
+communion before him. The Devil communicate, the Devil receive the
+body of God! The poor man was bewildered; humbled himself before the
+Inquisition. They were too many for him, so he said not another word.
+
+One of Louisa's tricks was to frighten the bystanders, by saying she
+could see wizards among them; which made every one tremble for
+himself.
+
+Triumphant over Sainte-Baume, she hits out even at Marseilles. Her
+Flemish exorciser, being reduced to the strange part of secretary and
+bosom-counsellor to the Devil, writes, under her dictation, five
+letters: first, to the Capuchins of Marseilles, that they may call
+upon Gauffridi to recant; second, to the same Capuchins, that they may
+arrest Gauffridi, bind him fast with a stole, and keep him prisoner in
+a house of her describing; thirdly, several letters to the moderate
+party, to Catherine of France, to the Doctrinal Priests, who had
+declared against her; and then this lewd, outrageous termagant ends
+with insulting her own prioress: "When I left, you bade me be humble
+and obedient. Now take back your own advice."
+
+Her devil Verrine, spirit of air and wind, whispered to her some
+trivial nonsense, words of senseless pride which harmed friends and
+foes, and the Inquisition itself. One day she took to laughing at
+Micha�lis, who was shivering at Aix, preaching in a desert while all
+the world was gone to hear strange things at Sainte-Baume. "Micha�lis,
+you preach away, indeed, but you get no further forward; while Louisa
+has reached, has caught hold of the quintessence of all perfection."
+
+This savage joy was mainly caused by her having quite conquered
+Madeline at last. One word had done more for her than a hundred
+sermons: "Thou shalt be burnt." Thenceforth in her distraction the
+young girl said whatever the other pleased, and upheld her statements
+in the meanest way. Humbling herself before them all, she besought
+forgiveness of her mother, of her superior Romillion, of the
+bystanders, of Louisa. According to the latter, the frightened girl
+took her aside, and begged her to be merciful, not to chasten her too
+much.
+
+The other woman, tender as a rock and merciful as a hidden reef, felt
+that Madeline was now hers, to do whatever she might choose. She
+caught her, folded her round, and bedazed her out of what little
+spirit she had left. It was a second enchantment; but all unlike that
+by Gauffridi, a _possession_ by means of terror. The poor downtrodden
+wretch, moving under rod and scourge, was pushed onward in a path of
+exquisite suffering which led her to accuse and murder the man she
+loved still.
+
+Had Madeline stood out, Gauffridi would have escaped, for every one
+was against Louisa. Micha�lis himself at Aix, eclipsed by her as a
+preacher, treated by her with so much coolness, would have stopped the
+whole business rather than leave the honour of it in her hands.
+
+Marseilles supported Gauffridi, being fearful of seeing the
+Inquisition of Avignon pushed into her neighbourhood, and one of her
+own children carried off from her threshold. The Bishop and Chapter
+were specially eager to defend their priest, maintaining that the
+whole affair sprang from nothing but a rivalry between confessors,
+nothing but the hatred commonly shown by monks towards secular
+priests.
+
+The Doctrinaries would have quashed the matter. They were sore
+troubled by the noise it made. Some of them in their annoyance were
+ready to give up everything and forsake their house.
+
+The ladies were very wroth, especially Madame Libertat, the lady of
+the Royalist leader who had given Marseilles up to the King.
+
+The Capuchins whom Louisa had so haughtily commanded to seize on
+Gauffridi, were, like all other of the Franciscan orders, enemies of
+the Dominicans. They were jealous of the prominence gained for these
+latter by their demoniac friend. Their wandering life, moreover, by
+throwing them into continual contact with the women, brought them a
+good deal of moral business. They had no wish to see too close a
+scrutiny made into the lives of clergymen; and so they also took the
+side of Gauffridi. Demoniacs were not so scarce, but that one was
+easily found and brought forward at the first summons. Her devil,
+obedient to the rope-girdle of St. Francis, gainsaid everything said
+by the Dominicans' devil: it averred--and the words were straightway
+written down--that "Gauffridi was no magician at all, and could not
+therefore be arrested."
+
+They were not prepared for this at Sainte-Baume. Louisa seemed
+confounded. She could only manage to say that apparently the Capuchins
+had not made their devil swear to tell the truth: a sorry reply,
+backed up, however, by the trembling Madeline, who, like a beaten
+hound that fears yet another beating, was ready for anything, ready
+even to bite and tear. Through her it was that Louisa at such a crisis
+inflicted an awful bite.
+
+She herself merely said that the Bishop was offending God unawares.
+She clamoured against "the wizards of Marseilles" without naming any
+one. But the cruel, the deadly word was spoken at her command by
+Madeline. A woman who had lost her child two years before, was pointed
+out by her as having throttled it. Afraid of being tortured, she fled
+or hid herself. Her husband, her father, went weeping to Sainte-Baume,
+hoping of course to soften the inquisitors. But Madeline durst not
+unsay her words; so she renewed the charge.
+
+No one now could feel safe. As soon as the Devil came to be accounted
+God's avenger, from the moment that people under his dictation began
+writing the names of those who should pass through the fire, every one
+had before him, day and night, the hideous nightmare of the stake.
+
+To withstand these bold attempts of the Papal Inquisition, Marseilles
+ought to have been backed up by the Parliament of Aix. Unluckily she
+knew herself to be little liked at Aix. That small official town of
+magistrates and nobles was always jealous of the wealth and splendour
+of Marseilles, the Queen of the South. On the other hand, the great
+opponent of Marseilles, the Papal Inquisitor, forestalled Gauffridi's
+appeal to the Parliament by carrying his own suit thither first. This
+was a body of utter fanatics, headed by some heavy nobles, whose
+wealth had been greatly increased in a former century by the massacre
+of the Vaudois. As lay judges, too, they were charmed to see a Papal
+Inquisitor set the precedent of acknowledging that, in a matter
+touching a priest, in a case of witchcraft, the Inquisition could not
+go beyond the preliminary inquiry. It was just as though the
+inquisitors had formally laid aside their old pretensions. The people
+of Aix, like those of Bordeaux before them, were also bitten by the
+flattering thought, that these lay-folk had been set up by the Church
+herself as censors and reformers of the priestly morals.
+
+In a business where all would needs be strange and miraculous, not
+least among those marvels was it to see so raging a demon grow all at
+once so fair-spoken towards the Parliament, so politic and
+fine-mannered. Louisa charmed the Royalists by her praises of the late
+King. Henry IV.--who would have thought it?--was canonized by the
+Devil. One morning, without any invitation, he broke forth into
+praises of "that pious and saintly King who had just gone up to
+heaven."
+
+Such an agreement between two old enemies, the Parliament and the
+Inquisition, which latter was thenceforth sure of the secular arm, its
+soldiers, and executioner; this and the sending of a commission to
+Sainte-Baume to examine the possessed, take down their statements,
+hear their charges, and impannel a jury, made up a frightful business
+indeed. Louisa openly pointed out the Capuchins, Gauffridi's
+champions, and proclaimed "their coming punishment _temporally_" in
+their bodies, and in their flesh.
+
+The poor Fathers were sorely bruised. Their devil would not whisper
+one word. They went to find the Bishop, and told him that indeed they
+might not refuse to bring Gauffridi forward at Sainte-Baume, in
+obedience to the secular power; but afterwards the Bishop and Chapter
+could claim him back, and replace him under the shelter of episcopal
+justice.
+
+Doubtless they had also reckoned on the agitation that would be shown
+by the two young women at the sight of one they loved; on the extent
+to which even the terrible Louisa might be shaken by the reproaches of
+her own heart.
+
+That heart indeed woke up at the guilty one's approach: for one moment
+the furious woman seemed to grow tender. I know nothing more fiery
+than her prayer for God to save the man she has driven to death:
+"Great God, I offer thee all the sacrifices that have been offered
+since the world began, that will be offered until it ends. All, all,
+for Lewis. I offer thee all the tears of every saint, all the
+transports of every angel. All, all, for Lewis. Oh, that there were
+yet more souls to reckon up, that so the oblation might be all the
+greater! It should be all for Lewis. O God, the Father of Heaven, have
+pity on Lewis! O God the Son, Redeemer of the world, have pity on
+Lewis!" &c.
+
+Bootless pity! baneful as well as bootless! Her real desire was that
+the accused _should not harden his heart_, should plead guilty. In
+that case by our laws he would most assuredly be burnt.
+
+She herself, in short, was worn out, unable to do anything more. The
+inquisitor Micha�lis was so humbled by a victory he could not have
+gained without her, so wroth with the Flemish exorciser who had become
+her obedient follower, and let her see into all the hidden springs of
+the tragedy, that he came simply to crush Louisa, and save Madeline by
+substituting the one for the other, if he could, in this popular
+drama. This move of his implies some skill, and a knowing eye for
+scenery. The winter and the Advent season had been wholly taken up
+with the acting of that awful sibyl, that raging bacchante. In the
+milder days of a Provencial spring, in the season of Lent, he would
+bring upon the scene a more moving personage, a demon all womanly,
+dwelling in a sick child, in a fair-haired frightened girl. The nobles
+and the Parliament of Provence would feel an interest in a little lady
+who belonged to an eminent house.
+
+Far from listening to his Flemish agent, Louisa's follower, Micha�lis
+shut the door upon him when he sought to enter the select council of
+Parliament-men. A Capuchin who also came, on the first words spoken by
+Louisa, cried out, "Silence, accursed devil!"
+
+Meanwhile Gauffridi had arrived at Sainte-Baume, where he cut a sorry
+figure. A man of sense, but weak and blameworthy, he foreboded but too
+truly how that kind of popular tragedy would end; and in coming to a
+strait so dreadful, he saw himself forsaken and betrayed by the child
+he loved. He now entirely forsook himself. When he was confronted with
+Louisa, she seemed to him like a judge, like one of those cruel and
+subtle schoolmen who judged the causes of the Church. To all her
+questions concerning doctrine, he only answered _yes_, assenting even
+to points most open to dispute; as, for instance, to the assumption
+"that the Devil in a court of justice might be believed on his word
+and his oath."
+
+This lasted only a week, from the 1st to the 8th January. The clergy
+of Marseilles demanded Gauffridi back. His friends, the Capuchins,
+declared that they had found no signs of magic in his room. Four
+canons of Marseilles came with authority to take him, and carried him
+away home.
+
+If Gauffridi had fallen very low, his adversaries had not risen much.
+Even the two inquisitors, Micha�lis and the Fleming, were in shameful
+variance with each other. The partiality of the former for Madeline,
+of the latter for Louisa, went beyond mere words, leading them into
+opposite lines of action. That chaos of accusations, sermons,
+revelations, which the Devil had dictated by the mouth of Louisa, the
+Fleming who wrote it down maintained to be the very word of God, and
+expressed his fear that somebody might tamper with the same. He owned
+to a great mistrust of his chief, Micha�lis, who, he was sore afraid,
+would so amend the papers in behalf of Madeline, as to ensure the ruin
+of Louisa. To guard them to the best of his power, he shut himself up
+in his room and underwent a regular siege. Micha�lis, with the
+Parliament-men on his side, could only get at the manuscript by using
+the King's name and breaking the door open.
+
+Louisa, afraid of nothing, sought to array the Pope against the King.
+The Fleming carried an appeal to the legate at Avignon, against his
+chief, Micha�lis. But the Papal Court had a prudent fear of causing
+scandal by letting one inquisitor accuse another. Lacking its support,
+the Fleming had no resource but to submit. To keep him quiet Micha�lis
+gave him back his papers.
+
+Those of Micha�lis, forming a second report, dull and nowise
+comparable with the former, are full of nought but Madeline. They
+played music to try and soothe her: care was taken to note down when
+she ate, and when she did not eat. Too much time indeed was taken up
+about her, often in a way but little edifying. Strange questions are
+put to her touching the Magician, and what parts of his body might
+bear the mark of the Devil. She herself was examined. This would have
+to be done at Aix by surgeons and doctors; but meanwhile, in the
+height of his zeal, Micha�lis examined her at Sainte-Baume, and put
+down the issue of his researches. No matron was called to see her. The
+judges, lay and monkish, agreeing in this one matter, and having no
+fear of each other's overlooking, seem to have quietly passed over
+this contempt of outward forms.
+
+In Louisa, however, they found a judge. The bold woman branded the
+indecency as with hot iron. "They who were swallowed up by the Flood
+never behaved so ill!... Even of thee, O Sodom, the like was never
+said!"
+
+She also averred that Madeline was given over to uncleanness. This was
+the saddest thing of all. In her blind joy at being alive, at escaping
+the flames, or else from some cloudy notion that it was her turn now
+to act upon her judges, the poor simpleton would sing and dance at
+times with a shameful freedom, in a coarse, indecent way. The old
+Doctrinal father, Romillion, blushed for his Ursuline. Shocked to
+remark the admiration of the men for her long hair, he said that such
+a vanity must be taken from her, be cut away.
+
+In her better moments she was gentle and obedient.
+
+They would have liked to make her a second Louisa; but her devils were
+vain and amorous; not, like the other's, eloquent and raging. When
+they wanted her to preach, she could only utter sorry things.
+Micha�lis was fain to play out the piece by himself. As chief
+inquisitor, and bound greatly to outdo his Flemish underling, he
+avowed that he had already drawn out of this small body a host of six
+thousand, six hundred, and sixty devils: only a hundred still
+remained. By way of convincing the public, he made her throw up the
+charm or spell which by his account she had swallowed, and he drew it
+from her mouth in some slimy matter. Who could hold out any longer?
+Assurance itself stood stupefied and convinced.
+
+Madeline was in a fair way to escape: the only hindrance was herself.
+Every moment she would be saying something rash, something to arouse
+the misgivings of her judges, and urge them beyond all patience. She
+declared that everything to her recalled Gauffridi, that everywhere
+she saw him present. Nor would she hide from them her dreams of love.
+"To-night," she said, "I was at the Sabbath. To my statue all covered
+with gilding the magicians offered their homage. Each of them, in
+honour thereof, made oblation of some blood drawn from his hands with
+a lancet. _He_ was also there, on his knees, a rope round his neck,
+beseeching me to go back and betray him not. I held out. Then said he,
+'Is there anyone here who would die for her?' 'I,' said a young man,
+and he was sacrificed by the magician."
+
+At another time she saw him, and he asked her only for one of her fine
+fair locks. "And when I refused, he said, 'Only the half of one
+hair.'"
+
+She swore, however, that she never yielded. But one day, the door
+happening to be open, behold our convert running off at the top of her
+speed to rejoin Gauffridi!
+
+They took her again, at least her body. But her soul? Micha�lis knew
+not how to catch that again. Luckily he caught sight of her magic
+ring, which was taken off, cut up, destroyed, and thrown into the
+fire. Fancying, moreover, that this perverseness on the part of one so
+gentle was due to unseen wizards who found their way into her room, he
+set there a very substantial man at arms, with a sword to slash about
+him everywhere, and cut the invisible imps into pieces.
+
+But the best physic for the conversion of Madeline was the death of
+Gauffridi. On the 5th February, the inquisitor went to Aix for his
+Lent preachings, saw the judges, and stirred them up. The Parliament,
+swiftly yielding to such a pressure, sent off to Marseilles an order
+to seize the rash man, who, finding himself so well backed by Bishop,
+Chapter, Capuchins, and all the world, had fancied they would never
+dare so far.
+
+Madeline from one quarter, Gauffridi from another, arrived at Aix. She
+was so disturbed that they were forced to bind her. Her disorder was
+frightful, and all were in great perplexity what to do. They bethought
+them at least of one bold way of dealing with this sick child; one of
+those fearful tricks that throw a woman into fits, and sometimes kill
+her outright. A vicar-general of the archbishopric said that the
+palace contained a dark narrow charnel-house, such as you may see in
+the Escurial, and called in Spain a "rotting vat."
+
+There, in olden days, old bones of unknown dead were left to waste
+away. Into this tomb-like cave the trembling girl was led. They
+exorcised her by putting those chilly bones to her face. She did not
+die of fright, but thenceforth gave herself up to their will and
+pleasure; and so they got what they wanted, the death of the
+conscience, the destruction of all that remained to her of moral
+insight and free will.
+
+She became their pliant tool, ready to obey their least desire, to
+flatter them, to try and guess beforehand what would give them most
+pleasure. Huguenots were brought before her: she called them names.
+Confronted with Gauffridi, she told forth by heart her grievances
+against him, better than the King's own officers could have done. This
+did not prevent her from squalling violently, when she was brought to
+the church to excite the people against Gauffridi, by making her devil
+blaspheme in the magician's name. Beelzebub speaking through her said,
+"In the name of Gauffridi I abjure God;" and again, at the lifting up
+of the Host, "Let the blood of the just be upon me, in the name of
+Gauffridi!"
+
+An awful fellowship indeed! This twofold devil condemns one out of the
+other's mouth; whatever Madeline says, is ascribed to Gauffridi. And
+the scared crowd were impatient to behold the burning of the dumb
+blasphemer, whose ungodliness so loudly declared itself by the voice
+of the girl.
+
+The exorcisers then put to her this cruel question, to which they
+themselves could have given the best answer:--"Why, Beelzebub, do you
+speak so ill of your great friend?" Her answer was frightful: "If
+there be traitors among men, why not among demons also? When I am with
+Gauffridi, I am his to do all his will. But when you constrain me, I
+betray him and turn him to scorn."
+
+However, she could not keep up this hateful mockery. Though the demon
+of fear and fawning seemed to have gotten fast hold of her, there was
+room still for despair. She could no longer take the slightest food;
+and they who for five months had been killing her with exorcisms and
+pretending to relieve her of six or seven thousand devils, were fain
+to admit that she longed only to die, and greedily sought after any
+means of self-destruction. Courage alone was wanting to her. Once she
+pricked herself with a lancet, but lacked the spirit to persevere.
+Once she caught up a knife, and when that was taken from her, tried to
+strangle herself. She dug needles into her body, and then made one
+last foolish effort to drive a long pin through her ear into her head.
+
+What became of Gauffridi? The inquisitor, who dwells so long on the
+two women, says almost nothing about him. He walks as it were over
+the fire. The little he does say is very strange. He relates that
+having bound Gauffridi's eyes, they pricked him with needles all over
+the body, to find out the callous places where the Devil had made his
+mark. On the removal of the bandage, he learned, to his horror and
+amazement, that the needle had thrice been stuck into him without his
+feeling it; so he was marked in three places with the sign of Hell.
+And the inquisitor added, "If we were in Avignon, this man should be
+burnt to-morrow."
+
+He felt himself a lost man; and defended himself no more. His only
+thought now was to see if he could save his life through any of the
+Dominicans' foes. He wished, he said, to confess himself to the
+Oratorians. But this new order, which might have been called the right
+mean of Catholicism, was too cold and wary to take up a matter already
+so hopeless and so far advanced.
+
+Thereon he went back again to the Begging Friars, confessing himself
+to the Capuchins, and acknowledging all and more than all the truth,
+that he might purchase life with dishonour. In Spain he would
+assuredly have been enlarged, barring a term of penance in some
+convent. But our Parliaments were sterner: they felt bound to prove
+the greater purity of the lay jurisdiction. The Capuchins, themselves
+a little shaky in the matter of morals, were not the people to draw
+the lightning down on their own body. They surrounded Gauffridi,
+sheltered him, gave him comfort day and night; but only in order that
+he might own himself a magician, and so, because magic formed the main
+head of his indictment, the seduction wrought by a confessor to the
+great discredit of the clergy might be left entirely in the
+background.
+
+So his friends the Capuchins, by dint of tender caresses and urgent
+counsel, drew from him the fatal confession which, by their showing,
+was to save his soul, but which was very certain to hand his body over
+to the stake.
+
+The man thus lost and done for, they made an end with the girls whom
+it was not their part to burn. A farcical scene took place. In a large
+gathering of the clergy and the Parliament, Madeline was made to
+appear, and, in words addressed to herself, her devil Beelzebub was
+summoned to quit the place or else offer some opposition. Not caring
+to do the latter, he went off in disgrace.
+
+Then Louisa, with her demon Verrine, was made to appear. But before
+they drove away a spirit so friendly to the Church, the monks regaled
+the Parliamentaries, who were new to such things, with the clever
+management of this devil, making him perform a curious pantomime. "How
+do the Seraphim, the Cherubim, the Thrones, behave before God?" "A
+hard matter this:" says Louisa, "they have no bodies." But on their
+repeating the command, she made an effort to obey, imitating the
+flight of the one class, the fiery longing of the others; and ending
+with the adoration, when she bowed herself before the judges, falling
+prostrate with her head downwards. Then was the far-famed Louisa, so
+proud and so untamable, seen to abase herself, kissing the pavement,
+and with outstretched arms laying all her length thereon.
+
+It was a strange, frivolous, unseemly exhibition, by which she was
+made to atone for her terrible success among the people. Once more she
+won the assembly by dealing a cruel dagger-stroke at Gauffridi, who
+stood there strongly bound. "Where," said they, "is Beelzebub now, the
+devil who went out of Madeline?" "I see him plainly at Gauffridi's
+ear."
+
+Have you had shame and horror enough? We should like further to know
+what the poor wretch said, when put to the torture. Both the ordinary
+and the extraordinary forms were used upon him. His revelations must
+undoubtedly have thrown light on the curious history of the nunneries.
+Those tales the Parliament stored up with greediness, as weapons that
+might prove serviceable to itself; but it retained them "under the
+seal of the Court."
+
+The inquisitor Micha�lis, who was fiercely assailed in public for an
+excess of animosity so closely resembling jealousy, was summoned by
+his order to a meeting at Paris, and never saw the execution of
+Gauffridi, who was burnt alive four days afterwards, 30th April, 1611,
+at Aix.
+
+The name of the Dominicans, damaged by this trial, was not much
+exalted by another case of _possession_ got up at Beauvais in such a
+way as to ensure them all the honours of a war, the account of which
+they got printed in Paris. Louisa's devil having been reproached for
+not speaking Latin, the new demoniac, Denise Lacaille, mingled a few
+words of it in her gibberish. They made a plenty of noise about her,
+often displayed her in the midst of a procession, and even carried her
+from Beauvais to Our Lady of Liesse. But the matter kept quite cool.
+This Picard pilgrimage lacked the horror, the dramatic force of the
+affair at Sainte-Baume. This Lacaille, for all her Latin, had neither
+the burning eloquence, nor the mettle, nor the fierce rage, that
+marked the woman of Provence. The only end of all her proceedings was
+to amuse the Huguenots.
+
+What became of the two rivals, Madeline and Louisa? The former, or at
+least her shadow, was kept on Papal ground, for fear of her being led
+to speak about so mournful a business. She was never shown in public,
+save in the character of a penitent. She was taken out among the poor
+women to cut wood, which was afterwards sold for alms; the parents,
+whom she had brought to shame, having forsworn and forsaken her.
+
+Louisa, for her part, had said during the trial: "I shall make no
+boast about it. The trial over, I shall soon be dead." But this was
+not to be. Instead of dying, she went on killing others. The
+murdering devil within her waxed stormier than ever. She set about
+revealing to the inquisitors the names, both Christian and surnames,
+of all whom she fancied to have any dealings with magic; among others
+a poor girl named Honoria, "blind of both eyes," who was burnt alive.
+
+"God grant," says Father Micha�lis, in conclusion, "that all this may
+redound to His own glory and to that of His Church!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE DEMONIACS OF LOUDUN--URBAN GRANDIER: 1632-1634.
+
+
+In the _State Memoirs_, written by the famous Father Joseph, and known
+to us by extracts only--the work itself having, no doubt, been wisely
+suppressed as too instructive--the good Father explained how, in 1633,
+he had the luck to discover a heresy, a huge heresy, in which ever so
+many confessors and directors were concerned. That excellent army of
+Church-constables, those dogs of the Holy Troop, the Capuchins, had,
+not only in the wildernesses, but even in the populous parts of
+France--at Chartres, in Picardy, everywhere--got scent of some
+dreadful game; the _Alumbrados_ namely, or Illuminate, of Spain, who
+being sorely persecuted there, had fled for shelter into France,
+where, in the world of women, especially among the convents, they
+dropped the gentle poison which was afterwards called by the name of
+Molinos.[90]
+
+    [90] Molinos, born at Saragossa in 1627, died a prisoner to
+    the Inquisition in 1696. His followers were called
+    Quietists.--TRANS.
+
+The wonder was, that the matter had not been sooner known. Having
+spread so far, it could not have been wholly hidden. The Capuchins
+swore that in Picardy alone, where the girls are weak and
+warmer-blooded than in the South, this amorously mystic folly owned
+some sixty thousand professors. Did all the clergy share in it--all
+the confessors and directors? We must remember, that attached to the
+official directors were a good many laymen, who glowed with the same
+zeal for the souls of women. One of them, who afterwards made some
+noise by his talent and boldness, is the author of _Spiritual
+Delights_, Desmarets of Saint Sorlin.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Without remembering the new state of things, we should fail to
+understand the all-powerful attitude of the director towards the nuns,
+of whom he was now a hundred-fold more the master than he had been in
+days of yore.
+
+The reforming movement of the Council of Trent, for the better
+enclosing of monasteries, was not much followed up in the reign of
+Henry IV., when the nuns received company, gave balls, danced, and so
+forth. In the reign, however, of Louis XIII., it began afresh with
+greater earnestness. The Cardinal Rochefoucauld, or rather the Jesuits
+who drew him on, insisted on a great deal of outward decency. Shall we
+say, then, that all entrance into the convents was forbidden? One man
+only went in every day, not only into the house, but also, if he
+chose, into each of the cells; a fact made evident from several known
+cases, especially that of David at Louviers. By this reform, this
+closing system, the door was shut upon the world at large, on all
+inconvenient rivals, while the director enjoyed the sole command of
+his nuns, the special right of private interviews with them.
+
+What would come of this? The speculative might treat it as a problem;
+not so practical men or physicians. The physician Wyer tells some
+plain stories to show what did come of it from the sixteenth century
+onwards. In his Fourth Book he quotes a number of nuns who went mad
+for love. And in Book III. he talks of an estimable Spanish priest
+who, going by chance into a nunnery, came out mad, declaring that the
+brides of Jesus were his also, brides of the priest, who was a vicar
+of Jesus. He had masses said in return for the favour which God had
+granted him in this speedy marriage with a whole convent.
+
+If this was the result of one passing visit, we may understand the
+plight of a director of nuns when he was left alone with them, and
+could take advantage of the new restrictions to spend the day among
+them, listening hour by hour to the perilous secret of their
+languishings and their weaknesses.
+
+In the plight of these girls the mere senses are not all in all.
+Allowance must be made for their listlessness of mind; for the
+absolute need of some change in their way of life; of some dream or
+diversion to relieve their lifelong monotony. Strange things are
+happening constantly at this period. Travels, events in the Indies,
+the discovery of a world, the invention of printing: what romance
+there is everywhere! While all this goes on without, putting men's
+minds into a flutter, how, think you, can those within bear up against
+the oppressive sameness of monastic life--the irksomeness of its
+lengthy services, seasoned by nothing better than a sermon preached
+through the nose?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The laity themselves, living amidst so many distractions, desire, nay
+insist, that their confessors shall absolve them for their acts of
+inconstancy. The priests, on their side, are drawn or forced on, step
+by step. There grows up a vast literature, at once various and
+learned, of casuistry, of the art of allowing all things; a
+progressive literature, in which the indulgence of to-night seems to
+become the severity of the morrow.
+
+This casuistry was meant for the world; that mysticism for the
+convent. The annihilation of the person and the death of the will form
+the great mystic principle. The true moral bearings of that principle
+are well shown by Desmarets. "The devout," he says, "having offered up
+and annihilated their own selves, exist no longer but in God.
+_Thenceforth they can do no wrong._ The better part of them is so
+divine that it no longer knows what the other is doing."[91]
+
+    [91] An old doctrine which often turns up again in the Middle
+    Ages. In the seventeenth century it prevails among the
+    convents of France and Spain. A Norman angel, in the Louviers
+    business, teaches a nun to despise the body and disregard the
+    flesh, after the example of Jesus, who bared himself for a
+    scourging before all the people. He enforces an utter
+    surrendering of the soul and the will by the example of the
+    Virgin, "who obeyed the angel Gabriel and conceived, without
+    risk of evil, for impurity could not come of a spirit." At
+    Louviers, David, an old director of some authority, taught
+    "that sin could be killed by sin, as the better way of
+    becoming innocent again."
+
+It might have been thought that the zealous Joseph who had raised so
+loud a cry of alarm against these corrupt teachers, would have gone
+yet further; that a grand searching inquiry would have taken place;
+that the countless host whose number, in one province only, were
+reckoned at sixty thousand, would be found out and closely examined.
+But not so: they disappear, and nothing more is known about them. A
+few, it is said, were imprisoned; but trial there was none: only a
+deep silence. To all appearance Richelieu cared but little about
+fathoming the business. In his tenderness for the Capuchins he was not
+so blind as to follow their lead in a matter which would have thrown
+the supervision of all confessors into their hands.
+
+As a rule, the monks had a jealous dislike of the secular clergy.
+Entire masters of the Spanish women, they were too dirty to be
+relished by those of France; who preferred going to their own priests
+or to some Jesuit confessor, an amphious creature, half monk, half
+worldling. If Richelieu had once let loose the pack of Capuchins,
+Recollects, Carmelites, Dominicans, &c., who among the clergy would
+have been safe? What director, what priest, however upright, but had
+used, and used amiss, the gentle language of the Quietists towards
+their penitents?
+
+Richelieu took care not to trouble the clergy, while he was already
+bringing about the General Assembly from which he was soon to ask a
+contribution towards the war. One trial alone was granted the monks,
+the trial of a vicar, but a vicar who dealt in magic; a trial wherein
+matters were allowed, as in the case of Gauffridi, to get so
+entangled, that no confessor, no director, saw his own likeness there,
+but everyone in full security could say, "This is not I."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thanks to these strict precautions the Grandier affair is involved in
+some obscurity.[92] Its historian, the Capuchin Tranquille, proves
+convincingly that Grandier was a wizard, and, still more, a devil; and
+on the trial he is called, as Ashtaroth might have been called,
+_Grandier of the Dominations_. On the other hand, M�nage is ready to
+rank him with great men accused of magic, with the martyrs of free
+thought.
+
+    [92] The _History of the Loudun Devils_, by the Protestant
+    Aubin, is an earnest, solid book, confirmed by the _Reports_
+    of Laubardemont himself. That of the Capuchin Tranquille is a
+    piece of grotesquerie. The _Proceedings_ are in the Great
+    Library of Paris. M. Figuier has given a long and excellent
+    account of the whole affair, in his _History of the
+    Marvellous_.
+
+In order to see a little more clearly, we must not set Grandier by
+himself; we must keep his place in the devilish trilogy of those
+times, in which he figured only as a second act; we must explain him
+by the first act, already shown to us in the dreadful business of
+Sainte-Baume, and the death of Gauffridi; we must explain him by the
+third act, by the affair at Louviers, which copied Loudun, as Loudun
+had copied Sainte-Baume, and which in its turn owned a Gauffridi and
+an Urban Grandier.
+
+The three cases are one and selfsame. In each case there is a
+libertine priest, in each a jealous monk, and a frantic nun by whose
+mouth the Devil is made to speak; and in all three the priest gets
+burnt at last.
+
+And here you may notice one source of light which makes these matters
+clearer to our eyes than if we saw them through the miry shades of a
+monastery in Spain or Italy. In those lands of Southern laziness, the
+nuns were astoundingly passive, enduring the life of the seraglio and
+even worse.[93] Our French women, on the contrary, gifted with a
+personality at once strong, lively, and hard to please, were equally
+dreadful in their jealousy and in their hate; and being devils indeed
+without metaphor, were accordingly rash, blusterous, and prompt to
+accuse. Their revelations were very plain, so plain indeed at the
+last, that everyone felt ashamed; and after thirty years and three
+special cases, the whole thing, begun as it was through terror, got
+fairly extinguished in its own dulness beneath hisses of general
+disgust.
+
+    [93] See Del Rio, Llorente Ricci, &c.
+
+It was not in Loudun, amidst crowds of Poitevins, in the presence of
+so many scoffing Huguenots, in the very town where they held their
+great national synods, that one would have looked for an event so
+discreditable to the Catholics. But these latter, living, as it were,
+in a conquered country,[94] in the old Protestant towns, with the
+greatest freedom, and thinking, not without cause, of the people they
+had often massacred and but lately overcome, were not the persons to
+say a word about it. Catholic Loudun, composed of magistrates,
+priests, monks, a few nobles, and some workmen, dwelled aloof from the
+rest, like a true conquering settlement. This settlement, as one might
+easily guess, was rent in twain by the rivalry of the priests and the
+monks.
+
+    [94] The capture of Rochelle, the last of the Huguenot
+    strongholds took place in 1628.--TRANS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The monks, being numerous and proud, as men specially sent forth to
+make converts, kept the pick of the pavement against the Protestants,
+and were confessing the Catholic ladies, when there arrived from
+Bordeaux a young vicar, brought up by the Jesuits, a man of letters,
+of pleasing manners, who wrote well and spoke better. He made a noise
+in the pulpit, and ere long in the world. By birth a townsman of
+Mantes, of a wrangling turn, he was Southern by education, with all
+the readiness of a Bordelais, boastful and frivolous as a Gascon. He
+soon managed to set the whole town by the ears, drawing the women to
+his side, while the men were mostly against him. He became lofty,
+insolent, unbearable, devoid of respect for everything. The Carmelites
+he overwhelmed with jibes; he would rail away from his pulpit against
+monks in general. They choked with rage at his sermons. Proud and
+stately, he went along the streets of Loudun like a Father of the
+Church; but by night he would steal, with less of bluster, down the
+byeways and through back-doors.
+
+They all surrendered themselves to his pleasure. The wife of the Crown
+Counsel was aware of his charms; still more so the daughter of the
+Public Prosecutor, who had a child by him. This did not satisfy him.
+Master of the ladies, this conqueror pushed his advantage until he had
+gained the nuns.
+
+By that time the Ursulines abounded everywhere, sisters devoted to
+education, feminine missionaries in a Protestant land, who courted and
+pleased the mothers, while they won over the little girls. The nuns of
+Loudun formed a small convent of young ladies, poor and well-born. The
+convent in itself was poor, the nuns for whom it was founded, having
+been granted nothing but their house, an old Huguenot college. The
+prioress, a lady of good birth and high connections, burned to exalt
+her nunnery, to enlarge it, make it wealthier and wider known. Perhaps
+she would have chosen Grandier, as being then the fashion, had she not
+already gotten for her director a priest with very different rootage
+in the country, a near kinsman of the two chief magistrates. The
+Canon Mignon, as he was called, held the prioress fast. These two were
+enraged at learning through the confessional--the "Ladies Superior"
+might confess their nuns--that the young nuns dreamed of nothing but
+this Grandier, of whom there was so much talk.
+
+Thereupon three parties, the threatened director, the cheated husband,
+the outraged father, joined together by a common jealousy, swore
+together the destruction of Grandier. To ensure success, they only
+needed to let him go on. He was ruining himself quite fast enough. An
+incident that came to light made noise enough almost to bring down the
+town.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The nuns placed in that old Huguenot mansion, were far from easy in
+their minds. Their boarders, children of the town, and perhaps also
+some of the younger nuns, had amused themselves with frightening the
+rest by playing at ghosts and apparitions. Little enough of order was
+there among this throng of rich spoilt girls. They would run about the
+passages at night, until they frightened themselves. Some of them were
+sick, or else sick at heart. But these fears and fancies mingled with
+the gossip of the town, of which they heard but too much during the
+day, until the ghost by night took the form of Grandier himself.
+Several said they saw him, felt him near them in the night, and
+yielded unawares to his bold advances. Was all this fancy, or the fun
+of novices? Had Grandier bribed the porteress or ventured to climb
+the walls? This part of the business was never cleared up.
+
+From that time the three felt sure of catching him. And first, among
+the small folk under their protection, they stirred up two good souls
+to declare that they could no longer keep as vicar a profligate, a
+wizard, a devil, a freethinker, who bent one knee in church instead of
+two, who scoffed at rules and granted dispensations contrary to the
+rights of the Bishop. A shrewd accusation, which turned against him
+his natural defender, the Bishop of Poitiers, and delivered him over
+to the fury of the monks.
+
+To say truth, all this was planned with much skill. Besides raising up
+two poor people as accusers, they thought it advisable to have him
+cudgelled by a noble. In those days of duelling a man who let himself
+be cudgelled with impunity lost ground with the public, and sank in
+the esteem of the women. Grandier deeply felt the blow. Fond of making
+a noise in all cases, he went to the King, threw himself on his knees,
+and besought vengeance for the insult to his gown. From so devout a
+king he might have gained it; but here there chanced to be some
+persons who told the King that it was all an affair of love, the fury
+of a betrayed husband wreaking itself on his foe.
+
+At the spiritual court of Poitiers, Grandier was condemned to do
+penance, to be banished from Loudun, and disgraced as a priest. But
+the civil court took up the matter and found him innocent. He had
+still to await the orders of him by whom Poitiers was spiritually
+overruled, Sourdis, Archbishop of Bordeaux. That warlike prelate, an
+admiral and brave sailor more than a priest, shrugged his shoulders on
+hearing of such peccadilloes. He acquitted the vicar, but at the same
+time wisely recommended him to go and live anywhere out of Loudun.
+
+This the proud man did not care to do. He wanted to enjoy his triumph
+on the very field of battle, to show off before the ladies. He came
+back to Loudun in broad day, with mighty noise; the women all looking
+out of window, as he went by with a laurel-branch in his hand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Not satisfied with that piece of folly, he began to threaten, to
+demand reparation. Thus pushed and imperilled in their turn, his
+enemies called to remembrance the affair of Gauffridi, where the
+Devil, the Father of Lies, was restored to his honours and accepted in
+a court of justice as a right truthful witness, worthy of belief on
+the side of the Church, worthy of belief on the side of His Majesty's
+servants. In despair they invoked a devil and found one at their
+command. He showed himself among the Ursulines.
+
+A dangerous thing; but then, how many were nearly concerned in its
+success! The prioress saw her poor humble convent suddenly attracting
+the gaze of the Court, of the provinces, of all the world. The monks
+saw themselves victorious over their rivals the priests. They pictured
+anew those popular battles waged with the Devil in a former century,
+and often, as at Soissons, before the church doors; the terror of the
+people, and their joy at the triumph of the Good Spirit; the
+confession drawn from the Devil touching God's presence in the
+Sacrament; and the humiliation of the Huguenots at being refuted by
+the Demon himself.
+
+In these tragi-comedies the exorciser represented God, or at any rate
+the Archangel, overthrowing the dragon. He came down from the platform
+in utter exhaustion, streaming with sweat, but victorious, to be borne
+away in the arms of the crowd, amidst the blessings of good women who
+shed tears of joy the while.
+
+Therefore it was that in these trials a dash of witchcraft was always
+needful. The Devil alone roused the interest of the vulgar. They could
+not always see him coming out of a body in the shape of a black toad,
+as at Bordeaux in 1610. But it was easy to make it up to them by a
+grand display of splendid stage scenery. The affair of Provence owed
+much of its success to Madeline's desolate wildness and the terror of
+Sainte-Baume. Loudun was regaled with the uproar and the bacchanal
+frenzy of a host of exorcisers distributed among several churches.
+Lastly, Louviers, as we shall presently see, put a little new life
+into this fading fashion by inventing midnight scenes, in which the
+demons who possessed the nuns began digging by the glimmer of torches,
+until they drew forth certain charms from the holes wherein they had
+been concealed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Loudun business began with the prioress and a lay sister of hers.
+They had convulsive fits, and talked infernal gibberish. Other of the
+nuns began copying them, one bold girl especially taking up Louisa's
+part at Marseilles, with the same devil Leviathan, the leading demon
+of trickery and evil speaking.
+
+The little town was all in a tremble. Monks of every hue provided
+themselves with nuns, shared them all round, and exorcised them by
+threes and fours. The churches were parcelled out among them; the
+Capuchins alone taking two for themselves. The crowd go after them,
+swollen by all the women in the place, and in this frightened
+audience, throbbing with anxiety, more than one cries out that she,
+too, is feeling the devils.[95] Six girls of the town are possessed.
+And the bare recital of these alarming events begets two new cases of
+possession at Chinon.
+
+    [95] The same hysteric contagion marks the "Revivals" of a
+    later period, down to the last mad outbreak in Ireland. The
+    translator hopes some day to work out the physical question
+    here stated.--TRANS.
+
+Everywhere the thing was talked of, at Paris, at the Court. Our
+Spanish queen,[96] who is imaginative and devout, sends off her
+almoner; nay more, sends her faithful follower, the old papist, Lord
+Montague, who sees, who believes everything, and reports it all to the
+Pope. It is a miracle proven. He had seen the wounds on a certain nun,
+and the marks made by the Devil on the Lady Superior's hands.
+
+    [96] Anne of Austria, wife of Louis XIII.--TRANS.
+
+What said the King of France to this? All his devotion was turned on
+the Devil, on hell, on thoughts of fear. It is said that Richelieu was
+glad to keep him thus. I doubt it; the demons were essentially
+Spanish, taking the Spanish side: if ever they talked politics, they
+must have spoken against Richelieu. Perhaps he was afraid of them. At
+any rate, he did them homage, and sent his niece to prove the interest
+he took in the matter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Court believed, but Loudun itself did not. Its devils, but sorry
+imitators of the Marseilles demons, rehearsed in the morning what they
+had learnt the night before from the well-known handbook of Father
+Micha�lis. They would never have known what to say but for the secret
+exorcisms, the careful rehearsal of the day's farce, by which night
+after night they were trained to figure before the people.
+
+One sturdy magistrate, bailiff of the town, made a stir: going himself
+to detect the knaves, he threatened and denounced them. Such, too, was
+the tacit opinion of the Archbishop of Bordeaux, to whom Grandier
+appealed. He despatched a set of rules for the guidance at least of
+the exorcisers, for putting a stop to their arbitrary doings; and,
+better still, he sent his surgeon, who examined the girls, and found
+them to be neither bewitched, nor mad, nor even sick. What were they
+then? Knaves, to be sure.[97]
+
+    [97] Not of necessity knaves, Mr. Michelet; at least not
+    wilfully so; but silly hysteric patients, of the
+    spirit-rapping, revivalist order, victims of nervous
+    derangement, or undue nervous sensibility.--TRANS.
+
+So through the century keeps on this noble duel between the Physician
+and the Devil, this battle of light and knowledge with the dark shades
+of falsehood. We saw its beginning in Agrippa and Wyer. Doctor Duncan
+carried it bravely on at Loudun, and fearlessly impressed on others
+the belief that this affair was nothing but a farce.
+
+For all his alleged resistance, the Demon was frightened, held his
+tongue, quite lost his voice. But people's passions had been too
+fiercely roused for the matter to end there. The tide flowed again so
+strongly in favour of Grandier, that the assailed became in their turn
+assailants. An apothecary of kin to the accusers was sued by a rich
+young lady of the town for speaking of her as the vicar's mistress. He
+was condemned to apologise for his slander.
+
+The prioress was a lost woman. It would have been easy to prove, what
+one witness afterwards saw, that the marks upon her were made with
+paint renewed daily. But she was kinswoman to one of the King's
+judges, Laubardemont, and he saved her. He was simply charged to
+overthrow the strong places of Loudun. He got himself commissioned to
+try Grandier. The Cardinal was given to understand that the accused
+was vicar and friend of the _Loudun shoemaker_,[98] was one of the
+numerous agents of Mary of Medici, had made himself his parishioner's
+secretary, and written a disgraceful pamphlet in her name.
+
+    [98] A woman named Hammon, of low birth, who entered the
+    service, and rose high in the good graces of Mary of Medici.
+    See Dumas' _Celebrated Crimes_.--TRANS.
+
+Richelieu, for his part, would have liked to show a high-minded scorn
+of the whole business, if he could have done so with safety to
+himself. The Capuchins and Father Joseph had an eye to that also.
+Richelieu would have given them a fine handle against him with the
+King, had he displayed a want of zeal. One Quillet, after much grave
+reflection, went to see the Minister and give him warning. But the
+other, afraid to listen, regarded him with so stern a gaze that the
+giver of advice deemed it prudent to seek shelter in Italy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Laubardemont arrived at Loudun on the 6th December, 1633, bringing
+along with him great fear, and unbounded powers; even those of the
+King himself. The whole strength of the kingdom became, as it were, a
+dreadful bludgeon to crush one little fly.
+
+The magistrates were wroth; the civic lieutenant warned Grandier that
+he would have to arrest him on the morrow. The latter paid no heed to
+him, and was arrested accordingly. In a moment he was carried off,
+without form of trial, to the dungeons of Angers. Presently he was
+taken back and thrown, where think you? Into the house, the room of
+one of his enemies, who had the windows walled up so as well-nigh to
+choke him. The loathsome scrutiny of the wizard's body, in order to
+find out the Devil's marks by sticking needles all over it, was
+carried on by the hands of the accusers themselves, who took their
+revenge upon him beforehand in the foretaste thus given him of his
+future punishment.
+
+They led him to the churches, confronted him with the girls, who had
+got their cue from Laubardemont. These Bacchanals, for such they
+became under the fuddling effect of some drugs administered by the
+condemned apothecary above-named, flung out in such frantic rages,
+that Grandier was nearly perishing one day beneath their nails.
+
+Unable to imitate the eloquence of the Marseilles demoniac, they tried
+obscenity in its stead. It was a hideous thing to see these girls give
+full vent in public to their sensual fury, on the plea of scolding
+their pretended devils. Thus indeed it was that they managed to swell
+their audiences. People flocked to hear from the lips of these women
+what no woman would else have dared to utter.
+
+As the matter grew more hateful, so it also grew more laughable. They
+were sure to repeat all awry what little Latin was ever whispered to
+them. The public found that the devils had never gone through _their
+lower classes_. The Capuchins, however, coolly said that if these
+demons were weak in Latin, they were marvellous speakers of Iroquois
+and Tupinambi.[99]
+
+    [99] Indians of the coast of Brazil.--TRANS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A farce so shameful, seen from a distance of sixty leagues, from St.
+Germain or the Louvre, appeared miraculous, awful, terrifying. The
+Court admired and trembled. Richelieu to please them did a cowardly
+thing. He ordered money to be paid to the exorcisers, to the nuns.
+
+The height of favour to which they had risen, drove the plotters
+altogether mad. Senseless words were followed by shameful deeds.
+Pleading that the nuns were tired, the exorcisers got them outside the
+town, took them about by themselves. One of them, at least to all
+appearance, returned pregnant. In the fifth or sixth month all outward
+trace of it disappeared, and the devil within her acknowledged how
+wickedly he had slandered the poor nun by making her look so large.
+This tale concerning Loudun we learn from the historian of
+Louviers.[100]
+
+    [100] Esprit de Bosroger, p. 135.
+
+It is stated that Father Joseph, after a secret journey to the spot,
+saw to what end the matter was coming, and noiselessly backed out of
+it. The Jesuits also went, tried their exorcisms, did next to nothing,
+got scent of the general feeling, and stole off in like manner.
+
+But the monks, the Capuchins, were gone so far, that they could only
+save themselves by frightening others. They laid some treacherous
+snares for the daring bailiff and his wife, seeking to destroy them,
+and thereby quench the coming reaction of justice. Lastly, they urged
+on the commissioners to despatch Grandier. Things could be carried no
+further: the nuns themselves were slipping out of their hands. After
+that dreadful orgie of sensual rage and immodest shouting in order to
+obtain the shedding of human blood, two or three of them swooned away,
+were seized with disgust and horror; vomited up their very selves.
+Despite the hideous doom that awaited them if they spoke the truth,
+despite the certainty of ending their days in a dungeon, they owned in
+church that they were damned, that they had been playing with the
+Devil, and Grandier was innocent.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They ruined themselves, but could not stay the issue. A general
+protest by the town to the King failed to stay it also. On the 18th
+August, 1634, Grandier was condemned to the stake. So violent were his
+enemies that, for the second time before burning him, they insisted on
+having him stuck with needles in order to find out the Devil's marks.
+One of his judges would have had even his nails torn out of him, had
+not the surgeon withheld his leave.
+
+They were afraid of the last words their victim might say on the
+scaffold. Among his papers there had been found a manuscript
+condemning the celibacy of priests, and those who called him a wizard
+themselves believed him to be a freethinker. They remembered the brave
+words which the martyrs of free thought had thrown out against their
+judges; they called to mind the last speech of Giordano Bruno, the
+bold defiance of Vanini.[101] So they agreed with Grandier, that if he
+were prudent, he should be saved from burning, perhaps be strangled.
+The weak priest, being a man of flesh, yielded to this demand of the
+flesh, and promised to say nothing. He spoke not a word on the road,
+nor yet upon the scaffold. When he was fairly fastened to the post,
+with everything ready, and the fire so arranged as to enfold him
+swiftly in smoke and flames, his own confessor, a monk, set the
+faggots ablaze without waiting for the executioner. The victim,
+pledged to silence, had only time to say, "So, you have deceived me!"
+when the flames whirled fiercely upwards, and the furnace of pain
+began, and nothing was audible save the wretch's screams.
+
+    [101] Both Neapolitans, burnt alive, the former at Venice in
+    1600, the latter at Toulouse in 1619.--TRANS.
+
+Richelieu in his Memoirs says little, and that with evident shame,
+concerning this affair. He gives one to believe that he only followed
+the reports that reached him, the voice of general opinion.
+Nevertheless, by rewarding the exorcisers, by throwing the reins to
+the Capuchins, and letting them triumph over France, he gave no slight
+encouragement to that piece of knavery. Gauffridi, thus renewed in
+Grandier, is about to reappear in yet fouler plight in the Louviers
+affair.
+
+In this very year, 1634, the demons hunted from Poitou pass over into
+Normandy, copying again and again the fooleries of Sainte-Baume,
+without any trace of invention, of talent, or of imagination. The
+frantic Leviathan of Provence, when counterfeited at Loudun, loses his
+Southern sting, and only gets out of a scrape by talking fluently to
+virgins in the language of Sodom. Presently, alas! at Louviers he
+loses even his old daring, imbibes the sluggish temper of the North,
+and sinks into a sorry sprite.[102]
+
+    [102] Wright and Dumas both differ from M. Michelet in their
+    view of Urban Grandier's character. The latter especially,
+    regards him as an innocent victim to his own fearlessness and
+    the hate of his foes, among whom not the least deadly was
+    Richelieu himself, who bore him a deep personal
+    grudge.--TRANS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE DEMONIACS OF LOUVIERS--MADELINE BAVENT: 1633-1647.
+
+
+Had Richelieu allowed the inquiry demanded by Father Joseph into the
+doings of the Illuminate Confessors, some strange light would have
+been thrown into the depth of the cloisters, on the daily life of the
+nuns. Failing that, we may still learn from the Louviers story, which
+is far more instructive than those of Aix and Loudun, that,
+notwithstanding the new means of corruption furnished by Illuminism,
+the director still resorted to the old trickeries of witchcraft, of
+apparitions, heavenly or infernal, and so forth.[103]
+
+    [103] It was very easy to cheat those who wished to be
+    cheated. By this time celibacy was harder to practise than in
+    the Middle Ages, the number of fasts and bloodlettings being
+    greatly reduced. Many died from the nervous plethora of a
+    life so cruelly sluggish. They made no secret of their
+    torments, owning them to their sisters, to their confessor,
+    to the Virgin herself. A pitiful thing, a thing to sorrow
+    for, not to ridicule. In Italy, a nun besought the Virgin for
+    pity's sake to grant her a lover.
+
+Of the three directors successively appointed to the Convent of
+Louviers in the space of thirty years, David, the first, was an
+Illuminate, who forestalled Molinos; the second, Picart, was a wizard
+dealing with the Devil; and Boull�, the third, was a wizard working
+in the guise of an angel.
+
+There is an excellent book about this business; it is called _The
+History of Magdalen Bavent_, a nun of Louviers; with her Examination,
+&c., 1652: Rouen.[104] The date of this book accounts for the thorough
+freedom with which it was written. During the wars of the Fronde, a
+bold Oratorian priest, who discovered the nun in one of the Rouen
+prisons, took courage from her dictation to write down the story of
+her life.
+
+    [104] I know of no book more important, more dreadful, or
+    worthier of being reprinted. It is the most powerful
+    narrative of its class. _Piety Afflicted_, by the Capuchin
+    Esprit de Bosroger, is a work immortal in the annals of
+    tomfoolery. The two excellent pamphlets by the doughty
+    surgeon, Yvelin, the _Inquiry_ and the _Apology_, are in the
+    Library of Ste. Genevieve.
+
+Born at Rouen in 1607, Madeline was left an orphan at nine years old.
+At twelve she was apprenticed to a milliner. The confessor, a
+Franciscan, held absolute sway in the house of this milliner, who as
+maker of clothes for the nuns, was dependent on the Church. The monk
+caused the apprentices, whom he doubtless made drunk with belladonna
+and other magical drinks, to believe that they had been taken to the
+Sabbath and there married to the devil Dagon. Three were already
+possessed by him, and Madeline at fourteen became the fourth.
+
+She was a devout worshipper, especially of St. Francis. A Franciscan
+monastery had just been founded at Louviers, by a lady of Rouen, widow
+of lawyer Hennequin, who was hanged for cheating. She hoped by this
+good deed of hers to help in saving her husband's soul. To that end
+she sought counsel of a holy man, the old priest David, who became
+director to the new foundation. Standing at the entrance of the town,
+with a wood surrounding it, this convent, born of so tragical a
+source, seemed quite gloomy and poor enough for a place of stern
+devotion. David was known as author of a _Scourge for Rakes_, an odd
+and violent book against the abuses that defiled the Cloister.[105]
+All of a sudden this austere person took up some very strange ideas
+concerning purity. He became an Adamite, preached up the nakedness of
+Adam in his days of innocence. The docile nuns of Louviers sought to
+subdue and abase the novices, to break them into obedience, by
+insisting--of course in summer-time--that these young Eves should
+return to the plight of their common mother. In this state they were
+sent out for exercise in some secluded gardens, and were taken into
+the chapel itself. Madeline, who at sixteen had come to be received as
+a novice, was too proud, perhaps in those days too pure also, to
+submit to so strange a way of life. She got an angry scolding for
+having tried at communion to hide her bosom with the altar-cloth.
+
+    [105] See Floquet; _Parliament of Normandy_, vol. v. p. 636.
+
+Not less unwilling was she to uncover her soul, to confess to the Lady
+Superior, after the usual monastic custom of which the abbesses were
+particularly fond. She would rather trust herself with old David, who
+kept her apart from the rest. He himself confided his own ailments
+into her ear. Nor did he hide from her his inner teaching, the
+Illuminism, which governed the convent: "You must kill sin by being
+made humble and lost to all sense of pride through sin." Madeline was
+frightened at the depths of depravity reached by the nuns, who quietly
+carried out the teaching with which they had been imbued. She avoided
+their company, kept to herself, and succeeded in getting made one of
+the doorkeepers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+David died when she was eighteen. Old age prevented his going far with
+the girl. But the vicar Picart, who succeeded him, was furious in his
+pursuit of her; at the confessional spoke to her only of his love. He
+made her his sextoness, that he might meet her alone in chapel. She
+liked him not; but the nuns forbade her to have another confessor,
+lest she might divulge their little secrets. And thus she was given
+over to Picart. He beset her when she was sick almost to death;
+seeking to frighten her by insisting that from David he had received
+some infernal prescriptions. He sought to win her compassion by
+feigning illness and begging her to come and see him. Thenceforth he
+became her master, upset her mind with magic potions, and worked her
+into believing that she had gone with him to the Sabbath, there to
+officiate as altar and victim. At length, exceeding even the Sabbath
+usages and daring the scandal that would follow, he made her to be
+with child.
+
+The nuns were afraid of one who knew the state of their morals; and
+their interest also bound them to him. The convent was enriched by his
+energy, his good repute, the alms and gifts he attracted towards it
+from every quarter. He was building them a large church. We saw in the
+Loudun business by what rivalries and ambitions these houses were led
+away, how jealously they strove each to outdo the others. Through the
+trust reposed in him by the wealthy, Picart saw himself raised into
+the lofty part of benefactor and second founder of the convent.
+"Sweetheart," he said to Madeline, "that noble church is all my
+building! After my death you will see wonders wrought there. Do you
+not agree to that?"
+
+This fine gentleman did not put himself out at all regarding Madeline.
+He paid a dowry for her, and made a nun of her who was already a
+lay-sister. Thus, being no longer a doorkeeper, she could live in one
+of the inner rooms, and there be brought to bed at her convenience. By
+means of certain drugs, and practices of their own, the convents could
+do without the help of doctors. Madeline said that she was delivered
+several times. She never said what became of the newly-born.
+
+Picart being now an old man, feared lest Madeline might in her
+fickleness fly off some day, and utter words of remorse to another
+confessor. So he took a detestable way of binding her to himself
+beyond recall, by forcing her to make a will in which she promised "to
+die when he died, and to be wherever he was." This was a dreadful
+thought for the poor soul. Must she be drawn along with him into the
+bottomless pit? Must she go down with him, even into hell? She deemed
+herself for ever lost. Become his property, his mere tool, she was
+used and misused by him for all kinds of purposes. He made her do the
+most shameful things. He employed her as a magical charm to gain over
+the rest of the nuns. A holy wafer steeped in Madeline's blood, and
+buried in the garden, would be sure to disturb their senses and their
+minds.
+
+This was the very year in which Urban Grandier was burnt. Throughout
+France, men spoke of nothing but the devils of Loudun. The
+Penitentiary of Evreux, who had been one of the actors on that stage,
+carried the dreadful tale back with him to Normandy. Madeline fancied
+herself bewitched and knocked about by devils; followed about by a
+lewd cat with eyes of fire. By degrees, other nuns caught the
+disorder, which showed itself in odd supernatural jerks and writhings.
+Madeline had besought aid of a Capuchin, afterwards of the Bishop of
+Evreux. The prioress was not sorry for a step of which she must have
+been aware, for she saw what wealth and fame a like business had
+brought to the Convent of Loudun. But for six years the bishop turned
+a deaf ear to the prayer, doubtless through fear of Richelieu, who was
+then at work on a reform of the cloisters.
+
+Richelieu wanted to bring these scandals to an end. It was not till
+his own death, and that of Louis XIII., during the break-up which
+followed on the rule of the Queen and Mazarin, that the priests again
+betook themselves to working wonders, and waging war with the Devil.
+Picart being dead, they were less shy of a matter in which so
+dangerous a man might have accused others in his turn. They met the
+visions of Madeline, by looking out a visionary for themselves. They
+got admission into the convent for a certain Sister Anne of the
+Nativity, a girl of sanguine, hysteric temperament, frantic at need
+and half-mad, so far at least as to believe in her own lies. A kind of
+dogfight was got up between the two. They besmeared each other with
+false charges. Anne saw the Devil quite naked, by Madeline's side.
+Madeline swore to seeing Anne at the Sabbath, along with the Lady
+Superior, the Mother-Assistant, and the Mother of the Novices. Besides
+this, there was nothing new; merely a hashing up of the two great
+trials at Aix and Loudun. They read and followed the printed
+narratives only. No wit, no invention, was shown by either.
+
+Anne, the accuser, and her devil Leviathan, were backed by the
+Penitentiary of Evreux, one of the chief actors in the Loudun affair.
+By his advice, the Bishop of Evreux gave orders to disinter the body
+of Picart, so that the devils might leave the convent when Picart
+himself was taken away from the neighbourhood. Madeline was condemned,
+without a hearing, to be disgraced, to have her body examined for the
+marks of the Devil. They tore off her veil and gown, and made her the
+wretched sport of a vile curiosity, that would have pierced her till
+she bled again, in order to win the right of sending her to the stake.
+Leaving to no one else the care of a scrutiny which was in itself a
+torture, these virgins acting as matrons, ascertained if she was with
+child or no, shaved all her body, and dug their needles into her
+quivering flesh, to find out the insensible spots that betrayed the
+mark of the Devil. At every dig they discovered signs of pain: if they
+had not the luck to prove her a Witch, at any rate, they could revel
+in her tears and cries.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Sister Anne was not satisfied, until, on the mere word of her own
+devil, Madeline, though acquitted by the results of this examination,
+was condemned for the rest of her life to an _In pace_. It was said
+that the convent would be quieted by her departure; but such was not
+the case. The Devil was more violent than ever; some twenty nuns began
+to cry out, to prophesy, to beat themselves.
+
+Such a sight drew thither a curious crowd from Rouen, and even from
+Paris. Yvelin, a young Parisian surgeon, who had already seen the
+farce at Loudun, came to see that of Louviers. He brought with him a
+very clear-headed magistrate, the Commissioner of Taxes at Rouen. They
+devoted unwearying attention to the matter, settled themselves at
+Louviers, and carried on their researches for seventeen days.
+
+From the first day they saw into the plot. A conversation they had had
+with the Penitentiary of Evreux on their entrance into the town, was
+repeated back to them by Sister Anne's demon, as if it had been a
+revelation. The scenic arrangements were very bewitching. The shades
+of night, the torches, the flickering and smoking lights, produced
+effects which had not been seen at Loudun. The rest of the process was
+simple enough. One of the bewitched said that in a certain part of the
+garden they would find a charm. They dug for it, and it was found.
+Unluckily, Yvelin's friend, the sceptical magistrate, never budged
+from the side of the leading actress, Sister Anne. At the very edge of
+a hole they had just opened he grasped her hand, and on opening it,
+found the charm, a bit of black thread, which she was about to throw
+into the ground.
+
+The exorcisers, the penitentiary, priests, and Capuchins, about the
+spot, were overwhelmed with confusion. The dauntless Yvelin, on his
+own authority, began a scrutiny, and saw to the uttermost depth of the
+affair.
+
+Among the fifty-two nuns, said he, there were six _possessed_, but
+deserving of chastisement. Seventeen more were victims under a spell,
+a pack of girls upset by the disease of the cloisters. He describes
+it with great precision: the girls are regular but hysterical, blown
+out with certain inward storms, lunatics mainly, and disordered in
+mind. A nervous contagion has ruined them; and the first thing to do
+is to keep them apart.
+
+He then, with the liveliness of Voltaire, examines the tokens by which
+the priests were wont to recognize the supernatural character of the
+bewitched. They foretel, he allows, but only what never happens. They
+translate, indeed, but without understanding; as when, for instance,
+they render "_ex parte virginis_," by "the departure of the Virgin."
+They know Greek before the people of Louviers, but cannot speak it
+before the doctors of Paris. They cut capers, take leaps of the
+easiest kind, climb up the trunk of a tree which a child three years
+old might climb. In short, the only thing they do that is really
+dreadful and unnatural, is to use dirtier language than men would ever
+do.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In tearing off the mask from these people, the surgeon rendered a
+great service to humanity. For the matter was being pushed further;
+other victims were about to be made. Besides the charms were found
+some papers, ascribed to David or Picart, in which this and that
+person were called witches, and marked out for death. Each one
+shuddered lest his name should be found there. Little by little the
+fear of the priesthood made its way among the people.
+
+The rotten age of Mazarin, the first days of the weak Anne of Austria,
+were already come. Order and government were no more. "But one phrase
+was left in the language: _The Queen is so good._" Her goodness gave
+the clergy a chance of getting the upper hand. The power of the laity
+entombed with Richelieu, bishops, priests, and monks, were about to
+reign. The bold impiety of the magistrate and his friend Yvelin
+imperilled so sweet a hope. Groans and wailings went forth to the Good
+Queen, not from the victims, but from the knaves thus caught in the
+midst of their offences. Up to the Court they went, weeping for the
+outrage to their religion.
+
+Yvelin was not prepared for this stroke: he deemed himself firm at
+Court, having for ten years borne the title of Surgeon to the Queen.
+Before he returned from Louviers to Paris, the weakness of Anne of
+Austria had been tempted into granting another commission named by his
+opponents, consisting of an old fool in his dotage, one Diafoirus of
+Rouen, and his nephew, both attached to the priesthood. These did not
+fail to discover that the Louviers affair was supernatural,
+transcending all art of man.
+
+Any other than Yvelin would have been discouraged. The Rouen
+physicians treated with utter scorn this surgeon, this barber fellow,
+this mere sawbones. The Court gave him no encouragement. Still, he
+held on his way in a treatise which will live yet. He accepts this
+battle of science against priestcraft, declaring, as Wyer did in the
+sixteenth century, that "in all such matters the right judge is not
+the priest but the man of science." With great difficulty he found
+some one bold enough to print, but no one willing to sell his little
+work. So in broad daylight the heroic young man set about distributing
+it with his own hands. Placing himself on the Pont Neuf, the most
+frequented spot in Paris, at the foot of Henry the Fourth's statue, he
+gave out copies of his memoir to the passers by. At the end of it they
+found a formal statement of the shameful fraud, how in the hand of the
+female demons the magistrate had caught the unanswerable evidence of
+their dishonour.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Return we to the wretched Madeline. Her enemy, the Penitentiary of
+Evreux, by whose influence she had been searched with needles, carried
+her off as his prey to the heart of the episcopal dungeons in that
+town. Below an underground passage dipped a cave, below the cave a
+cell, where the poor human creature lay buried in damps and darkness.
+Reckoning upon her speedy death, her dread companions had not even the
+kindness to give her a piece of linen for the dressing of her ulcer.
+There, as she lay in her own filth, she suffered alike from pain and
+want of cleanliness. The whole night long she was disturbed by the
+running to and fro of ravenous rats, those terrors of every prison,
+who were wont to nibble men's ears and noses.
+
+But all these horrors fell short of those which her tyrant, the
+Penitentiary, dealt out to her himself. Day after day he would come
+into the upper vault and speak to her through the mouth of her pit,
+threatening her, commanding her, and making her, whether she would or
+no, confess to this or that crime as having been wrought by others. At
+length she ceased to eat. Fearing that she might die at once, he drew
+her for a while out of her _In Pace_, and laid her in the upper vault.
+Then, in his rage against Yvelin's memoir, he cast her back into her
+sewer below.
+
+That glimpse of light, that short renewal and sudden death of hope,
+gave the crowning impulse to her despair. Her wound was closing, so
+that her strength was greater. She was seized with a deep and violent
+thirst for death. She swallowed spiders, but instead of dying, only
+brought them up again. Pounded glass she swallowed, but in vain.
+Finding an old bit of sharp iron, she tried to cut her throat, but
+could not. Then, as an easier way, she dug the iron into her belly.
+For four hours she worked and bled, but without success. Even this
+wound shortly began to close. To crown all, the life she hated so
+returned to her stronger than before. Her heart's death was of no
+avail.
+
+She became once more a woman; still, alas! an object of desire, of
+temptation for her jailers, those brutish varlets of the bishopric,
+who, notwithstanding the horror of the place, and the unhappy
+creature's own sad and filthy plight, would come to make sport of
+her, believing that they might do all their pleasure against a Witch.
+But an angel succoured her, so she said. From men and rats alike she
+defended herself. But against herself, herself she could not protect.
+Her prison corrupted her mind. She dreamed of the Devil, besought him
+to come and see her, to restore to her the shameful pleasures in which
+she had wallowed at Louviers. He never deigned to come back. Once more
+amidst this corruption of her senses, she fell back on her old desire
+for death. One of the jailers had given her a drug to kill the rats.
+She was just going to swallow it herself, when an angel--an angel, was
+it, or a devil?--stayed her hand, reserving her for other crimes.
+
+Thenceforward--sunk into the lowest depths of vileness, become an
+unspeakable cipher of cowardice and servility--she signed endless
+lists of crimes which she had never committed. Was she worth the
+trouble of burning? Many had given up that idea, but the ruthless
+Penitentiary clung to it still. He offered money to a Wizard of
+Evreux, then in prison, if he would bear such witness as might bring
+about the death of Madeline.
+
+For the future, however, they could use her for other purposes--to
+bear false witness, to become a tool for any slander. Whenever they
+sought the ruin of any man, they had only to drag down to Louviers or
+to Evreux this accursed ghost of a dead woman, living only to make
+others die. In this way she was brought out to kill with her words a
+poor man named Duval. What the Penitentiary dictated to her, she
+repeated readily: when he told her by what marks she should know
+Duval, whom she had never seen, she pointed him out and said she had
+seen him at the Sabbath. Through her it fell out that he was burnt!
+
+She owned her dreadful crime, and shuddered to think what answer she
+could make before God. She was fallen into such contempt that no one
+now deigned to look after her. The doors stood wide open: sometimes
+she had the keys herself. But where now should she go, object as she
+was of so much dread? Thenceforth the world repelled her--cast her
+out: the only world she had left was her dungeon.
+
+During the anarchy of Mazarin and his Good Lady the chief authority
+remained with the Parliaments. That of Rouen, hitherto the friendliest
+to the clergy, grew wroth at last at their arrogant way of examining,
+ordering, and burning people. A mere decree of the Bishop had caused
+Picart's body to be disinterred and thrown into the common sewer. And
+now they were passing on to the trial of Boull�, the curate, and
+supposed abettor of Picart. Listening to the plaint of Picart's
+family, the Parliament sentenced the Bishop of Evreux to replace him
+at his own expense in his tomb at Louviers. They called up Boull�,
+undertook his trial themselves, and at the same time sent for the
+wretched Madeline from Evreux to Rouen.
+
+People were afraid that Yvelin and the magistrate who had caught the
+nuns in the very act of cheating, would be made to appear. Hieing away
+to Paris, they found the knave Mazarin ready to protect their knavish
+selves. The whole matter was appealed to the King's Council--an
+indulgent court, without eyes or ears--whose care it was to bury, hush
+up, bedarken everything connected with justice.
+
+Meanwhile, some honey-tongued priests had comforted Madeline in her
+Rouen dungeon; they heard her confessions, and enjoined her, by way of
+penance, to ask forgiveness of her persecutors, the nuns of Louviers.
+Thenceforth, happen what might, Madeline could never more be brought
+in evidence against those who had thus bound her fast. It was a
+triumph indeed for the clergy, and the victory was sung by a knave of
+an exorciser, the Capuchin Esprit de Bosroger, in his _Piety
+Afflicted_, a farcical monument of stupidity, in which he accuses,
+unawares, the very people he fancies himself defending.
+
+The Fronde, as I said before, was a revolution for honest ends. Fools
+saw only its outer form--its laughable aspects; but at bottom it was a
+serious business, a moral reaction. In August, 1647, with the first
+breath of freedom, Parliament stepped forward and cut the knot. It
+ordered, in the first place, the destruction of the Louviers Sodom;
+the girls were to be dispersed and sent back to their kinsfolk. In the
+next, it decreed that thenceforth the bishops of the province should,
+four times a-year, send special confessors to the nunneries, to
+ascertain that such foul abuses were not renewed.
+
+One comfort, however, the clergy were to receive. They were allowed to
+burn the bones of Picart and the living body of Boull�, who, after
+making public confession in the cathedral, was drawn on a hurdle to
+the Fish Market, and there, on the 21st August, 1647, devoured by the
+flames. Madeline, or rather her corpse, remained in the prisons of
+Rouen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE DEVIL TRIUMPHS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
+
+
+The Fronde was a kind of Voltaire. The spirit of Voltaire, old as
+France herself, but long restrained, burst forth in the political, and
+anon in the religious, world. In vain did the Great King seek to
+establish a solemn gravity. Beneath it laughter went on.
+
+Was there nought else, then, but laughter and jesting? Nay, it was the
+Advent of Reason. By means of Kepler, of Galileo, Descartes, Newton,
+there was now triumphantly enthroned the reasonable dogma of faith in
+the unchangeable laws of nature. Miracle dared no longer show itself,
+or, when it did dare, was hissed down. In other and better words, the
+fantastic miracles of mere whim had vanished, and in their stead was
+seen the mighty miracle of the universe--more regular, and therefore
+more divine.
+
+The great rebellion decidedly won the day. You may see it working in
+the bold forms of those earlier outbursts; in the irony of Galileo; in
+the absolute doubt wherewith Descartes leads off his system. The
+Middle Ages would have said, "'Tis the spirit of the Evil One."
+
+The victory, however, is not a negative one, but very affirmative and
+surely based. The spirit of nature and the natural sciences, those
+outlaws of an elder day, return in might irresistible. All idle
+shadows are hunted out by the real, the substantial.
+
+They had said in their folly, "Great Pan is dead." Anon, observing
+that he was yet alive, they had made him a god of evil: amid such a
+chaos they might well be deceived. But, lo! he lives, and lives
+harmonious, in the grand stability of laws that govern alike the star
+and the deep-hidden mystery of life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of this period two things, by no means contradictory, may be averred:
+the spirit of Satan conquers, while the reign of witchcraft is at an
+end.
+
+All marvel-mongering, hellish or holy, is fallen very sick at last.
+Wizards and theologians are powerless alike. They are become, as it
+were, empirics, who pray in vain for some supernatural change, some
+whim of Providence, to work the wonders which science asks of nature
+and reason only.
+
+For all their zeal, the Jansenists of this century succeed only in
+bringing forth a miracle very small and very ridiculous. Still less
+lucky are the rich and powerful Jesuits, who cannot get a miracle done
+at any price; who have to be satisfied with the visions of a hysteric
+girl, Sister Mary Alacoque, of an exceedingly sanguine habit, with
+eyes for nothing but blood. In view of so much impotence, magic and
+witchcraft may find some solace for themselves.
+
+While the old faith in the supernatural was thus declining, priests
+and witches shared a common fate. In the fears, the fancies of the
+Middle Ages, these two were bound up together. Together they were
+still to face the general laughter and disdain. When Moli�re made fun
+of the Devil and his "seething cauldrons," the clergy were deeply
+stirred, deeming that the belief in Paradise had fallen equally low.
+
+A government of laymen only, that of the great Colbert, who was long
+the virtual King of France, could not conceal its scorn for such old
+questions. It emptied the prisons of the wizards whom the Rouen
+Parliament still crowded into them, and, in 1672, forbade the law
+courts from entertaining any prosecutions for witchcraft. The
+Parliament protested, and gave people to understand that by this
+denial of sorcery many other things were put in peril. Any doubting of
+these lower mysteries would cause many minds to waver from their
+belief in mysteries of a higher sort.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Sabbath disappears, but why? Because it exists everywhere. It
+enters into the people's habits, becomes the practice of their daily
+life. The Devil, the Witches, had long been reproached with loving
+death more than life, with hating and hindering the generative powers
+of nature. And now in the pious seventeenth century, when the Witch is
+fast dying out, a love of barrenness, and a fear of being fruitful,
+are found to be, in very truth, the one prevalent disease.
+
+If Satan ever read, he would have good cause for laughter as he read
+the casuists who took him up where he left off. For there was one
+difference at least between them. In times of terror Satan made
+provision for the famished, took pity on the poor. But these fellows
+have compassion only for the rich. With his vices, his luxury, his
+court life, the rich man is still a needy miserable beggar. He comes
+to confession with a humbly threatening air, in order to wrest from
+his doctor permission to sin with a good conscience. Some day will be
+told, by him who may have the courage to tell it, an astounding tale
+of the cowardly things done, and the shameful tricks so basely
+ventured by the casuist who wished to keep his penitent. From Navarro
+to Escobar the strangest bargains were continually made at the wife's
+expense, and some little wrangling went on after that. But all this
+would not do. The casuist was conquered, was altogether a coward. From
+Zoccoli to Liguori--1670 to 1770--he gave up banning Nature.
+
+The Devil, so it was said, showed two countenances at the Sabbath: the
+one in front seemed threatening, the other behind was farcical. Now
+that he has nothing to do with it, he has generously given the latter
+to the casuist.
+
+It must have amused him to see his trusty friends settled among honest
+folk, in the serious households swayed by the Church. The worldling
+who bettered himself by that great resource of the day, lucrative
+adultery, laughed at prudence, and boldly followed his natural bent.
+Pious families, on the other hand, followed nothing but their Jesuits.
+In order to preserve, to concentrate their property, to leave each one
+wealthy heir, they entered on the crooked ways of the new
+spiritualism. Buried in a mysterious gloom, losing at the faldstool
+all heed and knowledge of themselves, the proudest of them followed
+the lesson taught by Molinos: "In this world we live to suffer. But in
+time that suffering is soothed and lulled to sleep by a habit of pious
+indifference. We thus attain to a negation. Death do you say? Not
+altogether. Without mingling in the world, or heeding its voices, we
+get thereof an echo dim and soft. It is like a windfall of Divine
+Grace, so mild and searching; never more so than in moments of
+self-abasement, when the will is wholly obscured."
+
+Exquisite depths of feeling! Alas, poor Satan! how art thou left
+behind! Bend low, acknowledge, and admire thy children!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The physicians who, having sprung from the popular empiricism which
+men called witchcraft, were far more truly his lawful children, were
+too forgetful of him who had left them his highest patrimony, as being
+his favoured heirs. They were ungrateful to the Witch, who laid the
+way for themselves. Nay, they went further than that. On this fallen
+king, their father and creator, they dealt some hard strokes with the
+whip. "_Thou, too, my son?_" They gave the jesters cruel weapons
+against him.
+
+Even in the sixteenth century there were some to scoff at the spirit
+who through all time, from the days of the Sibyl to those of the
+Witch, had filled and troubled the woman. They maintained that he was
+neither God nor Devil, but only "the Prince of the Air," as the Middle
+Ages called him. Satan was nothing but a disease!
+
+_Possession_ to them was only a result of the prison-like, sedentary,
+dry, unyielding life of the cloister. As for the 6500 devils in
+Gauffridi's little Madeline, and the hosts that fought in the bodies
+of maddened nuns at Loudun and Louviers, these doctors called them
+physical storms. "If �olus can shake the earth," said Yvelin, "why not
+also the body of a girl?" La Cadi�re's surgeon, of whom more anon, had
+the coolness to say, "it was nothing more than a choking of the womb."
+
+Wonderful descent! Routed by the simplest remedies, by exorcisms after
+Moli�re, the terror of the Middle Ages would flee away and vanish
+utterly!
+
+This is too sweeping a reduction of the question. Satan was more than
+that. The doctors saw neither the height nor the depth of him; neither
+his grand revolt in the form of science, nor that strange mixture of
+impurity and pious intrigue, that union of Tartuffe and Priapus, which
+he brought to pass about the year 1700.
+
+People fancy they know something about the eighteenth century, and
+yet have never seen one of its most essential features. The greater
+its outward civilization, the clearer and fuller the light that bathed
+its uppermost layers, so much the more hermetically sealed lay all
+those widespread lower realms, of priests and monks, and women
+credulous, sickly, prone to believe whatever they heard or saw. In the
+years before Cagliostro, Mesmer, and the magnetisers, who appeared
+towards the close of the century, a good many priests still worked
+away at the old dead witchcraft. They talked of nothing but
+enchantments, spread the fear of them abroad, and undertook to hunt
+out the devils with their shameful exorcisms. Many set up for wizards,
+well knowing how little risk they ran, now that people were no longer
+burnt. They knew they were sheltered by the milder spirit of their
+age, by the tolerant teachings of their foes the philosophers, by the
+levity of the great jesters, who thought that anything could be
+extinguished with a laugh. Now it was just because people laughed,
+that these gloomy plot-spinners went their way without much fear. The
+new spirit, that of the Regent namely, was sceptical and easy-natured.
+It shone forth in the _Persian Letters_, it shone forth everywhere in
+the all-powerful journalist who filled that century, Voltaire. At any
+shedding of human blood his whole heart rises indignant. All other
+matters only make him laugh. Little by little, the maxim of the
+worldly public seems to be, "Punish nothing, and laugh at all."
+
+This tolerant spirit suffered Cardinal Tencin to appear in public as
+his sister's husband. This, too, it was that ensured to the masters of
+convents the peaceful possession of their nuns, who were even allowed
+to make declarations of pregnancy, to register the births of their
+children.[106] This tolerant temper made excuses for Father
+Apollinaire, when he was caught in a shameful piece of exorcism. That
+worthy Jesuit, Cauvrigny, idol of the provincial convents, paid for
+his adventures only by a recall to Paris, in other words--by fresh
+preferment.
+
+    [106] The noble Chapter of Canons of Pignan were sixteen in
+    number. In one year the provost received from the nuns
+    sixteen declarations of pregnancy. (See MS. History of Besse,
+    by M. Renoux.) One good fruit of this publicity was the
+    decrease of infanticide among the religious orders. At the
+    price of a little shame, the nuns let their children live,
+    and doubtless became good mothers. Those of Pignan put their
+    babes out to nurse with the neighbouring peasants, who
+    brought them up as their own.
+
+Such also was the punishment awarded the famous Jesuit, Girard, who
+was loaded with honours when he should have got the rope. He died in
+the sweetest savour of holiness. His was the most curious affair of
+that century. It enables us to probe the peculiar methods of that day,
+to realize the coarse jumble of jarring machinery which was then at
+work. As a thing of course, it was preluded by the dangerous suavities
+of the Song of Songs. It was carried on by Mary Alacoque, with a
+marriage of Bleeding Hearts spiced with the morbid blandishments of
+Molinos. To these Girard added the whisperings of Satan and the
+terrors of enchantment. He was at once the Devil and the Devil's
+exorciser. At last, horrible to say, instead of getting justice done
+to her, the unhappy girl whom he sacrificed with so much cruelty, was
+persecuted to death. She disappeared, shut up perhaps by a _lettre de
+cachet_, and buried alive in her tomb.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+FATHER GIRARD AND LA CADIERE: 1730.
+
+
+The Jesuits were unlucky. Powerful at Versailles, where they ruled the
+Court, they had not the slightest credit with Heaven. Not one tiny
+miracle could they do. The Jansenists overflowed, at any rate, with
+touching stories of miracles done. Untold numbers of sick, infirm,
+halt, and paralytic obtained a momentary cure at the tomb of the
+Deacon P�ris. Crushed by a terrible succession of plagues, from the
+time of the Great King to the Regency, when so many were reduced to
+beggary, these unfortunate people went to entreat a poor, good fellow,
+a virtuous imbecile, a saint in spite of his absurdities, to make them
+whole. And what need, after all, of laughter? His life is far more
+touching than ridiculous. We are not to be surprised if these good
+folk, in the emotion of seeing their benefactor's tomb, suddenly
+forgot their own sufferings. The cure did not last, but what matter? A
+miracle indeed had taken place, a miracle of devotion, of
+lovingkindness, of gratitude. Latterly, with all this some knavery
+began to mingle, but at that time, in 1728, these wonderful popular
+scenes were very pure.
+
+The Jesuits would have given anything for the least of the miracles
+they denied. For well-nigh fifty years they worked away, embellishing
+with fables and anecdotes their Legend of the Sacred Heart, the story
+of Mary Alacoque. For twenty-five or thirty years they had been trying
+to convince the world that their helpmate, James II. of England, not
+content with healing the king's evil (in his character of King of
+France), amused himself after his death in making the dumb to speak,
+the lame to walk straight, and the squint-eyed to see properly. They
+who were cured squinted worse than ever. As for the dumb, it so
+chanced that she who played this part was a manifest rogue, caught in
+the very act of stealing. She roamed the provinces: at every chapel of
+any renowned saint she was healed by a miracle and received alms, and
+then began her work again elsewhere.
+
+For getting wonders wrought the South was a better country. There
+might be found a plenty of nervous women, easy to excite, the very
+ones to make into somnambulists, subjects of miracle, bearers of
+mystic marks, and so forth.
+
+At Marseilles the Jesuits had on their side a bishop, Belzunce, a
+bold, hearty sort of man, renowned in the memorable plague,[107] but
+credulous and narrow-minded withal; under whose countenance many a
+bold venture might be made. Beside him they had placed a Jesuit of
+Franche-Comt�, not wanting in mind, whose austere outside did not
+prevent his preaching pleasantly, in an ornate and rather worldly
+style, such as the ladies loved. A true Jesuit, he made his way by two
+different methods, now by feminine intrigue, anon by his holy
+utterances. Girard had on his side neither years nor figure; he was a
+man of forty-seven, tall, withered, weak-looking, of dirty aspect, and
+given to spitting without end.[108] He had long been a tutor, even
+till he was thirty-seven; and he preserved some of his college tastes.
+For the last ten years, namely, ever since the great plague, he had
+been confessor to the nuns. With them he had fared well, winning over
+them a high degree of power by enforcing a method seemingly quite at
+variance with the Provencial temperament, by teaching the doctrine and
+the discipline of a mystic death, of absolute passiveness, of entire
+forgetfulness of self. The dreadful crisis through which they had just
+passed had deadened their spirits, and weakened hearts already
+unmanned by a kind of morbid languor. Under Girard's leading, the
+Carmelites of Marseilles carried their mysticism to great lengths; and
+first among them was Sister Remusat, who passed for a saint.
+
+    [107] The great plague of 1720, which carried off 60,000
+    people about Marseilles. Belzunce is the "Marseilles' good
+    bishop" of Pope's line--TRANS.
+
+    [108] See "The Proceedings in the Affair of Father Girard and
+    La Cadi�re," Aix, 1733.
+
+In spite, or perhaps by reason, of this success, the Jesuits took
+Girard away from Marseilles: they wanted to employ him in raising
+anew their house at Toulon. Colbert's splendid institution, the
+Seminary for Naval Chaplains, had been entrusted to the Jesuits, with
+the view of cleansing the young chaplains from the influence of the
+Lazarists, who ruled them almost everywhere. But the two Jesuits
+placed in charge were men of small capacity. One was a fool; the
+other, Sabatier, remarkable, in spite of his age, for heat of temper.
+With all the insolence of our old navy he never kept himself under the
+least control. In Toulon he was reproached, not for having a mistress,
+nor yet a married woman, but for intriguing in a way so insolent and
+outrageous as to drive the husband wild. He sought to keep the husband
+specially alive to his own shame, to make him wince with every kind of
+pang. Matters were pushed so far that at last the husband died
+outright.
+
+Still greater was the scandal caused by the Jesuits' rivals, the
+Observantines, who, having spiritual charge of a sisterhood at
+Ollioules, made mistresses openly of the nuns, and, not content with
+this, dared even to seduce the little boarders. One Aubany, the Father
+Guardian, violated a girl of thirteen; when her parents pursued him,
+he found shelter at Marseilles.
+
+As Director of the Seminary for Chaplains, Girard began, through his
+seeming sternness and his real dexterity, to win for the Jesuits an
+ascendant over monks thus compromised, and over parish-priests of very
+vulgar manners and scanty learning.
+
+In those Southern regions, where the men are abrupt, not seldom
+uncouth of speech and appearance, the women have a lively relish for
+the gentle gravity of the men of the North: they feel thankful to them
+for speaking a language at once aristocratic, official, and French.
+
+When Girard reached Toulon, he must already have gained full knowledge
+of the ground before him. Already had he won over a certain Guiol, who
+sometimes came to Marseilles, where she had a daughter, a Carmelite
+nun. This Guiol, wife of a small carpenter, threw herself entirely
+into his hands, even more so than he wanted. She was of ripe age,
+extremely vehement for a woman of forty-seven, depraved and ready for
+anything, ready to do him service of whatever kind, no matter what he
+might do or be, whether he were a sinner or a saint.
+
+This Guiol, besides her Carmelite daughter at Marseilles, had another,
+a lay-sister to the Ursulines of Toulon. The Ursulines, an order of
+teaching nuns, formed everywhere a kind of centre; their parlour, the
+resort of mothers, being a half-way stage between the cloister and the
+world. At their house, and doubtless through their means, Girard saw
+the ladies of the town, among them one of forty years, a spinster,
+Mdlle. Gravier, daughter of an old contractor for the royal works at
+the Arsenal. This lady had a shadow who never left her, her cousin La
+Reboul, daughter of a skipper and sole heiress to herself; a woman,
+too, who really meant to succeed her, though very nearly her own age,
+being five-and-thirty. Around these gradually grew a small roomful of
+Girard's admirers, who became his regular penitents. Among them were
+sometimes introduced a few young girls, such as La Cadi�re, a
+tradesman's daughter and herself a sempstress, La Laugier, and La
+Batarelle, the daughter of a waterman. They had godly readings
+together, and now and then small suppers. But they were specially
+interested in certain letters which recounted the miracles and
+ecstacies of Sister Remusat, who was still alive; her death occurring
+in February, 1730. What a glorious thing for Father Girard, who had
+led her to a pitch so lofty! They read, they wept, they shouted with
+admiration. If they were not ecstatic yet, they were not far from
+being so. Already, to please her kinswoman, would La Reboul throw
+herself at times into a strange plight by holding her breath and
+pinching her nose.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Among these girls and women the least frivolous certainly was
+Catherine Cadi�re, a delicate, sickly girl of seventeen, taken up
+wholly with devotion and charity, of a mournful countenance, which
+seemed to say that, young as she was, she had felt more keenly than
+anyone else the great misfortunes of the time, those, namely, of
+Provence and Toulon. This is easily explained. She was born during the
+frightful famine of 1709; and just as the child was growing into a
+maiden, she witnessed the fearful scenes of the great plague. Those
+two events seemed to have left their mark upon her, to have taken her
+out of the present into a life beyond.
+
+This sad flower belonged wholly to Toulon, to the Toulon of that day.
+To understand her better we must remember what that town is and what
+it was.
+
+Toulon is a thoroughfare, a landing-place, the entrance of an immense
+harbour and a huge arsenal. The sense of this carries the traveller
+away, and prevents his seeing Toulon itself. There is a town however
+there, indeed an ancient city. It contains two different sets of
+people, the stranger functionaries, and the genuine Toulonnese, who
+are far from friendly to the former, regarding them with envy, and
+often roused to rebellion by the swaggering of the naval officers. All
+these differences were concentred in the gloomy streets of a town in
+those days choked up within its narrow girdle of fortifications. The
+most peculiar feature about this small dark town is, that it lies
+exactly between two broad seas of light, between the marvellous mirror
+of its roadstead and its glorious amphitheatre of mountains,
+baldheaded, of a dazzling grey, that blinds you in the noonday sun.
+All the gloomier look the streets themselves. Such as do not lead
+straight to the harbour and draw some light therefrom, are plunged at
+all hours in deep gloom. Filthy byeways, and small tradesmen with
+shops ill-furnished, invisible to anyone coming for the day, such is
+the general aspect of the place. The interior forms a maze of passages
+in which you may find plenty of churches, and old convents now turned
+into barracks. Copious kennels, laden and foul with sewage water, run
+down in torrents. The air is almost stagnant, and in so dry a climate
+you are surprised at seeing so much moisture.
+
+In front of the new theatre a passage called La Rue de l'H�pital leads
+from the narrow Rue Royale into the narrow Rue des Cannoniers. It
+might almost be called a blind alley. The sun, however, just looks
+down upon it at noon, but, finding the place so dismal, passes on
+forthwith, and leaves the passage to its wonted darkness.
+
+Among these gloomy dwellings the smallest was that of the Sister
+Cadi�re, a retail dealer, or huckster. There was no entrance but by
+the shop, and only one room on each floor. The Cadi�res were honest
+pious folk, and Madame Cadi�re the mirror of excellence itself. These
+good people were not altogether poor. Besides their small dwelling in
+the town, they too, like most of their fellow-townsmen, had a
+country-house of their own. This latter is, commonly, a mere hut, a
+little stony plot of ground yielding a little wine. In the days of its
+naval greatness, under Colbert and his son, the wondrous bustle in the
+harbour brought some profit to the town. French money flowed in. The
+many great lords who passed that way brought their households along
+with them, an army of wasteful domestics, who left a good many things
+behind them. All this came to a sudden end. The artificial movement
+stopped short: even the workmen at the arsenal could no longer get
+their wages; shattered vessels were left unrepaired; and at last the
+timbers themselves were sold.
+
+Toulon was keenly sensible of the rebound. At the siege of 1707 it
+seemed as if dead. What, then, was it in the dreadful year 1709, the
+71st of Louis XIV., when every plague at once, a hard winter, a
+famine, and an epidemic, seemed bent on utterly destroying France? The
+very trees of Provence were not spared. All traffic came to an end.
+The roads were covered with starving beggars. Begirt with bandits who
+stopped up every outlet, Toulon quaked for fear.
+
+To crown all, Madame Cadi�re, in this year of sorrow, was with child.
+Three boys she had borne already. The eldest stayed in the shop to
+help his father. The second was with the Friar Preachers, and destined
+to become a Dominican, or a Jacobin as they were then called. The
+third was studying in the Jesuit seminary as a priest to be. The
+wedded couple wanted a daughter; Madame prayed to Heaven for a saint.
+She spent her nine months in prayer, fasting, or eating nought but rye
+bread. She had a daughter, namely Catherine. The babe was very
+delicate and, like her brothers, unhealthy. The dampness of an
+ill-aired dwelling, and the poor nourishment gained from a mother so
+thrifty and more than temperate, had something to do with this. The
+brothers had scrofulous glands, and in her earlier years the little
+thing suffered from the same cause. Without being altogether ill, she
+had all the suffering sweetness of a sickly child. She grew up without
+growing stronger. At an age when other children have all the strength
+and gladness of upswelling life in them, she was already saying, "I
+have not long to live."
+
+She took the small-pox, which left her rather marked. I know not if
+she was handsome, but it is clear that she was very winning, with all
+the charming contrasts, the twofold nature of the maidens of Provence.
+Lively and pensive, gay and sad, by turns, she was a good little
+worshipper, but given to harmless pranks withal. Between the long
+church services, if she went into the country with girls of her own
+age, she made no fuss about doing as they did, but would sing and
+dance away and flourish her tambourine. But such days were few. Most
+times her chief delight was to climb up to the top of the house, to
+bring herself nearer heaven, to obtain a glimpse of daylight, to look
+out, perhaps, on some small strip of sea, or some pointed peak in the
+vast wilderness of hills. Thenceforth to her eyes they were serious
+still, but less unkindly than before, less bald and leafless, in a
+garment thinly strewn with arbutus and larch.
+
+This dead town of Toulon numbered 26,000 inhabitants when the plague
+began. It was a huge throng cooped up in one spot. But from this
+centre let us take away a girdle of great convents with their backs
+upon the ramparts, convents of Minorites, Ursulines, Visitandines,
+Bernardines, Oratorians, Jesuits, Capuchins, Recollects; those of the
+Refuge, the Good Shepherd, and, midmost of all, the enormous convent
+of Dominicans. Add to these the parish churches, parsonages, bishop's
+palace, and it seems that the clergy filled up the place, while the
+people had no room at all, to speak of.[109]
+
+    [109] See the work by M. d'Antrechaus, and the excellent
+    treatise by M. Gustave Lambert.
+
+On a centre so closely thronged, we may guess how savagely the plague
+would fasten. Toulon's kind heart was also to prove her bane. She
+received with generous warmth some fugitives from Marseilles. These
+are just as likely to have brought the plague with them, as certain
+bales of wool to which was traced the first appearance of that
+scourge. The chief men of the place were about to fly, to scatter
+themselves over the country. But the First Consul, M. d'Antrechaus, a
+man of heroic soul, withheld them, saying, with a stern air, "And what
+will the people do, sirs, in this impoverished town, if the rich folk
+carry their purses away?" So he held them back, and compelled all
+persons to stay where they were. Now the horrors of Marseilles had
+been ascribed to the mutual intercourse of its inhabitants.
+D'Antrechaus, however, tried a system entirely the reverse, tried to
+isolate the people of Toulon, by shutting them up in their houses.
+Two huge hospitals were established, in the roadstead and in the
+hills. All who did not come to these, had to keep at home on pain of
+death. For seven long months D'Antrechaus carried out a wager, which
+would have been held impossible, the keeping, namely, and feeding in
+their own houses, of a people numbering 26,000 souls. All that time
+Toulon was one vast tomb. No one stirred save in the morning, to deal
+out bread from door to door, and then to carry off the dead. Most of
+the doctors perished, and the magistrates all but D'Antrechaus. The
+gravediggers also perished, and their places were filled by condemned
+deserters, who went to work with brutal and headlong violence. Bodies
+were thrown into the tumbril, head downwards, from the fourth storey.
+One mother, having just lost her little girl, shrunk from seeing her
+poor wee body thus hurled below, and by dint of bribing, managed to
+get it lowered the proper way. As they were bearing it off, the child
+came to; it lived still. They took her up again, and she survived, to
+become the grandmother of the learned M. Brun, who wrote an excellent
+history of the port.
+
+Poor little Cadi�re was exactly the same age as this girl who died and
+lived again, being twelve years old, an age for her sex so full of
+danger. In the general closing of the churches, in the putting down of
+all holidays, and chiefly of Christmas, wont to be so merry a season
+at Toulon, the child's fancy saw the end of all things. It seems as
+though she never quite shook off that fancy. Toulon never raised her
+head again. She retained her desert-like air. Everything was in ruins,
+everyone in mourning; widowers, orphans, desperate beings were
+everywhere seen. In the midst, a mighty shadow, moved D'Antrechaus
+himself; he had seen all about him perish, his sons, his brothers, and
+his colleagues; and was now so gloriously ruined, that he was fain to
+look to his neighbours for his daily meals. The poor quarrelled among
+themselves for the honour of feeding him.
+
+The young girl told her mother that she would never more wear any of
+her smarter clothes, and she must, therefore, sell them. She would do
+nothing but wait upon the sick, and she was always dragging her to the
+hospital at the end of the street. A little neighbour-girl of
+fourteen, Laugier by name, who had lost her father, was living with
+her mother in great wretchedness. Catherine was continually going to
+them with food and clothes, and anything she could get for them. She
+begged her parents to defray the cost of apprenticing Laugier to a
+dressmaker; and such was her sway over them that they could not refuse
+to incur so heavy an outlay. Her piety, her many little charms of
+soul, rendered her all-powerful. She was impassioned in her charity,
+giving not alms only, but love as well. She longed to make Laugier
+perfect, rejoiced to have her by her side, and often gave her half her
+bed. The pair had been admitted among the _Daughters of Saint
+Theresa_, the third order established by the Carmelites. Mdlle.
+Cadi�re was their model nun, and seemed at thirteen a Carmelite
+complete. Already she devoured some books of mysticism borrowed from a
+Visitandine. In marked contrast with herself seemed Laugier, now a
+girl of fifteen, who would do nothing but eat and look handsome. So
+indeed she was, and on that account had been made sextoness to the
+chapel of Saint Theresa. This led her into great familiarities with
+the priests, and so, when her conduct called for her expulsion from
+the congregation, another authority, the vicar-general, flew into such
+a rage as to declare that, if she were expelled, the chapel itself
+would be interdicted.
+
+Both these girls had the temperament of their country, suffering from
+great excitement of the nerves, and from what was called flatulence of
+the womb. But in each the result was entirely different; being very
+carnal in the case of Laugier, who was gluttonous, lazy, passionate;
+but wholly cerebral with regard to the pure and gentle Catherine, who
+owing to her ailments or to a lively imagination that took everything
+up into itself, had no ideas concerning sex. "At twenty she was like a
+child of seven." For nothing cared she but praying and giving of alms;
+she had no wish at all to marry. At the very word "marriage," she
+would fall a-weeping, as if she had been asked to abandon God.
+
+They had lent her the life of her patroness, Catherine of Genoa, and
+she had bought for herself _The Castle of the Soul_, by St. Theresa.
+Few confessors could follow her in these mystic flights. They who
+spoke clumsily of such things gave her pain. She could not keep either
+her mother's confessor, the cathedral-priest, or another, a Carmelite,
+or even the old Jesuit Sabatier. At sixteen she found a priest of
+Saint Louis, a highly spiritual person. She spent days in church, to
+such a degree that her mother, by this time a widow and often in want
+of her, had to punish her, for all her own piety, on her return home.
+It was not the girl's fault, however: during her ecstasies she quite
+forgot herself. So great a saint was she accounted by the girls of her
+own age, that sometimes at mass they seemed to see the Host drawn on
+by the moving power of her love, until it flew up and placed itself of
+its own accord in her mouth.
+
+Her two young brothers differed from each other in their feelings
+towards Girard. The elder, who lived with the Friar Preachers, shared
+the natural dislike of all Dominicans for the Jesuit. The other, who
+was studying with the Jesuits in order to become a priest, regarded
+Girard as a great man, a very saint, a man to honour as a hero. Of
+this younger brother, sickly like herself, Catherine was very fond.
+His ceaseless talking about Girard was sure to do its work upon her.
+One day she met the father in the street. He looked so grave, but so
+good and mild withal, that a voice within her said, "Behold the man to
+whose guidance thou art given!" The next Saturday, when she came to
+confess to him, he said that he had been expecting her. In her amazed
+emotion she never dreamed that her brother might have given him
+warning, but fancied that the mysterious voice had spoken to him also,
+and that they two were sharing the heavenly communion of warnings from
+the world above.
+
+Six months of summer passed away, and yet Girard, who confessed her
+every Saturday, had taken no step towards her. The scandal about old
+Sabatier had set him on his guard. His own prudence would have held
+him to an attachment of a darker kind for such a one as the Guiol, who
+was certainly very mature, but also ardent and a devil incarnate.
+
+It was Cadi�re who made the first advances towards him, innocent as
+they were. Her brother, the giddy Jacobin, had taken it into his head
+to lend a lady and circulate through the town a satire called _The
+Morality of the Jesuits_. The latter were soon apprised of this.
+Sabatier swore that he would write to the Court for a sealed order
+(lettre-de-cachet) to shut up the Jacobin. In her trouble and alarm,
+his sister, with tears in her eyes, went to beseech Father Girard for
+pity's sake to interfere. On her coming again to him a little later,
+he said, "Make yourself easy; your brother has nothing to fear; I have
+settled the matter for him." She was quite overcome. Girard saw his
+advantage. A man of his influence, a friend of the King, a friend of
+Heaven as well, after such proof of goodness as he had just been
+giving, would surely have the very strongest sway over so young a
+heart! He made the venture, and in her own uncertain language said to
+her, "Put yourself in my hands; yield yourself up to me altogether."
+Without a blush she answered, in the fulness of her angelic purity,
+"Yes;" meaning nought else than to have him for her sole director.
+
+What were his plans concerning her? Would he make her a mistress or
+the tool of his charlatanry? Girard doubtless swayed to and fro, but
+he leant, I think, most towards the latter idea. He had to make his
+choice, might manage to seek out pleasures free from risk. But Mdlle.
+Cadi�re was under a pious mother. She lived with her family, a married
+brother and the two churchmen, in a very confined house, whose only
+entrance lay through the shop of the elder brother. She went no
+whither except to church. With all her simplicity she knew
+instinctively what things were impure, what houses dangerous. The
+Jesuit penitents were fond of meeting together at the top of a house,
+to eat, and play the fool, and cry out, in their Provencial tongue,
+"Vivent les _Jesuitons_!" A neighbour, disturbed by their noise, went
+and found them lying on their faces, singing and eating fritters, all
+paid for, it was said, out of the alms-money. Cadi�re was also
+invited, but taking a disgust to the thing she never went a second
+time.
+
+She was assailable only through her soul. And it was only her soul
+that Girard seemed to desire. That she should accept those lessons of
+passive faith which he had taught at Marseilles, this apparently was
+all his aim. Hoping that example would do more for him than precept,
+he charged his tool Guiol to escort the young saint to Marseilles,
+where lived the friend of Cadi�re's childhood, a Carmelite nun, a
+daughter of Guiol's. The artful woman sought to win her trust by
+pretending that she, too, was sometimes ecstatic. She crammed her with
+absurd stories. She told her, for instance, that on finding a cask of
+wine spoilt in her cellar, she began to pray, and immediately the wine
+became good. Another time she felt herself pierced by a crown of
+thorns, but the angels had comforted her by serving up a good dinner,
+of which she partook with Father Girard.
+
+Cadi�re gained her mother's leave to go with this worthy Guiol to
+Marseilles, and Madame Cadi�re paid her expenses. It was now the most
+scorching month--that of August, 1729--in a scorching climate, when
+the country was all dried up, and the eye could see nothing but a
+rugged mirror of rocks and flintstone. The weak, parched brain of a
+sick girl suffering from the fatigues of travel, was all the more
+easily impressed by the dismal air of a nunnery of the dead. The true
+type of this class was the Sister Remusat, already a corpse to outward
+seeming, and soon to be really dead. Cadi�re was moved to admire so
+lofty a piece of perfection. Her treacherous companion allured her
+with the proud conceit of being such another and filling her place
+anon.
+
+During this short trip of hers, Girard, who remained amid the stifling
+heats of Toulon, had met with a dismal fall. He would often go to the
+girl Laugier, who believed herself to be ecstatic, and "comfort" her
+to such good purpose that he got her presently with child. When Mdlle.
+Cadi�re came back in the highest ecstasy, as if like to soar away, he
+for his part was become so carnal, so given up to pleasure, that he
+"let fall on her ears a whisper of love." Thereat she took fire, but
+all, as anyone may see, in her own pure, saintly, generous way; as
+eager to keep him from falling, as devoting herself even to die for
+his sake.
+
+One of her saintly gifts was her power of seeing into the depths of
+men's hearts. She had sometimes chanced to learn the secret life and
+morals of her confessors, to tell them of their faults; and this, in
+their fear and amazement, many of them had borne with great humility.
+One day this summer, on seeing Guiol come into her room, she suddenly
+said, "Wicked woman! what have you been doing?"
+
+"And she was right," said Guiol herself, at a later period; "for I had
+just been doing an evil deed." Perhaps she had just been rendering
+Laugier the same midwife's service which next year she wished to
+render Batarelle.
+
+Very likely, indeed, Laugier had entrusted to Catherine, at whose
+house she often slept, the secret of her good fortune, the love, the
+fatherly caresses of her saint. It was a hard and stormy trial for
+Catherine's spirits. On the one side, she had learnt by heart
+Girard's maxim, that whatever a saint may do is holy. But on the other
+hand, her native honesty and the whole course of her education
+compelled her to believe that over-fondness for the creature was ever
+a mortal sin. This woeful tossing between two different doctrines
+quite finished the poor girl, brought on within her dreadful storms,
+until at last she fancied herself possessed with a devil.
+
+And here her goodness of heart was made manifest. Without humbling
+Girard, she told him she had a vision of a soul tormented with impure
+thoughts and deadly sin; that she felt the need of rescuing that soul,
+by offering the Devil victim for victim, by agreeing to yield herself
+into his keeping in Girard's stead. He never forbade her, but gave her
+leave to be possessed for one year only.
+
+Like the rest of the town, she had heard of the scandalous loves of
+Father Sabatier--an insolent passionate man, with none of Girard's
+prudence. The scorn which the Jesuits--to her mind, such pillars of
+the Church--were sure to incur, had not escaped her notice. She said
+one day to Girard, "I had a vision of a gloomy sea, with a vessel full
+of souls tossed by a storm of unclean thoughts. On this vessel were
+two Jesuits. Said I to the Redeemer, whom I saw in heaven, 'Lord, save
+them, and let me drown! The whole of their shipwreck do I take upon
+myself,' And God, in His mercy, granted my prayer."
+
+All through the trial, and when Girard, become her foe, was aiming at
+her death, she never once recurred to this subject. These two
+parables, so clear in meaning, she never explained. She was too
+high-minded to say a word about them. She had doomed herself to very
+damnation. Some will say that in her pride she deemed herself so
+deadened and impassive as to defy the impurity with which the Demon
+troubled a man of God. But it is quite clear that she had no accurate
+knowledge of sensual things, foreseeing nought in such a mystery save
+pains and torments of the Devil. Girard was very cold, and quite
+unworthy of all this sacrifice. Instead of being moved to compassion,
+he sported with her credulity through a vile deceit. Into her casket
+he slipped a paper, in which God declared that, for her sake, He would
+indeed save the vessel. But he took care not to leave so absurd a
+document there: she would have read it again and again until she came
+to perceive how spurious it was. The angel who brought the paper
+carried it off the next day.
+
+With the same coarseness of feeling Girard lightly allowed her, all
+unsettled and incapable of praying as she plainly was, to communicate
+as much as she pleased in different churches every day. This only made
+her worse. Filled already with the Demon, she harboured the two foes
+in one place. With equal power they fought within her against each
+other. She thought she would burst asunder. She would fall into a
+dead faint, and so remain for several hours. By December she could
+not move even from her bed.
+
+Girard had now but too good a plea for seeing her. He was prudent
+enough to let himself be led by the younger brother at least as far as
+her door. The sick girl's room was at the top of the house. Her mother
+stayed discreetly in the shop. He was left alone as long as he
+pleased, and if he chose could turn the key. At this time she was very
+ill. He handled her as a child, drawing her forward a little to the
+front of the bed, holding her head, and kissing her in a fatherly way.
+
+She was very pure, but very sensitive. A slight touch, that no one
+else would have remarked, deprived her of her senses: this Girard
+found out for himself, and the knowledge of it possessed him with evil
+thoughts. He threw her at will into this trance,[110] and she, in her
+thorough trust in him, never thought of trying to prevent it, feeling
+only somewhat troubled and ashamed at causing such a man to waste upon
+her so much of his precious time. His visits were very long. It was
+easy to foresee what would happen at last. Ill as she was, the poor
+girl inspired Girard with a passion none the less wild and
+uncontrollable. One freedom led to another, and her plaintive
+remonstrances were met with scornful replies. "I am your master--your
+god. You must bear all for obedience sake." At length, about
+Christmas-time, the last barrier of reserve was broken down; and the
+poor girl awoke from her trance to utter a wail which moved even him
+to pity.
+
+    [110] A case of mesmerism applied to a very susceptible
+    patient.--TRANS.
+
+An issue which she but dimly realized, Girard, as better enlightened,
+viewed with growing alarm. Signs of what was coming began to show
+themselves in her bodily health. To crown the entanglement, Laugier
+also found herself with child. Those religious meetings, those suppers
+watered with the light wine of the country, led to a natural raising
+of the spirits of a race so excitable, and the trance that followed
+spread from one to another. With the more artful all this was mere
+sham; but with the sanguine, vehement Laugier the trance was genuine
+enough. In her own little room she had real fits of raving and
+swooning, especially when Girard came in. A little later than Cadi�re
+she, too became fruitful.
+
+The danger was great. The girls were neither in a desert nor in the
+heart of a convent, but rather, as one might say, in the open street:
+Laugier in the midst of prying neighbours, Cadi�re in her own family.
+The latter's brother, the Jacobin, began to take Girard's long visits
+amiss. One day when Girard came, he ventured to stay beside her as
+though to watch over her safety. Girard boldly turned him out of the
+room, and the mother angrily drove her son from the house.
+
+This was very like to bring on an explosion. Of course, the young
+man, swelling with rage at this hard usage, at this expulsion from his
+home, would cry aloud to the Preaching Friars, who in their turn would
+seize so fair an opening, to go about repeating the story and stirring
+up the whole town against the Jesuit. The latter, however, resolved to
+meet them with a strangely daring move, to save himself by a crime.
+The libertine became a scoundrel.
+
+He knew his victim, had seen the scrofulous traces of her childhood,
+traces healed up but still looking different from common scars. Some
+of these were on her feet, others a little below her bosom. He formed
+a devilish plan of renewing the wounds and passing them off as
+"_stigmata_," like those procured from heaven by St. Francis and other
+saints, who sought after the closest conformity with their pattern,
+the crucified Redeemer, even to bearing on themselves the marks of the
+nails and the spear-wound in the side. The Jesuits were distressed at
+having nought to show against the miracles of the Jansenists. Girard
+felt sure of pleasing them by an unlooked-for miracle. He could not
+but receive the support of his own order, of their house at Toulon.
+One of them, old Sabatier, was ready to believe anything: he had of
+yore been Cadi�re's confessor, and this affair would bring him into
+credit. Another of these was Father Grignet, a pious old dotard, who
+would see whatever they pleased. If the Carmelites or any others were
+minded to have their doubts, they might be taught, by warnings from a
+high quarter, to consult their safety by keeping silence. Even the
+Jacobin Cadi�re, hitherto a stern and jealous foe, might find his
+account in turning round and believing in a tale which made his family
+illustrious and himself the brother of a saint.
+
+"But," some will say, "did not the thing come naturally? We have
+instances numberless, and well-attested, of persons really marked with
+the sacred wounds."
+
+The reverse is more likely. When she was aware of the new wounds, she
+felt ashamed and distressed with the fear of displeasing Girard by
+this return of her childish ailments; for such she deemed the sores
+which he had opened afresh while she lay unconscious in the trance. So
+she sped away to a neighbour, one Madame Truc, who dabbled in physic,
+and of her she bought, as if for her youngest brother, an ointment to
+burn away the sores.
+
+She would have thought herself guilty of a great sin, if she had not
+told everything to Girard. So, however fearful she might be of
+displeasing and disgusting him, she spoke of this matter also. Looking
+at the wounds, he began playing his comedy, rebuked her attempt to
+heal them, and thus set herself against God. They were the marks, he
+said, of Heaven. Falling on his knees, he kissed the wounds on her
+feet. She crossed herself in self-abasement, struggled long-time
+against such a belief. Girard presses and scolds, makes her show him
+her side, and looks admiringly at the wound. "I, too," he said, "have
+a wound; but mine is within."
+
+And now she is fain to believe in herself as a living miracle. Her
+acceptance of a thing so startling was greatly quickened by the fact,
+that Sister Remusat was just then dead. She had seen her in glory, her
+heart borne upward by the angels. Who was to take her place on earth?
+Who should inherit her high gifts, the heavenly favours wherewith she
+had been crowned? Girard offered her the succession, corrupting her
+through her pride.
+
+From that time she was changed. In her vanity she set down every
+natural movement within her as holy. The loathings, the sudden starts
+of a woman great with child, of all which she knew nothing, were
+accounted for as inward struggles of the Spirit. As she sat at table
+with her family on the first day of Lent, she suddenly beheld the
+Saviour, who said, "I will lead thee into the desert, where thou shalt
+share with Me all the love and all the suffering of the holy Forty
+Days." She shuddered for dread of the suffering she must undergo. But
+still she would offer up her single self for a whole world of sinners.
+Her visions were all of blood; she had nothing but blood before her
+eyes. She beheld Jesus like a sieve running blood. She herself began
+to spit blood, and lose it in other ways. At the same time her nature
+seemed quite changed. The more she suffered, the more amorous she
+grew. On the twentieth day of Lent she saw her name coupled with that
+of Girard. Her pride, raised and quickened by these new sensations,
+enabled her to comprehend the _special sway_ enjoyed by Mary, the
+Woman, with respect to God. She felt _how much lower angels are_ than
+the least of saints, male or female. She saw the Palace of Glory, and
+mistook herself for the Lamb. To crown these illusions she felt
+herself lifted off the ground, several feet into the air. She could
+hardly believe it, until Mdlle. Gravier, a respectable person, assured
+her of the fact. Everyone came, admired, worshipped. Girard brought
+his colleague Grignet, who knelt before her and wept with joy.
+
+Not daring to go to her every day, Girard often made her come to the
+Jesuits' Church. There, before the altar, before the cross, he
+surrendered himself to a passion all the fiercer for such a sacrilege.
+Had she no scruples? did she still deceive herself? It seems as if, in
+the midst of an elation still unfeigned and earnest, her conscience
+was already dazed and darkened. Under cover of her bleeding wounds,
+those cruel favours of her heavenly Spouse, she began to feel some
+curious compensations....
+
+In her reveries there are two points especially touching. One is the
+pure ideal she had formed of a faithful union, when she fancied that
+she saw her name and that of Girard joined together for ever in the
+Book of Life. The other is her kindliness of heart, the charmingly
+childlike nature which shines out through all her extravagances. On
+Palm Sunday, looking at the joyous party around their family table,
+she wept three hours together, for thinking that "on that very day no
+one had asked Jesus to dinner."
+
+Through all that Lent, she could hardly eat anything: the little she
+took was thrown up again. The last fifteen days she fasted altogether,
+until she reached the last stage of weakness. Who would have believed
+that against this dying girl, to whom nothing remained but the mere
+breath, Girard could practise new barbarities? He had kept her sores
+from closing. A new one was now formed on her right side. And at last,
+on Good Friday, he gave the finishing touch to his cruel comedy, by
+making her wear a crown of iron-wire, which pierced her forehead,
+until drops of blood rolled down her face. All this was done without
+much secresy. He began by cutting off her long hair and carrying it
+away. He ordered the crown of one Bitard, a cagemaker in the town. She
+did not show herself to her visitors with the crown on: they saw the
+result only, the drops of blood and the bleeding visage. Impressions
+of the latter, like so many _Veronicas_,[111] were taken off on
+napkins, and doubtless given away by Girard to people of great piety.
+
+    [111] After the saint of that name, whose handkerchief
+    received the impress of Christ's countenance.--TRANS.
+
+The mother, in her own despite, became an abettor in all this
+juggling. In truth, she was afraid of Girard; she began to find him
+capable of anything, and somebody, perhaps the Guiol, had told her, in
+the deepest confidence, that, if she said a word against him, her
+daughter would not be alive twenty-four hours.
+
+Cadi�re, for her part, never lied about the matter. In the narrative
+taken down from her own lips of what happened this Lent, she expressly
+tells of a crown, with sharp points, which stuck in her head, and made
+it bleed. Nor did she then make any secret of the source whence came
+the little crosses she gave her visitors. From a model supplied by
+Girard, they were made to her order by one of her kinsfolk, a
+carpenter in the Arsenal.
+
+On Good Friday, she remained twenty-four hours in a swoon, which they
+called a trance; remained in special charge of Girard, whose
+attentions weakened her, and did her deadly harm. She was now three
+months gone with child. The saintly martyr, the transfigured marvel,
+was already beginning to fill out. Desiring, yet dreading the more
+violent issues of a miscarriage, he plied her daily with reddish
+powders and dangerous drinks.
+
+Much rather would he have had her die, and so have rid himself of the
+whole business. At any rate, he would have liked to get her away from
+her mother, to bury her safe in a convent. Well acquainted with houses
+of that sort, he knew, as Picard had done in the Louviers affair, how
+cleverly and discreetly such cases as Cadi�re's could be hidden away.
+He talked of it this very Good Friday. But she seemed too weak to be
+taken safely from her bed. At last, however, four days after Easter, a
+miscarriage took place.
+
+The girl Laugier had also been having strange convulsive fits, and
+absurd beginnings of _stigmata_: one of them being an old wound,
+caused by her scissors when she was working as a seamstress, the other
+an eruptive sore in her side. Her transports suddenly turned to
+impious despair. She spat upon the crucifix: she cried out against
+Girard, "that devil of a priest, who had brought a poor girl of
+two-and-twenty into such a plight, only to forsake her afterwards!"
+Girard dared not go and face her passionate outbreaks. But the women
+about her, being all in his interest, found some way of bringing this
+matter to a quiet issue.
+
+Was Girard a wizard, as people afterwards maintained? They might well
+think so, who saw how easily, being neither young nor handsome, he had
+charmed so many women. Stranger still it was, that after getting thus
+compromised, he swayed opinion to such a degree. For a while, he
+seemed to have enchanted the whole town.
+
+The truth was, that everyone knew the strength of the Jesuits. Nobody
+cared to quarrel with them. It was hardly reckoned safe to speak ill
+of them, even in a whisper. The bulk of the priesthood consisted of
+monklings of the Mendicant orders, who had no powerful friends or high
+connections. The Carmelites themselves, jealous and hurt as they were
+at losing Cadi�re, kept silence. Her brother, the young Jacobin, was
+lectured by his trembling mother into resuming his old circumspect
+ways. Becoming reconciled to Girard, he came at length to serve him as
+devotedly as did his younger brother, even lending himself to a
+curious trick by which people were led to believe that Girard had the
+gift of prophecy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Such weak opposition as he might have to fear, would come only from
+the very person whom he seemed to have most thoroughly mastered.
+Submissive hitherto, Cadi�re now gave some slight tokens of a coming
+independence which could not help showing itself. On the 30th of
+April, at a country party got up by the polite Girard, and to which he
+sent his troop of young devotees in company with Guiol, Cadi�re fell
+into deep thought. The fair spring-time, in that climate so very
+charming, lifted her heart up to God. She exclaimed with a feeling of
+true piety, "Thee, Thee only, do I seek, O Lord! Thine angels are not
+enough for me." Then one of the party, a blithesome girl, having, in
+the Provencial fashion, hung a tambourine round her neck, Cadi�re
+skipped and danced about like the rest; with a rug thrown across her
+shoulders, she danced the Bohemian measure, and made herself giddy
+with a hundred mad capers.
+
+She was very unsettled. In May she got leave from her mother to make a
+trip to Sainte-Baume, to the Church of St. Mary Magdalen, the chief
+saint of girls on penance. Girard would only let her go under charge
+of two faithful overlookers, Guiol and Reboul. But though she had
+still some trances on the way, she showed herself weary of being a
+passive tool to the violent spirit, whether divine or devilish, that
+annoyed her. The end of her year's _possession_ was not far off. Had
+she not won her freedom? Once issued forth from the gloom and
+witcheries of Toulon, into the open air, in the midst of nature,
+beneath the full sunshine, the prisoner regained her soul, withstood
+the stranger spirit, dared to be herself, to use her own will.
+Girard's two spies were far from edified thereat. On their return from
+this short journey, from the 17th to the 22nd May, they warned him of
+the change. He was convinced of it from his own experience. She fought
+against the trance, seeming no longer wishful to obey aught save
+reason.
+
+He had thought to hold her both by his power of charming and through
+the holiness of his high office, and, lastly, by right of possession
+and carnal usage. But he had no hold upon her at all. The youthful
+soul, which, after all, had not been so much conquered as
+treacherously surprised, resumed its own nature. This hurt him.
+Besides his business of pedant, his tyranny over the children he
+chastised at will, over nuns not less at his disposal, there remained
+within a hard bottom of domineering jealousy. He determined to snatch
+Cadi�re back by punishing this first little revolt, if such a name
+could be given to the timid fluttering of a soul rising again from its
+long compression. On the 22nd May she confessed to him after her wont;
+but he refused to absolve her, declaring her to be so guilty that on
+the morrow he would have to lay upon her a very great penance indeed.
+
+What would that be? A fast? But she was weakened and wasted already.
+Long prayers, again, were not in fashion with Quietist directors,--were
+in fact forbidden. There remained the _discipline_, or bodily
+chastisement. This punishment, then everywhere habitual, was enforced
+as prodigally in convents as in colleges. It was a simple and summary
+means of swift execution, sometimes, in a rude and simple age, carried
+out in the churches themselves. The _Fabliaux_ show us an artless
+picture of manners, where, after confessing husband and wife, the
+priest gave them the discipline without any ceremony, just as they
+were, behind the confessional. Scholars, monks, nuns, were all
+punished in the same way.[112]
+
+    [112] The Dauphin was cruelly flogged. A boy of fifteen,
+    according to St. Simon, died from the pain of a like
+    infliction. The prioress of the Abbey-in-the-Wood, pleaded
+    before the King against the "afflictive chastisement"
+    threatened by her superior. For the credit of the convent,
+    she was spared the public shame; but the superior, to whom
+    she was consigned, doubtless punished her in a quiet way. The
+    immoral tendency of such a practice became more and more
+    manifest. Fear and shame led to woeful entreaties and
+    unworthy bargains.
+
+Girard knew that a girl like Cadi�re, all unused to shame, and very
+modest--for what she had hitherto suffered took place unknown to
+herself in her sleep--would feel so cruelly tortured, so fatally
+crushed by this unseemly chastisement, as utterly to lose what little
+buoyancy she had. She was pretty sure too, if we must speak out, to be
+yet more cruelly mortified than other women, in respect of the pang
+endured by her woman's vanity. With so much suffering, and so many
+fasts, followed by her late miscarriage, her body, always delicate,
+seemed worn away to a shadow. All the more surely would she shrink
+from any exposure of a form so lean, so wasted, so full of aches. Her
+swollen legs and such-like small infirmities would serve to enhance
+her humiliation.
+
+We lack the courage to relate what followed. It may all be read in
+those three depositions, so artless, so manifestly unfeigned, in
+which, without being sworn, she made it her duty to avow what
+self-interest bade her conceal, owning even to things which were
+afterwards turned to the cruellest account against her.
+
+Her first deposition was made on the spur of the moment, before the
+spiritual judge who was sent to take her by surprise. In this we seem
+to be ever hearing the utterances of a young heart that speaks as
+though in God's own presence. The second was taken before the King--I
+should rather say before the magistrate who represented him, the
+Lieutenant Civil and Criminal of Toulon. The last was heard before
+the great assembly of the Parliament of Aix.
+
+Observe that all three, agreeing as they do wonderfully together, were
+printed at Aix under the eye of her enemies, in a volume where, as I
+shall presently prove, an attempt was made to extenuate the guilt of
+Girard, and fasten the reader's gaze on every point likely to tell
+against Cadi�re. And yet the editor could not help inserting
+depositions like these, which bear with crushing weight on the man he
+sought to uphold.
+
+It was a monstrous piece of inconsistency on Girard's part. He first
+frightened the poor girl, and then suddenly took a base, a cruel
+advantage of her fears.
+
+In this case no plea of love can be offered in extenuation. The truth
+is far otherwise: he loved her no more. And this forms the most
+dreadful part of the story. We have seen how cruelly he drugged her;
+we have now to see her utterly forsaken. He owed her a grudge for
+being of greater worth than those other degraded women. He owed her a
+grudge for having unwittingly tempted him and brought him into danger.
+Above all, he could not forgive her for keeping her soul in safety. He
+sought only to tame her down, but caught hopefully at her oft-renewed
+assurance, "I feel that I shall not live." Villanous profligate that
+he was, bestowing his shameful kisses on that poor shattered body
+whose death he longed to see!
+
+How did he account to her for this shocking antagonism of cruelty and
+caresses? Was it meant to try her patience and obedience, or did he
+boldly pass on to the true depths of Molinos' teaching, that "only by
+dint of sinning can sin be quelled"? Did she take it all in full
+earnest, never perceiving that all this show of justice, penitence,
+expiation, was downright profligacy and nothing else?
+
+She did not care to understand him in the strange moral crash that
+befell her after that 23rd May, under the influence of a mild warm
+June. She submitted to her master, of whom she was rather afraid, and
+with a singularly servile passion carried on the farce of undergoing
+small penances day by day. So little regard did Girard show for her
+feelings that he never hid from her his relations with other women.
+All he wanted was to get her into a convent. Meanwhile she was his
+plaything: she saw him, let him have his way. Weak, and yet further
+weakened by the shame that unnerved her, growing sadder and more sad
+at heart, she had now but little hold on life, and would keep on
+saying, in words that brought no sorrow to Girard's soul, "I feel that
+I shall soon be dead."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+CADIERE IN THE CONVENT: 1730.
+
+
+The Abbess of the Ollioules Convent was young for an abbess, being
+only thirty-eight years old. She was not wanting in mind. She was
+lively, swift alike in love and in hatred, hurried away by her heart
+and her senses also, endowed with very little of the tact and the
+moderation needed for the governing of such a body.
+
+This nunnery drew its livelihood from two sources. On the one side,
+there came to it from Toulon two or three nuns of consular families,
+who brought good dowers with them, and therefore did what they
+pleased. They lived with the Observantine monks who had the ghostly
+direction of the convent. On the other hand, these monks, whose order
+had spread to Marseilles and many other places, picked up some little
+boarders and novices who paid for their keep: a contact full of danger
+and unpleasantness for the children, as one may see by the Aubany
+affair.
+
+There was no real confinement, nor much internal order. In the
+scorching summer nights of that African climate, peculiarly oppressive
+and wearying in the airless passes of Ollioules, nuns and novices
+went to and fro with the greatest freedom. The very same things were
+going on at Ollioules in 1730 which we saw in 1630 at Loudun. The bulk
+of nuns, well-nigh a dozen out of the fifteen who made up the house,
+being rather forsaken by the monks, who preferred ladies of loftier
+position, were poor creatures, sick at heart, and disinherited, with
+nothing to console them but tattling, child's play, and other
+school-girls' tricks.
+
+The abbess was afraid that Cadi�re would soon see through all this.
+She made some demur about taking her in. Anon, with some abruptness,
+she entirely changed her cue. In a charming letter, all the more
+flattering as sent so unexpectedly from such a lady to so young a
+girl, she expressed a hope of her leaving the ghostly guidance of
+Father Girard. The girl was not, of course, to be transferred to her
+Observantines, who were far from capable of the charge. The abbess had
+formed the bold, enlivening idea of taking her into her own hands and
+becoming her sole director.
+
+She was very vain. Deeming herself more agreeable than an old Jesuit
+confessor, she reckoned on making this prodigy her own, on conquering
+her without trouble. She would have worked the young saint for the
+benefit of her house.
+
+She paid her the marked compliment of receiving her on the threshold,
+at the street-door. She kissed her, caught her up, led her into the
+abbess's own fine room, and bade her share it with herself. She was
+charmed with her modesty, with her invalid grace, with a certain
+strangeness at once mysterious and melting. In that short journey the
+girl had suffered a great deal. The abbess wanted to lay her down in
+her own bed, saying she loved her so that she would have them sleep
+together like sisters in one bed.
+
+For her purpose this was probably more than was needful. It would have
+been quite enough to have the saint under her own roof. She would now
+have too much the look of a little favourite. The lady, however, was
+surprised at the young girl's hesitation, which doubtless sprang from
+her modesty or her humility; in part, perhaps, from a comparison of
+her own ill-health with the young health and blooming beauty of the
+other. But the abbess tenderly urged her request.
+
+Under the influence of a fondling so close and so continual, she
+deemed that Girard would be forgotten. With all abbesses it had become
+the ruling fancy, the pet ambition, to confess their own nuns,
+according to the practice allowed by St. Theresa. By this pleasant
+scheme of hers the same result would come out of itself, the young
+woman telling her confessors only of small things, but keeping the
+depths of her heart for one particular person. Caressed continually by
+one curious woman, at eventide, in the night, when her head was on the
+pillow, she would have let out many a secret, whether her own or
+another's.
+
+From this living entanglement she could not free herself at the
+first. She slept with the abbess. The latter thought she held her fast
+by a twofold tie, by the opposite means employed on the saint and on
+the woman; that is, on the nervous, sensitive, and, through her
+weakness, perhaps sensual girl. Her story, her sayings, whatever fell
+from her lips, were all written down. From other sources she picked up
+the meanest details of her physical life, and forwarded the report
+thereof to Toulon. She would have made her an idol, a pretty little
+pet doll. On a slope so slippery the work of allurement doubtless
+moved apace. But the girl had scruples and a kind of fear. She made
+one great effort, of which her weak health would have made her seem
+incapable. She humbly asked leave to quit that dove's-nest, that couch
+too soft and delicate, to go and live in common with the novices or
+the boarders.
+
+Great was the abbess's surprise; great her mortification. She fancied
+herself scorned. She took a spite against the thankless girl, and
+never forgave her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From the others Cadi�re met with a very pleasant welcome. The mistress
+of the novices, Madame de Lescot, a nun from Paris, refined and good,
+was a worthier woman than the abbess. She seemed to understand the
+other--to see in her a poor prey of fate, a young heart full of God,
+but cruelly branded by some eccentric spell which seemed like to hurry
+her onward to disgrace, to some unhappy end. She busied herself
+entirely with looking after the girl, saving her from her own
+rashness, interpreting her to others, excusing those things which
+might in her be least excusable.
+
+Saving the two or three noble ladies who lived with the monks and had
+small relish for the higher mysticism, they were all fond of her, and
+took her for an angel from heaven. Their tender feelings having little
+else to engage them, became concentred in her and her alone. They
+found her not only pious and wonderfully devout, but a good child
+withal, kind-hearted, winning, and entertaining. They were no longer
+listless and sick at heart. She engaged and edified them with her
+dreams, with stories true, or rather, perhaps, unfeigned, mingled ever
+with touches of purest tenderness. She would say, "At night I go
+everywhere, even to America. Everywhere I leave letters bidding people
+repent. To-night I shall go and seek you out, even when you have
+locked yourselves in. We will all go together into the Sacred Heart."
+
+The miracle was wrought. Each of them at midnight, so she said,
+received the delightful visit. They all fancied they felt Cadi�re
+embracing them, and making them enter the heart of Jesus. They were
+very frightened and very happy. Tenderest, most credulous of all, was
+Sister Raimbaud, a woman of Marseilles, who tasted this happiness
+fifteen times in three months, or nearly once in every six days.
+
+It was purely the effect of imagination. The proof is, that Cadi�re
+visited all of them at one same moment. The abbess meanwhile was
+hurt, being roused at the first to jealousy by the thought that she
+only had been left out, and afterwards feeling assured that, lost as
+the girl might be in her own dreams, she would get through so many
+intimate friends but too clear an inkling into the scandals of the
+house.
+
+These were scarcely hidden from her at all. But as nothing came to
+Cadi�re save by the way of spiritual insight, she fancied they had
+been told her in a revelation. Here her kindliness shone out. She felt
+a large compassion for the God who was thus outraged. And once again
+she imagined herself bound to atone for the rest, to save the sinners
+from the punishment they deserved, by draining herself the worst
+cruelties which the rage of devils would have power to wreak.
+
+All this burst upon her on the 25th June, the Feast of St. John. She
+was spending the evening with the sisters in the novices' rooms. With
+a loud cry she fell backward in contortions, and lost all
+consciousness.
+
+When she came to, the novices surrounded her, waiting eager to hear
+what she was going to say. But the governess, Madame Lescot, guessed
+what she would say, felt that she was about to ruin herself. So she
+lifted her up, and led her straight to her room, where she found
+herself quite flayed, and her linen covered with blood.
+
+Why did Girard fail her amidst these struggles inward and from
+without? She could not make him out. She had much need of support, and
+yet he never came, except for one moment at rare intervals, to the
+parlour.
+
+She wrote to him on the 28th June, by her brothers; for though she
+could read, she was scarcely able to write. She called to him in the
+most stirring, the most urgent tones, and he answers by putting her
+off. He has to preach at Hy�res, he has a sore throat, and so on.
+
+Wonderful to tell, it is the abbess herself who brings him thither. No
+doubt she was uneasy at Cadi�re's discovering so much of the inner
+life of the convent. Making sure that the girl would talk of it to
+Girard, she wished to forestal her. In a very flattering and tender
+note of the 3rd July, she besought the Jesuit to come and see herself
+first, for she longed, between themselves, to be his pupil, his
+disciple, as humble Nicodemus had been of Christ. "Under your
+guidance, by the blessing of that holy freedom which my post ensures
+me, I should move forward swiftly and noiselessly in the path of
+virtue. The state of our young candidate here will serve me as a fair
+and useful pretext."
+
+A startling, ill-considered step, betraying some unsoundness in the
+lady's mind. Having failed to supplant Girard with Cadi�re, she now
+essayed to supplant Cadi�re with Girard. Abruptly, without the least
+preface, she stepped forward. She made her decision, like a great
+lady, who was still agreeable and quite sure of being taken at her
+word, who would go so far as even to talk of the _freedom_ she
+enjoyed!
+
+In taking so false a step she started from a true belief that Girard
+had ceased to care much for Cadi�re. But she might have guessed that
+he had other things to perplex him in Toulon. He was disturbed by an
+affair no longer turning upon a young girl, but on a lady of ripe age,
+easy circumstances, and good standing; on his wisest penitent, Mdlle.
+Gravier. Her forty years failed to protect her. He would have no
+self-governed sheep in his fold. One day, to her surprise and
+mortification, she found herself pregnant, and loud was her wail
+thereat.
+
+Taken up with this new adventure, Girard looked but coldly on the
+abbess's unforeseen advances. He mistrusted them as a trap laid for
+him by the Observantines. He resolved to be cautious, saw the abbess,
+who was already embarrassed by her rash step, and then saw Cadi�re,
+but only in the chapel where he confessed her.
+
+The latter was hurt by his want of warmth. In truth his conduct showed
+strange inconsistencies. He unsettled her with his light, agreeable
+letters, full of little sportive threats which might have been called
+lover-like. And yet he never deigned to see her save in public.
+
+In a note written the same evening she revenged herself in a very
+delicate way. She said that when he granted her absolution, she felt
+wonderfully dissevered both from herself and from _every other
+creature_.
+
+It was just what Girard would have wanted. His plots had fallen into a
+sad tangle, and Cadi�re was in the way. Her letter enchanted him: far
+from being annoyed with her, he enjoined her to keep dissevered. At
+the same time, he hinted at the need he had for caution. He had
+received a letter, he said, warning him sharply of her faults.
+However, as he would set off on the 6th July for Marseilles, he would
+see her on the road.
+
+She awaited him, but no Girard came. Her agitation was very great. It
+brought on a sharp fit of her old bodily distemper. She spoke of it to
+her dear Sister Raimbaud, who would not leave her, who slept with her,
+against the rules. This was on the night of the 6th July, when the
+heat in that close oven of Ollioules was most oppressive and
+condensed. At four or five o'clock, seeing her writhe in sharp
+suffering, the other "thought she had the colic, and went to fetch
+some fire from the kitchen." While she was gone, Cadi�re tried by one
+last effort to bring Girard to her side forthwith. Whether with her
+nails she had re-opened the wounds in her head, or whether she had
+stuck upon it the sharp iron crown, she somehow made herself all
+bloody. The pain transfigured her, until her eyes sparkled again.
+
+This lasted not less than two hours. The nuns flocked to see her in
+this state, and gazed admiringly. They would even have brought their
+Observantines thither, had Cadi�re not prevented them.
+
+The abbess would have taken good care to tell Girard nothing, lest he
+should see her in a plight so touching, so very pitiful. But good
+Madame Lescot comforted the girl by sending the news to the father. He
+came, but like a true juggler, instead of going up to her room at
+once, had himself an ecstatic fit in the chapel, staying there a whole
+hour on his knees, prostrate before the Holy Sacrament. Going at
+length upstairs, he found Cadi�re surrounded by all the nuns. They
+tell him how for a moment she looked as if she was at mass, how she
+seemed to open her lips to receive the Host. "Who should know that
+better than myself?" said the knave. "An angel had told me. I repeated
+the mass, and gave her the sacrament from Toulon." They were so upset
+by the miracle, that one of them was two days ill. Girard then
+addressed Cadi�re with unseemly gaiety: "So, so, little glutton! would
+you rob me of half my share?"
+
+They withdraw respectfully, leaving these two alone. Behold him face
+to face with his bleeding victim, so pale, so weak, but agitated all
+the more! Anyone would have been greatly moved. The avowal expressed
+by her blood, her wounds, rather than spoken words, was likely to
+reach his heart. It was a humbling sight; but who would not have
+pitied her? This innocent girl could for one moment yield to nature!
+In her short unhappy life, a stranger as she was to the charms of
+sense, the poor young saint could still show one hour of weakness! All
+he had hitherto enjoyed of her without her knowledge, became mere
+nought. With her soul, her will, he would now be master of everything.
+
+In her deposition Cadi�re briefly and bashfully said that she lost all
+knowledge of what happened next. In a confession made to one of her
+friends she uttered no complaints, but let her understand the truth.
+
+And what did Girard do in return for so charmingly bold a flight of
+that impatient heart? He scolded her. He was only chilled by a warmth
+which would have set any other heart on fire. His tyrannous soul
+wanted nothing but the dead, the merest plaything of his will. And
+this girl, by the boldness of her first move, had forced him to come.
+The scholar had drawn the master along. The peevish pedant treated the
+matter as he would have treated a rebellion at school. His lewd
+severities, his coolly selfish pursuit of a cruel pleasure, blighted
+the unhappy girl, who now had nothing left her but remorse.
+
+It was no less shocking a fact, that the blood poured out for his sake
+had no other effect than to tempt him to make the most of it for his
+own purposes. In this, perhaps his last, interview he sought to make
+so far sure of the poor thing's discretion, that, however forsaken by
+him, she herself might still believe in him. He asked if he was to be
+less favoured than the nuns who had seen the miracle. She let herself
+bleed before him. The water with which he washed away the blood he
+drank himself,[113] and made her drink also, and by this hateful
+communion, he thought to bind fast her soul.
+
+    [113] This communion of blood prevailed among the Northern
+    _Reiters_. See my _Origines_.
+
+This lasted two or three hours, and it was now near noon. The abbess
+was scandalized. She resolved to go with the dinner herself, and make
+them open the door. Girard took some tea: it being Friday, he
+pretended to be fasting; though he had doubtless armed himself well at
+Toulon. Cadi�re asked for coffee. The lay sister who managed the
+kitchen was surprised at this on such a day. But without that
+strengthening draught she would have fainted away. It set her up a
+little, and she kept hold of Girard still. He stayed with her, no
+longer indeed locked in, till four o'clock, seeking to efface the
+gloomy impression caused by his conduct in the morning. By dint of
+lying about friendship and fatherhood, he somewhat reassured the
+susceptible creature, and calmed her troubled spirits. She showed him
+the way out, and, walking after him, took, childlike, two or three
+skips for joy. He said, drily, "Little fool!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She paid heavily for her weakness. At nine of that same night she had
+a dreadful vision, and was heard crying out, "O God! keep off from me!
+get back!" On the morning of the 8th, at mass she did not stay for the
+communion, deeming herself, no doubt, unworthy, but made her escape
+to her own room. Thereon arose much scandal. Yet so greatly was she
+beloved, that one of the nuns ran after her, and, telling a
+compassionate falsehood, swore she had beheld Jesus giving her the
+sacrament with His own hand.
+
+Madame Lescot delicately and cleverly wrote a legend out of the mystic
+ejaculations, the holy sighs, the devout tears, and whatever else
+burst forth from this shattered heart. Strange to say, these women
+tenderly conspired to shield a woman. Nothing tells more than this in
+behalf of poor Cadi�re and her delightful gifts. Already in one
+month's time she had become the child of all. They defended her in
+everything she did. Innocent though she might be, they saw in her only
+the victim of the Devil's attacks. One kind sturdy woman of the
+people, Matherone, daughter of the Ollioules locksmith, and porteress
+herself to the convent, on seeing some of Girard's indecent liberties,
+said, in spite of them, "No matter: she is a saint." And when he once
+talked of taking her from the convent, she cried out, "Take away our
+Mademoiselle Cadi�re! I will have an iron door made to keep her from
+going."
+
+Alarmed at the state of things, and at the use to which it might be
+turned by the abbess and her monks, Cadi�re's brethren who came to her
+every day, took courage to be beforehand; and in a formal letter
+written in her name to Girard, reminded him of the revelation given
+to her on the 25th June regarding the morals of the Observantines. It
+was time, they said, "to carry out God's purposes in this matter,"
+namely, of course, to demand an inquiry, to accuse the accusers.
+
+Their excess of boldness was very rash. Cadi�re, now all but dying,
+had no such thoughts in her head. Her women-friends imagined that he
+who had caused the disturbance would, perhaps, bring back the calm.
+They besought Girard to come and confess her. A dreadful scene took
+place. At the confessional she uttered cries and wailings audible
+thirty paces off. The curious among them found some amusement
+listening to her, and were not disappointed. Girard was inflicting
+chastisement. Again and again he said, "Be calm, mademoiselle!" In
+vain did he try to absolve her. She would not be absolved. On the
+12th, she had so sharp a pang below her heart, that she felt as though
+her sides were bursting. On the 14th, she seemed fast dying, and her
+mother was sent for. She received the viaticum; and on the morrow made
+a public confession, "the most touching, the most expressive that had
+ever been heard. We were drowned in tears." On the 20th, she was in a
+state of heart-rending agony. After that she had a sudden and saving
+change for the better, marked by a very soothing vision. She beheld
+the sinful Magdalen pardoned, caught up into glory, filling in heaven
+the place which Lucifer had lost.
+
+Girard, however, could only ensure her discretion by corrupting her
+yet further, by choking her remorse. Sometimes he would come to the
+parlour and greet her with bold embraces. But oftener he sent his
+faithful followers, Guiol and others, who sought to initiate her into
+their own disgraceful secrets, while seeming to sympathise tenderly
+with the sufferings of their outspoken friend. Girard not only winked
+at this, but himself spoke freely to Cadi�re of such matters as the
+pregnancy of Mdlle. Gravier. He wanted her to ask him to Ollioules, to
+calm his irritation, to persuade him that such a circumstance might be
+a delusion of the Devil's causing, which could perchance be dispelled.
+
+These impure teachings made no way with Cadi�re. They were sure to
+anger her brethren, to whom they were not unknown. The letters they
+wrote in her name are very curious. Enraged at heart and sorely
+wounded, accounting Girard a villain, but obliged to make their sister
+speak of him with respectful tenderness, they still, by snatches, let
+their wrath become visible.
+
+As for Girard's letters, they are pieces of laboured writing,
+manifestly meant for the trial which might take place. Let us talk of
+the only one which he did not get into his hands to tamper with. It is
+dated the 22nd July. It is at once sour and sweet, agreeable,
+trifling, the letter of a careless man. The meaning of it is thus:--
+
+"The bishop reached Toulon this morning, and will go to see
+Cadi�re.... They will settle together what to do and say. If the Grand
+Vicar and Father Sabatier wish to see her, and ask to see her wounds,
+she will tell them that she has been forbidden to do or say aught.
+
+"I am hungering to see you again, to see the whole of you. You know
+that I only demand _my right_. It is so long since I have seen more
+than half of you (he means to say, at the parlour grating). Shall I
+tire you? Well, do you not also tire me?" And so on.
+
+A strange letter in every way. He distrusts alike the bishop and the
+Jesuit, his own colleague, old Sabatier. It is at bottom the letter of
+a restless culprit. He knows that in her hands she holds his letters,
+his papers, the means, in short, of ruining him. The two young men
+write back in their sister's name a spirited answer--the only one that
+has a truthful sound. They answer him line for line, without insult,
+but with a roughness often ironical, and betraying the wrath pent-up
+within them. The sister promises to obey him, to say nothing either to
+the bishop or the Jesuit. She congratulates him on having "boldness
+enough to exhort others to suffer." She takes up and returns him his
+shocking gallantry, but in a shocking way; and here we trace a man's
+hand, the hand of those two giddy heads.
+
+Two days after, they went and told her to decide on leaving the
+convent forthwith. Girard was dismayed. He thought his papers would
+disappear with her. The greatness of his terror took away his senses.
+He had the weakness to go and weep at the Ollioules parlour, to fall
+on his knees before her, and ask her if she had the heart to leave
+him. Touched by his words, the poor girl said "No," went forward, and
+let him embrace her. And yet this Judas wanted only to deceive her, to
+gain a few days' time for securing help from a higher quarter.
+
+On the 29th there is an utter change. Cadi�re stays at Ollioules, begs
+him to excuse her, vows submission. It is but too clear that he has
+set some mighty influences at work; that from the 29th threats come
+in, perhaps from Aix, and presently from Paris. The Jesuit bigwigs
+have been writing, and their courtly patrons from Versailles.
+
+In such a struggle, what were the brethren to do? No doubt they took
+counsel with their chiefs, who would certainly warn them against
+setting too hard on Girard as a _libertine confessor_; for thereby
+offence would be given to all the clergy, who deemed confession their
+dearest prize. It was needful, on the contrary; to sever him from the
+priests by proving the strangeness of his teaching, by bringing him
+forward as a _Quietist_. With that one word they might lead him a long
+way. In 1698, a vicar in the neighbourhood of Dijon had been burnt for
+Quietism. They conceived the idea of drawing up a memoir, dictated
+apparently by their sister, to whom the plan was really unknown, in
+which the high and splendid Quietism of Girard should be affirmed,
+and therefore in effect denounced. This memoir recounted the visions
+she had seen in Lent. In it the name of Girard was already in heaven.
+She saw it joined with her own in the Book of Life.
+
+They durst not take this memoir to the bishop. But they got their
+friend, little Camerle, his youthful chaplain, to steal it from them.
+The bishop read it, and circulated some copies about the town. On the
+21st August, Girard being at the palace, the bishop laughingly said to
+him, "Well, father, so your name is in the Book of Life!"
+
+He was overcome, fancied himself lost, wrote to Cadi�re in terms of
+bitter reproach. Once more with tears he asked for his papers. Cadi�re
+in great surprise vowed that her memoir had never gone out of her
+brother's hands. But when she found out her mistake, her despair was
+unbounded. The sharpest pangs of body and soul beset her. Once she
+thought herself on the point of death. She became like one mad. "I
+long so much to suffer. Twice I caught up the rod of penance, and
+wielded it so savagely as to draw a great deal of blood." In the midst
+of this dreadful outbreak, which proved at once the weakness of her
+head and the boundless tenderness of her conscience, Guiol finished
+her by describing Girard as nearly dead. This raised her compassion to
+the highest pitch.
+
+She was going to give up the papers. And yet it was but too clear
+that these were her only safeguard and support, the only proofs of her
+innocence, and the tricks of which she had been made the victim. To
+give them up was to risk a change of characters, to risk the
+imputation of having herself seduced a saint, the chance, in short, of
+seeing all the blame transferred to her own side.
+
+But, if she must either be ruined herself or else ruin Girard, she
+would far sooner accept the former result. A demon, Guiol of course,
+tempted her in this very way, with the wondrous sublimity of such a
+sacrifice. God, she wrote, asked of her a bloody offering. She could
+tell her of saints who, being accused, did not justify, but rather
+accused themselves, and died like lambs. This example Cadi�re
+followed. When Girard was accused before her, she defended him,
+saying, "He is right, and I told a falsehood."
+
+She might have yielded up the letters of Girard only; but in so great
+an outflowing of heart she would have no haggling, and so gave him
+even copies of her own.
+
+Thus at the same time he held these drafts written by the Jacobin, and
+the copies made and sent him by the other brother. Thenceforth he had
+nothing to fear: no further check could be given him. He might make
+away with them or put them back again; might destroy, blot out, and
+falsify at pleasure. He was perfectly free to carry on his forger's
+work, and he worked away to some purpose. Out of twenty-four letters,
+sixteen remain; and these still read like elaborately forged
+afterthoughts.
+
+With everything in his own hands, Girard could laugh at his foes. It
+was now their turn to be afraid. The bishop, a man of the upper world,
+was too well acquainted with Versailles and the name won by the
+Jesuits not to treat them with proper tenderness. He even thought it
+safest to make Girard some small amends for his unkind reproach about
+The Book of Life; and so he graciously informed him that he would like
+to stand godfather to the child of one of his kinsmen.
+
+The Bishops of Toulon had always been high lords. The list of them
+shows all the first names of Provence, and some famous names from
+Italy. From 1712 to 1737, under the Regency and Fleury, the bishop was
+one of the La Tours of Pin. He was very rich, having also the Abbeys
+of Aniane and St. William of the Desert, in Languedoc. He behaved
+well, it was said, during the plague of 1721. However, he stayed but
+seldom at Toulon, lived quite as a man of the world, never said mass,
+and passed for something more than a lady's man.
+
+In July he went to Toulon, and though Girard would have turned him
+aside from Ollioules and Cadi�re, he was curious to see her
+nevertheless. He saw her in one of her best moments. She took his
+fancy, seemed to him a pretty little saint; and so far did he believe
+in her enlightenment from above, as to speak to her thoughtlessly of
+all his affairs, his interests, his future doings, consulting her as
+he would have consulted a teller of fortunes.
+
+In spite, however, of the brethren's prayers he hesitated to take her
+away from Ollioules and from Girard. A means was found of resolving
+him. A report was spread about Toulon, that the girl had shown a
+desire to flee into the wilderness, as her model saint, Theresa, had
+essayed to do at twelve years old. Girard, they said, had put this
+fancy into her head, that he might one day carry her off beyond the
+diocese whose pride she was, and box-up his treasure in some far
+convent, where the Jesuits, enjoying the whole monopoly, might turn to
+the most account her visions, her miracles, her winsome ways as a
+young saint of the people. The bishop felt much hurt. He instructed
+the abbess to give Mdlle. Cadi�re up to no one save her mother, who
+was certain to come very shortly and take her away from the convent to
+a country-house belonging to the family.
+
+In order not to offend Girard, they got Cadi�re to write and say that,
+if such a change incommoded him, he could find a colleague and give
+her a second confessor. He saw their meaning, and preferred disarming
+jealousy by abandoning Cadi�re. He gave her up on the 15th September,
+in a note most carefully worded and piteously humble, by which he
+strove to leave her friendly and tender towards himself. "If I have
+sometimes done wrong as concerning you, you will never at least forget
+how wishful I have been to help you.... I am, and ever will be, all
+yours in the Secret Heart of Jesus."
+
+The bishop, however, was not reassured. He fancied that the three
+Jesuits, Girard, Sabatier, and Grignet, wanted to beguile him, and
+some day, with some order from Paris, rob him of his little woman. On
+the 17th September, he decided once for all to send his carriage, a
+light fashionable _phaeton_, as it was called, and have her taken off
+at once to her mother's country-house.
+
+By way of soothing and shielding her, of putting her in good trim, he
+looked out for a confessor, and applied first to a Carmelite who had
+confessed her before Girard came. But he, being an old man, declined.
+Some others also probably hung back. The bishop had to take a
+stranger, but three months come from the County (Avignon), one Father
+Nicholas, prior of the Barefooted Carmelites. He was a man of forty,
+endowed with brains and boldness, very firm and even stubborn. He
+showed himself worthy of such a trust by rejecting it. It was not the
+Jesuits he feared, but the girl herself. He foreboded no good
+therefrom, thought that the angel might be an angel of darkness, and
+feared that the Evil One under the shape of a gentle girl would deal
+his blows with all the more baleful effect.
+
+But he could not see her without feeling somewhat reassured. She
+seemed so very simple, so pleased at length to have a safe, steady
+person, on whom she might lean. The continual wavering in which she
+had been kept by Girard, had caused her the greatest suffering. On the
+first day she spoke more than she had done for a month past, told him
+of her life, her sufferings, her devotions, and her visions. Night
+itself, a hot night in mid-September, did not stop her. In her room
+everything was open, the windows, and the three doors. She went on
+even to daybreak, while her brethren lay near her asleep. On the
+morrow she resumed her tale under the vine-bower. The Carmelite was
+amazed, and asked himself if the Devil could ever be so earnest in
+praise of God.
+
+Her innocence was clear. She seemed a nice obedient girl, gentle as a
+lamb, frolicsome as a puppy. She wanted to play at bowls, a common
+game in those country-places, nor did he for his part refuse to join
+her.
+
+If there was a spirit in her, it could not at any rate be called the
+spirit of lying. On looking at her closely for a long time, you could
+not doubt that her wounds now and then did really bleed. He took care
+to make no such immodest scrutiny of them as Girard had done,
+contenting himself with a look at the wound upon her foot. Of her
+trances he saw quite enough. On a sudden, a burning heat would diffuse
+itself everywhere from her heart. Losing her consciousness, she went
+into convulsions and talked wildly.
+
+The Carmelite clearly perceived that in her were two persons, the
+young woman and the Demon. The former was honest, nay, very fresh of
+heart; ignorant, for all that had been done to her; little able to
+understand the very things that had brought her into such sore
+trouble. When, before confession, she spoke of Girard's kisses, the
+Carmelite roughly said, "But those are very great sins."
+
+"O God!" she answered, weeping, "I am lost indeed, for he has done
+much more than that to me!"
+
+The bishop came to see. For him the country-house was only the length
+of a walk. She answered his questions artlessly, told him at least how
+things began. The bishop was angry, mortified, very wroth. No doubt he
+guessed the remainder. There was nought to keep him from raising a
+great outcry against Girard. Not caring for the danger of a struggle
+with the Jesuits, he entered thoroughly into the Carmelite's views,
+allowed that she was bewitched, and added that _Girard himself was the
+wizard_. He wanted to lay him that very moment under a solemn ban, to
+bring him to disgrace and ruin. Cadi�re prayed for him who had done
+her so much wrong; vengeance she would not have. Falling on her knees
+before the bishop, she implored him to spare Girard, to speak no more
+of things so sorrowful. With touching humility, she said, "It is
+enough for me to be enlightened at last, to know that I was living in
+sin." Her Jacobin brother took her part, foreseeing the perils of such
+a war, and doubtful whether the bishop would stand fast.
+
+Her attacks of disorder were now fewer. The season had changed. The
+burning summer was over. Nature at length showed mercy. It was the
+pleasant month of October. The bishop had the keen delight of feeling
+that she had been saved by him. No longer under Girard's influence in
+the stifling air of Ollioules, but well cared-for by her family, by
+the brave and honest monk, protected, too, by the bishop, who never
+grudged his visits, and who shielded her with his steady countenance,
+the young girl became altogether calm.
+
+For seven weeks or so she seemed quite well-behaved. The bishop's
+happiness was so great that he wanted the Carmelite, with Cadi�re's
+help, to look after Girard's other penitents, and bring them also back
+to their senses. They should go to the country-house; how unwillingly,
+and with how ill a grace we can easily guess. In truth, it was
+strangely ill-judged to bring those women before the bishop's ward, a
+girl so young still, and but just delivered from her own ecstatic
+ravings.
+
+The state of things became ridiculous and sorely embittered. Two
+parties faced each other, Girard's women and those of the bishop. On
+the side of the latter were a German lady and her daughter, dear
+friends of Cadi�re's. On the other side were the rebels, headed by the
+Guiol. With her the bishop treated, in hopes of getting her to enter
+into relations with the Carmelite, and bring her friends over to him.
+He sent her his own clerk, and then a solicitor, an old lover of
+Guiol's. All this failing of any effect, the bishop came to his last
+resource, determined to summon them all to his palace. Here they
+mostly denied those trances and mystic marks of which they had made
+such boast. One of them, Guiol, of course, astonished him yet more by
+her shamelessly treacherous offer to prove to him, on the spot, that
+they had no marks whatever about their bodies. They had deemed him
+wanton enough to fall into such a snare. But he kept clear of it very
+well, declining the offer with thanks to those who, at the cost of
+their own modesty, would have had him copy Girard, and provoke the
+laughter of all the town.
+
+The bishop was not lucky. On the one hand, these bold wenches made fun
+of him. On the other, his success with Cadi�re was now being undone.
+She had hardly entered her own narrow lane in gloomy Toulon, when she
+began to fall off. She was just in those dangerous and baleful centres
+where her illness began, on the very field of the battle waged by the
+two hostile parties. The Jesuits, whose rearguard everyone saw in the
+Court, had on their side the crafty, the prudent, the knowing. The
+Carmelite had none but the bishop with him, was not even backed by his
+own brethren, nor yet by the clergy. He had one weapon, however, in
+reserve. On the 8th November, he got out of Cadi�re a written power to
+reveal her confession in case of need.
+
+It was a daring, dauntless step, which made Girard shudder. He was
+not very brave, and would have been undone had his cause not been that
+of the Jesuits also. He cowered down in the depths of their college.
+But his colleague Sabatier, an old, sanguine, passionate fellow, went
+straight to the bishop's palace. He entered into the prelate's
+presence, like another Popilius, bearing peace or war in his gown. He
+pushed him to the wall, made him understand that a suit with the
+Jesuits would lead to his own undoing; that he would remain for ever
+Bishop of Toulon; would never rise to an archbishopric. Yet further,
+with the freedom of an apostle strong at Versailles, he assured him
+that if this affair exposed the morals of a Jesuit, it would shed no
+less light on the morals of a bishop. In a letter, clearly planned by
+Girard, it was pretended that the Jesuits held themselves ready in the
+background, to hurl dreadful recriminations against the prelate,
+declaring his way of life not only unepiscopal, but _abominable_
+withal. The sly, faithless Girard and the hot-headed Sabatier, swollen
+with rage and spitefulness, would have pressed the calumnious charge.
+They would not have failed to say that all this matter was about a
+girl; that if Girard had taken care of her when ill, the bishop had
+gotten her when she was well. What a commotion would be caused by such
+a scandal in the well-regulated life of the great worldly lord! It
+were too laughable a piece of chivalry to make war in revenge for the
+maidenhood of a weak little fool, to embroil oneself for her sake with
+all honest people! The Cardinal of Bonzi died indeed of grief at
+Toulouse, but that was on account of a fair lady, the Marchioness of
+Ganges. The bishop, on his part, risked his ruin, risked the chance of
+being overwhelmed with shame and ridicule, for the child of a
+retail-dealer in the Rue de l'H�pital!
+
+Sabatier's threatenings made all the greater impression, because the
+bishop himself clung less firmly to Cadi�re. He did not thank her for
+falling ill again; for giving the lie to his former success; for doing
+him a wrong by her relapse. He bore her a grudge for having failed to
+cure her. He said to himself that Sabatier was in the right; that he
+had better come to a compromise. The change was sudden--a kind of
+warning from above. All at once, like Paul on the way to Damascus, he
+beheld the light, and became a convert to the Jesuits.
+
+Sabatier would not let him go. He put paper before him, and made him
+write and sign a decree forbidding the Carmelite, his agent with
+Cadi�re, and another forbidding her brother, the Jacobin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE TRIAL OF CADIERE: 1730-1731.
+
+
+We can guess how this alarming blow was taken by the Cadi�re family.
+The sick girl's attacks became frequent and fearful. By a cruel chance
+they brought on a kind of epidemic among her intimate friends. Her
+neighbour, the German lady, who had trances also, which she had
+hitherto deemed divine, now fell into utter fright, and fancied they
+came from hell. This worthy dame of fifty years remembered that she,
+too, had often had unclean thoughts: she believed herself given over
+to the Devil; saw nothing but devils about her; and escaping from her
+own house in spite of her daughter's watchfulness, entreated shelter
+from the Cadi�res. From that time the house became unbearable;
+business could not be carried on. The elder Cadi�re inveighed
+furiously against Girard, crying, "He shall be served like Gauffridi:
+he, too, shall be burnt!" And the Jacobin added, "Rather would we
+waste the whole of our family estate!"
+
+On the night of the 17th November, Cadi�re screamed, and was like one
+choking. They thought she was going to die. The eldest Cadi�re, the
+tradesman, lost his wits, and called out to his neighbours from the
+window, "Help! the Devil is throttling my sister!" They came running
+up almost in their shirts. The doctors and surgeons wanted to apply
+the cupping-glasses to a case of what they called "suffocation of the
+womb." While some were gone to fetch these, they succeeded in
+unlocking her teeth and making her swallow a drop of brandy, which
+brought her to herself. Meanwhile there also came to the girl some
+doctors of the soul; first an old priest confessor to Cadi�re's
+mother, and then some parsons of Toulon. All this noise and shouting,
+the arrival of the priests in full dress, the preparations for
+exorcising, had brought everyone out into the street. The newcomers
+kept asking what was the matter. "Cadi�re has been bewitched by
+Girard," was the continual reply. We may imagine the pity and the
+wrath of the people.
+
+Greatly alarmed, but anxious to cast the fear back on others, the
+Jesuits did a very barbarous thing. They returned to the bishop,
+ordered and insisted that Cadi�re should be brought to trial; that the
+attack should be made that very day; that justice should make an
+unforeseen descent on this poor girl, as she lay rattling in the
+throat after the last dreadful seizure.
+
+Sabatier never left the bishop until the latter had called his judge,
+his officer, the Vicar-general Larmedieu, and his prosecutor or
+episcopal advocate, Esprit Reybaud, and commanded them to go to work
+forthwith.
+
+By the Canon Law this was impossible, illegal. A _preliminary inquiry
+was needed_ into the facts, before the judicial business could begin.
+There was another difficulty: the spiritual judge had no right to make
+such an arrest save for _a rejection of the Sacrament_. The two
+church-lawyers must have made these objections. But Sabatier would
+hear of no excuses. If matters were allowed to drag in this cold legal
+way, he would miss his stroke of terror.
+
+Larmedieu was a compliant judge, a friend of the clergy. He was not
+one of your rude magistrates who go straight before them, like blind
+boars, on the high-road of the law, without seeing or respecting
+anyone. He had shown great regard for Aubany, the patron of Ollioules,
+during his trial; helping him to escape by the slowness of his own
+procedure. Afterwards, when he knew him to be at Marseilles, as if
+that was far from France, in the _ultima thule_ or _terra incognita_
+of ancient geographers, he would not budge any further. This, however,
+was a very different case: the judge who was so paralytic against
+Aubany, had wings, and wings of lightning, for Cadi�re. It was nine in
+the morning when the dwellers in the lane saw with much curiosity a
+grand procession arrive at the Cadi�res' door, with Master Larmedieu
+and the episcopal advocate at the head, honoured by an escort of two
+clergymen, doctors of theology. The house was invaded: the sick girl
+was summoned before them. They made her swear to tell the truth
+against herself; swear to defame herself by speaking out in the ears
+of justice matters that touched her conscience and the confessional
+only.
+
+She might have dispensed with an answer, for none of the usual forms
+had been observed: but she would not raise the question. She took the
+oath that was meant to disarm and betray her. For, being once bound
+thereby, she told everything, even to those shameful and ridiculous
+details which it must be very painful for any girl to acknowledge.
+
+Larmedieu's official statement and his first examination point to a
+clearly settled agreement between him and the Jesuits. Girard was to
+be brought forward as the dupe and prey of Cadi�re's knavery. Fancy a
+man of sixty, a doctor, professor, director of nuns, being therewithal
+so innocent and credulous, that a young girl, a mere child, was enough
+to draw him into the snare! The cunning, shameless wanton had beguiled
+him with her visions, but failed to draw him into her own excesses.
+Enraged thereat, she endowed him with every baseness that the fancy of
+a Messalina could suggest to her!
+
+So far from giving grounds for any such idea, the examination brings
+out the victim's gentleness in a very touching way. Evidently she
+accuses others only through constraint, under the pressure of her oath
+just taken. She is gentle towards her enemies, even to the faithless
+Guiol who, in her brother's words, had betrayed her; had done her
+worst to corrupt her; had ruined her, last of all, by making her give
+up the papers which would have insured her safety.
+
+The Cadi�re brothers were frightened at their sister's artlessness. In
+her regard for her oath she gave herself up without reserve to be
+vilified, alas! for ever; to have ballads sung about her; to be mocked
+by the very foes of Jesuits and silly scoffing libertines.
+
+The mischief done, they wanted at least to have it defined, to have
+the official report of the priests checked by some more serious
+measure. Seeming though she did to be the party accused, they made her
+the accuser, and prevailed on Marteli Chantard, the King's Lieutenant
+Civil and Criminal, to come and take her deposition. In this document,
+short and clear, the fact of her seduction is clearly established;
+likewise the reproaches she uttered against Girard for his lewd
+endearments, reproaches at which he only laughed; likewise the advice
+he gave her, to let herself be possessed by the Demon; likewise the
+means he used for keeping her wounds open, and so on.
+
+The King's officer, the Lieutenant, was bound to carry the matter
+before his own court. For the spiritual judge in his hurry had failed
+to go through the forms of ecclesiastic law, and so made his
+proceedings null. But the lay magistrate lacked the courage for this.
+He let himself be harnessed to the clerical inquiry, accepted
+Larmedieu for his colleague, went himself to sit and hear the evidence
+in the bishop's court. The clerk of the bishopric wrote it down, and
+not the clerk of the King's Lieutenant. Did he write it down
+faithfully? We have reason to doubt that, when we find him threatening
+the witnesses, and going every night to show their statements to the
+Jesuits.
+
+The two curates of Cadi�re's parish, who were heard first, deposed
+drily, not in her favour, yet by no means against her, certainly not
+in favour of the Jesuits. These latter saw that everything was going
+amiss for them. Lost to all shame, at the risk of angering the people,
+they determined to break all down. They got from the bishop an order
+to imprison Cadi�re and the chief witnesses she wanted to be heard.
+These were the German lady and Batarelle. The girl herself was placed
+in the Refuge, a convent-prison; the ladies in a bridewell, the
+_Good-Shepherd_, where mad women and foul streetwalkers needing
+punishment were thrown. On the 26th November, Cadi�re was dragged from
+her bed and given over to the Ursulines, penitents of Girard's, who
+laid her duly on some rotten straw.
+
+A fear of them thus established, the witnesses might now be heard.
+They began with two, choice and respectable. One was the Guiol,
+notorious for being Girard's pander, a woman of keen and clever
+tongue, who was commissioned to hurl the first dart and open the wound
+of slander. The other was Laugier, the little seamstress, whom Cadi�re
+had supported and for whose apprenticeship she had paid. While she lay
+with child by Girard, this Laugier had cried out against him; now she
+washed away her fault by sneering at Cadi�re and defiling her
+benefactress, but in a very clumsy way, like the shameless wanton she
+was; ascribing to her impudent speeches quite contrary to her known
+habits. Then came Mdlle. Gravier and her cousin Reboul--all the
+_Girardites_, in short, as they were called in Toulon.
+
+But, do as they would, the light would burst forth now and then. The
+wife of a purveyor in the house where these Girardites met together,
+said, with cruel plainness, that she could not abide them, that they
+disturbed the whole house; she spoke of their noisy bursts of
+laughter, of their suppers paid for out of the money collected for the
+poor, and so forth.
+
+They were sore afraid lest the nuns should speak out for Cadi�re. The
+bishop's clerk told them, as if from the bishop himself, that those
+who spoke evil should be chastised. As a yet stronger measure, they
+ordered back from Marseilles the gay Father Aubany, who had some
+ascendant over the nuns. His affair with the girl he had violated was
+got settled for him. Her parents were made to understand that justice
+could do nothing in their case. The child's good name was valued at
+eight hundred livres, which were paid on Aubany's account. So, full of
+zeal, he returned, a thorough Jesuit, to his troop at Ollioules. The
+poor troop trembled indeed, when this worthy father told them of his
+commission to warn them that, if they did not behave themselves, "they
+should be put to the torture."
+
+For all that, they could not get as much as they wanted from these
+fifteen nuns. Two or three at most were on Girard's side, but all
+stated facts, especially about the 7th July, which bore directly
+against him.
+
+In despair the Jesuits came to an heroic decision, in order to make
+sure of their witnesses. They stationed themselves in an outer hall
+which led into the court. There they stopped those going in, tampered
+with them, threatened them, and, if they were against Girard, coolly
+debarred their entrance by thrusting them out of doors.
+
+Thus the clerical judge and the King's officer were only as puppets in
+the Jesuits' hands. The whole town saw this and trembled. During
+December, January, and February, the Cadi�re family drew up and
+diffused a complaint touching the way in which justice was denied them
+and witnesses suborned. The Jesuits themselves felt that the place
+would no longer hold them. They evoked help from a higher quarter.
+This seemed best available in the shape of a decree of the Great
+Council, which would have brought the matter before itself and hushed
+up everything, as Mazarin had done in the Louviers affair. But the
+Chancellor was D'Aguesseau; and the Jesuits had no wish to let the
+matter go up to Paris. They kept it still in Provence. On the 16th
+January, 1731, they got the King to determine that the Parliament of
+Provence, where they had plenty of friends, should pass sentence on
+the inquiry which two of its councillors were conducting at Toulon.
+
+M. Faucon, a layman, and M. de Charleval, a councillor of the Church,
+came in fact and straightway marched down among the Jesuits. These
+eager commissioners made so little secret of their loud and bitter
+partiality, as to toss out an order for Cadi�re's remand, just as they
+might have done to an accused prisoner; whilst Girard was most
+politely called up and allowed to go free, to keep on saying mass and
+hearing confessions. And so the plaintiff was kept under lock and key,
+in her enemies' hands, exposed to all manner of cruelty from Girard's
+devotees.
+
+From these honest Ursulines she met with just such a reception as if
+they had been charged to bring about her death. The room they gave her
+was the cell of a mad nun who made everything filthy. In the nun's old
+straw, in the midst of a frightful stench, she lay. Her kinsmen on the
+morrow had much ado to get in a coverlet and mattress for her use. For
+her nurse and keeper she was allowed a poor tool of Girard's, a
+lay-sister, daughter to that very Guiol who had betrayed her; a girl
+right worthy of her mother, capable of any wickedness, a source of
+danger to her modesty, perhaps even to her life. They submitted her to
+a course of penance in her case specially painful, refusing her the
+right of confessing herself or taking the sacrament. She relapsed into
+her illness from the time she was debarred the latter privilege. Her
+fierce foe, the Jesuit Sabatier, came into her cell, and formed a new
+and startling scheme to win her by a bribe of the holy wafer. The
+bargaining began. They offered her terms: she should communicate if
+she would only acknowledge herself a slanderer, unworthy of
+communicating. In her excessive humbleness she might have done so.
+But, while ruining herself, she would also have ruined the Carmelite
+and her own brethren.
+
+Reduced to Pharisaical tricks, they took to expounding her speeches.
+Whatever she uttered in a mystic sense they feigned to accept in its
+material hardness. To free herself from such snares she displayed,
+what they had least expected, very great presence of mind.
+
+A yet more treacherous plan for robbing her of the public sympathy and
+setting the laughers against her, was to find her a lover. They
+pretended that she had proposed to a young blackguard that they should
+set off together and roam the world.
+
+The great lords of that day, being fond of having children and little
+pages to wait on them, readily took in the better-mannered of their
+peasant's sons. In this way had the bishop dealt with the boy of one
+of his tenants. He washed his face, as it were; made him tidy.
+Presently, when the favourite grew up, he gave him the tonsure,
+dressed him up like an abb�, and dubbed him his chaplain at the age of
+twenty. This person was the Abb� Camerle. Brought up with the footmen
+and made to do everything, he was, like many a half-scrubbed country
+youth, a sly, but simple lout. He saw that the prelate since his
+arrival at Toulon had been curious about Cadi�re and far from friendly
+to Girard. He thought to please and amuse his master by turning
+himself, at Ollioules, into a spy on their suspected intercourse. But
+after the bishop changed through fear of the Jesuits, Camerle became
+equally zealous in helping Girard with active service against Cadi�re.
+
+He came one day, like another Joseph, to say that Mdlle. Cadi�re had,
+like Potiphar's wife, been tempting him, and trying to shake his
+virtue. Had this been true, it was all the more cowardly of him thus
+to punish her for a moment's weakness, to take so mean an advantage of
+some light word. But his education as page and seminarist was not such
+as to bring him either honour or the love of women.
+
+She extricated herself with spirit and success, covering him with
+shame. The two angry commissioners saw her making so triumphant an
+answer, that they cut the investigation short, and cut down the number
+of her witnesses. Out of the sixty-eight she summoned, they allowed
+but thirty-eight to appear. Regardless alike of the delays and the
+forms of justice, they hurried forward the confronting of witnesses.
+Yet nothing was gained, thereby. On the 25th and again on the 26th
+February, she renewed her crushing declarations.
+
+Such was their rage thereat, that they declared their regret at the
+want of torments and executioners in Toulon, "who might have made her
+sing out a little." These things formed their _ultima ratio_. They
+were employed, by the Parliaments through all that century. I have
+before me a warm defence of torture,[114] written in 1780, by a
+learned member of Parliament, who also became a member of the Great
+Council; it was dedicated to the King, Louis XVI., and crowned with
+the flattering approval of His Holiness Pius VI.
+
+    [114] Muyart de Vouglans, in the sequel to his _Loix
+    Criminelles_, 1780.
+
+But, in default of the torture that would have made her sing, she was
+made to speak by a still better process. On the 27th February, Guiol's
+daughter, the lay-sister who acted as her jailer, came to her at an
+early hour with a glass of wine. She was astonished: she was not at
+all thirsty: she never drank wine, especially pure wine, of a morning.
+The lay-sister, a rough, strong menial, such as they keep in convents
+to manage crazy or refractory women, and to punish children,
+overwhelmed the feeble sufferer with remonstrances that looked like
+threats. Unwilling as she was, she drank. And she was forced to drink
+it all, to the very dregs, which she found unpleasantly salt.
+
+What was this repulsive draught? We have already seen how clever these
+old confessors of nuns were at remedies of various kinds. In this case
+the wine alone would have done for so weakly a patient. It had been
+quite enough to make her drunk, to draw from her at once some
+stammering speeches, which the clerk might have moulded into a
+downright falsehood. But a drug of some kind, perhaps some wizard's
+simple, which would act for several days, was added to the wine, in
+order to prolong its effects and leave her no way of disproving
+anything laid to her charge.
+
+In her declaration of the 27th February, how sudden and entire a
+change! It is nothing but a defence of Girard! Strange to say, the
+commissioners make no remark on so abrupt a change. The strange,
+shameful sight of a young girl drunk causes no astonishment, fails to
+put them on their guard. She is made to own that all which had passed
+between herself and Girard was merely the offspring of her own
+diseased fancy; that all she had spoken of as real, at the bidding of
+her brethren and the Carmelite, was nothing more than a dream. Not
+content with whitening Girard, she must blacken her own friends, must
+crush them, and put the halter round their necks.
+
+Especially wonderful is the clearness of her deposition, the neat way
+in which it is worded. The hand of the skilful clerk peeps out
+therefrom. It is very strange, however, that now they are in so fair a
+way, they do not follow it up. From the 27th to the 6th of March there
+is no further questioning.
+
+On the 28th, the poison having doubtless done its work, and plunged
+her into a perfect stupor, or else a kind of Sabbatic frenzy, it was
+impossible to bring her forth. After that, while her head was still
+disordered, they could easily give her other potions of which she
+would know and remember nothing. What happened during those six days
+seems to have been so shocking, so sad for poor Cadi�re, that neither
+she nor her brother had the heart to speak of it twice. Nor would they
+have spoken at all, had not the brethren themselves incurred a
+prosecution aiming at their own lives.
+
+Having won his cause through Cadi�re's falsehood, Girard dared to come
+and see her in her prison, where she lay stupefied or in despair,
+forsaken alike of earth and heaven, and if any clear thoughts were
+left her, possessed with the dreadful consciousness of having by her
+last deposition murdered her own near kin. Her own ruin was complete
+already. But another trial, that of her brothers and the bold
+Carmelite, would now begin. She may in her remorse have been tempted
+to soften Girard, to keep him from proceeding against them, above all
+to save herself from being put to the torture. Girard, at any rate,
+took advantage of her utter weakness, and behaved like the determined
+scoundrel he really was.
+
+Alas! her wandering spirit came but slowly back to her. It was on the
+6th March that she had to face her accusers, to renew her former
+admissions, to ruin her brethren beyond repair. She could not speak;
+she was choking. The commissioners had the kindness to tell her that
+the torture was there, at her side; to describe to her the wooden
+horse, the points of iron, the wedges for jamming fast her bones. Her
+courage failed her, so weak she was now of body. She submitted to be
+set before her cruel master, who might laugh triumphant now that he
+had debased not only her body, but yet more her conscience, by making
+her the murderess of her own friends.
+
+No time was lost in profiting by her weakness. They prevailed
+forthwith on the Parliament of Aix to let the Carmelite and the two
+brothers be imprisoned, that they might undergo a separate trial for
+their lives, as soon as Cadi�re should have been condemned.
+
+On the 10th March, she was dragged from the Ursulines of Toulon to
+Sainte-Claire of Ollioules. Girard, however, was not sure of her yet.
+He got leave to have her conducted, like some dreaded highway robber,
+between some soldiers of the mounted police. He demanded that she
+should be carefully locked up at Sainte-Claire. The ladies were moved
+to tears at the sight of a poor sufferer who could not drag herself
+forward, approaching between those drawn swords. Everyone pitied her.
+Two brave men, M. Aubin, a solicitor, and M. Claret, a notary, drew up
+for her the deeds in which she withdrew her late confession, fearful
+documents that record the threats of the commissioners and of the
+Ursuline prioress, and above all, the fact of the drugged wine she had
+been forced to drink.
+
+At the same time these daring men drew up for the Chancellor's court
+at Paris a plea of error, as it is called, exposing the irregular and
+blameable proceedings, the wilful breaches of the law, effected in the
+coolest way, first by the bishop's officer and the King's Lieutenant,
+secondly by the two commissioners. The Chancellor D'Aguesseau showed
+himself very slack and feeble. He let these foul proceedings stand;
+left the business in charge of the Parliament of Aix, sullied as it
+already seemed to be by the disgrace with which two of its members had
+just been covering themselves.
+
+So once more they laid hands on their victim, and had her dragged, in
+charge as before of the mounted police, from Ollioules to Aix. In
+those days people slept at a public house midway. Here the corporal
+explained that, by virtue of his orders, he would sleep in the young
+girl's room. They pretended to believe that an invalid unable to walk,
+might flee away by jumping out of window. Truly, it was a most
+villanous device, to commit such a one to the chaste keeping of the
+heroes of the _dragonnades_.[115] Happily, her mother had come to see
+her start, had followed her in spite of everything, and they did not
+dare to beat her away with their butt-ends. She stayed in the room,
+kept watch--neither of them, indeed, lying down--and shielded her
+child from all harm.
+
+    [115] Alluding to the cruelties dealt on the Huguenots by the
+    French dragoons, at the close of Louis the Fourteenth's
+    reign.--TRANS.
+
+Cadi�re was forwarded to the Ursulines of Aix, who had the King's
+command to take her in charge. But the prioress pretended that the
+order had not yet come. We may see here how savage a woman who was
+once impassioned will grow, until she has lost all her woman's nature.
+She kept the other four hours at her street-door, as if she were a
+public show. There was time to fetch a mob of Jesuits' followers, of
+honest Church artizans, to hoot and hiss, while children might help by
+throwing stones. For these four hours she was in the pillory. Some,
+however, of the more dispassionate passers-by asked if the Ursulines
+had gotten orders to let them kill the girl. We may guess what tender
+jailers their sick prisoner would find in these good sisters!
+
+The ground was prepared with admirable effect. By a spirited concert
+between Jesuit magistrates and plotting ladies, a system of deterring
+had been set on foot. No pleader would ruin himself by defending a
+girl thus heavily aspersed. No one would digest the poisonous things
+stored up by her jailers, for him who should daily show his face in
+their parlour to await an interview with Cadi�re. The defence in that
+case would devolve on M. Chaudon, syndic of the Aix bar. He did not
+decline so hard a duty. And yet he was so uneasy as to desire a
+settlement, which the Jesuits refused. Thereupon he showed what he
+really was, a man of unswerving honesty, of amazing courage. He
+exposed, with the learning of a lawyer, the monstrous character of the
+whole proceeding. So doing, he would for ever embroil himself with
+the Parliament no less than the Jesuits. He brought into sharp outline
+the spiritual incest of the confessor, though he modestly refrained
+from specifying how far he had carried his profligacy. He also
+withheld himself from speaking of Girard's girls, the loose-lived
+devotees, as a matter well-known, but to which no one would have liked
+to bear witness. In short, he gave Girard the best case he could by
+assailing him _as a wizard_. People laughed, made fun of the advocate.
+He undertook to prove the existence of demons by a series of sacred
+texts, beginning with the Gospels. This made them laugh the louder.
+
+The case had been cleverly disfigured by the turning of an honest
+Carmelite into Cadi�re's lover, and the weaver of a whole chain of
+libels against Girard and the Jesuits. Thenceforth the crowd of
+idlers, of giddy worldlings, scoffers and philosophers alike, made
+merry with either side, being thoroughly impartial as between
+Carmelite and Jesuit, and exceedingly rejoiced to see this battle of
+monk with monk. Those who were presently to be called _Voltairites_,
+were even better inclined towards the polished Jesuits, those men of
+the world, than towards any of the old mendicant orders.
+
+So the matter became more and more tangled. Jokes kept raining down,
+but raining mostly on the victim. They called it a love-intrigue. They
+saw in it nothing but food for fun. There was not a scholar nor a
+clerk who did not turn a ditty on Girard and his pupil, who did not
+hash up anew the old provincial jokes about Madeline in the Gauffridi
+affair, her six thousand imps, their dread of a flogging, and the
+wonderful chastening-process whereby Cadi�re's devils were put to
+flight.
+
+On this latter point the friends of Girard had no difficulty in
+proving him clean. He had acted by his right as director, in
+accordance with the common wont. The rod is the symbol of fatherhood.
+He had treated his penitent with a view to the healing of her soul.
+They used to thrash demoniacs, to thrash the insane and sufferers in
+other ways. This was the favourite mode of hunting out the enemy,
+whether in the shape of devil or disease. With the people it was a
+very common idea. One brave workman of Toulon, who had witnessed
+Cadi�re's sad plight, declared that a bull's sinew was the poor
+sufferer's only cure.
+
+Thus strongly supported, Girard had only to act reasonably. He would
+not take the trouble. His defence is charmingly flippant. He never
+deigns even to agree with his own depositions. He gives the lie to his
+own witnesses. He seems to be jesting, and says, with the coolness of
+a great lord of the Regency, that if, as they charge him, he was ever
+shut up with her, "it could only have happened nine times."
+
+"And why did the good father do so," would his friends say, "save to
+watch, to consider, to search out the truth concerning her? 'Tis the
+confessor's duty in all such cases. Read the life of the most holy
+Catherine of Genoa. One evening her confessor hid himself in her room,
+waiting to see the wonders she would work, and to catch her in the act
+miraculous. But here, unhappily, the Devil, who never sleeps, had laid
+a snare for this lamb of God, had belched forth this devouring monster
+of a she-dragon, this mixture of maniac and demoniac, to swallow him
+up, to overwhelm him in a cataract of slander."
+
+It was an old and excellent custom to smother monsters in the cradle.
+Then why not later also? Girard's ladies charitably advised the
+instant using against her of fire and sword. "Let her perish!" cried
+the devotees. Many of the great ladies also wished to have her
+punished, deeming it rather too bad that such a creature should have
+dared to enter such a plea, to bring into court the man who had done
+her but too great an honour.
+
+Some determined Jansenists there were in the Parliament, but these
+were more inimical to the Jesuits than friendly to the girl. And they
+might well be downcast and discouraged, seeing they had against them
+at once the terrible Society of Jesus, the Court of Versailles, the
+Cardinal Minister (Fleury), and, lastly, the drawing-rooms of Aix.
+Should they be bolder than the head of the law, the Chancellor
+D'Aguesseau, who had proved so very slack? The Attorney-General did
+not waver at all: being charged with the indictment of Girard, he
+avowed himself his friend, advised him how to meet the charges
+against him.
+
+There was, indeed, but one question at issue, to ascertain by what
+kind of reparation, of solemn atonement, of exemplary chastening, the
+plaintiff thus changed into the accused might satisfy Girard and the
+Company of Jesus. The Jesuits, with all their good-nature, affirmed
+the need of an example, in the interests of religion, by way of some
+slight warning both to the Jansenist Convulsionaries and the
+scribbling philosophers who were beginning to swarm.
+
+There were two points by which Cadi�re might be hooked, might receive
+the stroke of the harpoon.
+
+Firstly, she had borne false witness. But, then, by no law could
+slander be punished with death. To gain that end you must go a little
+further, and say, "The old Roman text, _De famosis libellis_,
+pronounces death on those who have uttered libels hurtful to the
+Emperor or to _the religion_ of the Empire. The Jesuits represent that
+religion. Therefore, a memorial against a Jesuit deserves the last
+penalty."
+
+A still better handle, however, was their second. At the opening of
+the trial the episcopal judge, the prudent Larmedieu, had asked her if
+she had never _divined_ the secrets of many people, and she had
+answered yes. Therefore they might charge her with the practice named
+in the list of forms employed in trials for witchcraft, as _Divination
+and imposture_. This alone in ecclesiastic law deserved the stake.
+They might, indeed, without much effort, call her a _Witch_, after
+the confession made by the Ollioules ladies, that at one same hour of
+the night she used to be in several cells together. Their infatuation,
+the surprising tenderness that suddenly came over them, had all the
+air of an enchantment.
+
+What was there to prevent her being burnt? They were still burning
+everywhere in the eighteenth century. In one reign only, that of
+Philip V., sixteen hundred people were burnt in Spain: one Witch was
+burnt as late as 1782. In Germany one was burnt in 1751; in
+Switzerland one also in 1781. Rome was always burning her victims, on
+the sly indeed, in the dark holes and cells of the Inquisition.[116]
+
+    [116] This fact comes to us from an adviser to the Holy
+    Office, still living.
+
+"But France, at least, is surely more humane?" She is very
+inconsistent. In 1718, a Wizard is burnt at Bordeaux.[117] In 1724 and
+1726, the faggots were lighted in Gr�ve for offences which passed as
+schoolboy jokes at Versailles. The guardians of the Royal child, the
+Duke and Fleury, who are so indulgent to the Court, are terrible to
+the town. A donkey-driver and a noble, one M. des Chauffours, are
+burnt alive. The advent of the Cardinal Minister could not be
+celebrated more worthily than by a moral reformation, by making a
+severe example of those who corrupted the people. Nothing more timely
+than to pass some terrible and solemn sentence on this infernal girl,
+who made so heinous an assault on the innocent Girard!
+
+    [117] I am not speaking of executions done by the people of
+    their own accord. A hundred years ago, in a village of
+    Provence, an old woman on being refused alms by a landowner,
+    said in her fury, "You will be dead to-morrow." He was
+    smitten and died. The whole village, high and low, seized the
+    old woman, and set her on a bundle of vine-twigs. She was
+    burnt alive. The Parliament made a feint of inquiring, but
+    punished nobody.--[In 1751 an old couple of Tring, in
+    Hertfordshire, according to Wright, were tortured, kicked,
+    and beaten to death, on the plea of witchcraft, by a maddened
+    country mob.--TRANS.]
+
+Observe what was needed to wash that father clean. It was needful to
+show that, even if he had done wrong and imitated Des Chauffours, he
+had been the sport of some enchantment. The documents were but too
+plain. By the wording of the Canon Law, and after these late decrees,
+somebody ought to be burnt. Of the five magistrates on the bench, two
+only would have burnt Girard. Three were against Cadi�re. They came to
+terms. The three who formed the majority would not insist on burning
+her, would forego the long, dreadful scene at the stake, would content
+themselves with a simple award of death.
+
+In the name of these five, it was settled, pending the final assent of
+Parliament, "That Cadi�re, having first been put to the torture in
+both kinds, should afterwards be removed to Toulon, and suffer death
+by hanging on the Place des Pr�cheurs."
+
+This was a dreadful blow. An immense revulsion of feeling at once took
+place. The worldlings, the jesters ceased to laugh: they shuddered.
+Their love of trifling did not lead them to slur over a result so
+horrible. That a girl should be seduced, ill-used, dishonoured,
+treated as a mere toy, that she should die of grief, or of frenzy,
+they had regarded as right and good; with all that they had no
+concern. But when it was a case of punishment, when in fancy they saw
+before them the woeful victim, with rope round her neck, by the
+gallows where she was about to hang, their hearts rose in revolt. From
+all sides went forth the cry, "Never, since the world began, was there
+seen so villanous a reversal of things; the law of rape administered
+the wrong way, the girl condemned for having been made a tool, the
+victim hanged by her seducer!"
+
+In this town of Aix, made up of judges, priests, and the world of
+fashion, a thing unforeseen occurred: a whole people suddenly rose, a
+violent popular movement was astir. A crowd of persons of every class
+marched in one close well-ordered body straight towards the Ursulines.
+Cadi�re and her mother were bidden to show themselves. "Make yourself
+easy, mademoiselle," they shouted: "we stand by you: fear nothing!"
+
+The grand eighteenth century, justly called by Hegel the "reign of
+mind," was still grander as the "reign of humanity." Ladies of
+distinction, such as the granddaughter of Mde. de S�vign�, the
+charming Madame de Simiane, took possession of the young girl and
+sheltered her in their bosoms.
+
+A thing yet prettier and more touching was it, to see the Jansenist
+ladies, elsewhile so sternly pure, so hard towards each other, in
+their austerities so severe, now in this great conjuncture offer up
+Law on the altar of Mercy, by flinging their arms round the poor
+threatened child, purifying her with kisses on the forehead, baptizing
+her anew in tears.
+
+If Provence be naturally wild, she is all the more wonderful in these
+wild moments of generosity and real greatness. Something of this was
+later seen in the earliest triumphs of Mirabeau, when he had a million
+of men gathered round him at Marseilles. But here already was a great
+revolutionary scene, a vast uprising against the stupid Government of
+the day, and Fleury's pets the Jesuits: a unanimous uprising in behalf
+of humanity, of compassion, in defence of a woman, a very child, thus
+barbarously offered up. The Jesuits fancied that among their own
+rabble, among their clients and their beggars, they might array a kind
+of popular force, armed with handbells and staves to beat back the
+party of Cadi�re. This latter, however, included almost everyone.
+Marseilles rose up as one man to bear in triumph the son of the
+Advocate Chaudon. Toulon went so far for the sake of her poor
+townswoman, as to think of burning the Jesuit college.
+
+The most touching of all these tokens in Cadi�re's favour, reached
+her from Ollioules. A simple boarder, Mdlle. Agnes, for all her
+youthful shyness, followed the impulse of her own heart, threw herself
+into the press of pamphlets, and published a defence of Cadi�re.
+
+So widespread and deep a movement had its effect on the Parliament
+itself. The foes of the Jesuits raised their heads, took courage to
+defy the threats of those above, the influence of the Jesuits, and the
+bolts that Fleury might hurl upon them from Versailles.[118]
+
+    [118] There is a laughable tale which expresses the state of
+    Parliament with singular nicety. The Recorder was reading his
+    comments on the trial, on the share the Devil might have had
+    therein, when a loud noise was heard. A black man fell down
+    the chimney. In their fright they all ran away, save the
+    Recorder only, who, being entangled in his robe, could not
+    move. The man made some excuse. It was simply a chimneysweep
+    who had mistaken his chimney.
+
+The very friends of Girard, seeing their numbers fall off, their
+phalanx grow thin, were eager for the sentence. It was pronounced on
+the 11th October, 1731.
+
+In sight of the popular feeling, no one dared to follow up the savage
+sentence of the bench, by getting Cadi�re hanged. Twelve councillors
+sacrificed their honour, by declaring Girard innocent. Of the twelve
+others, some Jansenists condemned him to the flames as a wizard; and
+three or four, with better reason, condemned him to death as a
+scoundrel. Twelve being against twelve, the President Lebret had to
+give the casting vote. He found for Girard. Acquitted of the capital
+crime of witchcraft, the latter was then made over, as priest and
+confessor, to the Toulon magistrate, his intimate friend Larmedieu,
+for trial in the bishop's court.
+
+The great folk and the indifferent ones were satisfied. And so little
+heed was given to this award, that even in these days it has been said
+that "both were _acquitted_." The statement is not correct. Cadi�re
+was treated as a slanderer, was condemned to see her memorials and
+other papers burnt by the hand of the executioner.
+
+There was still a dreadful something in the background. Cadi�re being
+so marked, so branded for the use of calumny, the Jesuits were sure to
+keep pushing underhand their success with Cardinal Fleury, and to urge
+her being punished in some secret, arbitrary way. Such was the notion
+imbibed by the town of Aix. It felt that, instead of sending her home,
+Parliament would rather _yield her up_. This caused so fearful a rage,
+such angry menaces, against President Lebret, that he asked to have
+the regiment of Flanders sent thither.
+
+Girard was fleeing away in a close carriage, when they found him out
+and would have killed him, had he not escaped into the Jesuits'
+Church. There the rascal betook himself to saying mass. After his
+escape thence he returned to D�le, to reap honour and glory from the
+Society. Here, in 1733, he died, _in the perfume of holiness_. The
+courtier Lebret died in 1735.
+
+Cardinal Fleury did whatever the Jesuits pleased. At Aix, Toulon,
+Marseilles, many were banished, or cast into prison. Toulon was
+specially guilty, as having borne Girard's effigy to the doors of his
+_Girardites_, and carried about the thrice holy standard of the
+Jesuits.
+
+According to the terms of the award, Cadi�re should have been free to
+return home, to live again with her mother. But I venture to say that
+she was never allowed to re-enter her native town, that flaming
+theatre wherein so many voices had been raised in her behalf.
+
+If only to feel an interest in her was a crime deserving imprisonment,
+we cannot doubt but that she herself was presently thrown into prison;
+that the Jesuits easily obtained a special warrant from Versailles to
+lock up the poor girl, to hush up, to bury with her an affair so
+dismal for themselves. They would wait, of course, until the public
+attention was drawn off to something else. Thereon the fatal clutch
+would have caught her anew; she would have been buried out of sight in
+some unknown convent, snuffed out in some dark _In pace_.
+
+She was but one-and-twenty at the time of the award, and she had
+always hoped to die soon. May God have granted her that mercy![119]
+
+    [119] Touching this matter, Voltaire is very flippant: he
+    scoffs at both parties, especially the Jansenists. The
+    historians of our own day, MM. Cabasse, Fabre, M�ry, not
+    having read the _Trial_, believe themselves impartial, while
+    they are bearing down the victim.
+
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE.
+
+
+A woman of genius, in a burst of noble tenderness, has figured to
+herself the two spirits whose strife moulded the Middle Ages, as
+coming at last to recognise each other, to draw together, to renew
+their olden friendship. Looking closer at each other, they discern,
+though somewhat late, the marks of a common parentage. How if they
+were indeed brethren, and this long battle nought but a mistake? Their
+hearts speak, and they are softened. The haughty outlaw and the gentle
+persecutor have forgotten everything: they dart forward and throw
+themselves into each other's arms.--(_Consuelo._)
+
+A charming, womanly idea. Others, too, have dreamed the same dream.
+The sweet Montanelli turned it into a beautiful poem. Ay, who would
+not welcome the delightful hope of seeing the battle here hushed down
+and finished by an embrace so moving?
+
+What does the wise Merlin think of it? In the mirror of his lake,
+whose depths are known to himself only, what did he behold? What said
+he in the colossal epic produced by him in 1860? Why, that Satan will
+not disarm, if disarm he ever do, until the Day of Judgment. Then,
+side by side, at peace with each other, the two will fall asleep in a
+common death.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is not so hard, indeed, to bend them into a kind of compromise. The
+weakening, relaxing effects of so long a battle allow of their
+mingling in a certain way. In the last chapter we saw two shadows
+agreeing to form an alliance in deceit; the Devil appearing as the
+friend of Loyola, devotees and demoniacs marching abreast, Hell
+touched to softness in the Sacred Heart.
+
+It is a quiet time now, and people hate each other less than formerly.
+They hate few indeed but their own friends. I have seen Methodists
+admiring Jesuits. Those lawyers and physicians whom the Church in the
+Middle Ages called the children of Satan, I have seen making shrewd
+covenant with the old conquered Spirit.
+
+But get we away from these pretences. They who gravely propose that
+Satan should make peace and settle down, have they thought much about
+the matter?
+
+There is no hindrance as regards ill-will. The dead are dead. The
+millions of former victims sleep in peace, be they Albigenses,
+Vaudois, or Protestants, Moors, Jews, or American Indians. The Witch,
+universal martyr of the Middle Ages, has nought to say. Her ashes have
+been scattered to the winds.
+
+Know you, then, what it is that raises a protest, that keeps these two
+spirits steadily apart, preventing them from coming nearer? It is a
+huge reality, born five hundred years ago; a gigantic creation
+accursed by the Church, even that mighty fabric of science and modern
+institutions, which she excommunicated stone by stone, but which with
+every anathema has grown a storey higher. You cannot name one science
+which has not been itself a rebellion.
+
+There is but one way of reconciling the two spirits, of joining into
+one the two churches. Demolish the younger, that one which from its
+first beginning was pronounced guilty and doomed as such. Let us, if
+we can, destroy the natural sciences, the observatory, the museum, the
+botanical garden, the schools of medicine, and all the modern
+libraries. Let us burn our laws, our bodies of statutes, and return to
+the Canon Law.
+
+All these novelties came of Satan. Each step forward has been a crime
+of his doing.
+
+He was the wicked logician who, despising the clerical law, preserved
+and renewed that of jurists and philosophers, grounded on an impious
+faith, on the freedom of the will.
+
+He was that dangerous magician who, while men were discussing the sex
+of angels and other questions of like sublimity, threw himself
+fiercely on realities, and created chemistry, physics, mathematics--ay,
+even mathematics. He sought to revive them, and that was rebellion.
+People were burnt for saying that three made three.
+
+Medicine especially was a Satanic thing, a rebellion against disease,
+the scourge so justly dealt by God. It was clearly sinful to check the
+soul on its way towards heaven, to plunge it afresh into life!
+
+What atonement shall we make for all this? How are we to put down, to
+overthrow, this pile of insurrections, whereof at this moment all
+modern life is made up? Will Satan destroy his work, that he may tread
+once more the way of angels? That work rests on three everlasting
+rocks, Reason, Right, and Nature.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So great is the triumph of the new spirit, that he forgets his
+battles, hardly at this moment deigns to remember that he has won.
+
+It were not amiss to remind him of his wretched beginnings, how
+coarsely mean, how rude and painfully comic were the shapes he wore in
+the season of persecution, when through a woman, even the unhappy
+Witch, he made his first homely flights in science. Bolder than the
+heretic, the half-Christian reasoner, the scholar who kept one foot
+within the sacred circle, this woman eagerly escaped therefrom, and
+under the open sunlight tried to make herself an altar of rough
+moorland stones.
+
+She has perished, as she was certain to perish. By what means? Chiefly
+by the progress of those very sciences which began with her, through
+the physician, the naturalist, for whom she had once toiled.
+
+The Witch has perished for ever, but not the Fay. She will reappear in
+the form that never dies.
+
+Busied in these latter days with the affairs of men, Woman has in
+return given up her rightful part, that of the physician, the
+comforter, the healing Fairy. Herein lies her proper priesthood--a
+priesthood that does belong to her, whatever the Church may say.
+
+Her delicate organs, her fondness for the least detail, her tender
+consciousness of life, all invite her to become Life's shrewd
+interpreter in every science of observation. With her tenderly pitiful
+heart, her power of divining goodness, she goes of her own accord to
+the work of doctoring. There is but small difference between children
+and sick people. For both of them we need the Woman.
+
+She will return into the paths of science, whither, as a smile of
+nature, gentleness and humanity will enter by her side.
+
+The Anti-natural is growing dim, nor is the day far off when its
+eclipse will bring back daylight to the earth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The gods may vanish, but God is still there. Nay, but the less we see
+of them, the more manifest is He. He is like a lighthouse eclipsed at
+moments, but alway shining again more clearly than before.
+
+It is a remarkable thing to see Him discussed so fully, even in the
+journals themselves. People begin to feel that all questions of
+education, government, childhood, and womanhood, turn on that one
+ruling and underlying question. As God is, so must the world be.
+
+From this we gather that the times are ripe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So near, indeed, is that religious dayspring that I seemed momently to
+see it breaking over the desert where I brought this book to an end.
+
+How full of light, how rough and beautiful looked this desert of mine!
+I had made my nest on a rock in the mighty roadstead of Toulon, in a
+lowly villa surrounded with aloe and cypress, with the prickly pear
+and the wild rose. Before me was a spreading basin of sparkling sea;
+behind me the bare-topt amphitheatre, where, at their ease, might sit
+the Parliament of the world.
+
+This spot, so very African, bedazzles you in the daytime with
+flashings as of steel. But of a winter morning, especially in
+December, it seemed full of a divine mystery. I was wont to rise
+exactly at six o'clock, when the signal for work was boomed from the
+Arsenal gun. From six to seven I enjoyed a delicious time of it. The
+quick--may I call it piercing?--twinkle of the stars made the moon
+ashamed, and fought against the daybreak. Before its coming, and
+during the struggle between two lights, the wonderful clearness of the
+air would let things be seen and heard at incredible distances. Two
+leagues away I could make everything out. The smallest detail about
+the distant mountains, a tree, a cliff, a house, a bend in the ground,
+was thrown out with the most delicate sharpness. New senses seemed to
+be given me. I found myself another being, released from bondage, free
+to soar away on my new wings. It was an hour of utter purity, all hard
+and clear. I said to myself, "How is this? Am I still a man?"
+
+An unspeakable bluish hue, respected, left untouched by the rosy dawn,
+hung round me like a sacred ether, a spirit that made all things
+spiritual.
+
+One felt, however, a forward movement, through changes soft and slow.
+The great marvel was drawing nearer, to shine forth and eclipse all
+other things. It came on in its own calm way: you felt no wish to
+hurry it. The coming transfiguration, the expected witcheries of the
+light, took not a whit away from the deep enjoyment of being still
+under the divinity of night, still, as it were, half-hidden, and slow
+to emerge from so wonderful a spell.... Come forth, O Sun! We worship
+thee while yet unseen, but will reap all of good we yet may from these
+last moments of our dream!
+
+He is about to break forth. In hope let us await his welcome.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF LEADING AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+Graesse, _Bibliotheca Magi�_, Leipsic, 1843.
+
+_Magie Antique_--as edited by Soldan, A. Maury, &c.
+
+Calcagnini, _Miscell., Magia Amatoria Antiqua_, 1544.
+
+J. Grimm, _German Mythology_.
+
+_Acta Sanctorum._--Acta SS. Ordinis S. Benedicti.
+
+Michael Psellus, _Energie des D�mons_, 1050.
+
+C�sar of Heisterbach, _Illustria Miracula_, 1220.
+
+_Registers of the Inquisition_, 1307-1326, in Limburch; and the
+extracts given by Magi, Llorente, Lamothe-Langon, &c.
+
+_Directorium._ Eymerici, 1358.
+
+Llorente, _The Spanish Inquisition_.
+
+Lamothe-Langon, _Inquisition de France_.
+
+_Handbooks of the Monk-Inquisitors of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth
+Centuries_: Nider's _Formicarius_; Sprenger's _Malleus_.
+
+C. Bernardus's _Lucerna_; Spina, Grillandus, &c.
+
+H. Corn. Agripp� _Opera_, Lyons.
+
+Paracelsi _Opera_.
+
+Wyer, _De Prestigiis D�monum_, 1569.
+
+Bodin, _D�monomanie_, 1580.
+
+Remigius, _Demonolatria_, 1596.
+
+Del Rio, _Disquisitiones Magic�_, 1599.
+
+Boguet, _Discours des Sorciers_, Lyons, 1605.
+
+Leloyer, _Histoire des Spectres_, Paris, 1605.
+
+Lancre, _Inconstance_, 1612: _Incredulit�_, 1622.
+
+Micha�lis, _Histoire d'une P�nitente, &c._, 1613.
+
+Tranquille, _Relation de Loudun_, 1634.
+
+_Histoire des Diables de Loudun_ (by Aubin), 1716.
+
+_Histoire de Madeleine Bavent_, de Louviers, 1652.
+
+_Examen de Louviers. Apologie de l'Examen_ (by Yvelin), 1643.
+
+_Proc�s du P. Girard et de la Cadi�re_; Aix, 1833.
+
+_Pi�ces relatives � ce Proc�s_; 5 vols., Aix, 1833.
+
+_Factum, Chansons, relatifs, &c._ MSS. in the Toulon Library.
+
+Eug�ne Salverte, _Sciences Occultes_, with Introduction by Littr�.
+
+A. Maury, _Les F�es_, 1843; _Magie_, 1860.
+
+Soldan, _Histoire des Proc�s de Sorcellerie_, 1843.
+
+Thos. Wright, _Narratives of Sorcery, &c._, 1851.
+
+L. Figuier, _Histoire du Merveilleux_, 4 vols.
+
+Ferdinand Denis, _Sciences Occultes: Monde Enchant�_.
+
+_Histoire des Sciences au Moyen Age_, by Sprenger, Pouchet, Cuvier, &c.
+
+
+Printed by Woodfall and Kinder, Angel Court, Skinner Street, London.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of La Sorci�re: The Witch of the Middle
+Ages, by Jules Michelet
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of La Sorci�re: The Witch of the Middle Ages, by 
+Jules Michelet
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: La Sorci�re: The Witch of the Middle Ages
+
+Author: Jules Michelet
+
+Translator: Lionel James Trotter
+
+Release Date: February 27, 2010 [EBook #31420]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LA SORCI�RE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Irma Spehar and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
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+
+
+
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+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+<h1>LA SORCI&Egrave;RE.</h1>
+
+<p class="author">J. MICHELET.</p>
+
+<p class="printer">
+LONDON:<br />
+PRINTED BY WOODFALL AND KINDER,<br />
+ANGEL COURT, SKINNER STREET.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<h1 class="witch">THE WITCH OF THE MIDDLE AGES.</h1>
+
+<p class="author2">FROM THE FRENCH OF J. MICHELET.</p>
+
+<p class="author2">BY L.&nbsp;J. TROTTER.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="title1" />
+<p class="center">(<i>The only Authorized English Translation.</i>)</p>
+<hr class="title2" />
+
+<p class="publisher">
+LONDON:<br />
+<span style="letter-spacing: 0.20ex">SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, AND CO.,</span><br />
+STATIONERS&#8217; HALL COURT.<br />
+MDCCCLXIII.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</a></span></h2>
+
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="smcap">In</span> this translation of a work rich in the raciest
+beauties and defects of an author long since made known
+to the British public, the present writer has striven to
+recast the trenchant humour, the scornful eloquence,
+the epigrammatic dash of Mr. Michelet, in language
+not all unworthy of such a word-master. How far he
+has succeeded others may be left to judge. In one
+point only is he aware of having been less true to his
+original than in theory he was bound to be. He has
+slurred or slightly altered a few of those passages
+which French readers take as a thing of course, but
+English ones, because of their different training, are
+supposed to eschew. A Frenchman, in short, writes
+for men, an Englishman rather for drawing-room
+ladies, who tolerate grossness only in the theatres and
+the columns of the newspapers. Mr. Michelet&#8217;s subject,
+and his late researches, lead him into details, moral and
+physical, which among ourselves are seldom mixed up
+with themes of general talk. The coarsest of these
+have been pruned away, but enough perhaps remain
+to startle readers of especial prudery. The translator,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[vi]</a></span>
+however, felt that he had no choice between shocking
+these and sinning against his original. Readers of a
+larger culture will make allowance for such a strait,
+will not be so very frightened at an amount of plain-speaking,
+neither in itself immoral, nor, on the whole,
+impertinent. Had he docked his work of everything
+condemned by prudish theories, he might have made
+it more conventionally decent; but Michelet would
+have been puzzled to recognize himself in the poor
+maimed cripple that would then have borne his name.</p>
+
+<p>Nor will a reader of average shrewdness mistake the
+religious drift of a book suppressed by the Imperial
+underlings in the interests neither of religion nor of
+morals, but merely of Popery in its most outrageous
+form. If its attacks on Rome seem, now and then, to
+involve Christianity itself, we must allow something
+for excess of warmth, and something for the nature of
+inquiries which laid bare the rotten outgrowths of a
+religion in itself the purest known among men. In
+studying the so-called Ages of Faith, the author has
+only found them worthy of their truer and older title,
+the Ages of Darkness. It is against the tyranny,
+feudal and priestly, of those days, that he raises an
+outcry, warranted almost always by facts which a more
+mawkish philosophy refuses to see. If he is sometimes
+hasty and onesided; if the Church and the Feudal
+System of those days had their uses for the time being;
+it is still a gain to have the other side of the subject<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span>
+kept before us by way of counterpoise to the doctrines
+now in vogue. We need not be intolerant; but Rome
+is yet alive.</p>
+
+<p>Taken as a whole, Mr. Michelet&#8217;s book cannot be
+called unchristian. Like most thoughtful minds of
+the day, he yearns for some nobler and larger creed
+than that of the theologians; for a creed which, understanding
+Nature, shall reconcile it with Nature&#8217;s God.
+Nor may he fairly be called irreverent for talking,
+Frenchman like, of things spiritual with the same
+freedom as he would of things temporal. Perhaps in
+his heart of hearts he has nearly as much religious
+earnestness as they who call Dr. Colenso an infidel,
+and shake their heads at the doubtful theology of
+Frederic Robertson. At any rate, no translator who
+should cut or file away so special a feature of French
+feeling would be doing justice to so marked an
+original.</p>
+
+<p>For English readers who already know the concise
+and sober volumes of their countryman, Mr. Wright,
+the present work will offer mainly an interesting study
+of the author himself. It is a curious compound of
+rhapsody and sound reason, of history and romance, of
+coarse realism and touching poetry, such as, even in
+France, few save Mr. Michelet could have produced.
+Founded on truth and close inquiry, it still reads more
+like a poem than a sober history. As a beautiful
+speculation, which has nearly, but not quite, grasped<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[viii]</a></span>
+the physical causes underlying the whole history of
+magic and illusion in all ages, it may be read with
+profit as well as pleasure in this age of vulgar spirit-rapping.
+But the true history of Witchcraft has yet
+to be written by some cooler hand.</p>
+
+<p class="right">L.&nbsp;T.</p>
+
+<p style="padding-left: 2em"><i>May 11th, 1863.</i></p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[ix]</a></span></h2>
+
+
+<table summary="contents">
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="ral"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap"><a href="#INTRODUCTION">Introduction</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">To One Wizard Ten Thousand Witches</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">The Witch was the sole Physician of the People</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_4">4</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">Terrorism of the Middle Ages</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_5">5</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">The Witch was the Offspring of Despair</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_9">9</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">She in her Turn created Satan</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_12">12</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">Satan, Prince of the World, Physician, Innovator</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_13">13</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">His School&mdash;of Witches, Shepherds, and Headsmen</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_15">15</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">His Decline</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_16">16</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2"><hr class="tab" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="book" colspan="2"><a href="#BOOK_I">BOOK I.</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">Chapter I.&mdash;The Death of the Gods</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_19">19</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">Christianity thought the World was Dying</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_20">20</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">The World of Demons</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_24">24</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">The Bride of Corinth</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_26">26</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">Chapter II.&mdash;Why the Middle Ages fell into Despair</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_30">30</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">The People make their own Legends</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_31">31</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">But are forbidden to do so any more</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_35">35</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">The People guard their Territory</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_38">38</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">But are made Serfs</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_40">40</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[x]</a></span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">Chapter III.&mdash;The Little Devil of the Fireside</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_43">43</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">Ancient Communism of the <i>Villa</i></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_43">43</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">The Hearth made independent</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_44">44</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">The Wife of the Serf</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_45">45</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">Her Loyalty to the Olden Gods</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_46">46</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">The Goblin</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_53">53</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">Chapter IV.&mdash;Temptations</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_57">57</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">The Serf invokes the Spirit of Hidden Treasures</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_58">58</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">Feudal Raids</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_59">59</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">The Wife turns her Goblin into a Devil</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_66">66</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">Chapter V.&mdash;Possession</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_69">69</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">The Advent of Gold in 1300</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_69">69</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">The Woman makes Terms with the Demon of Gold</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_71">71</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">Impure Horrors of the Middle Ages</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_75">75</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">The Village Lady</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_78">78</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">Hatred of the Lady of the Castle</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_84">84</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">Chapter VI.&mdash;The Covenant</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_88">88</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">The Woman-serf gives Herself up to the Devil</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_90">90</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">The Moor and the Witch</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_93">93</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">Chapter VII.&mdash;The King of the Dead</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_96">96</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">The dear Dead are brought back to Earth</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_97">97</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">The Idea of Satan is softened</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_103">103</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">Chapter VIII.&mdash;The Prince of Nature</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_106">106</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">The Thaw in the Middle Ages</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_108">108</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">The Witch calls forth the East</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_109">109</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">She conceives Nature</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_112">112</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">Chapter IX.&mdash;The Devil a Physician</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_116">116</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">Diseases of the Middle Ages</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_116">116</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">The <i>Comforters</i>, or Solane&aelig;</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_121">121</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">The Middle Ages anti-natural</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_128">128</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[xi]</a></span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">Chapter X.&mdash;Charms and Philtres</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_131">131</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">Blue-Beard and Griselda</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_133">133</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">The Witch consulted by the Castle</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_137">137</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">Her Malice</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_141">141</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">Chapter XI.&mdash;The Rebels&#8217; Communion&mdash;Sabbaths&mdash;The Black Mass</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_143">143</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">The old Half-heathen Sabasies</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_144">144</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">The Four Acts of the Black Mass</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_150">150</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">Act I. The Introit, the Kiss, the Banquet</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_151">151</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">Act II. The Offering: the Woman as Altar and Host</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_153">153</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">Chapter XII.&mdash;The Sequel&mdash;Love and Death&mdash;Satan Disappears</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_157">157</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">Act III. Love of near Kindred</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_158">158</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">Act IV. Death of Satan and the Witch</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_165">165</a></td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td colspan="2"><hr class="tab" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="book" colspan="2"><a href="#BOOK_II">BOOK II.</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap"><a href="#CHAPTER_I_2">Chapter I.&mdash;The Witch in her Decline&mdash;Satan multiplied and made Common</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_168">168</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">Witches and Wizards employed by the Great</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_172">172</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">The Wolf-lady</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_174">174</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">The last Philtre</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_179">179</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap"><a href="#CHAPTER_II_2">Chapter II.&mdash;Persecutions</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_180">180</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">The Hammer for Witches</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_181">181</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">Satan Master of the World</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_193">193</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap"><a href="#CHAPTER_III_2">Chapter III.&mdash;Century of Toleration in France: Reaction</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_198">198</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">Spain begins when France stops short</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_199">199</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">Reaction: French Lawyers burn as many as the Priests</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_203">203</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV_2">Chapter IV.&mdash;The Witches of the Basque Country</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_207">207</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">They give Instructions to their own Judges</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_212">212</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[xii]</a></span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap"><a href="#CHAPTER_V_2">Chapter V.&mdash;Satan turns Priest</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_218">218</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">Jokes of the Modern Sabbath</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_221">221</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI_2">Chapter VI.&mdash;Gauffridi: 1610</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_228">228</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">Wizard Priests prosecuted by Monks</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_232">232</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">Jealousies of the Nuns</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_234">234</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII_2">Chapter VII.&mdash;The Demoniacs of Loudun: Urban Grandier</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_255">255</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">The Vicar a fine Speaker, and a Wizard</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_263">263</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">Sickly Rages of the Nuns</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_264">264</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII_2">Chapter VIII.&mdash;The Demoniacs of Louviers&mdash;Madeline Bavent</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_277">277</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">Illuminism: the Devil a Quietist</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_277">277</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">Fight between the Devil and the Doctor</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_285">285</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX_2">Chapter IX.&mdash;The Devil Triumphs in the Seventeenth Century</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_294">294</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap"><a href="#CHAPTER_X_2">Chapter X.&mdash;Father Girard and La Cadi&egrave;re</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_303">303</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI_2">Chapter XI.&mdash;Cadi&egrave;re in the Convent</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_339">339</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII_2">Chapter XII.&mdash;Trial of Cadi&egrave;re</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_367">367</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class="chap"><a href="#EPILOGUE">Epilogue</a></td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_395">395</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">Can Satan and Jesus be reconciled?</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_396">396</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">The Witch is dead, but the Fairy will live again</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_399">399</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="subchap">Oncoming of the Religious Revival</td><td class="ral"><a href="#Page_399">399</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="INTRODUCTION" id="INTRODUCTION"></a>INTRODUCTION.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></h2>
+
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="smcap">It</span> was said by Sprenger, before the year 1500,
+&#8220;<i>Heresy of witches</i>, not of wizards, must we call it,
+for these latter are of very small account.&#8221; And by
+another, in the time of Louis XIII.: &#8220;To one wizard,
+ten thousand witches.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Witches they are by nature.&#8221; It is a gift peculiar
+to woman and her temperament. By birth a
+fay, by the regular recurrence of her ecstasy she
+becomes a sibyl. By her love she grows into an
+enchantress. By her subtlety, by a roguishness often
+whimsical and beneficent, she becomes a Witch; she
+works her spells; does at any rate lull our pains to
+rest and beguile them.</p>
+
+<p>All primitive races have the same beginning, as so
+many books of travel have shown. While the man is
+hunting and fighting, the woman works with her wits,
+with her imagination: she brings forth dreams and
+gods. On certain days she becomes a seeress, borne
+on boundless wings of reverie and desire. The better
+to reckon up the seasons, she watches the sky; but
+her heart belongs to earth none the less. Young and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span>
+flower-like herself, she looks down toward the enamoured
+flowers, and forms with them a personal acquaintance.
+As a woman, she beseeches them to heal
+the objects of her love.</p>
+
+<p>In a way so simple and touching do all religion and
+all science begin. Ere long everything will get parcelled
+out; we shall mark the beginning of the professional
+man as juggler, astrologer, or prophet, necromancer,
+priest, physician. But at first the woman
+is everything.</p>
+
+<p>A religion so strong and hearty as that of Pagan
+Greece begins with the Sibyl to end in the Witch. The
+former, a lovely maiden in the broad daylight, rocked
+its cradle, endowed it with a charm and glory of its
+own. Presently it fell sick, lost itself in the darkness
+of the Middle Ages, and was hidden away by the Witch
+in woods and wilds: there, sustained by her compassionate
+daring, it was made to live anew. Thus, of
+every religion woman is the mother, the gentle guardian,
+the faithful nurse. With her the gods fare like
+men: they are born and die upon her bosom.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Alas! her loyalty costs her dear. Ye magian queens
+of Persia; bewitching Circe; sublime Sibyl! Into
+what have ye grown, and how cruel the change that
+has come upon you! She who from her throne in the
+East taught men the virtues of plants and the courses
+of the stars; who, on her Delphic tripod beamed over
+with the god of light, as she gave forth her oracle to a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span>
+world upon its knees;&mdash;she also it is whom, a thousand
+years later, people hunt down like a wild beast; following
+her into the public places, where she is dishonoured,
+worried, stoned, or set upon the burning
+coals!</p>
+
+<p>For this poor wretch the priesthood can never have
+done with their faggots, nor the people with their
+insults, nor the children with their stones. The poet,
+childlike, flings her one more stone, for a woman the
+cruellest of all. On no grounds whatever, he imagines
+her to have been always old and ugly. The word
+&#8220;witch&#8221; brings before us the frightful old women of
+<i>Macbeth</i>. But their cruel processes teach us the
+reverse of that. Numbers perished precisely for being
+young and beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>The Sibyl foretold a fortune, the Witch accomplishes
+one. Here is the great, the true difference between
+them. The latter calls forth a destiny, conjures it,
+works it out. Unlike the Cassandra of old, who
+awaited mournfully the future she foresaw so well, this
+woman herself creates the future. Even more than
+Circe, than Medea, does she bear in her hand the rod
+of natural miracle, with Nature herself as sister and
+helpmate. Already she wears the features of a modern
+Prometheus. With her industry begins, especially
+that queen-like industry which heals and restores
+mankind. As the Sibyl seemed to gaze upon the
+morning, so she, contrariwise, looks towards the west;
+but it is just that gloomy west, which long before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span>
+dawn&mdash;as happens among the tops of the Alps&mdash;gives
+forth a flush anticipant of day.</p>
+
+<p>Well does the priest discern the danger, the bane,
+the alarming rivalry, involved in this priestess of nature
+whom he makes a show of despising. From the
+gods of yore she has conceived other gods. Close to
+the Satan of the Past we see dawning within her a
+Satan of the Future.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The only physician of the people for a thousand
+years was the Witch. The emperors, kings, popes,
+and richer barons had indeed their doctors of Salerno,
+their Moors and Jews; but the bulk of people in every
+state, the world as it might well be called, consulted
+none but the <i>Saga</i>, or wise-woman. When she could
+not cure them, she was insulted, was called a Witch.
+But generally, from a respect not unmixed with fear,
+she was called good lady or fair lady (<i>belle dame</i>&mdash;<i>bella
+donna</i><a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a>), the very name we give to the fairies.</p>
+
+<p>Soon there came upon her the lot which still befalls
+her favourite plant, belladonna, and some other wholesome
+poisons which she employed as antidotes to the
+great plagues of the Middle Ages. Children and
+ignorant passers-by would curse those dismal flowers
+before they knew them. Affrighted by their questionable
+hues, they shrink back, keep far aloof from
+them. And yet among them are the <i>comforters</i>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>(Solane&aelig;) which, when discreetly employed, have cured
+so many, have lulled so many sufferings to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>You find them in ill-looking spots, growing all
+lonely and ill-famed amidst ruins and rubbish-heaps.
+Therein lies one other point of resemblance between
+these flowers and her who makes use of them. For
+where else than in waste wildernesses could live the poor
+wretch whom all men thus evilly entreated; the woman
+accursed and proscribed as a poisoner, even while she
+used to heal and save; as the betrothed of the Devil
+and of evil incarnate, for all the good which, according
+to the great physician of the Renaissance, she herself
+had done? When Paracelsus, at Basle, in 1527,
+threw all medicine into the fire,<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> he avowed that he
+knew nothing but what he had learnt from witches.</p>
+
+<p>This was worth a requital, and they got it. They
+were repaid with tortures, with the stake. For them
+new punishments, new pangs, were expressly devised.
+They were tried in a lump; they were condemned by
+a single word. Never had there been such wastefulness
+of human life. Not to speak of Spain, that classic
+land of the faggot, where Moor and Jew are always
+accompanied by the Witch, there were burnt at Tr&egrave;ves
+seven thousand, and I know not how many at Toulouse;
+five hundred at Geneva in three months of
+1513; at Wurtzburg eight hundred, almost in one
+batch, and fifteen hundred at Bamberg; these two
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>latter being very small bishoprics! Even Ferdinand
+II., the savage Emperor of the Thirty Years&#8217; War, was
+driven, bigot as he was, to keep a watch on these worthy
+bishops, else they would have burned all their subjects.
+In the Wurtzburg list I find one Wizard a schoolboy,
+eleven years old; a Witch of fifteen: and at Bayonne
+two, infernally beautiful, of seventeen years.</p>
+
+<p>Mark how, at certain seasons, hatred wields this one
+word <i>Witch</i>, as a means of murdering whom she will.
+Woman&#8217;s jealousy, man&#8217;s greed, take ready hold of so
+handy a weapon. Is such a one wealthy? <i>She is a
+Witch.</i> Is that girl pretty? <i>She is a Witch.</i> You
+will even see the little beggar-woman, La Murgui,
+leave a death-mark with that fearful stone on the
+forehead of a great lady, the too beautiful dame of
+Lancinena.</p>
+
+<p>The accused, when they can, avert the torture by
+killing themselves. Remy, that excellent judge of
+Lorraine, who burned some eight hundred of them,
+crows over this very fear. &#8220;So well,&#8221; said he, &#8220;does
+my way of justice answer, that of those who were arrested
+the other day, sixteen, without further waiting,
+strangled themselves forthwith.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Over the long track of my History, during the
+thirty years which I have devoted to it, this frightful
+literature of witchcraft passed to and fro repeatedly
+through my hands. First I exhausted the manuals of
+the Inquisition, the asinine foolings of the Dominicans.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>
+(<i>Scourges</i>, <i>Hammers</i>, <i>Ant-hills</i>, <i>Floggings</i>, <i>Lanterns</i>,
+&amp;c., are the titles of their books.) Next, I read the
+Parliamentarists, the lay judges who despised the
+monks they succeeded, but were every whit as foolish
+themselves. One word further would I say of them
+here: namely, this single remark, that, from 1300 to
+1600, and yet later, but one kind of justice may be
+seen. Barring a small interlude in the Parliament of
+Paris, the same stupid savagery prevails everywhere,
+at all hours. Even great parts are of no use here.
+As soon as witchcraft comes into question, the fine-natured
+De Lancre, a Bordeaux magistrate and forward
+politician under Henry IV., sinks back to the level of
+a Nider, a Sprenger; of the monkish ninnies of the
+fifteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>It fills one with amazement to see these different
+ages, these men of diverse culture, fail in taking the
+least step forward. Soon, however, you begin clearly
+to understand how all were checked alike, or let us
+rather say blinded, made hopelessly drunk and savage,
+by the poison of their guiding principle. That principle
+lies in the statement of a radical injustice: &#8220;On
+account of one man all are lost; are not only punished
+but worthy of punishment; <i>depraved and perverted
+beforehand</i>, dead to God even before their birth. The
+very babe at the breast is damned.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Who says so? Everyone, even Bossuet himself. A
+leading doctor in Rome, Spina, a Master of the Holy
+Palace, formulates the question neatly: &#8220;Why does God<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>
+suffer the innocent to die?&mdash;For very good reasons:
+even if they do not die on account of their own sins,
+they are always liable to death as guilty of the original
+sin.&#8221; (<i>De Strigibus</i>, ch. 9.)</p>
+
+<p>From this atrocity spring two results, the one pertaining
+to justice, the other to logic. The judge is
+never at fault in his work: the person brought before
+him is certainly guilty, the more so if he makes a
+defence. Justice need never beat her head, or work
+herself into a heat, in order to distinguish the truth
+from the falsehood. Everyhow she starts from a foregone
+conclusion. Again, the logician, the schoolman,
+has only to analyse the soul, to take count of the
+shades it passes through, of its manifold nature, its
+inward strifes and battles. He had no need, as we
+have, to explain how that soul may grow wicked step
+by step. At all such niceties and groping efforts, how,
+if even he could understand them, would he laugh and
+wag his head! And, oh! how gracefully then would
+quiver those splendid ears which deck his empty skull!</p>
+
+<p>Especially in treating of the <i>compact with the Devil</i>,
+that awful covenant whereby, for the poor profit of one
+day, the spirit sells itself to everlasting torture, we of
+another school would seek to trace anew that road
+accursed, that frightful staircase of mishaps and crimes,
+which had brought it to a depth so low. Much, however,
+cares our fine fellow for all that! To him soul
+and Devil seem born for each other, insomuch that on
+the first temptation, for a whim, a desire, a passing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>
+fancy, the soul will throw itself at one stroke into so
+horrible an extremity.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Neither do I find that the moderns have made much
+inquiry into the moral chronology of witchcraft. They
+cling too much to the connection between antiquity and
+the Middle Ages; connection real indeed, but slight, of
+small importance. Neither from the magician of old,
+nor the seeress of Celts and Germans, comes forth the
+true Witch. The harmless &#8220;Sabasies&#8221; (from Bacchus
+Sabasius), and the petty rural &#8220;Sabbath&#8221; of the
+Middle Ages, have nothing to do with the Black Mass
+of the fourteenth century, with the grand defiance
+then solemnly given to Jesus. This fearful conception
+never grew out of a long chain of tradition. It leapt
+forth from the horrors of the day.</p>
+
+<p>At what date, then, did the Witch first appear? I
+say unfalteringly, &#8220;In the age of despair:&#8221; of that
+deep despair which the gentry of the Church engendered.
+Unfalteringly do I say, &#8220;The Witch is a crime
+of their own achieving.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I am not to be taken up short by the excuses which
+their sugary explanations seem to furnish. &#8220;Weak
+was that creature, and giddy, and pliable under temptation.
+She was drawn towards evil by her lust.&#8221;
+Alas! in the wretchedness, the hunger of those days,
+nothing of that kind could have ruffled her even into
+a hellish rage. An amorous woman, jealous and forsaken,
+a child hunted out by her step-mother, a mother<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>
+beaten by her son (old subjects these of story), if
+such as they were ever tempted to call upon the Evil
+Spirit, yet all this would make no Witch. These poor
+creatures may have called on Satan, but it does not
+follow that he accepted them. They are still far, ay,
+very far from being ripe for him. They have not yet
+learned to hate God.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>For the better understanding of this point, you
+should read those hateful registers which remain to us
+of the Inquisition, not only in the extracts given by
+Llorente, by Lamothe-Langon, &amp;c., but in what remains
+of the original registers of Toulouse. Read
+them in all their flatness, in all their dryness, so dismal,
+so terribly savage. At the end of a few pages
+you feel yourself stricken with a chill; a cruel shiver
+fastens upon you; death, death, death, is traceable in
+every line. Already you are in a bier, or else in a stone
+cell with mouldy walls. Happiest of all are the killed.
+The horror of horrors is the <i>In pace</i>. This phrase it
+is which comes back unceasingly, like an ill-omened
+bell sounding again and again the heart&#8217;s ruin of the
+living dead: always we have the same word, &#8220;Immured.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Frightful machinery for crushing and flattening;
+most cruel press for shattering the soul! One turn of
+the screw follows another, until, all breathless, and
+with a loud crack, it has burst forth from the machine
+and fallen into the unknown world.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>On her first appearance the Witch has neither father
+nor mother, nor son, nor husband, nor family. She is
+a marvel, an aerolith, alighted no one knows whence.
+Who, in Heaven&#8217;s name, would dare to draw near her?</p>
+
+<p>Her place of abode? It is in spots impracticable,
+in a forest of brambles, on a wild moor where thorn
+and thistle intertwining forbid approach. The night
+she passes under an old cromlech. If anyone finds her
+there, she is isolated by the common dread; she is
+surrounded, as it were, by a ring of fire.</p>
+
+<p>And yet&mdash;would you believe it?&mdash;she is a woman
+still. This very life of hers, dreadful though it be,
+tightens and braces her woman&#8217;s energy, her womanly
+electricity. Hence, you may see her endowed with two
+gifts. One is the <i>inspiration of lucid frenzy</i>, which
+in its several degrees, becomes poesy, second-sight,
+depth of insight, cunning simplicity of speech, the
+power especially of believing in yourself through all
+your delusions. Of such a gift the man, the wizard,
+knows nothing. On his side no beginning would have
+been made.</p>
+
+<p>From this gift flows that other, the sublime power
+of <i>unaided conception</i>, that parthenogenesis which our
+physiologists have come to recognise, as touching fruitfulness
+of the body in the females of several species;
+and which is not less a truth with regard to the conceptions
+of the spirit.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>By herself did she conceive and bring forth&mdash;what?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
+A second self, who resembles her in his self-delusions.
+The son of her hatred, conceived upon her love; for
+without love can nothing be created. For all the alarm
+this child gave her, she has become so well again, is
+so happily engrossed with this new idol, that she
+places it straightway upon her altar, to worship it,
+yield her life up to it, and offer herself up as a living
+and perfect sacrifice. Very often she will even say to
+her judge, &#8220;There is but one thing I fear; that I
+shall not suffer enough for him.&#8221;&mdash;(<i>Lancre.</i>)</p>
+
+<p>Shall I tell you what the child&#8217;s first effort was? It
+was a fearful burst of laughter. Has he not cause for
+mirth on his broad prairie, far away from the Spanish
+dungeons and the &#8220;immured&#8221; of Toulouse? The
+whole world is his <i>In pace</i>. He comes, and goes, and
+walks to and fro. His is the boundless forest, his the
+desert with its far horizons, his the whole earth, in the
+fulness of its teeming girdle. The Witch in her tenderness
+calls him &#8220;<i>Robin mine</i>,&#8221; the name of that
+bold outlaw, the joyous Robin Hood, who lived under
+the green bowers. She delights too in calling him
+fondly by such names as <i>Little Green</i>, <i>Pretty-Wood</i>,
+<i>Greenwood</i>; after the little madcap&#8217;s favourite haunts.
+He had hardly seen a thicket when he took to playing
+the truant.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>What astounds one most is, that at one stroke the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>Witch should have achieved an actual Being. He
+bears about him every token of reality. We have
+heard and seen him; anyone could draw his likeness.</p>
+
+<p>The Saints, those darling sons of the house, with
+their dreams and meditations make but little stir;
+<i>they look forward waitingly</i>, as men assured of their
+part in Elysium. What little energy they have is all
+centred in the narrow round of <i>Imitation</i>; a word
+which condenses the whole of the Middle Ages. He
+on the other hand&mdash;this accursed bastard whose only lot
+is the scourge&mdash;has no idea of waiting. He is always
+seeking and will never rest. He busies himself with
+all things between earth and heaven. He is exceedingly
+curious; will dig, dive, ferret, and poke his nose
+everywhere. At the <i>consummatum est</i> he only laughs,
+the little scoffer! He is always saying &#8220;Further,&#8221; or
+&#8220;Forward.&#8221; Moreover, he is not hard to please. He
+takes every rebuff; picks up every windfall. For instance,
+when the Church throws out nature as impure
+and doubtworthy, Satan fastens on her for his own
+adornment. Nay, more; he employs her, and makes
+her useful to him as the fountain-head of the arts;
+thus accepting the awful name with which others
+would brand him; to wit, the <i>Prince of the World</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Some one rashly said, &#8220;Woe to those who laugh.&#8221;
+Thus from the first was Satan intrusted with too pretty
+a part; he had the sole right of laughing, and of declaring
+it an <i>amusement</i>&mdash;rather let us say <i>a necessity</i>;
+for laughing is essentially a natural function. Life<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
+would be unbearable if we could not laugh, at least in
+our afflictions.</p>
+
+<p>Looking on life as nothing but a trial, the Church
+is careful not to prolong it. Her medicine is resignation,
+the looking for and the hope of death. A broad field
+this for Satan! He becomes the physician, the healer
+of the living. Better still, he acts as comforter: he is
+good enough to shew us our dead, to call up the shades
+of our beloved.</p>
+
+<p>One more trifle the Church rejected, namely, logic
+or free reason. Here was a special dainty, to which
+<i>the other</i> greedily helped himself. The Church had
+carefully builded up a small <i>In pace</i>, narrow, low-roofed,
+lighted by one dim opening, a mere cranny.
+That was called <i>The School</i>. Into it were turned
+loose a few shavelings, with this commandment, &#8220;Be
+free.&#8221; They all fell lame. In three or four centuries
+the paralysis was confirmed, and Ockham&#8217;s standpoint
+is the very same as Ab&eacute;lard&#8217;s.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is pleasant to track the Renaissance up to such a
+point. The Renaissance took place indeed, but how?
+Through the Satanic daring of those who pierced the
+vault, through the efforts of the damned who were
+bent on seeing the sky. And it took place yet more
+largely away from the schools and the men of letters,
+in the <i>School of the Bush</i>, where Satan had set up a
+class for the Witch and the shepherd.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span></p>
+<p>Perilous teaching it was, if so it happened; but the
+very dangers of it heightened the eager passion, the
+uncontrollable yearning to see and to know. Thus
+began those wicked sciences, physic debarred from
+poisoning, and that odious anatomy. There, along
+with his survey of the heavens, the shepherd who kept
+watch upon the stars applied also his shameful nostrums,
+made his essays upon the bodies of animals.
+The Witch would bring out a corpse stolen from the
+neighbouring cemetery; and, for the first time, at risk
+of being burned, you might gaze upon that heavenly
+wonder, &#8220;which men&#8221;&mdash;as M. Serres has well said&mdash;&#8220;are
+foolish enough to bury, instead of trying to
+understand.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Paracelsus, the only doctor whom Satan admitted
+there, saw yet a third worker, who, stealing at times
+into that dark assembly, displayed there his surgical
+art. This was the surgeon of those happy days, the
+headsman stout of hand, who could play patly enough
+with the fire, could break bones and set them again;
+who if he killed, would sometimes save, by hanging
+one only for a certain time.</p>
+
+<p>By the more sacrilegious of its essays this convict
+university of witches, shepherds, and headsmen, emboldened
+the other, obliged its rival to study. For
+everyone wanted to live. The Witch would have got hold
+of everything: people would for ever have turned their
+backs on the doctor. And so the Church was fain to
+suffer, to countenance these crimes. She avowed he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>r
+belief in <i>good poisons</i> (Grillandus). She found herself
+driven and constrained to allow of public dissections.
+In 1306 one woman, in 1315 another, was opened and
+dissected by the Italian Mondino. Here was a holy
+revelation, the discovery of a greater world than that
+of Christopher Columbus! Fools shuddered or howled;
+but wise men fell upon their knees.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>With such conquests the Devil was like enough to
+live on. Never could the Church alone have put an
+end to him. The stake itself was useless, save for
+some political objects.</p>
+
+<p>Men had presently the wit to cleave Satan&#8217;s realm
+in twain. Against the Witch, his daughter, his bride,
+they armed his son, the doctor. Heartily, utterly as
+the Church loathed the latter, yet to extinguish the
+Witch, she established his monopoly nevertheless. In
+the fourteenth century she proclaimed, that any woman
+who dared to heal others <i>without having duly studied</i>,
+was a witch and should therefore die.</p>
+
+<p>But how was she to study in public? Fancy what
+a scene of mingled fun and horror would have occurred,
+if the poor savage had risked an entrance into
+the schools! What games and merry-makings there
+would have been! On Midsummer Day they used to
+chain cats together and burn them in the fire. But to
+tie up a Witch in that hell of caterwaulers, a Witch
+yelling and roasting, what fun it would have been for
+that precious crew of monklings and cowlbearers!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In due time we shall see the decline of Satan. Sad
+to tell, we shall find him pacified, turned into <i>a good
+old fellow</i>. He will be robbed and plundered, until of
+the two masks he wore at the Sabbath, the dirtiest is
+taken by Tartuffe. His spirit is still everywhere, but
+of his bodily self, in losing the Witch he lost all. The
+wizards were only wearisome.</p>
+
+<p>Now that we have hurled him so far downwards,
+are we fully aware of what has happened? Was he
+not an important actor, an essential item in the great
+religious machine just now slightly out of gear? All
+organisms that work properly are twofold, twosided.
+Life can otherwise not go on at all. It is a kind of
+balance between two forces, opposite, symmetrical,
+but unequal; the lower answering to the other as its
+counterpoise. The higher chafes at it, seeks to put it
+down. So doing, it is all wrong.</p>
+
+<p>When Colbert, in 1672, got rid of Satan, with very
+little ceremony, by forbidding the judges to entertain
+pleas of witchcraft, the sturdy Parliament of Normandy
+with its sound Norman logic pointed out the dangerous
+drift of such a decision. The Devil is nothing less
+than a dogma holding on to all the rest. If you
+meddle with the Eternally Conquered, are you not
+meddling with the Conqueror likewise? To doubt the
+acts of the former, leads to doubting the acts of the
+second, the miracles he wrought for the very purpose
+of withstanding the Devil. The pillars of heaven are
+grounded in the Abyss. He who thoughtlessly removes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>
+that base infernal, may chance to split up Paradise
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>Colbert could not listen, having other business to
+mind. But the Devil perhaps gave heed and was
+comforted. Amidst such minor means of earning a
+livelihood as spirit-rapping or table-turning, he grows
+resigned, and believes at least that he will not die
+alone.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Whence our old word <i>Beldam</i>, the more courteous meaning
+of which is all but lost in its ironical one.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Alluding to the bonfire which Paracelsus, as professor of
+medicine, made of the works of Galen and Avicenna.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Here, as in some other passages, the play of words in
+the original is necessarily lost.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Ab&eacute;lard flourished in the twelfth, William of Ockham
+(pupil of Duns Scotus) in the fourteenth century.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2><a name="BOOK_I" id="BOOK_I"></a>BOOK I.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2 class="chs"><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>THE DEATH OF THE GODS.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="smcap">Certain</span> authors have declared that, shortly before
+the triumph of Christianity, a voice mysterious ran
+along the shores of the &AElig;gean Sea, crying, &#8220;Great
+Pan is dead!&#8221; The old universal god of nature was
+no more; and great was the joy thereat. Men fancied
+that with the death of nature temptation itself was
+dead. After the troublings of so long a storm, the
+soul of man was at length to find rest.</p>
+
+<p>Was it merely a question touching the end of that
+old worship, its overthrow, and the eclipse of old
+religious rites? By no means. Consult the earliest
+Christian records, and in every line you may read the
+hope, that nature is about to vanish, life to be extinguished;
+that the end of the world, in short, is very
+near. It is all over with the gods of life, who have
+spun out its mockeries to such a length. Everything<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
+is falling, breaking up, rushing down headlong.
+The whole is becoming as nought: &#8220;Great Pan is
+dead!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It was nothing new that the gods must perish.
+Many an ancient worship was grounded in that very
+idea. Osiris, Adonis die indeed in order to rise again.
+On the stage itself, in plays which were only acted
+for the feast days of the gods, &AElig;schylus expressly
+averred by the mouth of Prometheus, that some day
+they should suffer death: but how? As conquered
+and laid low by the Titans, the ancient powers of
+nature.</p>
+
+<p>Here, however, things are quite otherwise. Alike
+in generals and particulars, in the past and the future,
+would the early Christians have cursed Nature herself.
+So utterly did they condemn her, as to find the Devil
+incarnate in a flower. Swiftly may the angels come
+again, who erst overwhelmed the cities of the Dead
+Sea! Oh, that they may sweep off, may crumple up as
+a veil the hollow frame of this world; may at length
+deliver the saints from their long trial!</p>
+
+<p>The Evangelist said, &#8220;The day is coming:&#8221; the
+Fathers, &#8220;It is coming immediately.&#8221; From the
+breaking-up of the Empire and the invasion of the
+Barbarians, St. Augustin draws the hope that very
+soon no city would remain but the city of God.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, how hard of dying is the world; how
+stubbornly bent on living! Like Hezekiah, it begs
+a respite, one turn more of the dial. Well, then, be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>
+it so until the year one thousand. But thereafter,
+not one day.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Are we quite sure of what has been so often
+repeated, that the gods of old had come to an end,
+themselves wearied and sickened of living; that they
+were so disheartened as almost to send in their resignation;
+that Christianity had only to blow upon these
+empty shades?</p>
+
+<p>They point to the gods in Rome; they point out
+those in the Capitol, admitted there only by a kind of
+preliminary death, on the surrender, I might say, of
+all their local pith; as having disowned their country,
+as having ceased to be the representative spirits of the
+nations. In order to receive them, indeed, Rome had
+performed on them a cruel operation: they were
+enervated, bleached. Those great centralized deities
+became in their official life the mournful functionaries
+of the Roman Empire. But the decline of that
+Olympian aristocracy had in no wise drawn down
+the host of home-born gods, the mob of deities still
+keeping hold of the boundless country-sides, of the
+woods, the hills, the fountains; still intimately blended
+with the life of the country. These gods abiding in
+the heart of oaks, in waters deep and rushing, could
+not be driven therefrom.</p>
+
+<p>Who says so? The Church. She rudely gainsays
+her own words. Having proclaimed their death, she
+is indignant because they live. Time after time, by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>
+the threatening voice of her councils<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> she gives
+them notice of their death&mdash;and lo! they are living still.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They are devils.&#8221;&mdash;Then they must be alive.
+Failing to make an end of them, men suffer the
+simple folk to clothe, to disguise them. By the help
+of legends they come to be baptized, even to be foisted
+upon the Church. But at least they are converted?
+Not yet. We catch them stealthily subsisting in their
+own heathen character.</p>
+
+<p>Where are they? In the desert, on the moor, in
+the forest? Ay; but, above all, in the house. They are
+kept up by the most intimate household usages. The
+wife guards and hides them in her household things,
+even in her bed. With her they have the best place
+in the world, better than the temple,&mdash;the fireside.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Never was revolution so violent as that of Theodosius.
+Antiquity shows no trace of such proscription
+of any worship. The Persian fire-worshipper might,
+in the purity of his heroism, have insulted the visible
+deities, but he let them stand nevertheless. He
+greatly favoured the Jews, protecting and employing
+them. Greece, daughter of the light, made merry
+with the gods of darkness, the tunbellied Cabiri; but
+yet she bore with them, adopted them as workmen,
+even to shaping out of them her own Vulcan. Rome
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>in her majesty welcomed not only Etruria, but even
+the rural gods of the old Italian labourer. She persecuted
+the Druids, but only as the centre of a dangerous
+national resistance.</p>
+
+<p>Christianity conquering sought and thought to slay
+the foe. It demolished the schools, by proscribing
+logic and uprooting the philosophers, whom Valens
+slaughtered. It razed or emptied the temples, shivered
+to pieces the symbols. The new legend would have
+been propitious to the family, had the father not been
+cancelled in Saint Joseph; had the mother been set
+up as an educatress, as having morally brought forth
+Jesus. A fruitful road there was, but abandoned at
+the very outset through the effort to attain a high but
+barren purity.</p>
+
+<p>So Christianity turned into that lonely path where
+the world was going of itself; the path of a celibacy
+in vain opposed by the laws of the emperors. Down
+this slope it was hurled headlong by the establishment
+of monkery.</p>
+
+<p>But in the desert was man alone? The Devil kept
+him company with all manner of temptations. He
+could not help himself, he was driven to create anew
+societies, nay whole cities of anchorites. We all know
+those dismal towns of monks which grew up in the
+Thebaid; how wild, unruly a spirit dwelt among them;
+how deadly were their descents on Alexandria. They
+talked of being troubled, beset by the Devil; and they
+told no lie.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A huge gap was made in the world; and who was
+to fill it? The Christians said, The Devil, everywhere
+the Devil: <i>ubique d&aelig;mon</i>.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>
+
+<p>Greece, like all other nations, had her <i>energumens</i>,
+who were sore tried, possessed by spirits. The relation
+there is quite external; the seeming likeness is
+really none at all. Here we have no spirits of any
+kind: they are but black children of the Abyss, the
+ideal of waywardness. Thenceforth we see them
+everywhere, those poor melancholics, loathing, shuddering
+at their own selves. Think what it must be to
+fancy yourself double, to believe in that <i>other</i>, that
+cruel host who goes and comes and wanders within
+you, making you roam at his pleasure among deserts,
+over precipices! You waste and weaken more and
+more; and the weaker grows your wretched body, the
+more is it worried by the devil. In woman especially
+these tyrants dwell, making her blown and swollen.
+They fill her with an infernal <i>wind</i>, they brew in her
+storms and tempests, play with her as the whim seizes
+them, drive her to wickedness, to despair.</p>
+
+<p>And not ourselves only, but all nature, alas! becomes
+demoniac. If there is a devil in the flower, how
+much more in the gloomy forest! The light we think
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>so pure teems with children of the night. The
+heavens themselves&mdash;O blasphemy!&mdash;are full of hell.
+That divine morning star, whose glorious beams not
+seldom lightened a Socrates, an Archimedes, a Plato,
+what is it now become? A devil, the archfiend
+Lucifer. In the eventime again it is the devil Venus
+who draws me into temptation by her light so soft and
+mild.</p>
+
+<p>That such a society should wax wroth and terrible
+is not surprising. Indignant at feeling itself so weak
+against devils, it persecutes them everywhere, in the
+temples, at the altars once of the ancient worship,
+then of the heathen martyrs. Let there be more
+feasts?&mdash;they will likely be so many gatherings of idolaters.
+The Family itself becomes suspected: for
+custom might bring it together round the ancient
+Lares. And why should there be a family?&mdash;the
+empire is an empire of monks.</p>
+
+<p>But the individual man himself, thus dumb and
+isolated though he be, still watches the sky, still
+honours his ancient gods whom he finds anew in the
+stars. &#8220;This is he,&#8221; said the Emperor Theodosius,
+&#8220;who causes famines and all the plagues of the
+empire.&#8221; Those terrible words turned the blind rage
+of the people loose upon the harmless Pagan. Blindly
+the law unchained all its furies against the law.</p>
+
+<p>Ye gods of Eld, depart into your tombs! Get ye
+extinguished, gods of Love, of Life, of Light! Put
+on the monk&#8217;s cowl. Maidens, become nuns. Wives,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>
+forsake your husbands; or, if ye will look after the
+house, be unto them but cold sisters.</p>
+
+<p>But is all this possible? What man&#8217;s breath shall
+be strong enough to put out at one effort the burning
+lamp of God? These rash endeavours of an impious
+piety may evoke miracles strange and monstrous.
+Tremble, guilty that ye are!</p>
+
+<p>Often in the Middle Ages will recur the mournful
+tale of the Bride of Corinth. Told at a happy moment
+by Phlegon, Adrian&#8217;s freedman, it meets us again in the
+twelfth, and yet again in the sixteenth century, as the
+deep reproof, the invincible protest of nature herself.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>&#8220;A young man of Athens went to Corinth, to the
+house of one who had promised him his daughter.
+Himself being still a heathen, he knew not that the
+family which he thought to enter had just turned
+Christian. It is very late when he arrives. They are
+all gone to rest, except the mother, who serves up for
+him the hospitable repast and then leaves him to sleep.
+Dead tired, he drops down. Scarce was he fallen
+asleep, when a figure entered the room: &#8217;tis a girl all
+clothed and veiled in white; on her forehead a fillet of
+black and gold. She sees him. In amazement she
+lifts her white hand: &#8216;Am I, then, such a stranger in
+the house already? Alas, poor recluse!... But I
+am ashamed, and withdraw. Sleep on.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Stay, fair maiden! Here are Bacchus, Ceres, and
+with thee comes Love. Fear not, look not so pale!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Ah! Away from me, young man! I have nothing
+more to do with happiness. By a vow my
+mother made in her sickness my youth and my life are
+bound for ever. The gods have fled, and human
+victims now are our only sacrifices.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Ha! can it be thou, thou, my darling betrothed,
+who wast given me from my childhood? The oath of
+our fathers bound us for evermore under the blessing
+of heaven. Maiden, be mine!&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;No, my friend, not I. Thou shalt have my
+younger sister. If I moan in my chilly dungeon, do
+thou in her arms think of me, of me wasting away
+and thinking only of thee; of me whom the earth is
+about to cover again.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Nay, I swear by this flame, the torch of Hymen,
+thou shalt come home with me to my father. Rest
+thee, my own beloved.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;As a wedding-gift he offers her a cup of gold. She
+gives him her chain, but instead of the cup desires a
+curl of his hair.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It is the hour of spirits; her pale lip drinks up the
+dark blood-red wine. He too drinks greedily after
+her. He calls on the god of Love. She still resisted,
+though her poor heart was dying thereat. But he
+grows desperate, and falls weeping on the couch.
+Anon she throws herself by his side.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Oh! how ill thy sorrow makes me! Yet, if thou
+wast to touch me&mdash;&mdash; Oh, horror!&mdash;white as the snow,
+and cold as ice, such, ah me! is thy bride.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;I will warm thee again: come to me, wert thou
+come from the very grave.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sighs and kisses many do they exchange.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Dost thou feel how warm I am?&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Love twines and holds them fast. Tears mingle
+with their joy. She changes with the fire she drinks
+from his mouth: her icy blood is aglow with passion;
+but the heart in her bosom will not beat.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But the mother was there listening. Soft vows,
+cries of wailing and of pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Hush, the cock is crowing: to-morrow night!&#8217;
+Then with kiss on kiss they say farewell.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In wrath the mother enters; sees what? Her
+daughter. He would have hidden her, covered her
+up. But freeing herself from him, she grew from
+the couch up to the roof.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;O mother, mother, you grudge me a pleasant
+night; you would drive me from this cosy spot! Was
+it not enough to have wrapped me in my winding-sheet
+and borne me to the grave? A greater power
+has lifted up the stone. In vain did your priests
+drone over the trench they dug for me. Of what use
+are salt and water, where burns the fire of youth?
+The earth cannot freeze up love. You made a promise;
+I have just reclaimed my own.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Alas, dear friend, thou must die: thou wouldst
+but pine and dry up here. I have thy hair; it will
+be white to-morrow.... Mother, one last prayer!
+Open my dark dungeon, set up a stake, and let the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>
+loving one find rest in the flames. Let the sparks fly
+upward and the ashes redden. We will go to our
+olden gods.&#8217;&#8221;<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p>
+
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> See Mansi, Baluze; Council of Arles, 442; of Tours, 567;
+of Leptines, 743; the Capitularies, &amp;c., and even Gerson,
+about 1400.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> See the Lives of the Desert Fathers, and the authors
+quoted by A. Maurie, <i>Magie</i>, 317. In the fourth century, the
+Messalians, thinking themselves full of devils, spat and blew
+their noses without ceasing; made incredible efforts to spit
+them forth.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Here I have suppressed a shocking phrase. Goethe, so
+noble in the form, is not so in the spirit of his poem. He spoils
+the marvel of the legend by sullying the Greek conception
+with a horrible Slavish idea. As they are weeping, he turns
+the maiden into a vampire. She comes because she thirsts for
+blood, that she may suck the blood from his heart. And he
+makes her coldly say this impious and unclean thing: &#8220;When
+I have done with him, I will pass on to others: the young
+blood shall fall a prey to my fury.&#8221;
+</p><p>
+In the Middle Ages this story put on a grotesque garb, by
+way of frightening us with the <i>Devil Venus</i>. On the finger of
+her statue a young man imprudently places a ring, which she
+clasps tight, guarding it like a bride, and going in the night
+to his couch, to assert her rights. He cannot rid himself of
+his infernal spouse without an exorcism. The same tale,
+foolishly applied to the Virgin, is found in the <i>Fabliaux</i>. If
+my memory does not mislead me, Luther also, in his &#8220;Table
+Talk,&#8221; takes up the old story in a very coarse way, till you
+quite smell the body. The Spanish Del Rio shifts the scene of
+it to Brabant. The bride dies shortly before her marriage;
+the death-bells are rung. The bridegroom rushed wildly over
+the country. He hears a wail. It is she herself wandering
+about the heath. &#8220;Seest thou not&#8221;&mdash;she says&mdash;&#8220;who leads
+me?&#8221; But he catches her up and bears her home. At this
+point the story threatened to become too moving; but the hard
+inquisitor, Del Rio, cuts the thread. &#8220;On lifting her veil,&#8221;
+says he, &#8220;they found only a log of wood covered with the skin
+of a corpse.&#8221; The Judge le Loyer, silly though he be, has
+restored the older version.
+</p><p>
+Thenceforth these gloomy taletellers come to an end. The
+story is useless when our own age begins; for then the bride
+has triumphed. Nature comes back from the grave, not by
+stealth, but as mistress of the house.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2 class="chs"><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>WHY THE MIDDLE AGES FELL INTO DESPAIR.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="noind">&#8220;<span class="smcap">Be</span> ye as newborn babes (<i>quasi modo geniti infantes</i>);
+be thoroughly childlike in the innocence of your hearts;
+peaceful, forgetting all disputes, calmly resting under
+the hand of Christ.&#8221; Such is the kindly counsel
+tendered by the Church to this stormy world on the
+morning after the great fall. In other words: &#8220;Volcanoes,
+ruins, ashes, and lava, become green. Ye
+parched plains, get covered with flowers.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>One thing indeed gave promise of the peace that
+reneweth: the schools were all shut up, the way of
+logic forsaken. A method infinitely simple for the
+doing away with argument, offered all men a gentle
+slope, down which they had nothing to do but go. If
+the creed was doubtful, the life was all traced out in
+the pathway of the legend. From first to last but the
+one word <i>Imitation</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Imitate, and all will go well. Rehearse and copy.&#8221;
+But is this the way to that true childhood which quickens
+the heart of man, which leads back to its fresh and
+fruitful springs? In this world that is to make us
+young and childlike, I see at first nothing but the
+tokens of age; only cunning, slavishness, want of power.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>
+What kind of literature is this, confronted with the
+glorious monuments of Greeks and Jews? We have
+just the same literary fall as happened in India from
+Brahminism to Buddhism; a twaddling flow of words
+after a noble inspiration. Books copy from books,
+churches from churches, until they cannot so much as
+copy. They pillage from each other: Aix-la-Chapelle
+is adorned with the marbles torn from Ravenna. It is
+the same with all the social life of those days. The
+bishop-king of a city, the savage king of a tribe, alike
+copy the Roman magistrates. Original as one might
+deem them, our monks in their monasteries simply
+restored their ancient <i>Villa</i>, as Chateaubriand well said.
+They had no notion either of forming a new society or
+of fertilizing the old. Copying from the monks of the
+East, they wanted their servants at first to be themselves
+a barren race of monkling workmen. It was in
+spite of them that the family in renewing itself renewed
+the world.</p>
+
+<p>Seeing how fast these oldsters keep on oldening;
+how in one age we fall from the wise monk St. Benedict
+down to the pedantic Benedict of Aniane;<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> we
+feel that such gentry were wholly guiltless of that great
+popular creation which bloomed amidst ruins; namely,
+the Lives of the Saints. If the monks wrote, it was
+the people made them. This young growth might
+throw out some leaves and flowers from the crannies of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>an old Roman ruin turned into a convent: but most
+assuredly not thence did it first arise. Its roots go
+deep into the ground: sown by the people and cultivated
+by the family, it takes help from every hand,
+from men, from women, from children. The precarious,
+troubled life of those days of violence, made these poor
+folk imaginative, prone to believe in their own dreams,
+as being to them full of comfort: strange dreams
+withal, rich in marvels, in fooleries; absurd, but charming.</p>
+
+<p>These families, isolated in forests and mountains, as
+we still see them in the Tyrol or the Higher Alps, and
+coming down thence but once a week, never wanted for
+illusions in the desert. One child had seen this, some
+woman had dreamed that. A new saint began to rise.
+The story went abroad in the shape of a ballad with
+doggrel rhymes. They sang and danced to it of an
+evening at the oak by the fountain. The priest, when
+he came on Sunday to perform service in the woodland
+chapel, found the legendary chant already in every
+mouth. He said to himself, &#8220;After all, history is
+good, is edifying.... It does honour to the Church.
+<i>Vox populi, vox Dei!</i>&mdash;But how did they light upon
+it?&#8221; He could be shown the true, the irrefragable
+proofs of it in some tree or stone which had witnessed
+the apparition, had marked the miracle. What can he
+say to that?</p>
+
+<p>Brought back to the abbey, the tale will find a monk
+good for nothing, who can only write; who is curious,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>
+believes everything, no matter how marvellous. It is
+written out, broidered with his dull rhetoric, and spoilt
+a little. But now it has come forth, confirmed and
+consecrated, to be read in the refectory, ere long in
+the church. Copied, loaded and overloaded with ornaments
+chiefly grotesque, it will go on from age to age,
+until at last it comes to take high rank in the Golden
+Legend.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>When those fair stories are read again to us in these
+days, even as we listen to the simple, grave, artless airs
+into which those rural peoples threw all their young
+heart, we cannot help marking a great inspiration;
+and we are moved to pity as we reflect upon their fate.</p>
+
+<p>They had taken literally the touching advice of the
+Church: &#8220;Be ye as newborn babes.&#8221; But they gave
+to it a meaning, the very last that one would dream of
+finding in the original thought. As much as Christianity
+feared and hated Nature, even so much did these
+others cherish her, deeming her all guileless, hallowing
+her even in the legends wherewith they mingled
+her up.</p>
+
+<p>Those <i>hairy</i> animals, as the Bible sharply calls them,
+animals mistrusted by the monks who fear to find
+devils among them, enter in the most touching way
+into these beautiful stories; as the hind, for instance,
+who refreshes and comforts Genevi&egrave;ve of Brabant.</p>
+
+<p>Even outside the life of legends, in the common
+everyday world, the humble friends of his hearth, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
+bold helpmates of his work, rise again in man&#8217;s esteem.
+They have their own laws,<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> their own festivals. If in
+God&#8217;s unbounded goodness there is room for the smallest
+creatures, if He seems to show them a pitying preference,
+&#8220;Wherefore,&#8221; says the countryman, &#8220;should
+my ass not have entered the church? Doubtless, he
+has his faults, wherein he only resembles me the more.
+He is a rough worker, but has a hard head; is intractable,
+stubborn, headstrong; in short, just like myself.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Thence come those wonderful feasts, the fairest of
+the Middle Ages; feasts of <i>Innocents</i>, of <i>Fools</i>, of the
+<i>Ass</i>. It is the people itself, moreover, which, in the
+shape of an ass, draws about its own image, presents
+itself before the altar, ugly, comical, abased. Verily, a
+touching sight! Led by Balaam, he enters solemnly
+between Virgil and the Sibyl;<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> enters that he may
+bear witness. If he kicked of yore against Balaam,
+it was that before him he beheld the sword of the ancient
+law. But here the law is ended, and the world
+of grace seems opening its two-leaved gate to the mean
+and to the simple. The people innocently believes it
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>all. Thereon comes that lofty hymn, in which it says
+to the ass what it might have said to itself:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza" style="margin-bottom: 0em">
+<span class="i0">&#8220;Down on knee and say <i>Amen</i>!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Grass and hay enough hast eaten.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Leave the bad old ways, and go!<br /></span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza" style="margin-top: 0em; margin-bottom: 0em">
+<span class="i0">&#8226;<span style="padding-left: 1.5em">&#8226;</span><span style="padding-left: 1.5em">&#8226;</span>
+<span style="padding-left: 1.5em">&#8226;</span><span style="padding-left: 1.5em">&#8226;</span>
+<span style="padding-left: 1.5em">&#8226;</span><span style="padding-left: 1.5em">&#8226;<br /></span></span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="stanza" style="margin-top: 0em">
+<span class="i0">For the new expels the old:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shadows fly before the noon:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Light hath hunted out the night.&#8221;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>How bold and coarse ye are! Was it this we asked
+of you, children rash and wayward, when we told you
+to be as children? We offered you milk; you are
+drinking wine. We led you softly, bridle in hand,
+along the narrow path. Mild and fearful, ye hesitated
+to go forward: and now, all at once, the bridle is broken;
+the course is cleared at a single bound. Ah! how
+foolish we were to let you make your own saints; to
+dress out the altar; to deck, to burden, to cover it up
+with flowers! Why, it is hardly distinguishable! And
+what we do see is the old heresy condemned of the
+Church, <i>the innocence of nature</i>: what am I saying?&mdash;a
+new heresy, not like to end to-morrow, <i>the independence
+of man</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Listen and obey!&mdash;You are forbidden to invent, to
+create. No more legends, no more new saints: we
+have had enough of them. You are forbidden to introduce
+new chants in your worship: inspiration is not
+allowed. The martyrs you would bring to light should
+stay modestly within their tombs, waiting to be recognised
+by the Church. The clergy, the monks are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>
+forbidden to grant the tonsure of civil freedom to
+husbandmen and serfs. Such is the narrow fearful
+spirit that fills the Church of the Carlovingian days.<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a>
+She unsays her words, she gives herself the lie, she
+says to the children, &#8220;Be old!&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>A fall indeed! But is this earnest? They had
+bidden us all be young.&mdash;Ah! but priest and people
+are no longer one. A divorce without end begins, a
+gulf unpassable divides them for ever. The priest
+himself, a lord and prince, will come out in his golden
+cope, and chant in the royal speech of that great
+empire which is no more. For ourselves, a mournful
+company, bereft of human speech, of the only speech
+that God would care to hear, what else can we do but
+low and bleat with the guileless friends who never
+scorn us, who, in winter-time will keep us warm in
+their stable, or cover us with their fleeces? We will
+live with dumb beasts, and be dumb ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>In sooth there is less need than before for our going
+to church. But the church will not hold us free: she
+insists on our returning to hear what we no longer
+understand. Thenceforth a mighty fog, a fog heavy
+and dun as lead, enwraps the world. For how long?
+For a whole millennium of horror. Throughout ten
+centuries, a languor unknown to all former times seizes
+upon the Middle Ages, even in part on those latter
+days that come midway betwixt sleep and waking, and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>holds them under the sway of a visitation most irksome,
+most unbearable; that convulsion, namely, of
+mental weariness, which men call a fit of yawning.</p>
+
+<p>When the tireless bell rings at the wonted hours,
+they yawn; while the nasal chant is singing in the old
+Latin words, they yawn. It is all foreseen, there is
+nothing to hope for in the world, everything will come
+round just the same as before. The certainty of being
+bored to-morrow sets one yawning from to-day; and
+the long vista of wearisome days, of wearisome years to
+come, weighs men down, sickens them from the first
+with living. From brain to stomach, from stomach to
+mouth, the fatal fit spreads of its own accord, and keeps
+on distending the jaws without end or remedy. An
+actual disease the pious Bretons call it, ascribing it,
+however, to the malice of the Devil. He keeps crouching
+in the woods, the peasants say: if anyone passes
+by tending his cattle, he sings to him vespers and
+other rites, until he is dead with yawning.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><i>To be old</i> is to be weak. When the Saracens, when
+the Norsemen threaten us, what will come to us if the
+people remain old? Charlemagne weeps, and the
+Church weeps too. She owns that her relics fail to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>guard her altars from these Barbarian devils.<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> Had
+she not better call upon the arm of that wayward
+child whom she was going to bind fast, the arm of that
+young giant whom she wanted to paralyse? This
+movement in two opposite ways fills the whole ninth
+century. The people are held back, anon they are
+hurled forward: we fear them and we call on them for
+aid. With them and by means of them we throw up
+hasty barriers, defences that may check the Barbarians,
+while sheltering the priests and their saints escaped
+thither from their churches.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the Bald Emperor&#8217;s<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> command not to
+build, there grows up a tower on the mountain.
+Thither comes the fugitive, crying, &#8220;In God&#8217;s name,
+take me in, at least my wife and children! Myself
+with my cattle will encamp in your outer enclosure.&#8221;
+The tower emboldens him and he feels himself a man.
+It gives him shade, and he in his turn defends, protects
+his protector.</p>
+
+<p>Formerly in their hunger the small folk yielded
+themselves to the great as serfs; but here how great
+the difference! He offers himself as a <i>vassal</i>, one who
+would be called brave and valiant.<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> He gives himself
+up, and keeps himself, and reserves to himself the
+right of going elsewhere. &#8220;I will go further: the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>earth is large: I, too, like the rest, can rear my tower
+yonder. If I have defended the outworks, I can surely
+look after myself within.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Thus nobly, thus grandly arose the feudal world.
+The master of the tower received his vassals with some
+such words as these: &#8220;Thou shalt go when thou
+willest, and if need be with my help; at least, if thou
+shouldst sink in the mire, I myself will dismount to
+succour thee.&#8221; These are the very words of the old
+formula.<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>But, one day, what do I see? Can my sight be
+grown dim? The lord of the valley, as he rides about,
+sets up bounds that none may overleap; ay, and
+limits that you cannot see. &#8220;What is that? I don&#8217;t
+understand.&#8221; That means that the manor is shut in.
+&#8220;The lord keeps it all fast under gate and hinge,
+between heaven and earth.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Most horrible! By virtue of what law is this <i>vassus</i>
+(or <i>valiant</i> one) held to his power? People will thereon
+have it, that <i>vassus</i> may also mean <i>slave</i>. In like
+manner the word <i>servus</i>, meaning a <i>servant</i>, often
+indeed a proud one, even a Count or Prince of the
+Empire, comes in the case of the weak to signify a <i>serf</i>,
+a wretch whose life is hardly worth a halfpenny.</p>
+
+<p>In this damnable net are they caught. But down
+yonder, on his ground, is a man who avers that his land
+is free, a <i>freehold</i>, a <i>fief of the sun</i>. Seated on his
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>boundary-stone, with hat pressed firmly down, he looks
+at Count or Emperor passing near. &#8220;Pass on, Emperor;
+go thy ways! If thou art firm on thy horse,
+yet more am I on my pillar. Thou mayest pass, but so
+will not I: for I am Freedom.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But I lack courage to say what becomes of this man.
+The air grows thick around him: he breathes less and
+less freely. He seems to be <i>under a spell</i>: he cannot
+move: he is as one paralysed. His very beasts grow
+thin, as if a charm had been thrown over them. His
+servants die of hunger. His land bears nothing now;
+spirits sweep it clean by night.</p>
+
+<p>Still he holds on: &#8220;The poor man is a king in his
+own house.&#8221; But he is not to be let alone. He gets
+summoned, must answer for himself in the Imperial
+Court. So he goes, like an old-world spectre, whom
+no one knows any more. &#8220;What is he?&#8221; ask the
+young. &#8220;Ah, he is neither a lord, nor a serf! Yet
+even then is he nothing?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Who am I? I am he who built the first tower, he
+who succoured you, he who, leaving the tower, went
+boldly forth to meet the Norse heathens at the bridge.
+Yet more, I dammed the river, I tilled the meadow,
+creating the land itself by drawing it God-like out of
+the waters. From this land who shall drive me?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, my friend,&#8221; says a neighbour&mdash;&#8220;you shall
+not be driven away. You shall till this land, but in a
+way you little think for. Remember, my good fellow,
+how in your youth, some fifty years ago, you were rash<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>
+enough to wed my father&#8217;s little serf, Jacqueline.
+Remember the proverb, &#8216;He who courts my hen is my
+cock.&#8217; You belong to my fowl-yard. Ungird yourself;
+throw away your sword! From this day forth
+you are my serf.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There is no invention here. The dreadful tale recurs
+incessantly during the Middle Ages. Ah, it was a
+sharp sword that stabbed him. I have abridged and
+suppressed much, for as often as one returns to these
+times, the same steel, the same sharp point, pierces
+right through the heart.</p>
+
+<p>There was one among them who, under this gross
+insult, fell into so deep a rage that he could not bring
+up a single word. It was like Roland betrayed. His
+blood all rushed upwards into his throat. His flaming
+eyes, his mouth so dumb, yet so fearfully eloquent,
+turned all the assembly pale. They started back. He
+was dead: his veins had burst. His arteries spurted
+the red blood over the faces of his murderers.<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The doubtful state of men&#8217;s affairs, the frightfully
+slippery descent by which the freeman becomes a
+vassal, the vassal a servant, and the servant a serf,&mdash;in
+these things lie the great terror of the Middle Ages,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>and the depth of their despair. There is no way of
+escape therefrom; for he who takes one step is lost.
+He is an <i>alien</i>, a <i>stray</i>, a <i>wild beast of the chase</i>. The
+ground grows slimy to catch his feet, roots him, as he
+passes, to the spot. The contagion in the air kills
+him; he becomes a thing <i>in mortmain</i>, a dead creature,
+a mere nothing, a beast, a soul worth twopence-halfpenny,
+whose murder can be atoned for by twopence-halfpenny.</p>
+
+<p>These are outwardly the two great leading traits in
+the wretchedness of the Middle Ages, through which
+they came to give themselves up to the Devil. Meanwhile
+let us look within, and sound the innermost
+depths of their moral life.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Benedict founded a convent at Aniane in Languedoc, in
+the reign of Charlemagne.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> See J. Grimm, <i>Rechts Alterth&uuml;mer</i>, and my <i>Origines du
+Droit</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> According to the ritual of Rouen. See Ducange on the
+words <i>Festum</i> and <i>Kalend&aelig;</i>: also Mart&egrave;ne, iii. 110. The Sibyl
+was crowned and followed by Jews and Gentiles, by Moses, the
+Prophets, Nebuchadnezzar, &amp;c. From a very early time, and
+continually from the seventh to the seventeenth century, the
+Church strove to proscribe the great people&#8217;s feasts of the Ass,
+of Innocents, of Children, and of Fools. It never succeeded
+until the advent of the modern spirit.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> See the Capitularies, <i>passim</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> An illustrious Breton, the last man of the Middle Ages,
+who had gone on a bootless errand to convert Rome, received
+there some brilliant offers. &#8220;What do you want?&#8221; said the
+Pope.&mdash;&#8220;Only one thing: to have done with the Breviary.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> The famous avowal made by Hincmar.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Charles the Bald.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> A difference too little felt by those who have spoken of
+the <i>personal recommendation</i>, &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> Grimm, <i>Rechts Alterth&uuml;mer</i>, and my <i>Origines du Droit</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> This befell the Count of Avesnes when his freehold was
+declared a mere fief, himself a mere vassal, a serf of the Earl
+of Hainault. Read, too, the dreadful story of the Great Chancellor
+of Flanders, the first magistrate of Bruges, who also was
+claimed as a serf.&mdash;Gualterius, <i>Scriptores Rerum Francicarum</i>,
+viii. 334.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2 class="chs"><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>THE LITTLE DEVIL OF THE FIRESIDE.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="smcap">There</span> is an air of dreaming about those earlier centuries
+of the Middle Ages, in which the legends were
+self-conceived. Among countryfolk so gently submissive,
+as these legends show them, to the Church,
+you would readily suppose that very great innocence
+might be found. This is surely the temple of God
+the Father. And yet the <i>penitentiaries</i>, wherein reference
+is made to ordinary sins, speak of strange
+defilements, of things afterwards rare enough under
+the rule of Satan.</p>
+
+<p>These sprang from two causes, from the utter ignorance
+of the times, and from the close intermingling
+of near kindred under one roof. They seem to have
+had but a slight acquaintance with our modern ethics.
+Those of their day, all counterpleas notwithstanding,
+resemble the ethics of the patriarchs, of that far antiquity
+which regarded marriage with a stranger as
+immoral, and allowed only of marriage amongst kinsfolk.
+The families thus joined together became as
+one. Not daring to scatter over the surrounding
+deserts, tilling only the outskirts of a Merovingian
+palace or a monastery, they took shelter every evening
+under the roof of a large homestead (<i>villa</i>). Thence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>
+arose unpleasant points of analogy with the ancient
+<i>ergastulum</i>, where the slaves of an estate were all
+crammed together. Many of these communities lasted
+through and even beyond the Middle Ages. About
+the results of such a system the lord would feel very
+little concern. To his eyes but one family was visible
+in all this tribe, this multitude of people &#8220;who rose
+and lay down together, ... who ate together of the
+same bread, and drank out of the same mug.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Amidst such confusion the woman was not much
+regarded. Her place was by no means lofty. If the
+virgin, the ideal woman, rose higher from age to age,
+the real woman was held of little worth among these
+boorish masses, in this medley of men and herds.
+Wretched was the doom of a condition which could only
+change with the growth of separate dwellings, when
+men at length took courage to live apart in hamlets,
+or to build them huts in far-off forest-clearings, amidst
+the fruitful fields they had gone out to cultivate. From
+the lonely hearth comes the true family. It is the nest
+that forms the bird. Thenceforth they were no more
+things, but men; for then also was the woman born.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>It was a very touching moment, the day she entered
+<i>her own home</i>. Then at last the poor wretch might
+become pure and holy. There, as she sits spinning
+alone, while her goodman is in the forest, she may
+brood on some thought and dream away. Her damp,
+ill-fastened cabin, through which keeps whistling the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
+winter wind, is still, by way of a recompense, calm
+and silent. In it are sundry dim corners where the
+housewife lodges her dreams.</p>
+
+<p>And by this time she has some property, something
+of her own. The <i>distaff</i>, the <i>bed</i>, and the <i>trunk</i>, are
+all she has, according to the old song.<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> We may add
+a table, a seat, perhaps two stools. A poor dwelling
+and very bare; but then it is furnished with a living
+soul! The fire cheers her, the blessed box-twigs
+guard her bed, accompanied now and again by a pretty
+bunch of vervein. Seated by her door, the lady of
+this palace spins and watches some sheep. We are
+not yet rich enough to keep a cow; but to that we
+may come in time, if Heaven will bless our house.
+The wood, a bit of pasture, and some bees about our
+ground&mdash;such is our way of life! But little corn is
+cultivated as yet, there being no assurance of a harvest
+so long of coming. Such a life, however needy, is
+anyhow less hard for the woman: she is not broken
+down and withered, as she will be in the days of large
+farming. And she has more leisure withal. You
+must never judge of her by the coarse literature of
+the Fabliaux and the Christmas Carols, by the foolish
+laughter and license of the filthy tales we have to put
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>up with by and by. She is alone; without a neighbour.
+The bad, unwholesome life of the dark, little,
+walled towns, the mutual spyings, the wretched dangerous
+gossipings, have not yet begun. No old
+woman comes of an evening, when the narrow street
+is growing dark, to tempt the young maiden by saying
+how for the love of her somebody is dying. She has
+no friend but her own reflections; she converses only
+with her beasts or the tree in the forest.</p>
+
+<p>Such things speak to her, we know of what. They
+recall to her mind the saws once uttered by her mother
+and grandmother; ancient saws handed down for ages
+from woman to woman. They form a harmless reminder
+of the old country spirits, a touching family
+religion which doubtless had little power in the blustering
+hurly-burly of a great common dwellinghouse,
+but now comes back again to haunt the lonely cabin.</p>
+
+<p>It is a singular, a delicate world of fays and hobgoblins,
+made for a woman&#8217;s soul. When the great
+creation of the saintly Legend gets stopped and dried
+up, that other older, more poetic legend comes in for
+its share of welcome; reigns privily with gentle sway.
+It is the woman&#8217;s treasure; she worships and caresses
+it. The fay, too, is a woman, a fantastic mirror wherein
+she sees herself in a fairer guise.</p>
+
+<p>Who were these fays? Tradition says, that of yore
+some Gaulish queens, being proud and fanciful, did on
+the coming of Christ and His Apostles behave so insolently
+as to turn their backs upon them. In Brittany<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>
+they were dancing at the moment, and never stopped
+dancing. Hence their hard doom; they are condemned
+to live until the Day of Judgment.<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> Many of
+them were turned into mice or rabbits; as the Kow-riggwans
+for instance, or Elves, who meeting at night
+round the old Druidic stones entangle you in their
+dances. The same fate befell the pretty Queen Mab,
+who made herself a royal chariot out of a walnut-shell.
+They are all rather whimsical, and sometimes ill-humoured.
+But can we be surprised at them, remembering
+their woeful lot? Tiny and odd as they are,
+they have a heart, a longing to be loved. They are
+good and they are bad and full of fancies. On the
+birth of a baby they come down the chimney, to endow
+it and order its future. They are fond of good spinning-women&mdash;they
+even spin divinely themselves. Do
+we not talk of <i>spinning like a fairy</i>?</p>
+
+<p>The fairy-tales, stripped of the absurd embellishments
+in which the latest compilers muffled them up, express
+the heart of the people itself. They mark a poetic
+interval between the gross communism of the primitive
+<i>villa</i>, and the looseness of the time when a growing
+burgess-class made our cynical Fabliaux.<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a></p>
+
+<p>These tales have an historical side, reminding us, in
+the ogres, &amp;c., of the great famines. But commonly
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>they soar higher than any history, on the <i>Blue Bird&#8217;s</i>
+wing, in a realm of eternal poesy; telling us our
+wishes which never vary, the unchangeable history of
+the heart.</p>
+
+<p>The poor serf&#8217;s longing to breathe, to rest, to find a
+treasure that may end his sufferings, continually returns.
+More often, through a lofty aspiration, this
+treasure becomes a soul as well, a treasure of love
+asleep, as in <i>The Sleeping Beauty</i>: but not seldom the
+charming person finds herself by some fatal enchantment
+hidden under a mask. Hence that touching trilogy,
+that admirable <i>crescendo</i> of <i>Riquet with the Tuft</i>,
+<i>Ass&#8217;s Skin</i>, and <i>Beauty and the Beast</i>. Love will not
+be discouraged. Through all that ugliness it follows
+after and gains the hidden beauty. In the last of these
+tales that feeling touches the sublime, and I think that
+no one has ever read it without weeping.</p>
+
+<p>A passion most real, most sincere, lurks beneath it&mdash;that
+unhappy, hopeless love, which unkind nature often
+sets between poor souls of very different ranks in life.
+On the one hand is the grief of the peasant maid at
+not being able to make herself fair enough to win the
+cavalier&#8217;s fancy; on the other the smothered sighs of
+the serf, when along his furrow he sees passing, on a
+white horse, too exquisite a glory, the beautiful, the
+majestic Lady of the Castle. So in the East arises
+the mournful idyll of the impossible loves of the Rose
+and the Nightingale. Nevertheless, there is one
+great difference: the bird and the flower are both<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>
+beautiful; nay, are alike in their beauty. But here
+the humbler being, doomed to a place so far below,
+avows to himself that he is ugly and monstrous. But
+amidst his wailing he feels in himself a power greater
+than the East can know. With the will of a hero,
+through the very greatness of his desire, he breaks out
+of his idle coverings. He loves so much, this monster,
+that he is loved, and, in return, through that love
+grows beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>An infinite tenderness pervades it all. This soul
+enchanted thinks not of itself alone. It busies itself
+in saving all nature and all society as well. Victims
+of every kind, the child beaten by its step-mother, the
+youngest sister slighted, ill-used by her elders, are the
+surest objects of its liking. Even to the Lady of the
+Castle does its compassion extend; it mourns her fallen
+into the hands of so fierce a lord as Blue-Beard. It
+yearns with pity towards the beasts; it seeks to console
+them for being still in the shape of animals. Let them
+be patient, and their day will come. Some day their
+prisoned souls shall put on wings, shall be free, lovely,
+and beloved. This is the other side of <i>Ass&#8217;s Skin</i>
+and such like stories. There especially we are sure of
+finding a woman&#8217;s heart. The rude labourer in the
+fields may be hard enough to his beasts, but to the
+woman they are no beasts. She regards them with the
+feeling of a child. To her fancy all is human, all is
+soul: the whole world becomes ennobled. It is a beautiful
+enchantment. Humble as she is, and ugly as she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>
+thinks herself, she has given all her beauty, all her
+grace to the surrounding universe.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Is she, then, so ugly, this little peasant-wife, whose
+dreaming fancy feeds on things like these? I tell you
+she keeps house, she spins and minds the flock, she
+visits the forest to gather a little wood. As yet she has
+neither the hard work nor the ugly looks of the
+countrywoman as afterwards fashioned by the prevalent
+culture of grain crops. Nor is she like the fat townswife,
+heavy and slothful, about whom our fathers made
+such a number of fat stories. She has no sense of
+safety; she is meek and timid, and feels herself, as it
+were, in God&#8217;s hand. On yonder hill she can see the
+dark frowning castle, whence a thousand harms may
+come upon her. Her husband she holds in equal fear
+and honour. A serf elsewhere, by her side he is a
+king. For him she saves of her best, living herself on
+nothing. She is small and slender like the women-saints
+of the Church. The poor feeding of those
+days must needs make women fine-bred, but lacking
+also in vital strength. The children die off in vast
+numbers: those pale roses are all nerves. Hence, will
+presently burst forth the epileptic dances of the fourteenth
+century. Meanwhile, towards the twelfth century,
+there come to be two weaknesses attached to this
+state of half-grown youth: by night somnambulism;
+in the daytime seeing of visions, trance, and the gift
+of tears.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span></p><hr />
+
+<p>This woman, for all her innocence, still has a secret
+which the Church may never be told. Locked up in
+her heart she bears the pitying remembrance of those
+poor old gods who have fallen into the state of
+spirits;<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> and spirits, you must know, are not exempt
+from suffering. Dwelling in rocks, and in hearts of
+oak, they are very unhappy in winter; being particularly
+fond of warmth. They ramble about houses;
+they are sometimes seen in stables warming themselves
+beside the beasts. Bereft of incense and burnt-offerings,
+they sometimes take of the milk. The housewife
+being thrifty, will not stint her husband, but
+lessens her own share, and in the evening leaves a
+little cream.</p>
+
+<p>Those spirits who only appear at night, regret their
+banishment from the day and are greedy of lamplight.
+By night the housewife starts on her perilous trip,
+bearing a small lantern, to the great oak where they
+dwell, or to the secret fountain whose mirror, as it
+multiplies the flame, may cheer up those sorrowful
+outlaws.</p>
+
+<p>But if anyone should know of it, good heavens!
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>Her husband is canny and fears the Church: he would
+certainly give her a beating. The priest wages fierce
+war with the sprites, and hunts them out of every
+place. Yet he might leave them their dwelling in the
+oaks! What harm can they do in the forest? Alas!
+no: from council to council they are hunted down.
+On set days the priest will go even to the oak, and
+with prayers and holy water drive away the spirits.</p>
+
+<p>How would it be if no kind soul took pity on them?
+This woman, however, will take them under her care.
+She is an excellent Christian, but will keep for them
+one corner of her heart. To them alone can she
+entrust those little natural affairs, which, harmless as
+they are in a chaste wife&#8217;s dwelling, the Church
+at any rate would count as blameworthy. They are
+the confidants, the confessors of these touching womanly
+secrets. Of them she thinks, when she puts
+the holy log on the fire. It is Christmastide; but
+also is it the ancient festival of the Northern spirits,
+the <i>Feast of the Longest Night</i>. So, too, the Eve of
+May-day is the <i>Pervigilium of Maia</i>, when the tree
+is planted. So, too, with the Eve of St. John, the
+true feast-day of life, of flowers, and newly-awakened
+love. She who has no children makes it her especial
+duty to cherish these festivals, and to offer them a
+deep devotion. A vow to the Virgin would perhaps be
+of little avail, it being no concern of Mary&#8217;s. In a
+low whisper, she prefers addressing some ancient
+<i>genius</i>, worshipped in other days as a rustic deity, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>
+afterwards by the kindness of some local church transformed
+into a saint.<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> And thus it happens that the
+bed, the cradle, all the sweetest mysteries on which the
+chaste and loving soul can brood, belong to the olden
+gods.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Nor are the sprites ungrateful. One day she awakes,
+and without having stirred a finger, finds all her housekeeping
+done. In her amazement she makes the sign
+of the cross and says nothing. When the good man
+goes she questions herself, but in vain. It must have
+been a spirit. &#8220;What can it be? How came it here?
+How I should like to see it! But I am afraid: they
+say it is death to see a spirit.&#8221;&mdash;Yet the cradle moves
+and swings of itself. She is clasped by some one, and
+a voice so soft, so low that she took it for her own, is
+heard saying, &#8220;Dearest mistress, I love to rock your
+babe, because I am myself a babe.&#8221; Her heart beats,
+and yet she takes courage a little. The innocence of
+the cradle gives this spirit also an innocent air, causing
+her to believe it good, gentle, suffered at least by
+God.</p>
+
+<p>From that day forth she is no longer alone. She
+readily feels its presence, and it is never far from her.
+It rubs her gown, and she hears the grazing. It rambles
+momently about her, and plainly cannot leave her
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>side. If she goes to the stable, it is there; and she
+believes that the other day it was in the churn.<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></p>
+
+<p>Pity she cannot take it up and look at it! Once,
+when she suddenly touched the brands, she fancied
+she saw the tricksy little thing tumbling about in the
+sparks; another time she missed catching it in a rose.
+Small as it is, it works, sweeps, arranges, saves her a
+thousand cares.</p>
+
+<p>It has its faults, however; is giddy, bold, and if she
+did not hold it fast, might perhaps shake itself free. It
+observes and listens too much. It repeats sometimes
+of a morning some little word she had whispered very,
+very softly on going to bed, when the light was put out.
+She knows it to be very indiscreet, exceedingly curious.
+She is irked with feeling herself always followed about,
+complains of it, and likes complaining. Sometimes,
+having threatened him and turned him off, she feels
+herself quite at ease. But just then she finds herself
+caressed by a light breathing, as it were a bird&#8217;s wing.
+He was under a leaf. He laughs: his gentle voice, free
+from mocking, declares the joy he felt in taking his
+chaste young mistress by surprise. On her making a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>show of great wrath, &#8220;No, my darling, my little pet,&#8221;
+says the monkey, &#8220;you are not a bit sorry to have
+me here.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She feels ashamed and dares say nothing more. But
+she guesses now that she loves him overmuch. She has
+scruples about it, and loves him yet more. All night
+she seems to feel him creeping up to her bed. In her
+fear she prays to God, and keeps close to her husband.
+What shall she do? She has not the strength to tell
+the Church. She tells her husband, who laughs at first
+incredulously. Then she owns to a little more,&mdash;what
+a madcap the goblin is, sometimes even overbold.
+&#8220;What matters? He is so small.&#8221; Thus he himself
+sets her mind at ease.</p>
+
+<p>Should we too feel reassured, we who can see more
+clearly? She is quite innocent still. She would shrink
+from copying the great lady up there who, in the face
+of her husband, has her court of lovers and her page.
+Let us own, however, that to that point the goblin has
+already smoothed the way. One could not have a more
+perilous page than he who hides himself under a rose;
+and, moreover, he smacks of the lover. More intrusive
+than anyone else, he is so tiny that he can creep
+anywhere.</p>
+
+<p>He glides even into the husband&#8217;s heart, paying him
+court and winning his good graces. He looks after
+his tools, works in his garden, and of an evening, by
+way of reward, curls himself up in the chimney, behind
+the babe and the cat. They hear his small voice, just<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>
+like a cricket&#8217;s; but they never see much of him, save
+when a faint glimmer lights a certain cranny in which
+he loves to stay. Then they see, or think they see, a
+thin little face; and cry out, &#8220;Ah! little one, we have
+seen you at last!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In church they are told to mistrust the spirits, for
+even one that seems innocent, and glides about like a
+light breeze, may after all be a devil. They take good
+care not to believe it. His size begets a belief in his
+innocence. Whilst he is there, they thrive. The husband
+holds to him as much as the wife, and perhaps
+more. He sees that the tricksy little elf makes the
+fortune of the house.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a>
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&#8220;Trois pas du c&ocirc;t&eacute; du banc,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Et trois pas du c&ocirc;t&eacute; du lit;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Trois pas du c&ocirc;t&eacute; du coffre,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Et trois pas&mdash;&mdash; Revenez ici.&#8221;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">(<i>Old Song of the Dancing Master.</i>)<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> All passages bearing on this point have been gathered
+together in two learned works by M. Maury (<i>Les F&eacute;es</i>, 1843;
+and <i>La Magie</i>, 1860). See also Grimm.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> A body of tales by the Trouv&egrave;res of the twelfth and
+thirteenth centuries.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> This loyalty of hers is very touching indeed. In the fifth
+century the peasants braved persecution by parading the gods
+of the old religion in the shape of small dolls made of linen
+or flour. Still the same in the eighth century. The <i>Capitularies</i>
+threaten death in vain. In the twelfth century, Burchard, of
+Worms, attests their inutility. In 1389, the Sorbonne inveighs
+against certain traces of heathenism, while in 1400, Gerson
+talks of it as still a lively superstition.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> A. Maury, <i>Magie</i>, 159.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> This is a favourite haunt of the little rogue&#8217;s. To this day
+the Swiss, knowing his tastes, make him a present of some
+milk. His name among them is <i>troll</i> (<i>dr&ocirc;le</i>); among the Germans
+<i>kobold</i>, <i>nix</i>. In France he is called <i>follet</i>, <i>goblin</i>, <i>lutin</i>;
+in England, <i>Puck</i>, <i>Robin Goodfellow</i>. Shakespeare says, he does
+sleepy servants the kindness to pinch them black and blue, in
+order to rouse them.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2 class="chs"><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>TEMPTATIONS.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="smcap">I have</span> kept this picture clear of those dreadful
+shadows of the hour by which it would have been
+sadly overdarkened. I refer especially to the uncertainty
+attending the lot of these rural households, to
+their constant fear and foreboding of some casual
+outrage which might at any moment descend on them
+from the castle.</p>
+
+<p>There were just two things which made the feudal
+rule a hell: on one hand, its <i>exceeding steadfastness</i>,
+man being nailed, as it were, to the ground, and
+emigration made impossible; on the other, a very
+great degree of <i>uncertainty</i> about his lot.</p>
+
+<p>The optimist historians who say so much about
+fixed rents, charters, buying of immunities, forget how
+slightly all this was guaranteed. So much you were
+bound to pay the lord, but all the rest he could take
+if he chose; and this was very fitly called the <i>right of
+seizure</i>. You may work and work away, my good
+fellow! But while you are in the fields, yon dreaded
+band from the castle will fall upon your house and
+carry off whatever they please &#8220;for their lord&#8217;s service.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Look again at that man standing with his head
+bowed gloomily over the furrow! And thus he is
+always found, his face clouded, his heart oppressed, as
+if he were expecting some evil news. Is he meditating
+some wrongful deed? No; but there are two ideas
+haunting him, two daggers piercing him in turn.
+The one is, &#8220;In what state shall I find my house
+this evening?&#8221; The other, &#8220;Would that the turning
+up of this sod might bring some treasure to
+light! O that the good spirit would help to buy us
+free!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>We are assured that, after the fashion of the
+Etruscan spirit which one day started up from under
+the ploughshare in the form of a child, a dwarf or
+gnome of the tiniest stature would sometimes on such
+an appeal come forth from the ground, and, setting
+itself on the furrow, would say, &#8220;What wantest thou?&#8221;
+But in his amazement the poor man would ask for
+nothing; he would turn pale, cross himself, and presently
+go quite away.</p>
+
+<p>Did he never feel sorry afterwards? Said he never
+to himself, &#8220;Fool that you are, you will always be unlucky?&#8221;
+I readily believe he did; but I also think
+that a barrier of dread invincible stopped him short.
+I cannot believe with the monks who have told us all
+things concerning witchcraft, that the treaty with
+Satan was the light invention of a miser or a man in
+love. On the contrary, nature and good sense alike
+inform us that it was only the last resource of an overwhelming<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
+despair, under the weight of dreadful outrages
+and dreadful sufferings.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>But those great sufferings, we are told, must have been
+greatly lightened about the time of St. Louis, who forbade
+private wars among the nobles. My own opinion
+is quite the reverse. During the fourscore or hundred
+years that elapsed between his prohibition and the
+wars with England (1240-1340), the great lords being
+debarred from the accustomed sport of burning and
+plundering their neighbours&#8217; lands, became a terror
+to their own vassals. For the latter such a peace was
+simply war.</p>
+
+<p>The spiritual, the monkish lords, and others, as
+shown in the <i>Journal of Eudes Rigault</i>, lately published,
+make one shudder. It is a repulsive picture of
+profligacy at once savage and uncontrolled. The
+monkish lords especially assail the nunneries. The
+austere Rigault, Archbishop of Rouen, confessor of the
+holy king, conducts a personal inquiry into the state
+of Normandy. Every evening he comes to a monastery.
+In all of them he finds the monks leading the life of
+great feudal lords, wearing arms, getting drunk, fighting
+duels, keen huntsmen over all the cultivated land;
+the nuns living among them in wild confusion, and
+betraying everywhere the fruits of their shameless
+deeds.</p>
+
+<p>If things are so in the Church, what must the lay
+lords have been? What like was the inside of those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>
+dark towers which the folk below regarded with so
+much horror? Two tales, undoubtedly historical,
+namely, <i>Blue-Beard</i> and <i>Griselda</i>, tell us something
+thereanent. To his vassals, his serfs, what indeed must
+have been this devotee of torture who treated his own
+family in such a way? He is known to us through the
+only man who was brought to trial for such deeds; and
+that not earlier than the fifteenth century,&mdash;Gilles de
+Retz, who kidnapped children.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Walter Scott&#8217;s Front de B&#339;uf, and the other
+lords of melodramas and romances, are but poor creatures
+in the face of these dreadful realities. The
+Templar also in <i>Ivanhoe</i>, is a weak artificial conception.
+The author durst not assay the foul reality of celibate
+life in the Temple, or within the castle walls. Few
+women were taken in there, being accounted not worth
+their keep. The romances of chivalry altogether belie
+the truth. It is remarkable, indeed, how often the
+literature of an age expresses the very opposite of its
+manners, as, for instance, the washy theatre of eclogues
+after Florian,<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> during the years of the Great Terror.</p>
+
+<p>The rooms in these castles, in such at least as may
+be seen to-day, speak more plainly than any books.
+Men-at-arms, pages, footmen, crammed together of
+nights under low-vaulted roofs, in the daytime kept on
+the battlements, on narrow terraces, in a state of most
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>sickening weariness, lived only in their pranks down
+below; in feats no longer of arms on the neighbouring
+domains, but of hunting, ay, and hunting of men;
+insults, I may say, without number, outrages untold on
+families of serfs. The lord himself well knew that
+such an army of men, without women, could only be
+kept in order by letting them loose from time to time.</p>
+
+<p>The awful idea of a hell wherein God employs the
+very guiltiest of the wicked spirits to torture the less
+guilty delivered over to them for their sport,&mdash;this
+lovely dogma of the Middle Ages was exemplified to
+the last letter. Men felt that God was not among
+them. Each new raid betokened more and more
+clearly the kingdom of Satan, until men came to believe
+that thenceforth their prayers should be offered to
+him alone.</p>
+
+<p>Up in the castle there was laughing and joking.
+&#8220;The women-serfs were too ugly.&#8221; There is no question
+raised as to their beauty. The great pleasure lay
+in deeds of outrage, in striking and making them
+weep. Even in the seventeenth century the great
+ladies died with laughing, when the Duke of Lorraine
+told them how, in peaceful villages, his people went
+about harrying and torturing all the women, even to
+the old.</p>
+
+<p>These outrages fell most frequently, as we might
+suppose, on families well to do and comparatively distinguished
+among the serfs; the families, namely, of
+those serf-born mayors, who already in the twelfth
+century appear at the head of the village. By the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>
+nobles they were hated, jeered, cruelly plagued. Their
+newborn moral dignity was not to be forgiven. Their
+wives and daughters were not allowed to be good and
+wise: they had no right to be held in any respect.
+Their honour was not their own. <i>Serfs of the body</i>,
+such was the cruel phrase cast for ever in their teeth.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>In days to come people will be slow to believe, that
+the law among Christian nations went beyond anything
+decreed concerning the olden slavery; that it
+wrote down as an actual right the most grievous outrage
+that could ever wound man&#8217;s heart. The lord
+spiritual had this foul privilege no less than the lord
+temporal. In a parish outside Bourges, the parson, as
+being a lord, expressly claimed the firstfruits of the
+bride, but was willing to sell his rights to the husband.<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a></p>
+
+<p>It has been too readily believed that this wrong was
+formal, not real. But the price laid down in certain
+countries for getting a dispensation, exceeded the
+means of almost every peasant. In Scotland, for
+instance, the demand was for &#8220;several cows:&#8221; a price
+immense, impossible. So the poor young wife was at
+their mercy. Besides, the Courts of B&eacute;arn openly
+maintain that this right grew up naturally: &#8220;The
+eldest-born of the peasant is accounted the son of his
+lord, for he perchance it was who begat him.&#8221;<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span></p><p>All feudal customs, even if we pass over this, compel
+the bride to go up to the castle, bearing thither the
+&#8220;wedding-dish.&#8221; Surely it was a cruel thing to make
+her trust herself amongst such a pack of celibate dogs,
+so shameless and so ungovernable.</p>
+
+<p>A shameful scene we may well imagine it to have
+been. As the young husband is leading his bride to
+the castle, fancy the laughter of cavaliers and footmen,
+the frolics of the pages around the wretched poor!
+But the presence of the great lady herself will check
+them? Not at all. The lady in whose delicate breeding
+the romances tell us to believe,<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> but who, in her husband&#8217;s
+absence, ruled his men, judging, chastising,
+ordaining penalties, to whom her husband himself was
+bound by the fiefs she brought him,&mdash;such a lady
+would be in no wise merciful, especially towards a girl-serf
+who happened also to be good-looking. Since,
+according to the custom of those days, she openly kept
+her gentleman and her page, she would not be sorry to
+sanction her own libertinism by that of her husband.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing will she do to hinder the fun, the sport they
+are making out of yon poor trembler who has come to
+redeem his bride. They begin by bargaining with him;
+they laugh at the pangs endured by &#8220;the miserly
+peasant;&#8221; they suck the very blood and marrow of
+him. Why all this fury? Because he is neatly clad;
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>is honest, settled; is a man of mark in the village.
+Why, indeed? Because she is pious, chaste, and pure;
+because she loves him; because she is frightened and
+falls a-weeping. Her sweet eyes plead for pity.</p>
+
+<p>In vain does the poor wretch offer all he has, even
+to her dowry: it is all too little. Angered at such
+cruel injustice, he will say perhaps that &#8220;his neighbour
+paid nothing.&#8221; The insolent fellow! he would argue
+with us! Thereon they gather round him, a yelling
+mob: sticks and brooms pelt upon him like hail. They
+jostle him, they throw him down. &#8220;You jealous
+villain, you Lent-faced villain!&#8221; they cry; &#8220;no one
+takes your wife from you; you shall have her back to-night,
+and to enhance the honour done you ... your
+eldest child will be a baron!&#8221; Everyone looks
+out of window at the absurd figure of this dead man
+in wedding garments. He is followed by bursts of
+laughter, and the noisy rabble, down to the lowest
+scullion, give chase to the &#8220;cuckold.&#8221;<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The poor fellow would have burst, had he nothing to
+hope for from the Devil. By himself he returns: is
+the house empty as well as desolate? No, there is
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>company waiting for him there: by the fireside sits
+Satan.</p>
+
+<p>But soon his bride comes back, poor wretch, all pale
+and undone. Alas! alas! for her condition. At his
+feet she throws herself and craves forgiveness. Then,
+with a bursting heart, he flings his arms round her
+neck. He weeps, he sobs, he roars, till the house
+shakes again.</p>
+
+<p>But with her comes back God. For all her suffering,
+she is pure, innocent, holy still. Satan for that
+nonce will get no profit: the treaty is not yet ripe.</p>
+
+<p>Our silly Fabliaux, our absurd tales, assume with
+regard to this deadly outrage and all its further issues,
+that the woman sides with her oppressors against her
+husband; they would have us believe that her brutal
+treatment by the former makes her happy and transports
+her with delight. A likely thing indeed!
+Doubtless she might be seduced by rank, politeness,
+elegant manners. But no pains are ever taken to that
+end. Great would be the scoffing at anyone who
+made true-love&#8217;s wooing towards a serf. The whole
+gang of men, to the chaplain, the butler, even the
+footmen, would think they honoured her by deeds of
+outrage. The smallest page thought himself a great
+lord, if he only seasoned his love with insolence and
+blows.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>One day, the poor woman, having just been ill-treated
+during her husband&#8217;s absence, begins weeping,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>
+and saying quite aloud, the while she is tying up her
+long hair, &#8220;Ah, those unhappy saints of the woods,
+what boots it to offer them my vows? Are they deaf,
+or have they grown too old? Why have I not some
+protecting spirit, strong and mighty&mdash;wicked even, if it
+need be? Some such I see in stone at the church-door;
+but what do they there? Why do they not go
+to their proper dwelling, the castle, to carry off and
+roast those sinners? Oh, who is there will give me
+power and might? I would gladly give myself in
+exchange. Ah, me, what is it I would give? What
+have I to give on my side? Nothing is left me. Out
+on this body, out on this soul, a mere cinder now!
+Why, instead of this useless goblin, have I not some
+spirit, great, strong, and mighty, to help me?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;My darling mistress! If I am small, it is your
+fault; and bigger I cannot grow. And besides, if I
+were very big, neither you nor your husband would
+have borne with me. You would have driven me away
+with your priests and your holy water. I can be strong,
+however, if you please. For, mistress mine, the spirits
+in themselves are neither great nor small, neither weak
+nor strong. For him who wishes it, the smallest can
+become a giant.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;In what way?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, nothing can be simpler. To make him a
+giant, you must grant him only one gift.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What is that?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A lovely woman-soul.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ah, wicked one! What then art thou, and what
+wouldst thou have?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Only what you give me every day.... Would
+you be better than the lady up yonder? She has
+pledged her soul to her husband and to her lover, and
+yet she yields it whole to her page. I am more than a
+page to you, more than a servant. In how many
+matters have I not been your little handmaid! Do
+not blush, nor be angry. Let me only say, that I am
+all about you, and already perhaps in you. Else, how
+could I know your thoughts, even those which you
+hide from yourself? Who am I, then? Your little
+soul, which speaks thus openly to the great one. We
+are inseparable. Do you know how long I have been
+with you? Some thousand years, for I belonged to your
+mother, to hers, to your ancestors. I am the Spirit of
+the Fireside.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Tempter! What wilt thou do?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why, thy husband shall be rich, thyself mighty,
+and men shall fear thee.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where am I? Surely thou art the demon of
+hidden treasures!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why call me demon, if I do deeds of justice, of
+goodness, of piety? God cannot be everywhere&mdash;He
+cannot be always working. Sometimes He likes to
+rest, leaving us other spirits here to carry on the
+smaller husbandry, to remedy the ills which his providence
+passed over, which his justice forgot to
+handle.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Of this your husband is an example. Poor, deserving
+workman, he is killing himself and gaining
+nought in return. Heaven has had no time to look
+after him. But I, though rather jealous of him, still
+love my kind host. I pity him: his strength is going,
+he can bear up no longer. He will die, like your children,
+already dead of misery. This winter he was ill;
+what will become of him the next?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Thereon, her face in her hands, she wept two, three
+hours, and even more. And when she had poured out
+all her tears&mdash;her bosom still throbbing hard&mdash;the
+other said, &#8220;I ask nothing: only, I pray, save him.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She had promised nothing, but from that hour she
+became his.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> A writer of eclogues, fables and dramas; in youth a
+friend of Voltaire, afterwards imprisoned during the Terror.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> Lauriere, ii. 100 (on the word <i>Marquette</i>). Michelet,
+<i>Origines du Droit</i>, 264.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> When I published my <i>Origines</i> in 1837, I could not have
+known this work, published in 1842.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> This delicacy appears in the treatment these ladies inflicted
+on their poet Jean de Meung, author of the <i>Roman de
+la Rose</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> The old tales are very sportive, but rather monotonous.
+They turn on three jokes only: the despair of the <i>cuckold</i>, the
+cries of the <i>beaten</i>, the wry faces of the <i>hanged</i>. The first is
+amusing, the second laughable, the third, as crown of all,
+makes people split their sides. And the three have one point
+in common: it is the weak and helpless who is ill-used.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2 class="chs"><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>POSSESSION.</h3>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="smcap">A dreadful</span> age was the age of gold; for thus do
+I call that hard time when gold first came into use.
+This was in the year 1300, during the reign of that
+Fair King<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> who never spake a word; the great king
+who seemed to have a dumb devil, but a devil with
+mighty arm, strong enough to burn the Temple, long
+enough to reach Rome, and with glove of iron to deal
+the first good blow at the Pope.</p>
+
+<p>Gold thereupon becomes a great pope, a mighty
+god, and not without cause. The movement began
+in Europe with the Crusades: the only wealth men
+cared for was that which having wings could lend
+itself to their enterprise; the wealth, namely, of swift
+exchanges. To strike blows afar off the king wants
+nothing but gold. An army of gold, a fiscal army,
+spreads over all the land. The lord, who has brought
+back with him his dreams of the East, is always
+longing for its wonders, for damascened armour,
+carpets, spices, valuable steeds. For all such things
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>he needs gold. He pushes away with his foot the
+serf who brings him corn. &#8220;That is not all; I want
+gold!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>On that day the world was changed. Theretofore
+in the midst of much evil there had always been a
+harmless certainty about the tax. According as the
+year was good or bad, the rent followed the course of
+nature and the measure of the harvest. If the lord
+said, &#8220;This is little,&#8221; he was answered, &#8220;My lord,
+Heaven has granted us no more.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But the gold, alas! where shall we find it? We
+have no army to seize it in the towns of Flanders.
+Where shall we dig the ground to win him his treasure?
+Oh, that the spirit of hidden treasures would be
+our guide!<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span></p>
+<p>While all are desperate, the woman with the goblin
+is already seated on her sacks of corn in the little
+neighbouring village. She is alone, the rest being
+still at their debate in the village.</p>
+
+<p>She sells at her own price. But even when the
+rest come up, everything favours her, some strange
+magical allurement working on her side. No one
+bargains with her. Her husband, before his time,
+brings his rent in good sounding coin to the feudal
+elm. &#8220;Amazing!&#8221; they all say, &#8220;but the Devil
+is in her!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They laugh, but she does not. She is sorrowful
+and afraid. In vain she tries to pray that night.
+Strange prickings disturb her slumber. Fantastic
+forms appear before her. The small gentle sprite
+seems to have grown imperious. He waxes bold.
+She is uneasy, indignant, eager to rise. In her sleep
+she groans, and feels herself dependent, saying, &#8220;No
+more do I belong to myself!&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>&#8220;Here is a sensible countryman,&#8221; says the lord;
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>&#8220;he pays beforehand! You charm me: do you know
+accounts?&#8221;&mdash;&#8220;A little.&#8221;&mdash;&#8220;Well then, you shall
+reckon with these folk. Every Saturday you shall
+sit under the elm and receive their money. On
+Sunday, before mass, you shall bring it up to the
+castle.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>What a change in their condition! How the wife&#8217;s
+heart beats when of a Saturday she sees her poor
+workman, serf though he be, seated like a lordling
+under the baronial shades. At first he feels giddy,
+but in time accustoms himself to put on a grave
+air. It is no joking matter, indeed; for the lord commands
+them to show him due respect. When he has
+gone up to the castle, and the jealous ones look like
+laughing and designing to pay him off, &#8220;You see
+that battlement,&#8221; says the lord, &#8220;the rope you
+don&#8217;t see, but it is also ready. The first man who
+touches him shall be set up there high and quick.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>This speech is repeated from one to another; until
+it has spread around these two as it were an atmosphere
+of terror. Everybody doffs his hat to them,
+bowing very low indeed. But when they pass by, folk
+stand aloof, and get out of the way. In order to
+shirk them they turn up cross roads, with backs
+bended, with eyes turned carefully down. Such a
+change makes them first savage, but afterwards sorrowful.
+They walk alone through all the district.
+The wife&#8217;s shrewdness marks the hostile scorn of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>
+castle, the trembling hate of those below. She feels
+herself fearfully isolated between two perils. No one
+to defend her but her lord, or rather the money they
+pay him: but then to find that money, to spur on the
+peasant&#8217;s slowness, and overcome his sluggish antagonism,
+to snatch somewhat even from him who has
+nothing, what hard pressure, what threats, what
+cruelty, must be employed! This was never in the
+goodman&#8217;s line of business. The wife brings him to
+the mark by dint of much pushing: she says to him,
+&#8220;Be rough; at need be cruel. Strike hard. Otherwise
+you will fall short of your engagements; and
+then we are undone.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This suffering by day, however, is a trifle in comparison
+with the tortures of the night. She seems to
+have lost the power of sleeping. She gets up, walks
+to and fro, and roams about the house. All is still;
+and yet how the house is altered; its old innocence, its
+sweet security all for ever gone! &#8220;Of what is that cat
+by the hearth a-thinking, as she pretends to sleep, and
+&#8217;tweenwhiles opens her green eyes upon me? The
+she-goat with her long beard, looking so discreet and
+ominous, knows more about it than she can tell. And
+yon cow which the moon reveals by glimpses in her
+stall, why does she give me such a sidelong look? All
+this is surely unnatural!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Shivering, she returns to her husband&#8217;s side.
+&#8220;Happy man, how deep his slumber! Mine is over;
+I cannot sleep, I never shall sleep again.&#8221; In time,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>
+however, she falls off. But oh, what suffering visits
+her then! The importunate guest is beside her, demanding
+and giving his orders. If one while she gets
+rid of him by praying or making the sign of the cross,
+anon he returns under another form. &#8220;Get back, devil!
+What durst thou? I am a Christian soul. No, thou
+shalt not touch me!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In revenge he puts on a hundred hideous forms;
+twining as an adder about her bosom, dancing as a frog
+upon her stomach, anon like a bat, sharp-snouted, covering
+her scared mouth with dreadful kisses. What is
+it he wants? To drive her into a corner, so that
+conquered and crushed at last, she may yield and utter
+the word &#8220;Yes.&#8221; Still she is resolute to say &#8220;No.&#8221; Still
+she is bent on braving the cruel struggles of every
+night, the endless martyrdom of that wasting strife.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>&#8220;How far can a spirit make himself withal a body?
+What reality can there be in his efforts and approaches?
+Would she be sinning in the flesh, if she allowed the
+intrusions of one who was always roaming about her?
+Would that be sheer adultery?&#8221; Such was the sly
+roundabout way in which sometimes he stayed and
+weakened her resistance. &#8220;If I am only a breath, a
+smoke, a thin air, as so many doctors call me, why are
+you afraid, poor fearful soul, and how does it concern
+your husband?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It is the painful doom of the soul in these Middle
+Ages, that a number of questions which to us would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>
+seem idle, questions of pure scholastics, disturb,
+frighten, and torment it, taking the guise of visions,
+sometimes of devilish debatings, of cruel dialogues
+carried on within. The Devil, fierce as he shows himself
+in the demoniacs, remains always a spirit throughout
+the days of the Roman Empire, even in the time
+of St. Martin or the fifth century. With the Barbarian
+inroads he waxes barbarous, and takes to himself
+a body. So great a body does he become, that he
+amuses himself in breaking with stones the bell of
+the convent of St. Benedict. More and more fleshly
+is he made to appear, by way of frightening the plunderers
+of ecclesiastical goods. People are taught to
+believe that sinners will be tormented not in the spirit
+only, but even bodily in the flesh; that they will suffer
+material tortures, not those of ideal flames, but in very
+deed such exquisite pangs as burning coals, gridirons,
+and red-hot spits can awaken.</p>
+
+<p>This conception of the torturing devils inflicting
+material agonies on the souls of the dead, was a mine
+of gold to the Church. The living, pierced with grief
+and pity, asked themselves &#8220;if it were possible to redeem
+these poor souls from one world to another; if to
+these, too, might be applied such forms of expiation, by
+atonement and compromise, as were practised upon
+earth?&#8221; This bridge between two worlds was found
+in Cluny, which from its very birth, about 900, became
+at once among the wealthiest of the monastic
+orders.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So long as God Himself dealt out his punishments,
+<i>making heavy his hand</i>, or striking <i>with the sword of
+the Angel</i>, according to the grand old phrase, there
+was much less of horror; if his hand was heavy as
+that of a judge, it was still the hand of a Father. The
+Angel who struck remained pure and clean as his own
+sword. Far otherwise is it when the execution is done
+by filthy demons, who resemble not the angel that
+burned up Sodom, but the angel that first went forth
+therefrom. In that place they stay, and their hell is
+a kind of Sodom, wherein these spirits, fouler than the
+sinners yielded into their charge, extract a horrible joy
+from the tortures they are inflicting. Such was the
+teaching to be found in the simple carvings hung out
+at the doors of churches. By these men learned the
+horrible lesson of the pleasures of pain. On pretence
+of punishing, the devils wreaked upon their victims
+the most outrageous whims. Truly an immoral and
+most shameful idea was this, of a sham justice that
+befriended the worse side, deepening its wickedness by
+the present of a plaything, and corrupting the Demon
+himself!</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Cruel times indeed! Think how dark and low a
+heaven it was, how heavily it weighed on the head of
+man! Fancy the poor little children from their earliest
+years imbued with such awful ideas, and trembling
+within their cradles! Look at the pure innocent virgin
+believing herself damned for the pleasure infused in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>
+her by the spirit! And the wife in her marriage-bed
+tortured by his attacks, withstanding him, and yet
+again feeling him within her!&mdash;a fearful feeling known
+to those who have suffered from t&aelig;nia. You feel in
+yourself a double life; you trace the monster&#8217;s movements,
+now boisterous, anon soft and waving, and
+therein the more troublesome, as making you fancy
+yourself on the sea. Then you rush off in wild dismay,
+terrified at yourself, longing to escape, to die.</p>
+
+<p>Even at such times as the demon was not raging
+against her, the woman into whom he had once forced
+his way would wander about as one burdened with
+gloom. For thenceforth she had no remedy. He had
+taken fast hold of her, like an impure steam. He is
+the Prince of the Air, of storms, and not least of the
+storms within. All this may be seen rudely but forcefully
+presented under the great doorway of Strasburg
+Cathedral. Heading the band of <i>Foolish Virgins</i>, the
+wicked woman who lures them on to destruction is
+filled, blown out by the Devil, who overflows ignobly
+and passes out from under her skirts in a dark stream
+of thick smoke.</p>
+
+<p>This blowing-out is a painful feature in the <i>possession</i>;
+at once her punishment and her pride. This proud
+woman of Strasburg bears her belly well before her,
+while her head is thrown far back. She triumphs in
+her size, delights in being a monster.</p>
+
+<p>To this, however, the woman we are following has
+not yet come. But already she is puffed up with him,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>
+and with her new and lofty lot. The earth has ceased
+to bear her. Plump and comely in these better days,
+she goes down the street with head upright, and merciless
+in her scorn. She is feared, hated, admired.</p>
+
+<p>In look and bearing our village lady says, &#8220;I ought
+to be the great lady herself. And what does she up
+yonder, the shameless sluggard, amidst all those men,
+in the absence of her lord?&#8221; And now the rivalry is
+set on foot. The village, while it loathes her, is proud
+thereat. &#8220;If the lady of the castle is a baroness, our
+woman is a queen; and more than a queen,&mdash;we dare
+not say what.&#8221; Her beauty is a dreadful, a fantastic
+beauty, killing in its pride and pain. The Demon himself
+is in her eyes.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>He has her and yet has her not. She is still <i>herself</i>,
+and preserves <i>herself</i>. She belongs neither to the Demon
+nor to God. The Demon may certainly invade
+her, may encompass her like a fine atmosphere. And
+yet he has gained nothing at all; for he has no will
+thereto. She is <i>possessed</i>, <i>bedevilled</i>, and she does not
+belong to the Devil. Sometimes he uses her with
+dreadful cruelty, and yet gains nothing thereby. He
+places a coal of fire on her breast, or within her bowels.
+She jumps and writhes, but still says, &#8220;No, butcher,
+I will stay as I am.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Take care! I will lash you with so cruel a
+scourge of vipers, I will smite you with such a blow,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>
+that you will afterwards go weeping and rending the
+air with your cries.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The next night he will not come. In the morning&mdash;it
+was Sunday&mdash;her husband went up to the castle.
+He came back all undone. The lord had said: &#8220;A
+brook that flows drop by drop cannot turn the mill.
+You bring me a halfpenny at a time, which is good for
+nought. I must set off in a fortnight. The king
+marches towards Flanders, and I have not even a war-horse,
+my own being lame ever since the tourney.
+Get ready for business: I am in want of a hundred
+pounds.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But, my lord, where shall I find them?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You may sack the whole village, if you will; I am
+about to give you men enough. Tell your churls, if
+the money is not forthcoming they are lost men; yourself
+especially&mdash;you shall die. I have had enough of
+you: you have the heart of a woman; you are slack
+and sluggish. You shall die&mdash;you shall pay for your
+cowardice, your effeminacy. Stay; it makes but very
+small difference whether you go down now, or whether
+I keep you here. This is Sunday: right loudly would
+the folk yonder laugh to see you dangling your legs
+from my battlements.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>All this the unhappy man tells again to his wife;
+and preparing hopelessly for death, commends his soul
+to God. She being just as frightened, can neither lie
+down nor sleep. What is to be done? How sorry
+she is now to have sent the spirit away! If he would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>
+but come back! In the morning, when her husband
+rises, she sinks crushed upon the bed. She has hardly
+done so, when she feels on her chest a heavy weight.
+Gasping for breath, she is like to choke. The weight
+falls lower till it presses on her stomach, and therewithal
+on her arms she feels the grasp as of two steel hands.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You wanted me, and here I am. So, at last, stubborn
+one, I have your soul&mdash;at last!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But oh, sir, is it mine to give away? My poor
+husband! you used to love him&mdash;you said so: you
+promised&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Your husband! You forget. Are you sure your
+thoughts were always kept upon him? Your soul! I
+ask for it as a favour; but it is already mine.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, sir,&#8221; she says&mdash;her pride once more returning
+to her, even in so dire a strait&mdash;&#8220;no, sir; that soul
+belongs to me, to my husband, to our marriage rites.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ah, incorrigible little fool! you would struggle
+still, even now that you are under the goad! I have
+seen your soul at all hours; I know it better than
+you yourself. Day by day did I mark your first reluctances,
+your pains, and your fits of despair. I saw
+how disheartened you were when, in a low tone, you
+said that no one could be held to an impossibility.
+And then I saw you growing more resigned. You
+were beaten a little, and you cried out not very loud.
+As for me, I ask for your soul simply because you have
+already lost it. Meanwhile, your husband is dying.
+What is to be done? I am sorry for you: I have you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>
+in my power; but I want something more. You must
+grant it frankly and of free will, or else he is a dead
+man.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She answered very low, in her sleep, &#8220;Ah me! my
+body and my miserable flesh, you may take them to
+save my husband; but my heart, never. No one has
+ever had it, and I cannot give it away.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>So, all resignedly she waited there. And he flung
+at her two words: &#8220;Keep them, and they will save
+you.&#8221; Therewith she shuddered, felt within her a
+horrible thrill of fire, and, uttering a loud cry, awoke
+in the arms of her astonished husband, to drown him
+in a flood of tears.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>She tore herself away by force, and got up, fearing
+lest she should forget those two important words. Her
+husband was alarmed; for, without looking even at
+him, she darted on the wall a glance as piercing as
+that of Medea. Never was she more handsome. In
+her dark eye and the yellowish white around it played
+such a glimmer as one durst not face&mdash;a glimmer like
+the sulphurous jet of a volcano.</p>
+
+<p>She walked straight to the town. The first word
+was &#8220;<i>Green</i>.&#8221; Hanging at a tradesman&#8217;s door she beheld
+a green gown&mdash;the colour of the Prince of the World&mdash;an
+old gown, which as she put it on became new
+and glossy. Then she walked, without asking anyone,
+straight to the door of a Jew, at which she
+knocked loudly. It was opened with great caution.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
+The poor Jew was sitting on the ground, covered over
+with ashes. &#8220;My dear, I must have a hundred
+pounds.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, madam, how am I to get them? The Prince-bishop
+of the town has just had my teeth drawn to
+make me say where my gold lies.<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> Look at my bleeding
+mouth.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I know, I know; but I come to obtain from you
+the very means of destroying your Bishop. When the
+Pope gets a cuffing, the Bishop will not hold out long.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Who says so?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<i>Toledo.</i>&#8221;<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a></p>
+
+<p>He hung his head. She spoke and blew: within
+her was her own soul and the Devil to boot. A
+wondrous warmth filled the room: he himself was
+aware of a kind of fiery fountain. &#8220;Madam,&#8221; said he,
+looking at her from under his eyes, &#8220;poor and ruined
+as I am, I had some pence still in store to sustain my
+poor children.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You will not repent of it, Jew. I will swear to you
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>the <i>great oath</i> that kills whoso breaks it. What you are
+about to give me, you shall receive back in a week, at an
+early hour in the morning. This I swear by your <i>great
+oath</i> and by mine, which is yet greater: &#8216;<i>Toledo</i>.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>A year went by. She had grown round and plump;
+had made herself one mass of gold. Men were
+amazed at her power of charming. Every one admired
+and obeyed her. By some devilish miracle the Jew
+had grown so generous as to lend at the slightest
+signal. By herself she maintained the castle, both
+through her own credit in the town, and through the
+fear inspired in the village by her rough extortion.
+The all-powerful green gown floated to and fro, ever
+newer and more beautiful. Her own beauty grew, as
+it were, colossal with success and pride. Frightened at
+a result so natural, everyone said, &#8220;At her time of
+life how tall she grows!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile we have some news: the lord is coming
+home. The lady, who for a long time had not dared
+to come forth, lest she might meet the face of this other
+woman down below, now mounted her white horse.
+Surrounded by all her people, she goes to meet her
+husband; she stops and salutes him.</p>
+
+<p>And, first of all, she says, &#8220;How long I have been
+looking for you! Why did you leave your faithful
+wife so long a languishing widow? And yet I will
+not take you in to-night, unless you grant me a boon.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ask it, ask it, fair lady,&#8221; says the gentleman
+laughing; &#8220;but make haste, for I am eager to embrace
+you. How beautiful you have grown!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She whispered in his ear, so that no one knew what
+she said. Before going up to the castle the worthy
+lord dismounts by the village church, and goes in.
+Under the porch, at the head of the chief people, he
+beholds a lady, to whom without knowing her he offers
+a low salute. With matchless pride she bears high
+over the men&#8217;s heads the towering horned bonnet
+(<i>hennin</i><a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a>) of the period; the triumphal cap of the
+Devil, as it was often called, because of the two horns
+wherewith it was embellished. The real lady, blushing
+at her eclipse, went out looking very small. Anon
+she muttered, angrily, &#8220;There goes your serf. It is
+all over: everything has changed places: the ass insults
+the horse.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>As they are going off, a bold page, a pet of the
+lady&#8217;s, draws from his girdle a well-sharpened dagger,
+and with a single turn cleverly cuts the fine robe along
+her loins.<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> The crowd was astonished, but began to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>make it out when it saw the whole of the Baron&#8217;s
+household going off in pursuit of her. Swift and
+merciless about her whistled and fell the strokes of the
+whip. She flies, but slowly, being already grown
+somewhat heavy. She has hardly gone twenty paces
+when she stumbles; her best friend having put a stone
+in her way to trip her up. Amidst roars of laughter
+she sprawls yelling on the ground. But the ruthless
+pages flog her up again. The noble handsome greyhounds
+help in the chase and bite her in the tenderest
+places. At last, in sad disorder, amidst the terrible
+crowd, she reaches the door of her house. It is shut.
+There with hands and feet she beats away, crying,
+&#8220;Quick, quick, my love, open the door for me!&#8221;
+There hung she, like the hapless screech-owl whom
+they nail up on a farm-house door; and still as hard as
+ever rained the blows. Within the house all is deaf.
+Is the husband there? Or rather, being rich and
+frightened, does he dread the crowd, lest they should
+sack his house?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span></p><p>And now she has borne such misery, such strokes,
+such sounding buffets, that she sinks down in a swoon.
+On the cold stone threshold she finds herself seated,
+naked, half-dead, her bleeding flesh covered with little
+else than the waves of her long hair. Some one from
+the castle says, &#8220;No more now! We do not want her
+to die.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They leave her alone, to hide herself. But in
+spirit she can see the merriment going on at the
+castle. The lord however, somewhat dazed, said
+that he was sorry for it. But the chaplain says, in
+his meek way, &#8220;If this woman is <i>bedevilled</i>, as
+they say, my lord, you owe it to your good vassals,
+you owe it to the whole country, to hand her over
+to Holy Church. Since all that business with the
+Templars and the Pope, what way the Demon is
+making! Nothing but fire will do for him.&#8221;
+Upon which a Dominican says, &#8220;Your reverence
+has spoken right well. This devilry is a heresy
+in the highest degree. The bedevilled, like the
+heretic, should be burnt. Some of our good fathers,
+however, do not trust themselves now even to the
+fire. Wisely they desire that, before all things,
+the soul may be slowly purged, tried, subdued by
+fastings; that it may not be burnt in its pride,
+that it shall not triumph at the stake. If you,
+madam, in the greatness of your piety, of your
+charity, would take the trouble to work upon this
+woman, putting her for some years <i>in pace</i> in a safe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
+cell, of which you only should have the key,&mdash;by
+thus keeping up the chastening process you might
+be doing good to her soul, shaming the Devil, and
+giving herself up meek and humble into the hands of
+the Church.&#8221;</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> Philip the Fair of France, who put down the Templar
+in Paris, and first secured the liberties of the Gallican Church.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> The devils trouble the world all through the Middle Ages;
+but not before the thirteenth century does Satan put on a
+settled shape. &#8220;<i>Compacts</i>,&#8221; says M. Maury, &#8220;are very rare
+before that epoch;&#8221; and I believe him. How could they treat
+with one who as yet had no real existence? Neither of the
+treating parties was yet ripe for the contract. Before the will
+could be reduced to the dreadful pass of selling itself for ever,
+it must be made thoroughly desperate. It is not the unhappy
+who falls into despair, but the truly wretched, who being quite
+conscious of his misery, and having yet more to suffer, can
+find no escape therefrom. The wretched in this way are the
+men of the fourteenth century, from whom they ask a thing so
+impossible as payments in gold. In this and the following
+chapter I have touched on the circumstances, the feelings, the
+growing despair, which brought about the enormity of <i>compacts</i>,
+and, worse still than these, the dreadful character of the <i>Witch</i>.
+If the name was freely used, the thing itself was then rare,
+being no less than a marriage and a kind of priesthood. For
+ease of illustration, I have joined together the details of so
+delicate a scrutiny by a thread of fiction. The outward body
+of it matters little. The essential point is to remember that
+such things were not caused, as they try to persuade us, by
+<i>human fickleness, by the inconstancy of our fallen nature, by the
+chance persuasions of desire</i>. There was needed the deadly
+pressure of an age of iron, of cruel needs: it was needful that
+Hell itself should seem a shelter, an asylum, by contrast with
+the hell below.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> This was a common way of extracting help from the Jews.
+King John Lackland often tried it.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> Toledo seems to have been the holy city of Wizards, who
+in Spain were numberless. These relations with the civilized
+Moors, with the Jews so learned and paramount in Spain, as
+managers of the royal revenues, had given them a very high
+degree of culture, and in Toledo they formed a kind of University.
+In the sixteenth century, it was christianised, remodelled,
+reduced to mere <i>white magic</i>. See the <i>Deposition of
+the Wizard Achard, Lord of Beaumont, a Physician of Poitou</i>.
+Lancre, <i>Incredulit&eacute;</i>, p. 781.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> The absurd head-dress of the women, with its one and
+often two horns sloping back from the head, in the fourteenth
+century.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> Such cruel outrages were common in those days. By the
+French and Anglo-Saxon laws, lewdness was thus punished.
+Grimm, 679, 711. Sternhook, 19, 326. Ducange, iii. 52.
+Michelet, <i>Origines</i>, 386, 389. By and by, the same rough usage
+is dealt out to honest women, to citizen&#8217;s wives, whose pride
+the nobles seek to abase. We know the kind of ambush into
+which the tyrant Hagenbach drew the honourable ladies of
+the chief burghers in Alsace, probably in scorn of their rich
+and royal costume, all silks and gold. In my <i>Origines</i> I have
+also related the strange claim made by the Lord of Pac&eacute;, in
+Anjou, on the pretty (and honest) women of the neighbourhood.
+They were to bring to the castle fourpence and a
+chaplet of flowers, and to dance with his officers: a dangerous
+trip, in which they might well fear some such affronts as those
+offered by Hagenbach. They were forced to obey by the threat
+of being stripped and pricked with a goad bearing the impress
+of the lord&#8217;s arms.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2 class="chs"><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>THE COVENANT.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="smcap">Nothing</span> was wanting but the victim. They knew
+that to bring this woman before her was the most
+charming present she could receive. Tenderly would
+she have acknowledged the devotion of anyone
+who would have given her so great a token of his
+love, by delivering that poor bleeding body into her
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>But the prey was aware of the hunters. A few
+minutes later and she would have been carried off, to
+be for ever sealed up beneath the stone. Wrapping
+herself in some rags found by chance in the stable,
+she took to herself wings of some kind, and before
+midnight gained some out-of-the-way spot on a lonely
+moor all covered with briars and thistles. It was on
+the skirts of a wood, where by the uncertain light she
+might gather a few acorns, to swallow them like a
+beast. Ages had elapsed since evening; she was
+utterly changed. Beauty and queen of the village no
+more, she seemed with the change in her spirit to
+have changed her postures also. Among her acorns
+she squatted like a boar or a monkey. Thoughts far
+from human circled within her as she heard, or seemed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>
+to hear the hooting of an owl, followed by a burst of
+shrill laughter. She felt afraid, but perhaps it was
+the merry mockbird mimicking all those sounds, according
+to its wonted fashion.</p>
+
+<p>But the laughter begins again: whence comes it?
+She can see nothing. Apparently it comes from an old
+oak. Distinctly, however, she hears these words: &#8220;So,
+here you are at last! You have come with an ill grace;
+nor would you have come now, if you had not tried
+the full depth of your last need. You were fain first
+to run the gauntlet of whips; to cry out and plead for
+mercy, haughty as you were; to be mocked, undone,
+forsaken, unsheltered even by your husband. Where
+would you have been this night, if I had not been
+charitable enough to show you the <i>in pace</i> getting
+ready for you in the tower? Late, very late, you are
+in coming to me, and only after they have called you
+the <i>old woman</i>. In your youth you did not treat me
+well, when I was your wee goblin, so eager to serve
+you. Now take your turn, if so I wish it, to serve me
+and kiss my feet.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You were mine from birth through your inborn
+wickedness, through those devilish charms of yours. I
+was your lover, your husband. Your own has shut
+his door against you: I will not shut mine. I welcome
+you to my domains, my free prairies, my woods. How
+am I the gainer, you may say? Could I not long
+since have had you at any hour? Were you not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>
+invaded, possessed, filled with my flame? I changed
+your blood and renewed it: not a vein in your body
+where I do not flow. You know not yourself how
+utterly you are mine. But our wedding has yet to be
+celebrated with all the forms. I have some manners,
+and feel rather scrupulous. Let us be one for everlasting.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh! sir, in my present state, what should I say?
+For a long, long while back have I felt, too truly felt,
+that you were all my fate. With evil intent you
+caressed me, loaded me with favours, and made me
+rich, in order at length to cast me down. Yesterday,
+when the black greyhound bit my poor naked flesh,
+its teeth scorched me, and I said, &#8216;&#8217;Tis he!&#8217; At night
+when that daughter of Herodias with her foul language
+scared the company, somebody put them up to the promising
+her my blood; and that was you!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;True; but &#8217;twas I who saved you and brought you
+hither. I did everything, as you have guessed. I
+ruined you, and why? That I might have you all to
+myself. To speak frankly, I was tired of your husband.
+You took to haggling and pettifogging: far otherwise
+do I go to work; I want all or none. This is why I have
+moulded and drilled you, polished and ripened you, for
+my own behoof. Such, you see, is my delicacy of taste.
+I don&#8217;t take, as people imagine, those foolish souls who
+would give themselves up at once. I prefer the choicer
+spirits, who have reached a certain dainty stage of fury<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>
+and despair. Stop: I must let you know how pleasant
+you look at this moment. You are a great beauty, a
+most desirable soul. I have loved you ever so long, but
+now I am hungering for you.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I will do things on a large scale, not being one of
+those husbands who reckon with their betrothed. If
+you wanted only riches, you should have them in a
+trice. If you wanted to be queen in the stead of Joan
+of Navarre, that too, though difficult, should be done,
+and the King would not lose much thereby in the
+matter of pride and haughtiness. My wife is greater
+than a queen. But, come, tell me what you wish.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sir, I ask only for the power of doing evil.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A delightful answer, very delightful! Have I not
+cause to love you? In reality those words contain all
+the law and all the prophets. Since you have made so
+good a choice, all the rest shall be thrown in, over and
+above. You shall learn all my secrets. You shall see
+into the depths of the earth. The whole world shall
+come and pour out gold at thy feet. See here, my
+bride, I give you the true diamond, <i>Vengeance</i>. I
+know you, rogue; I know your most hidden desires.
+Ay, our hearts on that point understand each other
+well! Therein at least shall I have full possession of
+you. You shall behold your enemy on her knees at
+your feet, begging and praying for mercy, and only too
+happy to earn her release by doing whatever she has
+made you do. She will burst into tears; and you will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>
+graciously say, <i>No</i>: whereon she will cry, &#8216;Death and
+damnation!&#8217; ... Come, I will make this my special
+business.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Sir, I am at your service. I was thankless indeed,
+for you have always heaped favours on me. I am
+yours, my master, my god! None other do I desire.
+Sweet are your endearments, and very mild your service.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And so she worships him, tumbling on all-fours.
+At first she pays him, after the forms of the Temple,
+such homage as betokens the utter abandonment of
+the will. Her master, the Prince of this World, the
+Prince of the Winds, breathes upon her in his turn,
+like an eager spirit. She receives at once the three
+sacraments, in reverse order&mdash;baptism, priesthood, and
+marriage. In this new Church, the exact opposite of
+the other, everything must be done the wrong way.
+Meekly, patiently, she endures the cruel initiation,<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a>
+borne up by that one word, &#8220;Vengeance!&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Far from being crushed or weakened by the infernal
+thunderbolt, she arose with an awful vigour and flashing
+eyes. The moon, which for a moment had chastely
+covered herself, took flight on seeing her again. Blown
+out to an amazing degree by the hellish vapour, filled
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>with fire, with fury, and with some new ineffable desire,
+she grew for a while enormous with excess of fulness,
+and displayed a terrible beauty. She looked around
+her, and all nature was changed. The trees had gotten
+a tongue, and told of things gone by. The herbs became
+simples. The plants which yesterday she trod
+upon as so much hay, were now as people discoursing
+on the art of medicine.</p>
+
+<p>She awoke on the morrow far, very far, from her
+enemies, in a state of thorough security. She had been
+sought after, but they had only found some scattered
+shreds of her unlucky green gown. Had she in her
+despair flung herself headlong into the torrent? Or
+had she been carried off alive by the Devil? No one
+could tell. Either way she was certainly damned,
+which greatly consoled the lady for having failed to
+find her.</p>
+
+<p>Had they seen her they would hardly have known
+her again, she was so changed. Only the eyes remained,
+not brilliant, but armed with a very strange
+and a rather deterring glimmer. She herself was afraid
+of frightening: she never lowered them, but looked
+sideways, so that the full force of their beams might
+be lost by slanting them. From the sudden browning
+of her hue people would have said that she had passed
+through the flame. But the more watchful felt that
+the flame was rather in herself, that she bore about her
+an impure and scorching heat. The fiery dart with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>
+which Satan had pierced her was still there, and, as
+through a baleful lamp, shot forth a wild, but fearfully
+witching sheen. Shrinking from her, you would
+yet stand still, with a strange trouble filling your every
+sense.</p>
+
+<p>She saw herself at the mouth of one of those troglodyte
+caves, such as you find without number in
+the hills of the Centre and the West of France. It
+was in the borderland, then wild, between the country
+of Merlin and the country of Melusina. Some moors
+stretching out of sight still bear witness to the ancient
+wars, the unceasing havoc, the many horrors, which
+prevented the country being peopled again. There the
+Devil was in his home. Of the few inhabitants most
+were his zealous worshippers. Whatever attractions he
+might have found in the rough brakes of Lorraine, the
+black pine-forests of the Jura, or the briny deserts of
+Burgos, his preferences lay, perhaps, in our western
+marches. There might be found not only the visionary
+shepherd, that Satanic union of the goat and the goatherd,
+but also a closer conspiracy with nature, a deeper
+insight into remedies and poisons, a mysterious connection,
+whose links we know not, with Toledo the
+learned, the University of the Devil.</p>
+
+<p>The winter was setting in: its breath having first
+stripped the trees, had heaped together the leaves and
+small boughs of dead wood. All this she found prepared
+for her at the mouth of her gloomy den. By a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>
+wood and moor, half a mile across, you came down
+within reach of some villages, which had grown up
+beside a watercourse. &#8220;Behold your kingdom!&#8221; said
+the voice within her. &#8220;To-day a beggar, to-morrow
+you shall be queen of the whole land.&#8221;</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> This will be explained further on. We must guard against
+the pedantic additions of the sixteenth century writers.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2 class="chs"><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>THE KING OF THE DEAD.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="smcap">At</span> first she was not much affected by promises like
+these. A lonely hermitage without God, amidst the
+great monotonous breezes of the West, amidst memories
+all the more ruthless for that mighty solitude,
+of such heavy losses, such sharp affronts; a widowhood
+so hard and sudden, away from the husband who had
+left her to her shame&mdash;all this was enough to bow her
+down. Plaything of fate, she seemed like the wretched
+weed upon the moor, having no root, but tossed to and
+fro, lashed and cruelly cut by the north-east winds; or
+rather, perhaps, like the grey, many-cornered coral,
+which only sticks fast to get more easily broken. The
+children trampled on her; the people said, with a
+laugh, &#8220;She is the bride of the winds.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Wildly she laughed at herself when she thought on
+the comparison. But, from the depth of her dark
+cave, she heard,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ignorant and witless, you know not what you
+say. The plant thus tossing to and fro may well look
+down upon the rank and vulgar herbs. If it tosses, it
+is, at least, all self-contained&mdash;itself both flower and
+seed. Do thou be like it; be thine own root, and even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>
+in the whirlwind thou wilt still bear thy blossom: our
+own flowers for ourselves, as they come forth from the
+dust of tombs and the ashes of volcanoes.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;To thee, first flower of Satan, do I this day grant
+the knowledge of my former name, my olden power.
+I was, I am, the <i>King of the Dead</i>. Ay, have I not
+been sadly slandered? &#8217;Tis I who alone can make
+them reappear; a boon untold, for which I surely deserved
+an altar.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>To pierce the future and to call up the past, to forestal
+and to live again the swift-flying moments, to
+enlarge the present with that which has been and that
+which will be&mdash;these are the two things forbidden to
+the Middle Ages; but forbidden in vain. Nature is
+invincible; nothing can be gained in such a quarter.
+He who thus errs is <i>a man</i>. It is not for him to be
+rooted to his furrow, with eyes cast down, looking nowhere
+beyond the steps he takes behind his oxen. No:
+we will go forward with head upraised, looking further
+and looking deeper! This earth that we measure out
+with so much care, we kick our feet upon withal, and
+keep ever saying to it, &#8220;What dost thou hold in thy
+bowels? What secrets lie therein? Thou givest us
+back the grain we entrust to thee; but not that human
+seed, those beloved dead, we have lent into thy charge.
+Our friends, our loves, that lie there, will they never
+bud again? Oh, that we might see them, if only for
+one hour, if only for one moment!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Some day we ourselves shall reach the unknown
+land, whither they have already gone. But shall we
+see them again there? Shall we dwell with them?
+Where are they, and what are they doing? They must
+be kept very close prisoners, these dear dead of mine,
+to give me not one token! And how can I make them
+hear me? My father, too, whose only hope I was,
+who loved me with so mighty a love, why comes he
+never to me? Ah, me! on either side is bondage,
+imprisonment, mutual ignorance; a dismal night,
+where we look in vain for one glimmer!&#8221;<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a></p>
+
+<p>These everlasting thoughts of Nature, from having
+in olden times been simply mournful, became in the
+Middle Ages painful, bitter, weakening, and the heart
+thereby grew smaller. It seems as if they had reckoned
+on flattening the soul, on pressing and squeezing it down
+to the compass of a bier. The burial of the serf between
+four deal boards was well suited to such an end:
+it haunted one with the notion of being smothered.
+A person thus enclosed, if ever he returned in one&#8217;s
+dreams, would no longer appear as a thin luminous
+shadow encircled by a halo of Elysium, but only as
+the wretched sport of some hellish griffin-cat. What
+a hateful and impious idea, that my good, kind father,
+my mother so revered by all, should become the plaything
+of such a beast! You may laugh now, but for
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>a thousand years it was no laughing matter: they
+wept bitterly. And even now the heart swells with
+wrath, the very pen grates angrily upon the paper, as
+one writes down these blasphemous doings.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Moreover, it was surely a cruel device to transfer
+the Festival of the Dead from the Spring, where antiquity
+had placed it, to November. In May, where
+it fell at first, they were buried among the flowers.
+In March, wherein it was afterwards placed, it became
+the signal for labour and the lark. The dead and the
+seed of corn entered the earth together with the same
+hope. But in November, when all the work is done,
+the weather close and gloomy for many days to come;
+when the folk return to their homes; when a man, re-seating
+himself by the hearth, looks across on that
+place for evermore empty&mdash;ah, me! at such a time
+how great the sorrow grows! Clearly, in choosing a
+moment already in itself so funereal, for the obsequies
+of Nature, they feared that a man would not find
+cause enough of sorrow in himself!</p>
+
+<p>The coolest, the busiest of men, however taken up
+they be with life&#8217;s distracting cares, have, at least,
+their sadder moments. In the dark wintry morning,
+in the night that comes on so swift to swallow us up
+in its shadow, ten years, nay, twenty years hence,
+strange feeble voices will rise up in your heart: &#8220;Good
+morning, dear friend, &#8217;tis we! You are alive, are
+working as hard as ever. So much the better! You<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>
+do not feel our loss so heavily, and you have learned
+to do without us; but we cannot, we never can, do
+without you. The ranks are closed, the gap is all but
+filled. The house that was ours is full, and we have
+blessed it. All is well, is better than when your father
+carried you about; better than when your little girl
+said, in her turn, to you, &#8216;Papa, carry me.&#8217; But, lo!
+you are in tears. Enough, till we meet again!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Alas, and are they gone? That wail was sweet and
+piercing: but was it just? No. Let me forget myself
+a thousand times rather than I should forget them!
+And yet, cost what it will to say so, say it we must, that
+certain traces are fading off, are already less clear to
+see; that certain features are not indeed effaced, but
+grown paler and more dim. A hard, a bitter, a
+humbling thought it is, to find oneself so weak and
+fleeting, wavering as unremembered water; to feel that
+in time one loses that treasure of grief which one had
+hoped to preserve for ever. Give it me back, I pray: I
+am too much bounden to so rich a fountain of tears.
+Trace me again, I implore you, those features I love so
+well. Could you not help me at least to dream of them
+by night?</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>More than one such prayer is spoken in the month of
+November. And amidst the striking of the bells and the
+dropping of the leaves, they clear out of church, saying
+one to another in low tones: &#8220;I say, neighbour; up there
+lives a woman of whom folk speak well and ill. For<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>
+myself, I dare say nothing; but she has power over the
+world below. She calls up the dead, and they come.
+Oh, if she might&mdash;without sin, you know, without
+angering God&mdash;make my friends come to me! I am
+alone, as you must know, and have lost everything in
+this world. But who knows what this woman is,
+whether of hell or heaven? I won&#8217;t go (he is dying
+of curiosity all the while); I won&#8217;t. I have no wish
+to endanger my soul: besides, the wood yonder is
+haunted. Many&#8217;s the time that things unfit to see
+have been found on the moor. Haven&#8217;t you heard
+about Jacqueline, who was there one evening looking
+for one of her sheep? Well, when she returned, she
+was crazy. I won&#8217;t go.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Thus unknown to each other, many of the men at
+least went thither. For as yet the women hardly dared
+so great a risk. They remark the dangers of the road,
+ask many questions of those who return therefrom.
+The new Pythoness is not like her of Endor, who
+raised up Samuel at the prayer of Saul. Instead of
+showing you the ghosts, she gives you cabalistic words
+and powerful potions to bring them back in your
+dreams. Ah, how many a sorrow has recourse to
+these! The grandmother herself, tottering with her
+eighty years, would behold her grandson again. By
+an unwonted effort, yet not without a pang of shame
+at sinning on the edge of the grave, she drags herself
+to the spot. She is troubled by the savage look of a
+place all rough with yews and thorns, by the rude,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>
+dark beauty of that relentless Proserpine. Prostrate,
+trembling, grovelling on the ground, the poor old
+woman weeps and prays. Answer there is none. But
+when she dares to lift herself up a little, she sees that
+Hell itself has been a-weeping.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>It is simply Nature recovering herself. Proserpine
+blushes self-indignantly thereat. &#8220;Degenerate soul!&#8221;
+she calls herself, &#8220;why this weakness? You came
+hither with the firm desire of doing nought but evil.
+Is this your master&#8217;s lesson? How he will laugh
+at you for this!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Nay! Am I not the great shepherd of the shades,
+making them come and go, opening unto them the
+gate of dreams? Your Dante, when he drew my likeness,
+forgot my attributes. When he gave me that
+useless tail, he did not see that I held the shepherd&#8217;s
+staff of Osiris; that from Mercury I had inherited his
+caduceus. In vain have they thought to build up an
+insurmountable wall between the two worlds; I have
+wings to my heels, I have flown over. By a kindly
+rebellion of that slandered Spirit, of that ruthless
+monster, succour has been given to those who mourned;
+mothers, lovers, have found comfort. He has taken
+pity on them in defiance of their new god.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The scribes of the Middle Ages, being all of the
+priestly class, never cared to acknowledge the deep but
+silent changes of the popular mind. It is clear that
+from thenceforth compassion goes over to Satan&#8217;s side.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>
+The Virgin herself, ideal as she is of grace, makes no
+answer to such a want of the heart. Neither does the
+Church, who expressly forbids the calling up of the
+dead. While all books delight in keeping up either
+the swinish demon of earlier times, or the griffin butcher
+of the second period, Satan has changed his shape for
+those who cannot write. He retains somewhat of the
+ancient Pluto; but his pale nor wholly ruthless majesty,
+that permitted the dead to come back, the living
+once more to see the dead, passes ever more and more
+into the nature of his father, or his grandfather,
+Osiris, the shepherd of souls.</p>
+
+<p>Through this one change come many others. Men
+with their mouths acknowledge the hell official and
+the boiling caldrons; but in their hearts do they
+truly believe therein? Would it be so easy to win
+these infernal favours for hearts beset with hateful traditions
+of a hell of torments? The one idea neutralizes
+without wholly effacing the other, and between
+them grows up a vague mixed image, resembling more
+and more nearly the hell of Virgil. A mighty solace
+was here offered to the human heart. Blessed above
+all was the relief thus given to the poor women, whom
+that dreadful dogma about the punishment of their
+loved dead had kept drowned in tears and inconsolable.
+The whole of their lifetime had been but one long
+sigh.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The Sibyl was musing over her master&#8217;s words,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>
+when a very light step became audible. The day has
+scarcely dawned: it is after Christmas, about the first
+day of the new year. Over the crisp and rimy grass
+approaches a small, fair woman, all a-trembling, who
+has no sooner reached the spot, than she swoons and
+loses her breath. Her black gown tells plainly of her
+widowhood. To the piercing gaze of Medea, without
+moving or speaking, she reveals all: there is no mystery
+about her shrinking figure. The other says to
+her with a loud voice: &#8220;You need not tell me, little
+dumb creature, for you would never get to the end of
+it. I will speak for you. Well, you are dying of
+love!&#8221; Recovering a little, she clasps her hands
+together, and sinking almost on her knees, tells everything,
+making a full confession. She had suffered,
+wept, prayed, and would have silently suffered on.
+But these winter feasts, these family re-unions, the
+ill-concealed happiness of other women who, without
+pity for her, showed off their lawful loves, had driven
+the burning arrow again into her heart. Alas, what
+could she do? If he might but return and comfort
+her for one moment! &#8220;Be it even at the cost of
+my life; let me die, but only let me see him once
+more!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Go back to your house: shut the door carefully:
+put up the shutter even against any curious neighbour.
+Throw off your mourning, and put on your wedding-clothes;
+place a cover for him on the table; but yet
+he will not come. You will sing the song he made for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>
+you, and sang to you so often, but yet he will
+not come. Then you shall draw out of your box
+the last dress he wore, and, kissing it, say, &#8216;So
+much the worse for thee if thou wilt not come!&#8217;
+And presently when you have drunk this wine, bitter,
+but very sleepful, you will lie down as a wedded bride.
+Then assuredly he will come to you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The little creature would have been no woman, if
+next morning she had not shown her joy and tenderness
+by owning the miracle in whispers to her best
+friend. &#8220;Say nought of it, I beg. But he himself
+told me, that if I wore this gown and slept a deep sleep
+every Sunday, he would return.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A happiness not without some danger. Where
+would the rash woman be, if the Church learned that
+she was no longer a widow; that re-awakened by her
+love, the spirit came to console her?</p>
+
+<p>But strange to tell, the secret is kept. There is an
+understanding among them all, to hide so sweet a
+mystery. For who has no concern therein? Who
+has not lost and mourned? Who would not gladly
+see this bridge created between two worlds? &#8220;O
+thou beneficent Witch! Blessed be thou, spirit of the
+nether world!&#8221;</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> The glimmer shines forth in Dumesnil&#8217;s <i>Immortalit&eacute;</i>, and
+<i>La Foi Nouvelle</i>, in the <i>Ciel et Terre</i> of Reynaud, Henry Martin,
+&amp;c.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2 class="chs"><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>THE PRINCE OF NATURE.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="smcap">Hard</span> is the long sad winter of the North-west.
+Even after its departure it renews its visits, like a
+drowsy sorrow which ever and again comes back and
+rages afresh. One morning everything wakes up
+decked with bright needles. In this cruel mocking
+splendour that makes one shiver through and through,
+the whole vegetable world seems turned mineral, loses
+its sweet diversity, and freezes into a mass of rough
+crystals.</p>
+
+<p>The poor Sibyl, as she sits benumbed by her hearth
+of leaves, scourged by the flaying north-east winds,
+feels at her heart a cruel pang, for she feels herself all
+alone. But that very thought again brings her relief.
+With returning pride returns a vigour that warms her
+heart and lights up her soul. Intent, quick, and
+sharp, her sight becomes as piercing as those needles;
+and the world, the cruel world that caused her suffering,
+is to her transparent as glass. Anon she rejoices
+over it, as over a conquest of her making.</p>
+
+<p>For is she not a queen, a queen with courtiers of her
+own? The crows have clearly some connection with
+her. In grave, dignified body they come like ancient<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>
+augurs, to talk to her of passing things. The wolves
+passing by salute her timidly with sidelong glances.
+The bear, then oftener seen than now, would sometimes,
+in his heavily good-natured way, seat himself
+awkwardly at the threshold of her den, like a hermit
+calling on a fellow-hermit, just as we often see him in
+the Lives of the Desert Fathers.</p>
+
+<p>All those birds and beasts with whom men only
+made acquaintance in hunting or slaying them, were
+outlawed as much as she. With all these she comes to
+an understanding; for Satan as the chief outlaw,
+imparts to his own the pleasures of natural freedom,
+the wild delight of living in a world sufficient unto
+itself.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Rough freedom of loneliness, all hail! The whole
+earth seems still clothed in a white shroud, held in
+bondage by a load of ice, of pitiless crystals, so uniform,
+sharp, and agonizing. After the year 1200
+especially, the world is shut in like a transparent
+tomb, wherein all things look terribly motionless, hard,
+and stiff.</p>
+
+<p>The Gothic Church has been called a &#8220;crystallization;&#8221;
+and so it truly is. About 1300, architecture
+gave up all its old variety of form and living fancies,
+to repeat itself for evermore, to vie with the monotonous
+prisms of Spitzbergen, to become the true and
+awful likeness of that hard crystal city, in which a
+dreadful dogma thought to bury all life away.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But for all the props, buttresses, flying-buttresses,
+that keep the monument up, one thing there is that
+makes it totter. There is no loud battering from without,
+but a certain softness in the very foundations,
+which attacks the crystal with an imperceptible thaw.
+What thing do I mean? The humble stream of warm
+tears shed by a whole world, until they have become a
+very sea of wailings. What do I call it? A breath of
+the future, a stirring of the natural life, which shall
+presently rise again in irresistible might. The fantastic
+building of which more than one side is already
+sinking, says, not without terror, to itself, &#8220;It is the
+breath of Satan.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Beneath this Hecla-glacier lies a volcano which has
+no need of bursting out; a mild, slow, gentle heat,
+which caresses it from below, and, calling it nearer,
+says in a whisper, &#8220;Come down.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The Witch has something to laugh at, if from the
+gloom she can see how utterly Dante and St. Thomas,<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a>
+in the bright light yonder, ignore the true position of
+things. They fancy that the Devil wins his way by
+cunning or by terror. They make him grotesque and
+coarse, as in his childhood, when Jesus could still send
+him into the herd of swine. Or else they make him
+subtle as a logician of the schools, or a fault-finding
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>lawyer. If he had been no better than this compound
+of beast and disputant,&mdash;if he had only lived in the
+mire or on fine-drawn quibbles about nothing, he
+would very soon have died of hunger.</p>
+
+<p>People were too ready to crow over him, when he
+was shewn by Bartolus<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> pleading against the woman&mdash;that
+is, the Virgin&mdash;who gets him nonsuited and condemned
+with costs. At that time, indeed, the very
+contrary was happening on earth. By a master-stroke
+of his he had won over the plaintiff herself, his fair
+antagonist, the Woman; had seduced her, not indeed
+by verbal pleadings, but by arguments not less real
+than they were charming and irresistible. He put into
+her hands the fruits of science and of nature.</p>
+
+<p>No need for controversies, for pleas of any kind:
+he simply shows himself. In the East, the new-found
+Paradise, he begins to work. From that Asian world,
+which men had thought to destroy, there springs forth
+a peerless day-dawn, whose beams travel afar until
+they pierce the deep winter of the West. There dawns
+on us a world of nature and of art, accursed of the
+ignorant indeed, but now at length come forward to
+vanquish its late victors in a pleasant war of love and
+motherly endearments. All are conquered, all rave
+about it; they will have nothing but Asia herself.
+With her hands full she comes to meet us. Her
+tissues, shawls, her carpets so agreeably soft, so
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>wondrously harmonized, her bright and well-wrought
+blades, her richly damascened arms, make us aware of
+our own barbarism. Moreover, little as that may
+seem, these accursed lands of the &#8220;miscreant,&#8221; ruled
+by Satan, are visibly blessed with the fairest fruits of
+nature, that elixir of the powers of God; with <i>the first
+of vegetables</i>, coffee; with <i>the first of beasts</i>, the Arab
+horse. What am I saying?&mdash;with a whole world of
+treasures, silk, sugar, and a host of herbs all-powerful
+to relieve the heart, to soothe and lighten our sufferings.</p>
+
+<p>All this breaks upon our view about the year 1300.
+Spain herself, whose brain is wholly fashioned out of
+Moors and Jews, for all that she is again subdued by
+the barbarous children of the Goth, bears witness in
+behalf of those <i>miscreants</i>. Wherever the Mussulman
+children of the Devil are at work, all is prosperous, the
+springs well forth, the ground is covered with flowers.
+A right worthy and harmless travail decks it with those
+wondrous vineyards, through which men recruit themselves,
+drowning all care, and seeming to drink in
+draughts of very goodness and heavenly compassion.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>To whom does Satan bring the foaming cup of life?
+In this fasting world, which has so long been fasting
+from reason, what man was there strong enough to
+take all this in without growing giddy, without getting
+drunken and risking the loss of his wits?</p>
+
+<p>Is there yet a brain so far from being petrified or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>
+crystallized by the teaching of St. Thomas, as to remain
+open to the living world, to its vegetative forces?
+Three magicians, Albert the Great, Roger Bacon,
+Arnaud of Villeneuve,<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> by strong efforts make their
+way to Nature&#8217;s secrets; but those lusty intellects lack
+flexibility and popular power. Satan falls back on his
+own Eve. The woman is still the most natural thing
+in the world; still keeps her hold on those traits of
+roguish innocence one sees in a kitten or a child of
+very high spirit. Besides, she figures much better in
+that world-comedy, that mighty game wherewith the
+universal Proteus disports himself.</p>
+
+<p>But being light and changeful, she is all the less
+liable to be carked and hardened by pain! This woman,
+whom we have seen outlawed from the world, and
+rooted on her wild moor, affords a case in point. Have
+we yet to learn whether, bruised and soured as she is,
+with her heart full of hate, she will re-enter the natural
+world and the pleasant paths of life? Assuredly her
+return thither will not find her in good tune, will
+happen mainly through a round of ill. In the coming
+and going of the storm she is all the more scared and
+violent for being so very weak.</p>
+
+<p>When in the mild warmth of spring, from the air,
+the depths of the earth, from the flowers and their
+languages, a new revelation rises round her on every
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>side, she is taken dizzy at the first. Her swelling
+bosom overflows. The Sibyl of science has her
+tortures, like her of Cum&aelig; or of Delphi. The schoolmen
+find their fun in saying, &#8220;It is the wind and
+nought else that blows her out. Her lover, the Prince
+of the Air, fills her with dreams and delusions, with
+wind, with smoke, with emptiness.&#8221; Foolish irony!
+So far from this being the true cause of her drunkenness,
+it is nothing empty, it is a real, a substantial
+thing, which has loaded her bosom all too quickly.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Have you ever seen the agave, that hard wild African
+shrub, so sharp, bitter, and tearing, with huge bristles
+instead of leaves? Ten years through it loves and
+dies. At length one day the amorous shoot, which
+has so long been gathering in the rough thing, goes
+off with a noise like gunfire, and darts skyward. And
+this shoot becomes a whole tree, not less than thirty
+feet high, and bristling with sad flowers.</p>
+
+<p>Some such analogy does the gloomy Sibyl feel, when
+one morning of a spring-time, late in coming, and
+therefore impetuous at the last, there takes place all
+around her a vast explosion of life.</p>
+
+<p>And all things look at her, and all things bloom for
+her. For every thing that has life says softly, &#8220;Whoso
+understands me, I am his.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>What a contrast! Here is the wife of the desert
+and of despair, bred up in hate and vengeance, and lo!
+all these innocent things agree to smile upon her!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>
+The trees, soothed by the south wind, pay her gentle
+homage. Each herb of the field, with its own special
+virtue of scent, or remedy, or poison&mdash;very often the
+three things are one&mdash;offers itself to her, saying,
+&#8220;Gather me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>All things are clearly in love. &#8220;Are they not
+mocking me? I had been readier for hell than for
+this strange festival. O spirit, art thou indeed that
+spirit of dread whom once I knew, the traces of whose
+cruelty I bear about me&mdash;what am I saying, and where
+are my senses?&mdash;the wound of whose dealing scorches
+me still?</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ah, no! &#8217;Tis not the spirit whom I hoped for in
+my rage; &#8216;<i>he who always says, No!</i>&#8217; This other one
+utters a yes of love, of drunken dizziness. What ails
+him? Is he the mad, the dazed soul of life?</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;They spoke of the great Pan as dead. But here
+he is in the guise of Bacchus, of Priapus, eager with
+long-delayed desire, threatening, scorching, teeming.
+No, no! Be this cup far from me! Trouble only
+should I drink from it,&mdash;who knows? A despair yet
+sharper than my past despairs.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile wherever the woman appears, she becomes
+the one great object of love. She is followed by all,
+and for her sake all despise their own proper kind.
+What they say about the black he-goat, her pretended
+favourite, may be applied to all. The horse neighs for
+her, breaking everything and putting her in danger.
+The awful king of the prairie, the black bull, bellows<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>
+with grief, should she pass him by at a distance. And,
+behold, yon bird despondingly turns away from his
+hen, and with whirring wings hastes to convince the
+woman of his love!</p>
+
+<p>Such is the new tyranny of her master, who, by the
+funniest hap of all, foregoes the part accredited to him
+as king of the dead, to burst forth a very king of
+life.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No!&#8221; she says; &#8220;leave me to my hatred: I
+ask for nothing more. Let me be feared and fearful!
+The beauty I would have, is only that which dwells in
+these black serpents of my hair, in this countenance
+furrowed with grief, and the scars of thy thunderbolt.&#8221;
+But the Lord of Evil replies with cunning softness:
+&#8220;Oh, but you are only the more beautiful, the more
+impressible, for this fiery rage of yours! Ay, call out
+and curse on, beneath one and the same goad! &#8217;Tis
+but one storm calling another. Swift and smooth is the
+passage from wrath to pleasure.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Neither her fury nor her pride would have saved her
+from such allurements. But she is saved by the boundlessness
+of her desire. There is nought will satisfy her.
+Each kind of life for her is all too bounded, wanting in
+power. Away from her, steed and bull and loving bird!
+Away, ye creatures all! for one who desires the Infinite,
+how weak ye are!</p>
+
+<p>She has a woman&#8217;s longing; but for what? Even
+for the whole, the great all-containing whole. Satan
+did not foresee that no one creature would content her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>That which he could not do, is done for her in some
+ineffable way. Overcome by a desire so wide and
+deep, a longing boundless as the sea, she falls asleep.
+At such a moment, all else forgot, no touch of hate, no
+thought of vengeance left in her, she slumbers on the
+plain, innocent in her own despite, stretched out in
+easy luxuriance like a sheep or a dove.</p>
+
+<p>She sleeps, she dreams; a delightful dream! It
+seemed as if the wondrous might of universal life had
+been swallowed up within her; as if life and death and
+all things thenceforth lay fast in her bowels; as if in
+return for all her suffering, she was teeming at last
+with Nature herself.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> St. Thomas Aquinas, the &#8220;Angelic Doctor,&#8221; who died in
+1274.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> Bartolus or Bartoli, a lawyer and law-writer of the fourteenth
+century.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> Three eminent schoolmen of the thirteenth century, whose
+scientific researches pointed the way to future discoveries.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2 class="chs"><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>THE DEVIL A PHYSICIAN.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="smcap">That</span> still and dismal scene of the Bride of Corinth,
+is repeated literally from the thirteenth to the fifteenth
+century. While it was yet night, just before the daybreak,
+the two lovers, Man and Nature, meet again,
+embrace with rapture, and, at that same moment&mdash;horrible
+to tell!&mdash;behold themselves attacked by fearful
+plagues. We seem still to hear the loved one saying
+to her lover, &#8220;It is all over: thy hair will be white
+to-morrow. I am dead, and thou too wilt die.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Three dreadful blows happen in these three centuries.
+In the first we have a loathsome changing of the
+outer man, diseases of the skin, above all, leprosy. In
+the second, the evil turns inwards, becomes a grotesque
+excitement of the nerves, a fit of epileptic
+dancing. Then all grows calm, but the blood is changed,
+and ulcers prepare the way for syphilis, the scourge of
+the fifteenth century.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Among the chief diseases of the Middle Ages, so
+far as one can look therein, to speak generally, had
+been hunger, weakness, poverty of blood, that kind
+of consumption which is visible in the sculptures of
+that time. The blood was like clear water, and scrofulous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>
+ailments were rife everywhere. Barring the
+well-paid doctors, Jew or Arab, of the kings, the art of
+medicine was practised only with, holy water at the
+church door. Thither on Sundays, after the service,
+would come a crowd of sick, to whom words like these
+were spoken: &#8220;You have sinned and God has afflicted
+you. Be thankful: so much the less will you suffer
+in the next world. Resign yourselves to suffer and to
+die. The Church has prayers for the dead.&#8221; Weak,
+languishing, hopeless, with no desire to live, they
+followed this counsel faithfully, and let life go its way.</p>
+
+<p>A fatal discouragement, a wretched state of things,
+that would have prolonged without end these ages of
+lead, and debarred them from all progress! Worst of
+all things is it to resign oneself so readily, to welcome
+death with so much docility, to have strength for
+nothing, to desire nothing. Of more worth was that
+new era, that close of the Middle Ages, which at the
+cost of cruel sufferings first enabled us to regain our
+former energy; namely, <i>the resurrection of desire</i>.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Some Arab writers have asserted that the widespread
+eruption of skin-diseases which marks the thirteenth
+century, was caused by the taking of certain stimulants
+to re-awaken and renew the defaults of passion.
+Undoubtedly the burning spices brought over from the
+East, tended somewhat to such an issue. The invention
+of distilling and of divers fermented drinks may
+also have worked in the same direction.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But a greater and far more general fermentation was
+going on. During the sharp inward struggle between
+two worlds and two spirits, a third surviving silenced
+both. As the fading faith and the newborn reason
+were disputing together, somebody stepping between
+them caught hold of man. You ask who? A spirit
+unclean and raging, the spirit of sour desires, bubbling
+painfully within.</p>
+
+<p>Debarred from all outlet, whether of bodily enjoyment,
+or the free flow of soul, the sap of life thus
+closely rammed together, was sure to corrupt itself.
+Bereft of light, of sound, of speech, it spoke through
+pains and ominous excrescences. Then happened a
+new and dreadful thing. The desire put off without
+being diminished, finds itself stopped short by a cruel
+enchantment, a shocking metamorphosis.<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> Love was
+advancing blindly with open arms. It recoils groaning;
+but in vain would it flee: the fire of the blood keeps
+raging; the flesh eats itself away in sharp titillations,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>and sharper within rages the coal of fire, made fiercer
+by despair.</p>
+
+<p>What remedy does Christian Europe find for this
+twofold ill? Death and captivity; nothing more.
+When the bitter celibacy, the hopeless love, the passion
+irritable and ever-goading, bring you into a morbid
+state; when your blood is decomposing, then you shall
+go down into an <i>In pace</i>, or build your hut in the
+desert. You must live with the handbell in your hand,
+that all may flee before you. &#8220;No human being must
+see you: no consolation may be yours. If you come
+near, &#8217;tis death.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Leprosy is the last stage, the <i>apogee</i> of this scourge;
+but a thousand other ills, less hideous but still cruel,
+raged everywhere. The purest and the most fair were
+stricken with sad eruptions, which men regarded as sin
+made visible, or the chastisement of God. Then people
+did what the love of life had never made them do:
+they forsook the old sacred medicine, the bootless
+holy water, and went off to the Witch. From habit
+and fear as well, they still repaired to church; but
+thenceforth their true church was with her, on the
+moor, in the forest, in the desert. To her they carried
+their vows.</p>
+
+<p>Prayers for healing, prayers for pleasure. On the
+first effervescing of their heated blood, folk went to
+the Sibyl, in great secrecy, at uncertain hours. &#8220;What<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>
+shall I do? and what is this I feel within me? I
+burn: give me some lenitive. I burn: grant me that
+which causes my intolerable desire.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A bold, a blamable journey, for which they reproach
+themselves at night. Let this new fatality be
+never so urgent, this fire be never so torturing, the
+Saints themselves never so powerless; still, have not
+the indictment of the Templars and the proceedings of
+Pope Boniface unveiled the Sodom lying hid beneath
+the altar? But a wizard Pope, a friend of the Devil,
+who also carried him away, effects a change in all their
+ideas. Was it not with the Demon&#8217;s help that John
+XXII., the son of a shoemaker, a Pope no more of
+Rome, succeeded in amassing in his town of Avignon
+more gold than the Emperor and all the kings? As
+the Pope is, so is the bishop. Did not Guichard,
+Bishop of Troyes, procure from the Devil the death of
+the King&#8217;s daughters? No death we ask for&mdash;we; but
+pleasant things&mdash;for life, for health, for beauty, and
+for pleasure: the things of God which God refuses.
+What shall we do? Might we but win them through
+the grace of the <i>Prince of this World</i>!</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>When the great and mighty doctor of the Renaissance,
+Paracelsus, cast all the wise books of ancient
+medicine into the fire, Latin, and Jewish, and Arabic,
+all at once, he declared that he had learned none but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>
+the popular medicine, that of the <i>good women</i>,<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a> the
+<i>shepherds</i>, and the <i>headsmen</i>, the latter of whom made
+often good horse-doctors and clever surgeons, resetting
+bones broken or put out of joint.</p>
+
+<p>I make no doubt but that his admirable and
+masterly work on <i>The Diseases of Women</i>&mdash;the first
+then written on a theme so large, so deep, so tender&mdash;came
+forth from his special experience of those women
+to whom others went for aid; of the witches, namely,
+who always acted as the midwives: for never in those
+days was a male physician admitted to the woman&#8217;s
+side, to win her trust in him, to listen to her secrets.
+The witches alone attended her, and became, especially
+for women, the chief and only physician.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>What we know for surest with regard to their medicinal
+practice is, that for ends the most different, alike
+to stimulate and to soothe, they made use of one large
+family of doubtful and very dangerous plants, called,
+by reason of the services they rendered, <i>The Comforters</i>,
+or Solane&aelig;.<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span></p><p>A vast and popular family, many kinds of which
+abound to excess under our feet, in the hedges, everywhere&mdash;a
+family so numerous that of one kind alone
+we have eight hundred varieties.<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> There is nothing
+easier, nothing more common, to find. But these
+plants are mostly dangerous in the using. It needs
+some boldness to measure out a dose, the boldness,
+perhaps, of genius.</p>
+
+<p>Let us, step by step, mount the ladder of their
+powers.<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> The first are simply pot-herbs, good for
+food, such as the mad-apples and the tomatoes, miscalled
+&#8220;love-apples.&#8221; Other, of the harmless kinds,
+are sweetness and tranquillity itself, as the white mullens,
+or lady&#8217;s fox-gloves, so good for fomentations.</p>
+
+<p>Going higher up, you come on a plant already suspicious,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>which many think a poison, a plant which at
+first seems like honey and afterwards tastes bitter, reminding
+one of Jonathan&#8217;s saying, &#8220;I have eaten a
+little honey, and therefore shall I die.&#8221; But this death
+is serviceable, a dying away of pain. The &#8220;bittersweet&#8221;
+should have been the first experiment of that
+bold hom&#339;opathy which rose, little by little, up to the
+most dangerous poisons. The slight irritation and the
+tingling which it causes might point it out as a remedy
+for the prevalent diseases of that time, those, namely,
+of the skin.</p>
+
+<p>The pretty maiden who found herself woefully
+adorned with uncouth red patches, with pimples, or
+with ringworm, would come crying for such relief. In
+the case of an elder woman the hurt would be yet
+more painful. The bosom, most delicate thing in nature,
+with its innermost vessels forming a matchless
+flower, becomes, through its injective and congestive
+tendencies, the most perfect instrument for causing
+pain. Sharp, ruthless, restless are the pains she suffers.
+Gladly would she accept all kinds of poison.
+Instead of bargaining with the Witch, she only puts
+her poor hard breast between her hands.</p>
+
+<p>From the bittersweet, too weak for such, we rise to
+the dark nightshades, which have rather more effect.
+For a few days the woman is soothed. Anon she
+comes back weeping. &#8220;Very well, to-night you may
+come again. I will fetch you something, as you wish
+me; but it will be a strong poison.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It was a heavy risk for the Witch. At that time
+they never thought that poisons could act as remedies,
+if applied outwardly or taken in very weak doses. The
+plants they compounded together under the name of
+<i>witches&#8217; herbs</i>, seemed to be but ministers of death.
+Such as were found in her hands would have proved
+her, in their opinion, a poisoner or a dealer in accursed
+charms. A blind crowd, all the more cruel for its
+growing fears, might fell her with a shower of stones,
+or make her undergo the trial by water&mdash;the <i>noyade</i>.
+Or even&mdash;most dreadful doom of all!&mdash;they might
+drag her with a rope round her neck to the churchyard,
+where a pious festival was held and the people
+edified by seeing her thrown to the flames.</p>
+
+<p>However, she runs the risk, and fetches home the
+dreadful plant. The other woman comes back to her
+abode by night or morning, whenever she is least afraid
+of being met. But a young shepherd, who saw her
+there, told the village, &#8220;If you had seen her as I did,
+gliding among the rubbish of the ruined hut, looking
+about her on all sides, muttering I know not what!
+Oh, but she has frightened me very much! If she
+had seen me, I was a lost man. She would have
+changed me into a lizard, a toad, or a bat. She took
+a paltry herb&mdash;the paltriest I ever saw&mdash;of a pale
+sickly yellow, with red and black marks, like the
+flames, as they say, of hell. The horror of the thing
+is, that the whole stalk was hairy like a man, with
+long, black, sticky hairs. She plucked it roughly,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>
+with a grunt, and suddenly I saw her no more. She
+could not have run away so quick; she must have
+flown. What a dreadful thing that woman is! How
+dangerous to the whole country!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Certainly the plant inspires dread. It is the henbane,
+a cruel and dangerous poison, but a powerful
+emollient, a soft sedative poultice, which melts, unbends,
+lulls to sleep the pain, often taking it quite
+away.</p>
+
+<p>Another of these poisons&mdash;the Belladonna, so called,
+undoubtedly, in thankful acknowledgment, had great
+power in laying the convulsions that sometimes supervened
+in childbirth, and added a new danger, a new
+fear, to the danger and the fear of that most trying
+moment. A motherly hand instilled the gentle poison,
+casting the mother herself into a sleep, and smoothing
+the infant&#8217;s passage, after the manner of the modern
+chloroform, into the world.<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a></p>
+
+<p>Belladonna cures the dancing-fits while making you
+dance. A daring hom&#339;opathy this, which at first
+must frighten: it is <i>medicine reversed</i>, contrary in most
+things to that which alone the Christians studied,
+which alone they valued, after the example of the Jews
+and Arabs.</p>
+
+<p>How did men come to this result? Undoubtedly
+by the simple effect of the great Satanic principle, that
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span><i>everything must be done the wrong way</i>, the very opposite
+way to that followed by the holy people. These
+latter have a dread of poisons. Satan uses them and
+turns them into remedies. The Church thinks by
+spiritual means, by sacraments and prayers, to act
+even on the body. Satan, on the other hand, uses
+material means to act even upon the soul, making you
+drink of forgetfulness, love, reverie, and every passion.
+To the blessing of the priest he opposes the magnetic
+passes made by the soft hands of women, who cheat
+you of your pains.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>By a change of system, and yet more of dress, as
+in the substitution of linen for wool, the skin-diseases
+lost their intensity. Leprosy abated, but seemed to
+go inwards and beget deeper ills. The fourteenth century
+wavered between three scourges&mdash;the epileptic
+dancings, the plague, and the sores which, according
+to Paracelsus, led the way to syphilis.</p>
+
+<p>The first danger was not the least. About 1350 it
+broke out in a frightful manner with the dance of St.
+Guy, and was singular especially in this, that it did not
+act upon each person separately. As if carried on by
+one same galvanic current, the sick caught each other
+by the hand, formed immense chains, and spun and
+spun round till they died. The spectators, who laughed
+at first, presently catching the contagion, let themselves
+go, fell into the mighty current, increased the
+terrible choir.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>What would have happened if the evil had held on
+as long as leprosy did even in its decline?</p>
+
+<p>It was the first step, as it were, towards epilepsy.
+If that generation of sufferers had not been cured,
+it would have begotten another decidedly epileptic.
+What a frightful prospect! Think of Europe covered
+with fools, with idiots, with raging madmen! We are
+not told how the evil was treated and checked. The
+remedy prescribed by most, the falling upon these
+jumpers with kicks and cuffings, was entirely fitted
+to increase the frenzy and turn it into downright
+epilepsy.<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a> Doubtless there was some other remedy,
+of which people were loth to speak. At the time when
+witchcraft took its first great flight, the widespread
+use of the <i>Solane&aelig;</i>, above all, of belladonna, vulgarized
+the medicine which really checked those affections. At
+the great popular gatherings of the Sabbath, of which
+we shall presently speak, the <i>witches&#8217; herb</i>, mixed with
+mead, beer, cider,<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> or perry (the strong drinks of the
+West), set the multitude dancing a dance luxurious
+indeed, but far from epileptic.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>But the greatest revolution caused by the witches,
+the greatest step <i>the wrong way</i> against the spirit of
+the Middle Ages, was what may be called the re&euml;nfeoffment
+of the stomach and the digestive organs. They
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>had the boldness to say, &#8220;There is nothing foul or
+unclean.&#8221; Thenceforth the study of matter was free
+and boundless. Medicine became a possibility.</p>
+
+<p>That this principle was greatly abused, we do not
+deny; but the principle is none the less clear. There
+is nothing foul but moral evil. In the natural world
+all things are pure: nothing may be withheld from our
+studious regard, nothing be forbidden by an idle spiritualism,
+still less by a silly disgust.</p>
+
+<p>It was here especially that the Middle Ages showed
+themselves in their true light, as <i>anti-natural</i>, out of
+Nature&#8217;s oneness drawing distinctions of castes, of
+priestly orders. Not only do they count the spirit
+<i>noble</i>, and the body <i>ignoble</i>; but even parts of the body
+are called noble, while others are not, being evidently
+plebeian. In like manner heaven is noble, and hell
+is not; but why?&mdash;&#8220;Because heaven is high up.&#8221; But
+in truth it is neither high nor low, being above and
+beneath alike. And what is hell? Nothing at all.
+Equally foolish are they about the world at large and
+the smaller world of men.</p>
+
+<p>This world is all one piece: each thing in it is attached
+to all the rest. If the stomach is servant of
+the brain and feeds it, the brain also works none the
+less for the stomach, perpetually helping to prepare
+for it the digestive <i>sugar</i>.<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>There was no lack of injurious treatment. The
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>witches were called filthy, indecent, shameless, immoral.
+Nevertheless, their first steps on that road
+may be accounted as a happy revolution in things most
+moral, in charity and kindness. With a monstrous
+perversion of ideas the Middle Ages viewed the flesh
+in its representative, woman,&mdash;accursed since the days
+of Eve&mdash;as a thing impure. The Virgin, exalted as
+<i>Virgin</i> more than as <i>Our Lady</i>, far from lifting up the
+real woman, had caused her abasement, by setting men
+on the track of a mere scholastic puritanism, where
+they kept rising higher and higher in subtlety and
+falsehood.</p>
+
+<p>Woman herself ended by sharing in the hateful
+prejudice and deeming herself unclean. She hid herself
+at the hour of childbed. She blushed at loving
+and bestowing happiness on others. Sober as she
+mostly was in comparison with man, living as she
+mostly did on herbs and fruits, sharing through her
+diet of milk and vegetables the purity of the most innocent
+breeds, she almost besought forgiveness for
+being born, for living, for carrying out the conditions
+of her life.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The medical art of the Middle Ages busied itself
+peculiarly about the man, a being noble and pure, who
+alone could become a priest, alone could make God at
+the altar. It also paid some attention to the beasts,
+beginning indeed with them; but of children it thought
+seldom: of women not at all.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The romances, too, with their subtleties pourtray the
+converse of the world. Outside the courts and highborn
+adulterers, which form the chief topic of these
+romances, the woman is always a poor Griselda, born
+to drain the cup of suffering, to be often beaten, and
+never cared for.</p>
+
+<p>In order to mind the woman, to trample these usages
+under foot, and to care for her in spite of herself, nothing
+less would serve than the Devil, woman&#8217;s old ally, her
+trusty friend in Paradise, and the Witch, that monster
+who deals with everything the wrong way, exactly contrariwise
+to that of the holier people. The poor creature
+set such little store by herself. She would shrink
+back, blushing, and loth to say a word. The Witch
+being clever and evil-hearted, read her to the inmost
+depths. Ere long she won her to speak out, drew from
+her her little secret, overcame her refusals, her modest,
+humble hesitations. Rather than undergo the remedy,
+she was willing almost to die. But the cruel sorceress
+made her live.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> Leprosy has been traced to Asia and the Crusades; but
+Europe had it in herself. The war declared by the Middle
+Ages against the flesh and all cleanliness bore its fruits. More
+than one saint boasted of having never washed even his hands.
+And how much did the rest wash? To have stripped for a
+moment would have been sinful. The worldlings carefully
+follow the teaching of the monks. This subtle and refined
+society, which sacrificed marriage and seemed inspired only
+with the poetry of adultery, preserved a strange scruple on a
+point so harmless. It dreaded all cleansing, as so much defilement.
+There was no bathing for a thousand years!</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> The name given in fear and politeness to the witches.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> Man&#8217;s ingratitude is painful to see. A thousand other
+plants have come into use: a hundred exotic vegetables have
+become the fashion. But the good once done by these poor
+<i>Comforters</i> is clean forgotten!&mdash;Nay, who now remembers or
+even acknowledges the old debt of humanity to harmless
+nature? The <i>Asclepias acida</i>, <i>Sarcostemma</i>, or flesh-plant,
+which for five thousand years was the <i>Holy Wafer</i> of the East,
+its very palpable God, eaten gladly by five hundred millions of
+men,&mdash;this plant, in the Middle Ages called the Poison-queller
+(<i>vince-venenum</i>), meets with not one word of historical comment
+in our books of Botany. Perhaps two thousand years
+hence they will forget the wheat. See Langlois on the <i>Soma</i>
+of India and the <i>Hom</i> of Persia. <i>Mem. de l&#8217;Acad&eacute;mie des
+Inscriptions</i>, xix. 326.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> M. d&#8217;Orbigny&#8217;s <i>Dictionary of Natural History</i>, article
+<i>Morelles</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> I have found this ladder nowhere else. It is the more
+important, because the witches who made these essays at the
+risk of passing for poisoners, certainly began with the weakest,
+and rose gradually to the strongest. Each step of power thus
+gives its relative date, and helps us in this dark subject to set
+up a kind of chronology. I shall complete it in the following
+chapters, when I come to speak of the Mandragora and the
+Datura. I have chiefly followed Pouchet&#8217;s <i>Solan&eacute;es</i> and <i>Botanique
+G&eacute;n&eacute;rale</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> Madame La Chapelle and M. Chaussier have renewed to
+good purpose these practices of the older medicine. Pouchet,
+<i>Solan&eacute;es</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> We should think that few physicians would quite agree
+with M. Michelet.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> Cider was first made in the twelfth century.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> This great discovery was made by Claude Bernard.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2 class="chs"><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>CHARMS AND PHILTRES.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="smcap">Let</span> no one hastily conclude from the foregoing
+chapter that I attempt to whiten, to acquit entirely,
+the dismal bride of the Devil. If she often did good,
+she could also do no small amount of ill. There is no
+great power which is not abused. And this one had
+three centuries of actual reigning, in the interlude between
+two worlds, the older dying and the new struggling
+painfully to begin. The Church, which in the
+quarrels of the sixteenth century will regain some of
+her strength, at least for fighting, in the fourteenth is
+down in the mire. Look at the truthful picture drawn
+by Cl&eacute;mangis. The nobles, so proudly arrayed in their
+new armour, fall all the more heavily at Cr&eacute;cy, Poitiers,
+Agincourt. All who survive end by being prisoners in
+England. What a theme for ridicule! The citizens, the
+very peasants make merry and shrug their shoulders.
+This general absence of the lords gave, I fancy, no
+small encouragement to the Sabbath gatherings which
+had always taken place, but at this time might first
+have grown into vast popular festivals.</p>
+
+<p>How mighty the power thus wielded by Satan&#8217;s
+sweetheart, who cures, foretels, divines, calls up the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>
+souls of the dead; who can throw a spell upon you,
+turn you into a hare or wolf, enable you to find a treasure,
+and, best of all, ensure your being beloved! It
+is an awful power which combines all others. How
+could a stormy soul, a soul most commonly gangrened,
+and sometimes grown utterly wayward, have helped
+employing it to wreak her hate and revenge; sometimes
+even out of a mere delight in malice and uncleanness?</p>
+
+<p>All that once was told the confessor, is now imparted
+to her: not only the sins already done, but those also
+which folk purpose doing. She holds each by her
+shameful secret, by the avowal of her uncleanest desires.
+To her they entrust both their bodily and mental ills;
+the lustful heats of a blood inflamed and soured; the
+ceaseless prickings of some sharp, urgent, furious
+desire.</p>
+
+<p>To her they all come: with her there is no shame.
+In plain blunt words they beseech her for life, for
+death, for remedies, for poisons. Thither comes a
+young woman, to ask through her tears for the means
+of saving her from the fruits of her sin. Thither comes
+the step-mother&mdash;a common theme in the Middle Ages&mdash;to
+say that the child of a former marriage eats well
+and lives long. Thither comes the sorrowing wife
+whose children year by year are born only to die. And
+now, on the other hand, comes a youth to buy at any
+cost the burning draught that shall trouble the heart
+of some haughty dame, until, forgetful of the distance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>
+between them, she has stooped to look upon her little
+page.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>In these days there are but two types, two forms of
+marriage, both of them extreme and outrageous.</p>
+
+<p>The scornful heiress of a fief, who brings her husband
+a crown or a broad estate, an Eleanor of Guyenne
+for instance, will, under her husband&#8217;s very eyes, hold
+her court of lovers, keeping herself under very slight
+control. Let us leave romances and poems, to look at
+the reality in its dread march onward to the unbridled
+rage of the daughters of Philip the Fair, of the cruel
+Isabella, who by the hands of her lovers impaled
+Edward II. The insolence of the feudal women breaks
+out diabolically in the triumphant two-horned bonnet
+and other brazen-faced fashions.</p>
+
+<p>But in this century, when classes are beginning to
+mingle slightly, the woman of a lower rank, when she
+marries a lord, has to fear the hardest trials. So says
+the truthful history of the humble, the meek, the
+patient Griselda. In a more popular form it becomes
+the tale of <i>Blue-Beard</i>, a tale which seems to me quite
+earnest and historical. The wife so often killed and
+replaced by him could only have been his vassal. He
+would have reckoned wholly otherwise with the daughter
+or sister of a baron, who might avenge her. If I
+am not misled by a specious conjecture, we must believe
+that this tale is of the fourteenth century, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>
+not of those preceding, in which the lord would never
+have deigned to take a wife below himself.</p>
+
+<p>Specially remarkable in the moving tale of <i>Griselda</i>
+is the fact, that throughout her heavy trials, she never
+seeks support in being devout or in loving another.
+She is evidently faithful, chaste, and pure. It never
+comes into her mind to love elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>Of the two feudal women, the Heiress and Griselda,
+it is peculiarly the first who has her household of gentlemen,
+her courts of love, who shows favour to the
+humblest lovers, encouraging them, delivering, as
+Eleanor did, the famous sentence, soon to become quite
+classical: &#8220;There can be no love between married
+folk.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon a secret hope, but hot and violent withal,
+arises in more than one young heart. If he must give
+himself to the Devil, he will rush full tilt on this
+adventurous intrigue. Let the castle be never so surely
+closed, one fine opening is still left for Satan. In a
+game so perilous, what chance of success reveals itself?
+Wisdom answers, None. But what if Satan said, Yes?</p>
+
+<p>We must remember how great a distance feudal pride
+set between the nobles themselves. Words are misleading:
+one <i>cavalier</i> might be far below another.</p>
+
+<p>The knight banneret, who brought a whole army of
+vassals to his king&#8217;s side, would look with utter scorn
+from one end of his long table on the poor <i>lackland</i>
+knights seated at the other. How much greater his scorn
+for the simple varlets, grooms, pages, &amp;c., fed upon his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>
+leavings! Seated at the lowermost end of the tables
+close to the door, they scraped the dishes sent down to
+them, often empty, from the personages seated above
+beside the hearth. It never would cross the great
+lord&#8217;s mind, that those below would dare to lift eyes of
+fancy towards their lovely mistress, the haughty heiress
+of a fief, sitting near her mother, &#8220;crowned by a
+chaplet of white roses.&#8221; Whilst he bore with wondrous
+patience the love of some stranger knight,
+appointed by his lady to bear her colours, he would
+have savagely punished the boldness of any servant
+who looked so high. Of this kind was the raging
+jealousy shown by the Lord of Fayel, who was stirred
+to deadly wrath, not because his wife had a lover, but
+because that lover was one of his household, the castellan
+or simple constable of his castle of Coucy.</p>
+
+<p>The deeper and less passable seemed the gulf between
+the great heiress, lady of the manor, and the
+groom or page who, barring his shirt, had nothing, not
+even his coat, but what belonged to his master, the
+stronger became love&#8217;s temptation to overleap that
+gulf.</p>
+
+<p>The youth was buoyed up by the very impossibility.
+At length, one day that he managed to get out of the
+tower, he ran off to the Witch and asked her advice.
+Would a philtre serve as a spell to win her? Or, failing
+that, must he make an express covenant? He never
+shrank at all from the dreadful idea of yielding himself
+to Satan. &#8220;We will take care for that, young<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>
+man: but hie thee up again; you will find some
+change already.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The change, however, is in himself. He is stirred by
+some ineffable hope, that escapes in spite of him from
+a deep downcast eye, scored by an ever-darting flame.
+Somebody, we may guess who, having eyes for him
+alone, is moved to throw him, as she passes, a word of
+pity. Oh, rapture! Kind Satan! Charming, adorable
+Witch!</p>
+
+<p>He cannot eat nor drink until he has been to see the
+latter again. Respectfully kissing her hand, he almost
+falls at her feet. Whatever she may ask him, whatever
+she may bid him do, he will obey her. That moment,
+if she wishes it, he will give her his golden chain, will
+give her the ring upon his finger, though he had it
+from a dying mother. But the Witch, in her native
+malice, in her hatred of the Baron, feels an especial
+comfort in dealing him a secret blow.</p>
+
+<p>Already a vague anxiety disturbs the castle. A
+dumb tempest, without lightning or thunder, broods
+over it, like an electric vapour on a marsh. All is
+silence, deep silence; but the lady is troubled. She
+suspects that some supernatural power has been at
+work. For why indeed be thus drawn to this youth,
+more than to some one else, handsomer, nobler, renowned
+already for deeds of arms? There is something
+toward, down yonder! Has that woman cast a
+spell upon her, or worked some hidden charm? The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>
+more she asks herself these questions, the more her
+heart is troubled.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The Witch has something to wreak her malice upon
+at last. In the village she was a queen; but now the
+castle comes to her, yields itself up to her on that side
+where its pride ran the greatest risk. For us this
+passion has a peculiar interest, as the rush of one soul
+towards its ideal against every social harrier, against the
+unjust decree of fate. To the Witch, on her side, it
+holds out the deep, keen delight of humbling the lady&#8217;s
+pride, and revenging perhaps her own wrongs; the
+delight of serving the lord as he served his vassals, of
+levying upon him, through the boldness of a mere
+child, the firstfruits of his outrageous wedding-rights.
+Undoubtedly, in these intrigues where the Witch had to
+play her part, she often acted from a depth of levelling
+hatred natural to a peasant.</p>
+
+<p>Already it was something gained to have made the
+lady stoop to love a menial. We should not be misled
+by such examples as John of Saintr&eacute; and Cherubin.
+The serving-boy filled the lowest offices in the household.
+The footman proper did not then exist, while on
+the other hand, few, if any maidservants lived in
+military strongholds. Young hands did everything,
+and were not disgraced thereby. The service, specially
+the body-service of the lord and lady, honoured and
+raised them up. Nevertheless, it often placed the
+highborn page in situations sorrowful enough, prosaic,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>
+not to say ridiculous. The lord never distresses himself
+about that. And the lady must indeed be charmed
+by the Devil, not to see what every day she saw, her
+well-beloved employed in servile and unsuitable tasks.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>In the Middle Ages the very high and the very low
+are continually brought together. That which is hidden
+by the poems, we can catch a glimpse of otherwhere.
+With those ethereal passions, many gross things were
+clearly blended.</p>
+
+<p>All we know of the charms and philtres used by the
+witches is very fantastic, not seldom marked by malice,
+and recklessly mixed up with things that seem to us
+the least likely to have awakened love. By these
+methods they went a long way without the husband&#8217;s
+perceiving in his blindness the game they made of
+him.</p>
+
+<p>These philtres were of various kinds. Some were
+for exciting and troubling the senses, like the stimulants
+so much abused in the East. Others were dangerous,
+and often treacherous draughts to whose illusions
+the body would yield itself without the will. Others
+again were employed as tests when the passion was
+defied, when one wished to see how far the greediness
+of desire might derange the senses, making them
+receive as the highest and holiest of favours, the most
+disagreeable services done by the object of their love.</p>
+
+<p>The rude way in which a castle was constructed,
+with nothing in it but large halls, led to an utter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>
+sacrifice of the inner life. It was long enough before
+they took to building in one of the turrets a closet or
+recess for meditation and the saying of prayers. The
+lady was easily watched. On certain days set or
+waited for, the bold youth would attempt the stroke,
+recommended him by the Witch, of mingling a philtre
+with her drink.</p>
+
+<p>This, however, was a dangerous matter, not often tried.
+Less difficult was it to purloin from the lady things
+which escaped her notice, which she herself despised.
+He would treasure up the very smallest paring of a
+nail; he would gather up respectfully one or two
+beautiful hairs that might fall from her comb. These
+he would carry to the Witch, who often asked, as our
+modern sleep-wakers do, for something very personal
+and strongly redolent of the person, but obtained
+without her leave; as, for instance, some threads torn
+out of a garment long worn and soiled with the traces
+of perspiration. With much kissing, of course, and
+worshipping, the lover was fain reluctantly to throw
+these treasures into the fire, with a view to gathering
+up the ashes afterwards. By and by, when she came
+to look at her garment, the fine lady would remark the
+rent, but guessing at the cause, would only sigh and
+hold her tongue. The charm had already begun to
+work.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Even if she hesitated from regard for her marriage-vow,
+certain it is that life in a space so narrow, where<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>
+they were always in each other&#8217;s sight, so near and yet
+so far, became a downright torment. And even when
+she had once shown her weakness, still before her husband
+and others equally jealous the moments of happiness
+would assuredly be rare. Hence sprang many a
+foolish outbreak of unsatisfied desire. The less they
+came together, the more deeply they longed to do so.
+A disordered fancy sought to attain that end by means
+grotesque, unnatural, utterly senseless. So by way of
+establishing a means of secret correspondence between
+the two, the Witch had the letters of the alphabet
+pricked on both their arms. If one of them wanted to
+send a thought to the other, he brightened and brought
+out by sucking the blood-red letters of the wished-for
+word. Immediately, so it is said, the corresponding
+letters bled on the other&#8217;s arm.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes in these mad fits they would drink each
+of the other&#8217;s blood, so as to mingle their souls, it was
+said, in close communion. The devouring of Coucy&#8217;s
+heart, which the lady &#8220;found so good that she never
+ate again,&#8221; is the most tragical instance of these
+monstrous vows of loving cannibalism. But when the
+absent one did not die, but only the love within him,
+then the lady would seek counsel of the Witch, begging
+of her the means of holding him, of bringing him
+back.</p>
+
+<p>The incantations used by the sorceress of Theocritus
+and Virgil, though employed also in the Middle Ages,
+were seldom of much avail. An attempt was made to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>
+win back the lover by a spell seemingly copied from
+antiquity, by means of a cake, of a <i>confarreatio</i><a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> like
+that which, both in Asia and Europe, had always been
+the holiest pledge of love. But in this case it is not
+the soul only, it is the flesh also they seek to bind;
+there must be so true an identity established between
+the two, that, dead to all other women, he shall live
+only for her. It was a cruel ceremony on the woman&#8217;s
+side. &#8220;No haggling, madam,&#8221; says the Witch.
+Suddenly the proud dame grows obedient, even to
+letting herself be stripped bare: for thus indeed it
+must be.</p>
+
+<p>What a triumph for the Witch! And if this lady
+were the same as she who had once made her &#8220;run the
+gauntlet,&#8221; how meet the vengeance, how dread the requital
+now! But it is not enough to have stripped her
+thus naked. About her loins is fastened a little shelf,
+on which a small oven is set for the cooking of the cake.
+&#8220;Oh, my dear, I cannot bear it longer! Make haste,
+and relieve me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You must bear it, madam; you must feel the heat.
+When the cake is done, he will be warmed by you,
+by your flame.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It is over; and now we have the cake of antiquity, of
+the Indian and the Roman marriage, but spiced and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>warmed up by the lecherous spirit of the Devil. She
+does not say with Virgil&#8217;s wizard,<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&#8220;Ducite ab urbe domum, mea carmina, ducite Daphnin!&#8221;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But she takes him the cake, steeped, as it were, in the
+other&#8217;s suffering, and kept warm by her love. He has
+hardly bitten it when he is overtaken by an odd
+emotion, by a feeling of dizziness. Then as the blood
+rushes up to his heart he turns red and hot. Passion
+fastens anew on him, and inextinguishable desire.<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> One form of wedding among the Romans, in which the
+bride-cake was broken between the pair, in token of their
+union.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> &#8220;Hither, ye spells of mine, bring Daphnis home from the
+city!&#8221;&mdash;<i>Virgil</i>, Eclogue viii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> I am wrong in saying inextinguishable. Fresh philtres
+were often needed; and the blame of this must lie with the
+lady, from whom the Witch in her mocking, malignant rage
+exacted the most humiliating observances.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2 class="chs"><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>THE REBELS&#8217; COMMUNION&mdash;SABBATHS&mdash;THE BLACK
+MASS.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="smcap">We</span> must now speak of the <i>Sabbaths</i>; a word which at
+different times clearly meant quite different things.
+Unhappily, we have no detailed accounts of these
+gatherings earlier than the reign of Henry IV.<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> By
+that time they were nothing more than a great lewd
+farce carried on under the cloak of witchcraft. But
+these very descriptions of a thing so greatly corrupted
+are marked by certain antique touches that tell of the
+successive periods and the different forms through
+which it had passed.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>We may set out with this firm idea that, for many
+centuries, the serf led the life of a wolf or a fox; that
+he was <i>an animal of the night</i>, moving about, I may
+say, as little as possible in the daytime, and truly
+living in the night alone.</p>
+
+<p>Still, up to the year 1000, so long as the people
+made their own saints and legends, their daily life was
+not to them uninteresting. Their nightly Sabbaths were
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>only a slight relic of paganism. They held in fear and
+honour the Moon, so powerful over the good things of
+earth. Her chief worshippers, the old women, burn
+small candles to <i>Dianom</i>&mdash;the Diana of yore, whose
+other names were Luna and Hecate. The Lupercal
+(or wolf-man) is always following the women and
+children, disguised indeed under the dark face of
+ghost Hallequin (Harlequin). The Vigil of Venus was
+kept as a holiday precisely on the first of May. On
+Midsummer Day they kept the Sabaza by sacrificing
+the he-goat of Bacchus Sabasius. In all this there was
+no mockery; nothing but a harmless carnival of serfs.</p>
+
+<p>But about the year 1000 the church is well-nigh
+shut against the peasant through the difference between
+his language and hers. By 1100 her services became
+quite unintelligible. Of the mysteries played at the
+church-doors, he has retained chiefly the comic side, the
+ox and the ass, &amp;c. On these he makes Christmas
+carols, which grow ever more and more burlesque,
+forming a true Sabbatic literature.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Are we to suppose that the great and fearful risings
+of the twelfth century had no influence on these
+mysteries, on this night-life of the <i>wolf</i>, the <i>game bird</i>,
+the <i>wild quarry</i>. The great sacraments of rebellion
+among the serfs, when they drank of each other&#8217;s
+blood, or ate of the ground by way of solemn pledge,<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a>
+may have been celebrated at the Sabbaths. The &#8220;Marseillaise&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>of that time, sung by night rather than day,
+was perhaps a Sabbatic chant:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&#8220;Nous sommes hommes commes ils sont!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tout aussi grand c&#339;ur nous avons!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tout autant souffrir nous pouvons!&#8221;<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But the tombstone falls again in 1200. Seated
+thereon the Pope and the King, with their enormous
+weight, have sealed up man. Has he now his old life
+by night? More than ever. The old pagan dances
+must by this time have waxed furious. Our negroes
+of the Antilles, after a dreadful day of heat and hard
+work, would go and dance away some four leagues off.
+So it was with the serf too. But with his dances there
+must have mingled a merriment born of revenge,
+satiric farces, burlesques and caricatures of the baron
+and the priest: a whole literature of the night indeed,
+that knew not one word of the literature of the day,
+that knew little even of the burgher Fabliaux.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Of such a nature were the Sabbaths before 1300.
+Before they could take the startling form of open
+warfare against the God of those days, much more was
+needed still, and especially these two things: not only
+a descending into the very depths of despair, but also
+<i>an utter losing of respect for anything</i>.</p>
+
+<p>To this pass they do not come until the fourteenth
+century, under the Avignon popes, and during the
+Great Schism; when the Church with two heads
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>seems no longer a church; when the king and all his
+nobles, being in shameful captivity to the English, are
+extorting the means of ransom from their oppressed
+and outraged people. Then do the Sabbaths take the
+grand and horrible form of the <i>Black Mass</i>, of a
+ritual upside down, in which Jesus is defied and
+bidden to thunder on the people if He can. In
+the thirteenth century this devilish drama was still
+impossible, through the horror it would have caused.
+And later again, in the fifteenth, when everything,
+even suffering itself, had become exhausted, so fierce
+an outburst could not have issued forth; so monstrous
+an invention no one would have essayed. It could only
+have belonged to the age of Dante.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>It took place, I fancy, at one gush; an explosion as
+it were of genius raving, bringing impiety up to the
+height of a great popular passion-fit. To understand
+the nature of these bursts of rage, we must remember
+that, far from imagining the fixedness of God&#8217;s laws,
+a people brought up by their own clergy to believe
+and depend on miracles, had for ages past been hoping
+and waiting for nothing else than a miracle which
+never came. In vain they demanded one in the
+desperate hour of their last worst strait. Heaven
+thenceforth appeared to them as the ally of their
+savage tormentors, nay, as itself a tormentor too.</p>
+
+<p>Thereon began the <i>Black Mass</i> and the <i>Jacquerie</i>.<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span></p>
+<p>In the elastic shell of the Black Mass, a thousand
+variations of detail may afterwards have been inserted;
+but the shell itself was strongly made and, in my
+opinion, all of one piece.</p>
+
+<p>This drama I succeeded in reproducing in my
+&#8220;History of France,&#8221; in the year 1857. There
+was small difficulty in casting it anew in its four
+acts. Only at that time I left in it too many of the
+grotesque adornments which clothed the Sabbath of a
+later period; nor did I clearly enough define what
+belonged to the older shell, so dark and dreadful.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Its date is strongly marked by certain savage tokens
+of an age accursed, and yet more by the ruling place
+therein assigned to woman, a fact most characteristic
+of the fourteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>It is strange to mark how, at that period, the
+woman who enjoys so little freedom still holds her
+royal sway in a hundred violent fashions. At this
+time she inherits fiefs, brings her kingdoms to the
+king. On the lower levels she has still her throne,
+and yet more in the skies. Mary has supplanted
+Jesus. St. Francis and St. Dominic have seen the
+three worlds in her bosom. By the immensity of her
+grace she washes away sin; ay, and sometimes helps
+the sinner,&mdash;as in the story of a nun whose place the
+Virgin took in the choir, while she herself was gone
+to meet her lover.</p>
+
+<p>Up high, and down very low, we see the woman.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>
+Beatrice reigns in heaven among the stars, while John
+of Meung in the <i>Romaunt of the Rose</i> is preaching the
+community of women. Pure or sullied, the woman is
+everywhere. We might say of her what Raymond
+Lulle said of God: &#8220;What part has He in the world?
+The whole.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But alike in heaven and in poetry the true heroine
+is not the fruitful mother decked out with children;
+but the Virgin, or some barren Beatrice, who dies
+young.</p>
+
+<p>A fair English damsel passed over into France, it is
+said, about the year 1300, to preach the redemption of
+women. She looked on herself as their Messiah.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>In its earliest phase the Black Mass seemed to
+betoken this redemption of Eve, so long accursed of
+Christianity. The woman fills every office in the
+Sabbath. She is priestess, altar, pledge of holy communion,
+by turns. Nay, at bottom, is she not herself
+as God?</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Many popular traits may be found herein, and yet
+it comes not wholly from the people. The peasant
+who honoured strength alone, made small account of
+the woman; as we see but too clearly in our old laws
+and customs. From him the woman would not have
+received the high place she holds here. It is by her
+own self the place is won.</p>
+
+<p>I would gladly believe that the Sabbath in its then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>
+shape was woman&#8217;s work, the work of such a desperate
+woman as the Witch was then. In the fourteenth
+century she saw open before her a horrible career of
+torments lighted up for three or four hundred years
+by the stake. After 1300 her medical knowledge is
+condemned as baleful, her remedies are proscribed as
+if they were poisons. The harmless drawing of lots,
+by which lepers then thought to better their luck,
+brought on a massacre of those poor wretches. Pope
+John XXII. ordered the burning of a bishop suspected
+of Witchcraft. Under a system of such blind repression
+there was just the same risk in daring little as in
+daring much. Danger itself made people bolder; and
+the Witch was able to dare anything.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Human brotherhood, defiance of the Christian
+heaven, a distorted worship of nature herself as God&mdash;such
+was the purport of the Black Mass.</p>
+
+<p>They decked an altar to the arch-rebel of serfs, <i>to
+Him who had been so wronged</i>, the old outlaw, unfairly
+hunted out of heaven, &#8220;the Spirit by whom earth was
+made, the Master who ordained the budding of the
+plants.&#8221; Such were the names of honour given him
+by his worshippers, the <i>Luciferians</i>, and also, according
+to a very likely opinion, by the Knights of the Temple.</p>
+
+<p>The greatest miracle of those unhappy times is, the
+greater abundance found at the nightly communion of
+the brotherhood, than was to be found elsewhere by
+day. By incurring some little danger the Witch levied<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>
+her contributions from those who were best off, and
+gathered their offerings into a common fund. Charity
+in a Satanic garb grew very powerful, as being a crime,
+a conspiracy, a form of rebellion. People would rob
+themselves of their food by day for the sake of the
+common meal at night.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Figure to yourself, on a broad moor, and often near
+an old Celtic cromlech, at the edge of a wood, this
+twofold scene: on one side a well-lit moor and a great
+feast of the people; on the other, towards yon wood,
+the choir of that church whose dome is heaven. What
+I call the choir is a hill commanding somewhat the
+surrounding country. Between these are the yellow
+flames of torch-fires, and some red brasiers emitting a
+fantastic smoke. At the back of all is the Witch,
+dressing up her Satan, a great wooden devil, black and
+shaggy. By his horns, and the goatskin near him, he
+might be Bacchus; but his manly attributes make him
+a Pan or a Priapus. It is a darksome figure, seen
+differently by different eyes; to some suggesting only
+terror, while others are touched by the proud melancholy
+wherein the Eternally Banished seems absorbed.<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Act First. The magnificent <i>In troit</i> taken by Christendom
+from antiquity, that is, from those ceremonies
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>where the people in long train streamed under the
+colonnades on their way to the sanctuary, is now taken
+back for himself by the elder god upon his return to
+power. The <i>Lavabo</i>, likewise borrowed from the
+heathen lustrations, reappears now. All this he claims
+back by right of age.</p>
+
+<p>His priestess is always called, by way of honour, the
+Elder; but she would sometimes have been young.
+Lancre tells of a witch of seventeen, pretty, and
+horribly savage.</p>
+
+<p>The Devil&#8217;s bride was not to be a child: she must
+be at least thirty years old, with the form of a Medea,
+with the beauty that comes of pain; an eye deep,
+tragic, lit up by a feverish fire, with great serpent
+tresses waving at their will: I refer to the torrent of
+her black untamable hair. On her head, perhaps, you
+may see the crown of vervein, the ivy of the tomb, the
+violets of death.</p>
+
+<p>When she has had the children taken off to their
+meal, the service begins: &#8220;I will come before thine
+altar; but save me, O Lord, from the faithless and
+violent man (from the priest and the baron).&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Then come the denial of Jesus, the paying of homage
+to the new master, the feudal kiss, like the greetings
+of the Temple, when all was yielded without reserve,
+without shame, or dignity, or even purpose; the denial
+of an olden god being grossly aggravated by a seeming
+preference for Satan&#8217;s back.</p>
+
+<p>It is now his turn to consecrate his priestess. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>
+wooden deity receives her in the manner of an olden
+Pan or Priapus. Following the old pagan form she
+sits a moment upon him in token of surrender, like
+the Delphian seeress on Apollo&#8217;s tripod. After receiving
+the breath of his spirit, the sacrament of his
+love, she purifies herself with like formal solemnity.
+Thenceforth she is a living altar.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The Introit over, the service is interrupted for the
+feast. Contrary to the festive fashion of the nobles,
+who all sit with their swords beside them, here, in this
+feast of brethren, are no arms, not even a knife.</p>
+
+<p>As a keeper of the peace, each has a woman with
+him. Without a woman no one is admitted. Be she
+a kinswoman or none, a wife or none; be she old or
+young, a woman he must bring with him.</p>
+
+<p>What were the drinks passed round among them?
+Mead, or beer, or wine; strong cider or perry? The
+last two date from the twelfth century.</p>
+
+<p>The illusive drinks, with their dangerous admixture
+of belladonna, did they already appear at that board?
+Certainly not. There were children there. Besides,
+an excess of commotion would have prevented the
+dancing.</p>
+
+<p>This whirling dance, the famous <i>Sabbath-round</i>, was
+quite enough to complete the first stage of drunkenness.
+They turned back to back, their arms behind them,
+not seeing each other, but often touching each other&#8217;s
+back. Gradually no one knew himself, nor whom he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>
+had by his side. The old wife then was old no more.
+Satan had wrought a miracle. She was still a woman,
+desirable, after a confused fashion beloved.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Act Second. Just as the crowd, grown dizzy together,
+was led, both by the attraction of the women
+and by a certain vague feeling of brotherhood, to
+imagine itself one body, the service was resumed at the
+<i>Gloria</i>. The altar, the host, became visible. These
+were represented by the woman herself. Prostrate, in
+a posture of extreme abasement, her long black silky
+tresses lost in the dust; she, this haughty Proserpine,
+offered up herself. On her back a demon officiated,
+saying the <i>Credo</i>, and making the offering.<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a></p>
+
+<p>At a later period this scene came to be immodest.
+But at this time, amidst the calamities of the fourteenth
+century, in the terrible days of the Black Plague, and
+of so many a famine, in the days of the Jacquerie and
+those hateful brigands, the Free Lances,&mdash;on a people
+thus surrounded by danger, the effect was more than
+serious. The whole assembly had much cause to fear
+a surprise. The risk run by the Witch in this bold proceeding
+was very great, even tantamount to the forfeiting
+of her life. Nay, more; she braved a hell of suffering,
+of torments such as may hardly be described. Torn
+by pincers, and broken alive; her breasts torn out;
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>her skin slowly singed, as in the case of the wizard
+bishop of Cahors; her body burned limb by limb on a
+small fire of red-hot coal, she was like to endure an
+eternity of agony.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly all were moved when the prayer was
+spoken, the harvest-offering made, upon this devoted
+creature who gave herself up so humbly. Some wheat
+was offered to the <i>Spirit of the Earth</i>, who made wheat
+to grow. A flight of birds, most likely from the
+woman&#8217;s bosom, bore to the <i>God of Freedom</i> the
+sighs and prayers of the serfs. What did they ask?
+Only that we, their distant descendants, might become
+free.<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a></p>
+
+<p>What was the sacrament she divided among them?
+Not the ridiculous pledge we find later in the reign of
+Henry IV., but most likely that <i>confarreatio</i> which we
+saw in the case of the philtres, the hallowed pledge of
+love, a cake baked on her own body, on the victim who,
+perhaps, to-morrow would herself be passing through
+the fire. It was her life, her death, they ate there.
+One sniffs already the scorching flesh.</p>
+
+<p>Last of all they set upon her two offerings, seemingly
+of flesh; two images, one of <i>the latest dead</i>, the
+other of the newest-born in the district. These shared
+in the special virtue assigned to her who acted as altar
+and Host in one, and on these the assembly made a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>show of receiving the communion. Their Host would
+thus be threefold, and always human. Under a
+shadowy likeness of the Devil the people worshipped
+none other than its own self.</p>
+
+<p>The true sacrifice was now over and done. The
+woman&#8217;s work was ended, when she gave herself up to
+be eaten by the multitude. Rising from her former
+posture, she would not withdraw from the spot until
+she had proudly stated, and, as it were, confirmed the
+lawfulness of her proceedings by an appeal to the
+thunderbolt, by an insolent defiance of the discrowned
+God.</p>
+
+<p>In mockery of the <i>Agnus Dei</i>, and the breaking of
+the Christian Host, she brought a toad dressed up, and
+pulled it to pieces. Then rolling her eyes about in a
+frightful way she raised them to heaven, and beheading
+the toad, uttered these strange words: &#8220;Ah,
+<i>Philip</i>,<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a> if I had you here, you should be served in the
+same manner!&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>No answer being outwardly given to her challenge,
+no thunderbolt hurled upon her head, they imagine
+that she has triumphed over the Christ. The nimble
+band of demons seized their moment to astonish the
+people with various small wonders which amazed and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>overawed the more credulous. The toads, quite
+harmless in fact, but then accounted poisonous, were
+bitten and torn between their dainty teeth. They
+jumped over large fires and pans of live coal, to amuse
+the crowd and make them laugh at the fires of Hell.</p>
+
+<p>Did the people really laugh after a scene so tragical,
+so very bold? I know not. Assuredly there was no
+laughing on the part of her who first dared all this.
+To her these fires must have seemed like those of the
+nearest stake. Her business rather lay in forecasting
+the future of that devilish monarchy, in creating the
+Witch to be.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> The least bad of these is by Lancre, a man of some wit,
+whose evident connection with some young witches gave him
+something to say. The accounts of the Jesuit Del Rio and
+the Dominican Micha&euml;lis are the absurd productions of two
+credulous and silly pedants.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> At the battle of Courtray. See also Grimm and my
+<i>Origines</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a>
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&#8220;We are fashioned of one clay:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Big as theirs our hearts are aye:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We can bear as much as they.&#8221;&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> The Peasants&#8217; war which raged in France in 1364.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> This is taken from Del Rio, but is not, I think, peculiar to
+Spain. It is an ancient trait, and marked by the primitive
+inspiration.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> This important fact of the woman being her own altar, is
+known to us by the trial of La Voisin, which M. Ravaisson,
+Sen., is about to publish with the other <i>Papers of the Bastille</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> This grateful offering of wheat and birds is peculiar to
+France. In Lorraine, and no doubt in Germany, black beasts
+were offered, as the black cat, the black goat, or the black bull.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> Lancre, 136. Why &#8220;Philip,&#8221; I cannot say. By Satan
+Jesus is always called John or <i>Janicot</i> (Jack). Was she speaking
+of Philip of Valois, who brought on the wasting hundred
+years&#8217; war with England?</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2 class="chs"><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>THE SEQUEL&mdash;LOVE AND DEATH&mdash;SATAN DISAPPEARS.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="smcap">And</span> now the multitude is made free, is of good cheer.
+For some hours the serf reigns in short-lived freedom.
+His time indeed is scant enough. Already the sky is
+changing, the stars are going down. Another moment,
+and the cruel dawn remits him to his slavery, brings
+him back again under hostile eyes, under the shadow
+of the castle, beneath the shadow of the church; back
+again to his monotonous toiling, to the old unending
+weariness of heart, governed as it were by two bells,
+whereof one keeps saying &#8220;Always,&#8221; the other
+&#8220;Never.&#8221; Anon they will be seen coming each out
+of his own house, heavily, humbly, with an air of calm
+composure.</p>
+
+<p>Let them at least enjoy the one short moment! Let
+each of these disinherited, for once fulfil his fancy, for
+once indulge his musings. What soul is there so
+all unhappy, so lost to all feeling, as never to have one
+good dream, one fond desire; never to say, &#8220;If this
+would only happen!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The only detailed accounts we have, as I said before,
+are modern, belonging to a time of peace and well-doing,
+when France was blooming afresh, in the latter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>
+years of Henry VI., years of thriving luxury, entirely
+different from that dark age when the Sabbath was first
+set going.</p>
+
+<p>No thanks to Mr. Lancre and others, if we refrain
+from pourtraying the Third Act as like the Church-Fair
+of Rubens, a very miscellaneous orgie, a great
+burlesque ball, which allowed of every kind of union,
+especially between near kindred. According to those
+authors, who would make us groan with horror, the
+main end of the Sabbath, the explicit doctrine taught
+by Satan, was incest; and in those great gatherings,
+sometimes of two thousand souls, the most startling
+deeds were done before the whole world.</p>
+
+<p>This is hard to believe; and the same writers tell of
+other things which seem quite opposed to a view so
+cynical. They say that people went to those meetings
+only in pairs, that they sat down to the feast by twos,
+that even if one person came alone, she was assigned a
+young demon, who took charge of her, and did the
+honours of the feast. They say, too, that jealous lovers
+were not afraid to go thither in company with the
+curious fair.</p>
+
+<p>We also find that the most of them came by
+families, children and all. The latter were sent off
+only during the first act, not during the feast, nor the
+services, nor yet while this third act was going on; a
+fact which proves that some decency was observed.
+Moreover, the scene was twofold. The household
+groups stayed on the moor in a blaze of light. It was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>
+only beyond the fantastic curtain of torch-smoke that
+the darker spaces, where people could roam in all
+directions, began.</p>
+
+<p>The judges, the inquisitors, for all their enmity, are
+fain to allow the existence here of a general spirit of
+peace and mildness. Of the three things that startle
+us in the feasts of nobles, there is not one here; no
+swords, no duels, no tables reeking blood. No faithless
+gallantries here bring dishonour on some intimate
+friend. Unknown, unneeded here, for all they say, is
+the unclean brotherhood of the Temple; in the Sabbath,
+woman is everything.</p>
+
+<p>The question of incest needs explaining. All
+alliances between kinsfolk, even those most allowable
+in the present day, were then regarded as a crime.
+The modern law, which is charity itself, understands
+the heart of man and the well-being of families.<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a> It
+allows the widower to marry his wife&#8217;s sister, the best
+mother his children could have. Above all, it allows
+a man to wed his cousin, whom he knows and may
+trust fully, whom he has loved perhaps from childhood,
+his playfellow of old, regarded by his mother
+with special favour as already the adopted of her own
+heart. In the Middle Ages all this was incestuous.</p>
+
+<p>The peasant being fondest of his own family was
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>driven to despair. It was a monstrous thing for him
+to marry a cousin, even in the sixth degree. It was
+impossible for him to get married in his own village
+where the question of kinship stood so much in his
+way. He had to look for a wife elsewhere, afar off.
+But in those days there was not much intercourse or
+acquaintance between different places, and each hated
+its own neighbours. On feast days one village would
+fight another without knowing the reason why, as may
+sometimes still be seen in countries never so thinly
+peopled. No one durst go seek a wife in the very spot
+where men had been fighting together, where he himself
+would have been in great danger.</p>
+
+<p>There was another difficulty. The lord of the young
+serf forbade his marrying in the next lordship. Becoming
+the serf of his wife&#8217;s lord he would have been
+wholly lost to his own. Thus he was debarred by the
+priest from his cousin, by the lord from a stranger;
+and so it happened that many did not marry at all.</p>
+
+<p>The result was just what they pretended to avoid.
+In the Sabbath the natural sympathies sprang forth
+again. There the youth found again her whom he
+had known and loved at first, her whose &#8220;little husband&#8221;
+he had been called at ten years old. Preferring
+her as he certainly did, he paid but little heed to
+canonical hindrances.</p>
+
+<p>When we come to know the Medi&aelig;val Family better,
+we give up believing the declamatory assumptions of a
+general mingling together of the people forming so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>
+great a crowd. On the contrary, we feel that each
+small group is so closely joined together, as to be
+utterly barred to the entrance of a stranger.</p>
+
+<p>The serf was not jealous towards his own kin, but
+his poverty and wretchedness made him exceedingly
+afraid of worsening his lot by multiplying children
+whom he could not support. The priest and the lord
+on their part wished to increase the number of their
+serfs&mdash;wanted the woman to be always bearing; and
+the strangest sermons were often delivered on this
+head,<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a> varied sometimes with threats and cruel reproaches.
+All the more resolute was the prudence of
+the man. The woman, poor creature, unable to bear
+children fit to live on such conditions, bearing them
+only to her sorrow, had a horror of being made big.
+She never would have ventured to one of these night
+festivals without being first assured, again and again,
+that no woman ever came away pregnant.<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a></p>
+
+<p>They were drawn thither by the banquet, the
+dancing, the lights, the amusements; in nowise by
+carnal pleasure. The last thing they cared for was to
+heighten their poverty, to bring one more wretch into
+the world, to give another serf to their lord.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-top: 0em; font-size: 150%">*<span style="padding-left: 2.5em">*</span><span style="padding-left: 2.5em">*</span><span style="padding-left: 2.5em">*</span><span style="padding-left: 2.5em">*</span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span></p><p>Cruel indeed was the social system of those days.
+Authority bade men marry, but rendered marriage
+nearly impossible, at once by the excessive misery of
+most, and the senseless cruelty of the canonical prohibitions.</p>
+
+<p>The result was quite opposed to the purity thus
+preached. Under a show of Christianity existed the
+patriarchate of Asia alone.</p>
+
+<p>Only the firstborn married. The younger brothers
+and sisters worked under him and for him. In the
+lonely farms of the mountains of the South, far from
+all neighbours and every woman, brothers and sisters
+lived together, the latter serving and in all ways belonging
+to the former; a way of life analogous to that
+in Genesis, to the marriages of the Parsees, to the
+customs still obtaining in certain shepherd tribes of
+the Himalayas.</p>
+
+<p>The mother&#8217;s fate was still more revolting. She
+could not marry her son to a kinswoman, and thus
+secure to herself a kindly-affected daughter-in-law.
+Her son married, if he could, a girl from a distant
+village, an enemy often, whose entrance proved baneful
+either to the children of a former marriage, or to the
+poor mother, who was often driven away by the stranger
+wife. You may not think it, but the fact is certainly
+so. At the very least she was ill-used; banished from
+the fireside, from the very table.</p>
+
+<p>There is a Swiss law forbidding the removal of the
+mother from her place by the chimney-corner.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She was exceedingly afraid of her son&#8217;s marrying.
+But her lot was little happier if he did not marry.
+None the less servant was she of the young master of
+the house, who succeeded to all his father&#8217;s rights,
+even to that of beating her. This impious custom
+I have seen still followed in the South: a son of
+five-and-twenty chastising his mother when she got
+drunk.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>How much greater her suffering in those days of
+savagery! Then it was rather he who came back from
+the feast half-drunken, hardly knowing what he was
+about. But one room, but one bed, was all they had
+between them. She was by no means free from fear.
+He had seen his friends married, and felt soured thereat.
+Thenceforth her way is marked by tears, by utter
+weakness, by a woful self-surrender. Threatened by
+her only God, her son, heart-broken at finding herself
+in a plight so unnatural, she falls desperate. She tries
+to drown all her memories in sleep. At length comes
+an issue for which neither of them can fairly account,
+an issue such as nowadays will often happen in the
+poorer quarters of large towns, where some poor woman
+is forced, frightened, perhaps beaten, into bearing
+every outrage. Thus conquered, and, spite of her
+scruples, far too resigned, she endured thenceforth a
+pitiable bondage; a life of shame and sorrow, and
+abundant anguish, growing with the yearly widening<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>
+difference between their several ages. The woman of
+six-and-thirty might keep watch over a son of twenty
+years: but at fifty, alas! or still later, where would he
+be? From the great Sabbath where thronged the people
+of far villages, he would be bringing home a strange
+woman for his youthful mistress, a woman hard, heartless,
+devoid of ruth, who would rob her of her son, her
+seat by the fire, her bed, of the very house which she
+herself had made.</p>
+
+<p>To believe Lancre and others, Satan accounted the
+son for praiseworthy, if he kept faithful to his mother,
+thus making a virtue of a crime. If this be true, we
+must assume that the woman was protected by a woman,
+that the Witch sided with the mother, to defend her
+hearth against a daughter-in-law who, stick in hand,
+would have sent her forth to beg.</p>
+
+<p>Lancre further maintains that &#8220;never was good
+Witch, but she sprang from the love of a mother for
+her son.&#8221; In this way, indeed, was born the Persian
+soothsayer, the natural fruit, they say, of so hateful a
+mystery; and thus the secrets of the magical art were
+kept confined to one family which constantly renewed
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>An impious error led them to imitate the harmless
+mystery of the husbandman, the unceasing vegetable
+round whereby the corn resown in the furrow, brings
+forth its corn.</p>
+
+<p>The less monstrous unions of brother with sister, so
+common in the East, and in Greece, were cold and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>
+rarely fruitful. They were wisely abandoned; nor
+would people ever have returned to them, but for that
+rebellious spirit which, being aroused by absurd restrictions,
+flung itself foolishly into the opposite
+extreme. Thus from unnatural laws, hatred begot
+unnatural customs.</p>
+
+<p>A cruel, an accursed time, a time big with despair!</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>We have been long discoursing; but the dawn is
+well-nigh come. In a moment the hour will strike for
+the spirits to take themselves away. The Witch feels
+her dismal flowers already withering on her brow.
+Farewell, her royalty, perhaps her life! Where would
+they be, if the day still found her there?</p>
+
+<p>Of Satan, what shall she make? A flame, a cinder?
+He asks for nothing better; knowing well, in his craftiness,
+that the only way to live and to be born again,
+is first to die.</p>
+
+<p>And will he die, he who as the mighty summoner of
+the dead, granted to them that mourn their only joy
+on earth, the love they had lost, the dream they had
+cherished? Ah, no! he is very sure to live.</p>
+
+<p>Will he die, he that mighty spirit who, finding
+Creation accurst, and Nature lying cold upon the
+ground, flung thither like a dirty foster-child from off
+the Church&#8217;s garment, gathered her up and placed her
+on his bosom? In truth it cannot be.</p>
+
+<p>Will he die, he the one great physician of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>
+Middle Ages, of a world that, falling sick, was saved
+by his poisons and bidden, poor fool, to live?</p>
+
+<p>As the gay rogue is sure of living, he dies wholly at
+his ease. He shuffles out of himself, cleverly burns up
+his fine goatskin, and disappears in a blaze of dawn.</p>
+
+<p>But <i>she</i> who made Satan, who made all things, good
+or ill, whose countenance was given to so many forms
+of love, of devotion, and of crime,&mdash;to what end will
+she come? Behold her all lonely on her waste moorland.</p>
+
+<p>She is not, as they say, the dread of all. Many
+will bless her. More than one have found her beautiful,
+would sell their share in Paradise to dare be near
+her. But all around her is a wide gulf. They who
+admire, are none the less afraid of this all-powerful
+Medea, with her fair deep eyes, and the thrilling
+adders of her dark overflowing hair.</p>
+
+<p>To her thus lonely for ever, for evermore without
+love, what is there left? Nothing but the Demon
+who had suddenly disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;Tis well, good Devil, let us go. I am utterly
+loath to stay here any more. Hell itself is far preferable.
+Farewell to the world!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She must live but a very little longer, to play out the
+dreadful drama she had herself begun. Near her,
+ready saddled by the obedient Satan, stood a huge
+black horse, the fire darting from his eyes and nostrils.
+She sprang upon him with one bound.</p>
+
+<p>They follow her with their eyes. The good folk say<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>
+with alarm, &#8220;What is to become of her?&#8221; With a
+frightful burst of laughter, she goes off, vanishing
+swift as an arrow. They would like much to know
+what becomes of the poor woman, but that they
+never will.<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> Of course the allusion here, as shown in the next following
+sentence, is to French law in particular. As for the marriage
+of cousins, there is much to say on both sides of the
+question.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> The ingenious M. G&eacute;nin has very recently collected the
+most curious information on this point.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> Boguet, Lancre, and other authors, are agreed on this
+question.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> See the end of the Witch of Berkeley, as told by William
+of Malmesbury.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2><a name="BOOK_II" id="BOOK_II"></a>BOOK II.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr />
+<h2 class="chs"><a name="CHAPTER_I_2" id="CHAPTER_I_2"></a>CHAPTER I.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>THE WITCH IN HER DECLINE&mdash;SATAN MULTIPLIED AND
+MADE COMMON.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="smcap">The</span> Devil&#8217;s delicate fondling, the lesser Witch, begotten
+of the Black Mass after the greater one&#8217;s disappearance,
+came and bloomed in all her malignant
+cat-like grace. This woman is quite the reverse of the
+other: refined and sidelong in manner, sly and purring
+demurely, quick also at setting up her back. There is
+nothing of the Titan about her, to be sure. Far from
+that, she is naturally base; lewd from her cradle and
+full of evil daintinesses. Her whole life is the expression
+of those unclean thoughts which sometimes in
+a dream by night may assail him who would shrink
+with horror from any such by day.</p>
+
+<p>She who is born with such a secret in her blood,
+with such instinctive mastery of evil, she who has
+looked so far and so low down, will have no religion,
+no respect for anything or person in the world; none
+even for Satan, since he is a spirit still, while she has
+a particular relish for all things material.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In her childhood she spoiled everything. Tall and
+pretty she startled all by her slovenly habits. With
+her Witchcraft becomes a mysterious cooking up of
+some mysterious chemistry. From an early date she
+delights to handle repulsive things, to-day a drug, to-morrow
+an intrigue. Among diseases and love-affairs
+she is in her element. She will make a clever go-between,
+a bold and skilful empiric. War will be made
+against her as a fancied murderer, as a woman who
+deals in poisons. And yet she has small taste for such
+things, is far from murderous in her desires. Devoid
+of goodness, she yet loves life, loves to work cures, to
+prolong others&#8217; lives. She is dangerous in two ways:
+on the one hand by selling receipts for barrenness, and
+even for abortion; while on the other, her headlong
+libertine fancy leads her to compass a woman&#8217;s fall
+with her cursed potions, to triumph in the wicked
+deeds of love.</p>
+
+<p>Different, indeed, is this one from the other! She
+is a manufacturer: the other was the ungodly one, the
+demon, the great rebellion, the wife, we might almost
+say, the mother of Satan; for out of her and her inward
+strength he grew up. But this one is the Devil&#8217;s
+daughter notwithstanding. Two things she derives
+from him, her uncleanness, her love of handling life.
+These are her allotted walk, in these she is quite an
+artist; an artist already trading in her lore, and we
+are admitted into the business.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was said that she would perpetuate herself by the
+incest from which she sprang. But she has no need
+of that: numberless little ones will she beget without
+help from another. In less than fifty years, at the
+opening of the fifteenth century, under Charles VI., a
+mighty contagion was spread abroad. Whoever
+thought he had any secrets or any receipts, whoever
+fancied himself a seer, whoever dreamed and travelled
+in his dreams, would call himself a pet of Satan.
+Every moonstruck woman adopted the awful name of
+Witch!</p>
+
+<p>A perilous, profitable name, cast at her in their
+hatred by people who alternately insult and implore
+the unknown power. It is none the less accepted, nay,
+is often claimed. To the children who follow her, to
+the woman who, with threatening fists, hurl the name
+at her like a stone, she turns round, saying proudly,
+&#8220;&#8217;Tis true, you have said well!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The business improves, and men are mingled in it.
+Hence another fall for the art. Still the least of the
+witches retains somewhat of the Sibyl. Those other
+frowsy charlatans, those clownish jugglers, mole-catchers,
+ratkillers, who throw spells over beasts, who
+sell secrets which they have not, defiled these times
+with the stench of a dismal black smoke, of fear and
+foolery. Satan grows enormous, gets multiplied without
+end. &#8217;Tis a poor triumph, however, for him. He
+grows dull and sick at heart. Still the people keep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>
+flowing towards him, bent on having no other God
+than he. Himself only is to himself untrue.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>In spite of two or three great discoveries, the fifteenth
+century is, to my thinking, none the less a century
+tired out, a century of few ideas.</p>
+
+<p>It opened right worthily with the Sabbath Royal of
+St. Denis, the wild and woful ball given by Charles VI.
+in the abbey so named, to commemorate the burial of
+Du Guesclin, which had taken place so many years
+before. For three days and nights was Sodom wallowing
+among the graves. The foolish king, not yet
+grown quite an idiot, compelled his royal forefathers
+to share in the ball, by making their dry bones dance
+in their biers. Death, becoming a go-between whether
+he would or no, lent a sharp spur to the voluptuous
+revel. Then broke out those unclean fashions of an
+age when ladies made themselves taller by wearing the
+Devil&#8217;s horned-bonnet, and gloried in dressing as if
+they were all with child.<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a> To this fashion they clung
+for the next forty years. The younger folk on their
+side, not to be behind in shamelessness, eclipsed them
+in the display of naked charms. The woman wore
+Satan on her forehead in the shape of a horned head-dress:
+on the feet of the bachelor and the page he
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>was visible in the tapering scorpion-like tips of their
+shoes. Under the mask of animals they represented
+the lowest side of brute nature. The famous child
+stealer, Retz, here took his first flight in villany. The
+great feudal ladies, unbridled Jezebels, with less sense
+of shame in them than the men, scorned all disguise
+whatever; displayed themselves with face uncovered.
+In their sensual rages, in their mad parade of debauchery,
+the king, the whole company might see the
+bottomless pit itself yawning for the life, the feeling,
+the body, and the soul of each.</p>
+
+<p>Out of such doings come forth the conquered of
+Agincourt, a poor generation of effete nobles, in whose
+miniatures you shiver to see the falling away of their
+sorry limbs, as shown through the treacherous tightness
+of their clothes.<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Much to be pitied is the Witch who, when the great
+lady came home from that royal feast, became her
+bosom-counsellor and agent charged with the doing of
+impossible things.</p>
+
+<p>In her own castle, indeed, the lady is almost, if not
+all alone, amidst a crowd of single men. To judge
+from romances you would think she delighted in girding
+herself with an array of fair girls. Far otherwise
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>are we taught by history and common sense. Eleanor
+is not so silly as to match herself against Rosamond.
+With all their own rakishness, those queens and great
+ladies could be frightfully jealous; witness she who is
+said by Henry Martin to have caused the death of a
+girl admired by her husband, under the outrageous
+handling of his soldiery. The power wielded by the
+lady&#8217;s love depends, we repeat, on her being alone.
+Whatever her age and figure, she becomes the dream
+of all. The Witch takes mischievous delight in making
+her abuse her goddesship, in tempting her to make
+game of the men she humbles and befools. She goes
+to all lengths of boldness, even treating them like very
+beasts. Look at them being transformed! Down on
+all fours they tumble, like fawning monkeys, absurd
+bears, lewd dogs, or swine eager to follow their contemptuous
+Circ&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>Her pity rises thereat? Nay, but she grows sick
+of it all, and kicks those crawling beasts with her foot.
+The thing is impure, but not heinous enough. An
+absurd remedy is found for her complaint. These
+others being so nought, she is to have something yet
+more nought&mdash;namely, a little sweetheart. The advice
+is worthy of the Witch. Love&#8217;s spark shall be lighted
+before its time in some young innocent, sleeping the
+pure sleep of childhood! Here you have the ugly
+tale of little John of Saintr&eacute;, pink of cherubim, and
+other paltry puppets of the Age of Decay.</p>
+
+<p>Through all those pedantic embellishments and sentimental<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>
+moralizings, one clearly marks the vile cruelty
+that lies below. The fruit was killed in the flower.
+Here, in a manner, is the very &#8220;eating of children,&#8221;
+which was laid so often to the Witch&#8217;s charge. Anyhow,
+she drained their lives. The fair lady who
+caresses one in so tender and motherly a way, what is
+she but a vampire, draining the blood of the weak?
+The upshot of such atrocities we may gather from
+the tale itself. Saintr&eacute; becomes a perfect knight, but
+so utterly frail and weak as to be dared and defied by
+the lout of a peasant priest, in whom the lady, become
+better advised, has seen something that will suit her
+best.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Such idle whimsies heighten the surfeit, the mad
+rage of an empty mind. Circ&eacute; among her beasts grows
+so weary and heartsick that she would be a beast herself.
+She fancies herself wild, and locks herself up.
+From her tower she casts an evil eye towards the
+gloomy forest. She fancies herself a prisoner, and
+rages like a wolf chained fast. &#8220;Let the old woman
+come this moment: I want her. Run!&#8221; Two minutes
+later again: &#8220;What! is she not come yet?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>At last she is come. &#8220;Hark you: I have a sore
+longing&mdash;invincible, as you know&mdash;to choke you, to
+drown you, or to give you up to the bishop, who
+already claims you. You have but one way of escape,
+that is, to satisfy another longing of mine by changing
+me into a wolf. I feel wretchedly bored, weary of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>
+keeping still. I want, by night at least, to run free
+about the forest. Away with stupid servants, with
+dogs that stun me with their noise, with clumsy horses
+that kick out and shy at a thicket.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But if you were caught, my lady&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Insolent woman! You would rather die, then?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;At least you have heard the story of the woman-wolf,
+whose paw was cut off.<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a> But, oh! how sorry I
+should be.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That is my concern. I will hear nothing more,
+I am in a hurry&mdash;have been barking already. What
+happiness, to hunt all by myself in the clear moonlight;
+by myself to fasten on the hind, or man likewise
+if he comes near me; to attack the tender children,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>and, above all, to set my teeth in the women; ay, the
+women, for I hate them all&mdash;not one like yourself.
+Don&#8217;t start, I won&#8217;t bite you&mdash;you are not to my taste,
+and besides, you have no blood in you! &#8217;Tis blood I
+crave&mdash;blood!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She can no longer refuse. &#8220;Nothing easier, my
+lady. To-night, at nine o&#8217;clock, you will drink this.
+Lock yourself up, and then turning into a wolf, while
+they think you are still here, you can scour the
+forest.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It is done; and next morning the lady finds herself
+worn out and depressed. In one night she must have
+travelled some thirty leagues. She has been hunting
+and slaying until she is covered with blood. But the
+blood, perhaps, comes from her having torn herself
+among the brambles.</p>
+
+<p>A great triumph and danger also for her who has
+wrought this miracle. From the lady, however, whose
+command provoked it, she receives but a gloomy welcome.
+&#8220;Witch, &#8217;tis a fearful power you have; I
+should never have guessed it. But now I fear and
+dread you. Good cause, indeed, they have to hate
+you. A happy day will it be when you are burnt. I
+can ruin you when I please. One word of mine about
+last night, and my peasants would this evening whet
+their scythes upon you. Out, you black-looking, hateful
+old hag!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span></p><hr />
+
+<p>The great folk, her patrons, launch her into strange
+adventures. For what can she refuse to her terrible
+protectors, when nothing but the castle saves her from
+the priest, from the faggot? If the baron, on his return
+from a crusade, being bent on copying the manners
+of the Turks, sends for her, and orders her to
+steal him a few children, what can she do? Raids
+such as those grand ones in which two thousand pages
+were sometimes carried off from Greek ground to enter
+the seraglio, were by no means unknown to the
+Christians; were known from the tenth century to the
+barons of England, at a later date to the knights of
+Rhodes and Malta. The famous Giles of Retz, the
+only one brought to trial, was punished, not for having
+stolen his small serfs, a crime not then uncommon, but
+for having sacrificed them to Satan. She who actually
+stole them, and was ignorant, doubtless, of their future
+lot, found herself between two perils: on the one hand
+the peasant&#8217;s fork and scythe; on the other, those
+torments which awaited her, when recusant, within the
+tower. Retz&#8217;s terrible Italian would have made nothing
+of pounding her in a mortar.<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a></p>
+
+<p>On all sides the perils and the profits went together.
+A position more frightfully corrupting could not have
+been found. The Witches themselves did not deny the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>absurd powers imputed to them by the people. They
+averred that by means of a doll stuck over with needles
+they could weave their spells around whomever they
+pleased, making him waste away until he died. They
+averred that mandragora, torn from beneath the
+gallows by the teeth of a dog, who invariably died
+therefrom, enabled them to pervert the understanding;
+to turn men into beasts, to give women over to idiotcy
+and madness. Still more dreadful was the furious
+frenzy caused by the Thorn-apple, or Datura, which
+made men dance themselves to death, and go through
+a thousand shameful antics, without their own knowledge
+or remembrance.<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Hence there grew up against them a feeling of
+boundless hatred, mingled with as extreme a fear.
+Sprenger, who wrote the <i>Hammer for Witches</i>, relates
+with horror how, in a season of snow, when all the
+roads were broken up, he saw a wretched multitude,
+wild with terror, and spell-bound by evils all too real,
+fill up all the approaches to a little German town.
+&#8220;Never,&#8221; says he, &#8220;did you behold so mighty a pilgrimage
+to our Lady of Grace, or her of the wilderness.
+All these people, who hobbled, crawled, and stumbled
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>among the quagmires, were on their way to the Witch,
+to beseech the grace of the Devil upon themselves.
+How proud and excited must the old woman have felt
+at seeing so large a concourse prostrate before her
+feet!&#8221;<a name="FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a></p>
+
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> Even in a very mystic theme, in a work of such genius as
+the <i>Lamb</i> of Van Eyck (says John of Bruges), all the Virgins
+seem big. It was only the quaint fashion of the fifteenth
+century.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> This wasting away of a used-up, enervated race, mars the
+effect of all those splendid miniatures of the Court of Burgundy,
+the Duke of Berry, &amp;c. No amount of clever handling could
+make good works of art out of subjects so very pitiable.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a> Among the great ladies imprisoned in their castles, this
+dreadful fancy was not rare. They hungered and thirsted for
+freedom, for savage freedom. Boguet mentions how, among
+the hills of Auvergne, a hunter one night drew his sword upon
+a she-wolf, but missing her, cut off her paw. She fled away
+limping. He came to a neighbouring castle to seek the hospitality
+of him who dwelt there. The gentleman, on seeing him,
+asked if he had had good sport. By way of answer he thought
+to draw out of his pouch the she-wolf&#8217;s paw; but what was his
+amazement to find instead of the paw a hand, and on one of
+the fingers a ring, which the gentleman recognized as belonging
+to his wife! Going at once in search of her, he found her hurt
+and hiding her fore-arm. To the arm which had lost its hand
+he fitted that which the hunter had brought him, and the lady
+was fain to own that she it was, who in the likeness of a wolf
+had attacked the hunter, and afterwards saved herself by leaving
+a paw on the battle-field. The husband had the cruelty to
+give her up to justice, and she was burnt.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a> See my <i>History of France</i>, and still more the learned and
+careful account by the lamented Armand Gu&eacute;raud: <i>Notice sur
+Gilles de Rais</i>, Nantes, 1855. We there find that the purveyors
+of that horrible child&#8217;s charnel-house were mostly men.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a> Pouchet, on the <i>Solane&aelig; and General Botany</i>. Nysten,
+<i>Dictionary of Medicine</i>, article <i>Datura</i>. The robbers employed
+these potions but too often. A butcher of Aix and his wife,
+whom they wanted to rob of their money, were made to drink
+of some such, and became so maddened thereby, that they
+danced all one night naked in a cemetery.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a> The Witch delighted in causing the noble and the great to
+undergo the most outrageous trials of their love. We know
+that queens and ladies of rank (in Italy even to the last century)
+held their court at times the most forbidding, and exacted
+the most unpleasant services from their favourites. There was
+nothing too mean, too repulsive, for the domestic brute&mdash;the
+<i>cicisbeo</i>, the priest, the half-witted page&mdash;to undergo, in the
+stupid belief that the power of a philtre increased with its
+nastiness. This was sad enough when the ladies were neither
+young, nor beautiful, nor witty. But what of that other astounding
+fact, that a Witch, who was neither a great lady, nor
+young, nor fair, but poor, and perhaps a serf, clad only in dirty
+rags, could still by her malice, by the strange power of her
+raging lewdness, by some bewitchingly treacherous spell,
+stupefy the gravest personages, and abase them to so low a
+depth? Some monks of a monastery on the Rhine, wherein,
+as in many other German convents, none but a noble of four
+hundred years&#8217; standing could gain admission, sorrowfully
+owned to Sprenger that they had seen three of their brethren
+bewitched in turn, and a fourth killed by a woman, who boldly
+said, &#8220;I did it, and will do so again: they cannot escape me,
+for they have eaten,&#8221; &amp;c. (Sprenger, <i>Malleus maleficarum</i>,
+<i>qu&aelig;stio</i>, vii. p. 84.) &#8220;The worst of it is,&#8221; says Sprenger, &#8220;that
+we have no means of punishing or examining her: <i>so she lives
+still</i>.&#8221;</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2 class="chs"><a name="CHAPTER_II_2" id="CHAPTER_II_2"></a>CHAPTER II.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>THE HAMMER FOR WITCHES.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="smcap">The</span> witches took small care to hide their game.
+Rather they boasted of it; and it was, indeed, from
+their own lips that Sprenger picked up the bulk of the
+tales that grace his handbook. It is a pedantic work,
+marked out into the absurd divisions and subdivisions
+employed by the followers of St. Thomas Aquinas;
+but a work sincere withal, and frank-spoken, written
+by a man so thoroughly frightened by this dreadful
+duel between God and the Devil, wherein God <i>generally</i>
+allows the Devil to win, that the only remedy he can
+discern is to pursue the latter fire in hand, and burn
+with all speed those bodies which he had chosen for his
+dwelling-place.</p>
+
+<p>Sprenger&#8217;s sole merit is the fact of his having written
+a complete book, which crowns a mighty system, a
+whole literature. To the old <i>Penitentiaries</i>, handbooks
+of confessors for the inquisition of sin, succeeded
+the <i>Directories</i> for the inquisition of heresy, the greatest
+sin of all. But for Witchcraft, the greatest of all
+heresies, special handbooks or directories were appointed.
+Hammers for Witches, to wit. These handbooks,
+continually enriched by the zeal of the Dominicans,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>
+attained perfection in the <i>Malleus</i> of Sprenger,
+the book by which he himself was guided during his
+great mission to Germany, and which for a century
+after served as a guide and light for the courts of the
+Inquisition.</p>
+
+<p>How was Sprenger led to the study of these things?
+He tells us that being in Rome, at a refectory where
+the monks were entertaining some pilgrims, he saw
+two from Bohemia; one a young priest, the other his
+father. The father sighing prayed for a successful
+journey. Touched with a kindly feeling Sprenger
+asked him why he sorrowed. Because his son was
+<i>possessed</i>: at great cost and with much trouble he had
+brought him to the tomb of the saints, at Rome.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where is this son of yours?&#8221; said the monk.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;By your side.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;At this answer I shrank back alarmed. I scanned
+the young priest&#8217;s figure, and was amazed to see him
+eat with so modest an air, and answer with so much
+gentleness. He informed me that, on speaking somewhat
+sharply to an old woman, she had laid him under
+a spell, and that spell was under a tree. What tree?
+The Witch steadily refused to say.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Sprenger&#8217;s charity led him to take the possessed
+from church to church, from relic to relic. At every
+halting-place there was an exorcism, followed by furious
+cries, contortions, jabbering in every language, and
+gambols without number: all this before the people,
+who followed the pair with shuddering admiration.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>
+The devils, so abundant in Germany, were scarcer
+among the Italians. For some days Rome talked of
+nothing else. The noise made by this affair doubtless
+brought the Dominican into public notice. He studied,
+collected all the <i>Mallei</i>, and other manuscript handbooks,
+and became a first-rate authority in the processes
+against demons. His <i>Malleus</i> was most likely
+composed during the twenty years between this adventure
+and the important mission entrusted to Sprenger
+by Pope Innocent VIII., in 1484.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>For that mission to Germany a clever man was
+specially needed; a man of wit and ability, who might
+overcome the dislike of honest German folk for the
+dark system it would be his care to introduce. In the
+Low Countries Rome had suffered a rude check, which
+brought the Inquisition into vogue there, and consequently
+closed France against it: Toulouse alone,
+as being the old Albigensian country, having endured
+the Inquisition. About the year 1460 a Penitentiary<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a>
+of Rome, being made Dean of Arras, thought to strike
+an awe-inspiring blow at the <i>Chambers of Rhetoric</i>,
+literary clubs which had begun to handle religious
+questions. He had one of these Rhetoricians burnt for
+a wizard, and along with him some wealthy burgesses,
+and even a few knights. The nobles were angry at
+this near approach to themselves: the public voice was
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>raised in violent outcry. The Inquisition was cursed
+and spat upon, especially in France. The Parliament
+of Paris roughly closed its doors upon it; and thus by
+her awkwardness did Rome lose her opportunity of
+establishing that Reign of Terror throughout the North.</p>
+
+<p>About 1484 the time seemed better chosen. The
+Inquisition had grown to so dreadful a height in
+Spain, setting itself even above the king, that it seemed
+already confirmed as a conquering institution, able to
+move forward alone, to make its way everywhere, and
+seize upon everything. In Germany, indeed, it was
+hindered by the jealous antagonism of the spiritual
+princes, who, having courts of their own, and holding
+inquisitions by themselves, would never agree to accept
+that of Rome. But the position of these princes
+towards the popular movements by which they were
+then so greatly disquieted, soon rendered them more
+manageable. All along the Rhine, and throughout
+Swabia, even on the eastern side towards Salzburg, the
+country seemed to be undermined. At every moment
+burst forth some fresh revolt of the peasantry. A vast
+underground volcano, an invisible lake of fire, showed
+itself, as it were, from place to place, in continual
+spouts of flame. More dreaded than that of Germany,
+the foreign Inquisition appeared at a most seasonable
+hour for spreading terror through the country, and
+crushing the rebellious spirits, by roasting, as the
+wizards of to-day, those who might else have been the
+insurgents of to-morrow. It was a beautiful <i>derivative</i>,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>
+an excellent popular weapon for putting down the
+people. This time the storm got turned upon the
+Wizards, as in 1349, and on many other occasions it
+had been launched against the Jews.</p>
+
+<p>Only the right man was needed. He who should
+be the first to set up his judgment-seat in sight of the
+jealous courts of Mentz and Cologne, in presence of
+the mocking mobs of Strazburg or Frankfort, must
+indeed be a man of ready wit. He would need great
+personal cleverness to atone for, to cause a partial
+forgetfulness of his hateful mission. Rome, too, has
+always plumed herself on choosing the best men for
+her work. Caring little for questions, and much for
+persons, she thought rightly enough that the successful
+issue of her affairs depended on the special character
+of her several agents abroad. Was Sprenger the right
+man? He was a German to begin with, a Dominican
+enjoying beforehand the support of that dreaded order
+through all its convents, through all its schools. Need
+was there of a worthy son of the schools, a good disputant,
+of a man well skilled in the <i>Sum</i>,<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a> grounded
+firm in his St. Thomas, able at any moment to quote
+texts. All this Sprenger certainly was: and best of
+all, he was a fool.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>&#8220;It has been often said that <i>diabolus</i> comes from
+<i>dia</i>, &#8216;two,&#8217; and <i>bolus</i>, &#8216;a pill or ball,&#8217; because devouring
+alike soul and body, he makes but one pill, one mouthful
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>of the two. But&#8221;&mdash;he goes on to say with the
+gravity of <i>Sganarelle</i>&mdash;&#8220;in Greek etymology <i>diabolus</i>
+means &#8216;shut up in a house of bondage,&#8217; or rather
+&#8216;flowing down&#8217; (Teufel?), that is to say, falling,
+because he fell from heaven.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Whence comes the word sorcery (<i>mal&eacute;fice</i>)? From
+<i>maleficiendo</i>, which means <i>male de fide sentiendo</i>.<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a> A
+curious etymology, but one that will hold a great deal.
+Once trace a resemblance between witchcraft and evil
+opinions, and every wizard becomes a heretic, every
+doubter a wizard. All who think wrongly can be
+burnt for wizards. This was done at Arras; and they
+long to establish the same rule, little by little, everywhere
+else.</p>
+
+<p>Herein lies the once sure merit of Sprenger. A
+fool, but a fearless one, he boldly lays down the most
+unwelcome theses. Others would have striven to shirk,
+to explain away, to diminish, the objections that might
+be made. Not he, however. From the first page he
+puts plainly forward, one by one, the natural manifest
+reasons for not believing in the Satanic miracles. To
+these he coldly adds: &#8220;<i>They are but so many heretical
+mistakes</i>.&#8221; And without stopping to refute those
+reasons, he copies you out the adverse passages found
+in the Bible, St. Thomas, in books of legends, in the
+canonists, and the scholiasts. Having first shown you
+the right interpretation, he grinds it to powder by
+dint of authority.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span></p>
+<p>He sits down satisfied, calm as a conqueror; seeming
+to say, &#8220;Well, what say you now? Will you
+dare use your reason again? Go and doubt away
+then; doubt, for instance, that the Devil delights in
+setting himself between wife and husband, although
+the Church and all the canonists repeatedly admit this
+reason for a divorce!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Of a truth this is unanswerable: nobody will breathe
+so much as a whisper in reply. Since Sprenger heads
+his handbook for judges by declaring the slightest
+doubt <i>heretical</i>, the judge stands bound accordingly;
+he feels that he cannot stumble, that if unhappily he
+should ever be tempted by an impulse of doubt or
+humanity, he must begin by condemning himself and
+delivering his own body to the flames.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The same method prevails everywhere: first the
+sensible meaning, which is then confronted openly,
+without reserve, by the negation of all good sense.
+Some one, for instance, might be tempted to say that
+as love is in the soul, there is no need to account for it
+by the mysterious working of the Devil. That is
+surely specious, is it not?</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;By no means,&#8221; says Sprenger.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I mark a difference. He who cuts wood does not
+cause it to burn: he only does so indirectly. The
+woodcutter is Love; see Denis the Areopagite,
+Origen, John of Damascus. Therefore, love is but the
+indirect cause of love.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>What a thing, you see, to have studied! No weak
+school could have turned out such a man. Only Paris,
+Louvain, or Cologne, had machinery fit to mould the
+human brain. The school of Paris was mighty: for
+dog-Latin who can be matched with the <i>Janotus</i> of
+Gargantua?<a name="FNanchor_73_73" id="FNanchor_73_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a> But mightier yet was Cologne, glorious
+queen of darkness, whence Hutten drew the type of
+his <i>Obscuri viri</i>, that thriving and fruitful race of
+obscurantists and ignoramuses.<a name="FNanchor_74_74" id="FNanchor_74_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a></p>
+
+<p>This massive logician, so full of words, so devoid of
+meaning, sworn foe of nature as well as reason, takes
+his seat with a proud reliance on his books and gown,
+on his dirt and dust. On one side of his judgement-table
+lies the <i>Sum</i>, on the other the <i>Directory</i>. Beyond
+these he never goes: at all else he only smiles.
+On such a man as he there is no imposing: he is not
+the man to utter anent astrology or alchemy nonsense
+not so foolish but that others might be led thereby to
+observe truly. And yet Sprenger is a freethinker: he
+is sceptical about old receipts! Albert the Great may
+aver, that some sage in a spring of water will suffice to
+raise a storm, but Sprenger only shakes his head.
+Sage indeed! Tell that to others, I beg. For all my
+little experience, I see herein the craft of One who
+would put us on the wrong scent, that cunning Prince
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>of the Air; but he will fare ill, for he has to deal
+with a doctor more subtle than the Subtle One
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>I should have liked to see face to face this wonderful
+specimen of a judge, and the people who were brought
+before him. The creatures that God might bring
+together from two different worlds would not be more
+unlike, more strange to each other, more utterly wanting
+in a common language. The old hag, a skeleton
+in tatters, with an eye flashing forth evil things, a
+being thrice cooked in hell-fire; and the ill-looking
+hermit shepherd of the Black Forest or the upper
+Alpine wastes&mdash;such are the savages offered to the
+leaden gaze of a scholarling, to the judgement of a
+schoolman.</p>
+
+<p>Not long will they let him toil in his judgment-seat.
+They will tell all without being tortured. Come the
+torture will indeed, but afterwards, by way of complement
+and crown to the law-procedure. They explain
+and relate to order whatever they have done. The
+Devil is the Witch&#8217;s bedfellow, the shepherd&#8217;s intimate
+friend. She, for her part, smiles triumphantly, feels a
+manifest joy in the horror of those around.</p>
+
+<p>Truly, the old woman is very mad, and equally so
+the shepherd. Are they foolish? Not at all, but far
+otherwise. They are refined, subtle, skilled in growing
+herbs, and seeing through walls. Still more clearly do
+they see those monumental ass&#8217;s ears that overshadow
+the doctor&#8217;s cap. Clearest of all is the fear he has of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>
+them, for in vain does he try to bear him boldly; he
+does nought but tremble. He himself owns that, if
+the priest who adjures the demon does not take care,
+the Devil will change his lodging only to pass into the
+priest himself, feeling all the more proud of dwelling in
+a body dedicated to God. Who knows but these
+simple Devils of Witches and shepherds might even
+aspire to inhabit an inquisitor? He is far from easy
+in mind when in his loudest voice he says to the old
+woman, &#8220;If your master is so mighty, why do I not
+feel his blows?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And, indeed I felt them but too strongly,&#8221; says
+the poor man in his book. &#8220;When I was in Ratisbon,
+how often he would come knocking at my windowpanes!
+How often he stuck pins in my cap! A
+hundred visions too did I have of dogs, monkeys,&#8221; &amp;c.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The dearest delight of that great logician, the Devil,
+is, by the mouth of the seeming old woman, to push
+the doctor with awkward arguments, with crafty questions,
+from which he can only escape by acting like
+the fish who saves himself by troubling the water and
+turning it black as ink. For instance, &#8220;The Devil
+does no more than God allows him: why, then, punish
+his tools?&#8221; Or again, &#8220;We are not free. As in the
+case of Job, the Devil is allowed by God to tempt and
+beset us, to urge us on by blows. Should we, then,
+punish him who is not free?&#8221; Sprenger gets out of
+that by saying, &#8220;We are free beings.&#8221; Here come<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>
+plenty of texts. &#8220;You are made serfs only by covenant
+with the Evil One.&#8221; The answer to this would
+be but too ready: &#8220;If God allows the Evil One to
+tempt us into making covenants, he renders covenants
+possible,&#8221; &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am very good,&#8221; says he, &#8220;to listen to yonder
+folk. He is a fool who argues with the Devil.&#8221; So
+say all the rest likewise. They all cheer the progress
+of the trial: all are strongly moved, and show in
+murmurs their eagerness for the execution. They
+have seen enough of men hanged. As for the Wizard
+and the Witch, &#8217;twill be a curious treat to see those two
+faggots crackling merrily in the flames.</p>
+
+<p>The judge has the people on his side, so he is not
+embarrassed. According to his <i>Directory</i> three witnesses
+would be enough. Are not three witnesses
+readily found, especially to witness a falsehood? In
+every slanderous town, in every envious village teeming
+with the mutual hate of neighbours, witnesses abound.
+Besides, the <i>Directory</i> is a superannuated book, a century
+old. In that century of light, the fifteenth, all
+is brought to perfection. If witnesses are wanting,
+we are content with the <i>public voice</i>, the general
+clamour.<a name="FNanchor_75_75" id="FNanchor_75_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span></p>
+<p>A genuine outcry, born of fear; the piteous cry of
+victims, of the poor bewitched. Sprenger is greatly
+moved thereat. Do not fancy him one of those unfeeling
+schoolmen, the lovers of a dry abstraction.
+He has a heart: for which very reason he is so ready
+to kill. He is compassionate, full of lovingkindness.
+He feels pity for yon weeping woman, but lately pregnant,
+whose babe the witch had smothered by a look.
+He feels pity for the poor man whose land she wasted
+with hail. He pities the husband, who though himself
+no wizard, clearly sees his wife to be a witch, and
+drags her with a rope round her neck before Sprenger,
+who has her burnt.</p>
+
+<p>From a cruel judge escape was sometimes possible;
+but from our worthy Sprenger it was hopeless. His
+humanity is too strong: it needs great management, a
+very large amount of ready wit, to avoid a burning at
+his hands. One day there was brought before him the
+plaint of three good ladies of Strasburg who, at one
+same hour of the same day, had been struck by an arm
+unseen. Ah, indeed! They are fain to accuse a man
+of evil aspect, of having laid them under a spell. On
+being brought before the inquisitor, the man vows
+and swears by all the saints that he knows nothing
+about these ladies, has never so much as seen them.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>The judge is hard of believing: nor tears nor oaths
+avail aught with him. His great compassion for the
+ladies made him inexorable, indignant at the man&#8217;s
+denials. Already he was rising from his seat. The
+man would have been tortured into confessing his
+guilt, as the most innocent often did. He got leave
+to speak, and said: &#8220;I remember, indeed, having
+struck some one yesterday at the hour named; but
+whom? No Christian beings, but only three cats
+which came furiously biting at my legs.&#8221; The judge,
+like a shrewd fellow, saw the whole truth of the
+matter; the poor man was innocent; the ladies were
+doubtless turned on certain days into cats, and the
+Evil One amused himself by sending them at the legs
+of Christian folk, in order to bring about the ruin of
+these latter by making them pass for wizards.</p>
+
+<p>A judge of less ability would never have hit upon
+this. But such a man was not always to be had. It
+was needful to have always handy on the table of the
+Inquisition a good fool&#8217;s guide, to reveal to simple and
+inexperienced judges the tricks of the Old Enemy, the
+best way of baffling him, the clever and deep-laid
+tactics employed with such happy effect by the great
+Sprenger in his campaigns on the Rhine. To that
+end the <i>Malleus</i>, which a man was required to carry
+in his pocket, was commonly printed in small 18mo,
+a form at that time scarce. It would not have been
+seemly for a judge in difficulties to open a folio on the
+table before his audience. But his handbook of folly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>
+he might easily squint at from the corner of his eye,
+or turn over its leaves as he held it under the table.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>This <i>Malleus</i> (or Mallet), like all books of the same
+class, contains a singular avowal, namely, that the
+Devil is gaining ground; in other words, that God is
+losing it; that mankind, after being saved by Christ,
+is becoming the Devil&#8217;s prey. Too clearly indeed does
+he step forward from legend to legend. What a way
+he has made between the time of the Gospels, when he
+was only too glad to get into the swine, and the days
+of Dante, when, as lawyer and divine, he argues
+with the saints, pleads his cause, and by way of closing
+a successful syllogism, bears away the soul he was
+fighting for, saying, with a triumphant laugh, &#8220;You
+didn&#8217;t know that I was a logician!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In the earlier days of the Middle Ages he waits till
+the last pangs to seize the soul and bear it off. Saint
+Hildegarde, about 1100, thinks that &#8220;<i>he cannot enter
+the body of a living man</i>, for else his limbs would fly
+off in all directions: it is but the shadow and the
+smoke of the Devil which pass therein.&#8221; That last
+gleam of good sense vanishes in the twelfth century.
+In the thirteenth we find a suppliant so afraid of being
+caught alive that he has himself watched day and
+night by two hundred armed men.</p>
+
+<p>Then begins a period of increasing terror, in which
+men trust themselves less and ever less to God&#8217;s protection.
+The Demon is no longer a stealthy sprite, no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>
+longer a thief by night, gliding through the gloom.
+He becomes the fearless adversary, the daring ape of
+Heaven, who in broad daylight mimics God&#8217;s creation
+under God&#8217;s own sun. Is it the legends tell us this?
+Nay, it is the greatest of the doctors. &#8220;The Devil,&#8221; says
+Albert the Great, &#8220;transforms all living things.&#8221; St.
+Thomas goes yet further. &#8220;All changes that may
+occur naturally by means of seeds, can be copied by
+the Devil.&#8221; What an astounding concession, which
+coming from the mouth of so grave a personage, means
+nothing short of setting up one Creator face to face
+with another! &#8220;But in things done without the
+germinal process,&#8221; he adds, &#8220;such as the changing of
+men into beasts or the resurrection of the dead, there
+the Devil can do nothing.&#8221; Thus to God is left the
+smaller part of His work! He may only perform
+miracles, a kind of action alike singular and infrequent.
+But the daily miracle of life is not for Him alone: His
+copyist, the Devil, shares with Him the world of
+nature!</p>
+
+<p>For man himself, whose weak eyes see no difference
+between nature as sprung from God and nature as
+made by the Devil, here is a world split in twain! A
+dreadful uncertainty hangs over everything. Nature&#8217;s
+innocence is gone. The clear spring, the pale flower,
+the little bird, are these indeed of God, or only treacherous
+counterfeits, snares laid out for man? Back! all
+things look doubtful! The better of the two creations,
+being suspiciously like the other, becomes eclipsed and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span>
+conquered. The shadow of the Devil covers up the
+day, spreads over all life. To judge by appearances
+and the fears of men, he has ceased to share the world;
+he has taken it all to himself.</p>
+
+<p>So matters stand in the days of Sprenger. His
+book teems with saddest avowals of God&#8217;s weakness.
+&#8220;These things,&#8221; he says, &#8220;are done with God&#8217;s leave.&#8221;
+To permit an illusion so entire, to let people believe that
+God is nought and the Devil everything, is more than
+mere <i>permission</i>; is tantamount to decreeing the damnation
+of countless souls whom nothing can save from
+such an error. No prayers, no penances, no pilgrimages,
+are of any avail; nor even, so it is said, the sacrament
+of the altar. Strange and mortifying avowal! The
+very nuns who have just confessed themselves, declare
+<i>while the host is yet in their mouths</i>, that even then
+they feel the infernal lover troubling them without fear
+or shame, troubling and refusing to leave his hold.
+And being pressed with further questions, they add,
+through their tears, that he has a body <i>because he has
+a soul</i>.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The Manichees of old, and the more modern Albigenses,
+were charged with believing in the Power of
+Evil struggling side by side with Good, with making
+the Devil equal to God. Here, however, he is more
+than equal; for if God through His holy sacrament has
+still no power for good, the Devil certainly seems superior.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I am not surprised at the wondrous sight then offered
+by the world. Spain with a darksome fury, Germany
+with the frightened pedantic rage certified in the
+<i>Malleus</i>, assail the insolent conqueror through the
+wretches in whom he chooses to dwell. They burn,
+they destroy the dwellings in which he has taken up
+his abode. Finding him too strong for men&#8217;s souls,
+they try to hunt him out of their bodies. But what is
+the good of it all? You burn one old woman and he
+settles himself in her neighbour. Nay, more; if
+Sprenger may be trusted, he fastens sometimes on the
+exorcising priest, and triumphs over his very judge.</p>
+
+<p>Among other expedients, the Dominicans advised
+recourse to the intercession of the Virgin, by a continual
+repeating of the <i>Ave Maria</i>. Sprenger, for his
+part, always averred that such a remedy was but a
+momentary one. You might be caught between two
+prayers. Hence came the invention of the rosary, the
+chaplet of beads, by means of which any number of
+aves might be mumbled through, whilst the mind was
+busied elsewhere. Whole populations adopted this first
+essay of an art thereafter to be used by Loyola in his
+attempt to govern the world, an art of which his
+<i>Exercises</i> furnish the ingenious groundwork.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>All this seems opposed to what was said in the foregoing
+chapter as to the decline of Witchcraft. The
+Devil is now popular and everywhere present. He
+seems to have come off conqueror: but has he gained<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>
+by his victory? What substantial profit has he reaped
+therefrom?</p>
+
+<p>Much, as beheld in his new phase of a scientific
+rebellion which is about to bring forth the bright
+Renaissance. None, if beheld under his old aspect, as
+the gloomy Spirit of Witchcraft. The stories told of
+him in the sixteenth century, if more numerous, more
+widespread than ever, readily swing towards the grotesque.
+People tremble, but they laugh withal.<a name="FNanchor_76_76" id="FNanchor_76_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a></p>
+
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a> Officer charged with the absolution of penitents.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a> A medi&aelig;val text-book on theology.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a> &#8220;Thinking ill of the faith.&#8221;&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a> A character in Rabelais. &#8220;Date nobis clochas nostras, &amp;c.&#8221;&mdash;<i>Gargantua</i>,
+ch. 19.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_74_74" id="Footnote_74_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a> Ulrich von Hutten, friend of Luther, and author of the
+witty <i>Epistol&aelig; obscurorum virorum</i>.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_75_75" id="Footnote_75_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a> Faustin H&eacute;lie, in his learned and luminous <i>Trait&eacute; de
+l&#8217;Instruction Criminelle</i> (vol. i. p. 398), has clearly explained the
+manner in which Pope Innocent III., about 1200, suppressed
+the safeguards theretofore required in any prosecution, especially
+the risk incurred by prosecutors of being punished for
+slander. Instead of these were established the dismal processes
+of <i>Denunciation and Inquisition</i>. The frightful levity
+of these latter methods is shown by Soldan. Blood was shed
+like water.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_76_76" id="Footnote_76_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a> See my <i>Memoirs of Luther</i>, concerning the Kilcrops, &amp;c.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2 class="chs"><a name="CHAPTER_III_2" id="CHAPTER_III_2"></a>CHAPTER III.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>CENTURY OF TOLERATION IN FRANCE: REACTION.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="smcap">The</span> Church forfeited the wizard&#8217;s property to the
+judge and the prosecutor. Wherever the Canon Law
+was enforced the trials for witchcraft waxed numerous,
+and brought much wealth to the clergy. Wherever
+the lay tribunals claimed the management of these
+trials they grew scarce and disappeared, at least for
+a hundred years in France, from 1450 to 1550.</p>
+
+<p>The first gleam of light shot forth from France in
+the middle of the fifteenth century. The inquiry made
+by Parliament into the trial of Joan of Arc, and her
+after reinstalment, set people thinking on the intercourse
+of spirits, good and bad; on the errors, also, of
+the spiritual courts. She whom the English, whom
+the greatest doctors of the Council of Basil pronounced
+a Witch, appeared to Frenchmen a saint and sibyl. Her
+reinstalment proclaimed to France the beginning of an
+age of toleration. The Parliament of Paris likewise
+reinstalled the alleged Waldenses of Arras. In 1498
+it discharged as mad one who was brought before it as
+a wizard. None such were condemned in the reigns
+of Charles VIII., Louis XII., and Francis I.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span></p><hr />
+
+<p>On the contrary, Spain, under the pious Isabella
+(1506) and the Cardinal Ximenes, began burning
+witches. In 1515, Geneva, being then under a Bishop,
+burned five hundred in three months. The Emperor
+Charles V., in his German Constitutions, vainly sought
+to rule, that &#8220;Witchcraft, as causing damage to goods
+and persons, is a question for <i>civil</i>, not ecclesiastic
+law.&#8221; In vain did he do away the right of confiscation,
+except in cases of treason. The small prince-bishops,
+whose revenues were largely swelled by trials
+for witchcraft, kept on burning at a furious rate. In
+one moment, as it were, six hundred persons were
+burnt in the infinitesimal bishopric of Bamberg, and
+nine hundred in that of Wurtzburg. The way of
+going to work was very simple. Begin by using torture
+against the witnesses; create witnesses for the prosecution
+by means of pain and terror; then, by dint of
+excessive kindliness, draw from the accused a certain
+avowal, and believe that avowal in the teeth of proven
+facts. A witch, for instance, owns to having taken
+from the graveyard the body of an infant lately dead,
+that she might use it in her magical compounds. Her
+husband bids them go the graveyard, for the child is
+there still. On being disinterred, the child is found
+all right in his coffin. But against the witness of his
+own eyes the judge pronounces it <i>an appearance</i>, a
+cheat of the Devil. He prefers the wife&#8217;s confession
+to the fact itself; and she is burnt forthwith.<a name="FNanchor_77_77" id="FNanchor_77_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span></p>
+<p>So far did matters go among these worthy prince-bishops,
+that after a while, Ferdinand II., the most
+bigoted of all emperors, the emperor of the Thirty
+Years&#8217; War, was fain to interfere, to set up at Bamberg
+an imperial commissary, who should maintain the
+law of the empire, and see that the episcopal judge did
+not begin the trial with tortures which settled it beforehand,
+which led straight to the stake.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Witches were easily caught by their confessions,
+sometimes without the torture. Many of them were
+half mad. They would own to turning themselves into
+beasts. The Italian women often became cats, and
+gliding under the doors, sucked, they said, the blood
+of children. In the land of mighty forests, in Lorraine
+and on the Jura, the women, of their own accord,
+became wolves, and, if you could believe them, devoured
+the passers by, even when nobody had passed by.
+They were burnt. Some girls, who swore they had
+given themselves to the Devil, were found to be
+maidens still. They, too, were burnt. Several seemed
+in a great hurry, as if they wanted to be burnt. Sometimes
+it happened from raging madness, sometimes
+from despair. An Englishwoman being led to the
+stake, said to the people, &#8220;Do not blame my judges.
+I wanted to put an end to my own self. My parents
+kept aloof from me in their dread. My husband had
+disowned me. I could not have lived on without disgrace.
+I longed for death, and so I told a lie.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The first words of open toleration against silly
+Sprenger, his frightful Handbook, and his Inquisitors,
+were spoken by Molitor, a lawyer of Constance. He
+made this sensible remark, that the confessions of
+witches should not be taken seriously, because it was
+the very Father of Lies who spoke by their mouths.
+He laughed at the miracles of Satan, affirming them
+to be all illusory. In an indirect way, such jesters
+as Hutten and Erasmus dealt violent blows at the
+Inquisition, through their satires on the Dominican
+idiots. Cardan<a name="FNanchor_78_78" id="FNanchor_78_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a> said, straightforwardly, &#8220;In order
+to obtain forfeit property, the same persons acted as
+accusers and judges, and invented a thousand stories
+in proof.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>That apostle of toleration, Chatillon, who maintained
+against Catholics and Protestants both, that
+heretics should not be burnt, though he said nothing
+about wizards, put men of sense in a better way.
+Agrippa,<a name="FNanchor_79_79" id="FNanchor_79_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a> Lavatier, above all, Wyer<a name="FNanchor_80_80" id="FNanchor_80_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a>] the illustrious
+physician of Cl&egrave;ves, rightly said that if those wretched
+witches were the Devil&#8217;s plaything, we must lay the
+blame on the Devil, not on them; must cure, instead
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>of burning them. Some physicians of Paris soon
+pushed incredulity so far as to maintain that the
+possessed and the witches were simply knaves. This
+was going too far. Most of them were sufferers under
+the sway of an illusion.</p>
+
+<p>The dark reign of Henry II. and Diana of Poitiers
+ends the season of toleration. Under Diana, they burn
+heretics and wizards again. On the other hand, Catherine
+of Medici, surrounded as she was by astrologers
+and magicians, would have protected the latter. Their
+numbers increased amain. The wizard Trois-Echelles,
+who was tried in the reign of Charles IX., reckons
+them at a hundred thousand, declaring all France to be
+one Witch.</p>
+
+<p>Agrippa and others affirm, that all science is contained
+in magic. In white magic undoubtedly. But
+the fears of fools and their fanatic rage, put little
+difference between them. In spite of Wyer, in spite
+of those true philosophers, Light and Toleration, a
+strong reaction towards darkness set in from a quarter
+whence it was least expected. Our magistrates, who for
+nearly a century, had shown themselves enlightened
+and fair-dealing, now threw themselves into the
+Spanish Catholicon<a name="FNanchor_81_81" id="FNanchor_81_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a> and the fury of the Leaguists,<a name="FNanchor_82_82" id="FNanchor_82_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a>
+until they waxed more priest-like than the priests
+themselves. While scouting the Inquisition from
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span>France, they matched, and well-nigh eclipsed it by
+their own deeds: the Parliament of Toulouse alone
+sending four hundred human bodies at one time to the
+stake. Think of the horror, the black smoke of all
+that flesh, of the frightful melting and bubbling of the
+fat amidst those piercing shrieks and yells! So
+accursed, so sickening a sight had not been seen, since
+the Albigenses were broiled and roasted.</p>
+
+<p>But this is all too little for Bodin, lawyer of Angers,
+and a violent adversary to Wyer. He begins by saying
+that the wizards in Europe are numerous enough to
+match Xerxes&#8217; army of eighteen hundred thousand
+men. Then, like Caligula, he utters a prayer, that
+these two millions might be gathered together, so as
+he, Bodin, could sentence and burn them all at one
+stroke.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The new rivalry makes matters worse. The gentry
+of the Law begin to say that the priest, being too
+often connected with the wizard, is no longer a safe
+judge. In fact, for a moment, the lawyers seem to be
+yet more trustworthy. In Spain, the Jesuit pleader,
+Del Rio; in Lorraine, Remy (1596); Boguet (1602) on
+the Jura; Leloyer (1605) in Anjou; are all matchless
+persecutors, who would have made Torquemada<a name="FNanchor_83_83" id="FNanchor_83_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a> himself
+die of envy.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span></p>
+<p>In Lorraine there seemed to be quite a dreadful
+plague of wizards and visionaries. Driven to despair
+by the constant passing of troops and brigands, the
+multitude prayed to the Devil only. They were drawn
+on by the wizards. A number of villagers, frightened
+by a twofold dread of wizards on the one hand, and
+judges on the other, longed to leave their homes and
+flee elsewhither, if Remy, Judge of Nancy, may be
+believed. In the work he dedicated (1596) to the
+Cardinal of Lorraine, he owns to having burnt eight
+hundred witches, in sixteen years. &#8220;So well do I deal
+out judgements,&#8221; he says, &#8220;that last year sixteen
+slew themselves to avoid passing through my hands.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The priests felt humbled. Could they have done
+better than the laity? Nay, even the monkish lords of
+Saint Claude asked for a layman, honest Boguet, to sit
+in judgment on their own people, who were much
+given to witchcraft. In that sorry Jura, a poor land
+of firs and scanty pasturage, the serf in his despair
+yielded himself to the Devil. They all worshipped the
+Black Cat.</p>
+
+<p>Boguet&#8217;s book had immense weight. This Golden
+Book, by the petty judge of Saint Claude, was
+studied as a handbook by the worshipful members of
+Parliament. In truth, Boguet is a thorough lawyer,
+is even scrupulous in his own way. He finds fault<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span>
+with the treachery shown in these prosecutions; will
+not hear of barristers betraying their clients, of judges
+promising pardon only to ensure the death of the
+accused. He finds fault with the very doubtful tests to
+which the witches were still exposed. &#8220;Torture,&#8221;
+he says, &#8220;is needless: it never makes them yield.&#8221;
+Moreover, he is humane enough to have them strangled
+before throwing them to the flames, always except the
+werewolves, &#8220;whom you must take care to burn alive.&#8221;
+He cannot believe that Satan would make a compact
+with children: &#8220;Satan is too sharp; knows too well
+that, under fourteen years, any bargain made with
+a minor, is annulled by default of years and due discretion.&#8221;
+Then the children are saved? Not at all;
+for he contradicts himself, and holds, moreover, that
+such a leprosy cannot be purged away without burning
+everything, even to the cradles. Had he lived, he would
+have come to that. He made the country a desert:
+never was there a judge who destroyed people with so
+fine a conscience.</p>
+
+<p>But it is to the Parliament of Bourdeaux that the
+grand hurrah for lay jurisdiction is sent up in Lancre&#8217;s
+book on <i>The Fickleness of Demons</i>. The author, a
+man of some sense, a counsellor in this same Parliament,
+tells with a triumphant air of his fight with the
+Devil in the Basque country, where, in less than three
+months, he got rid of I know not how many witches,
+and, better still, of three priests. He looks compassionately<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>
+on the Spanish Inquisition, which at Logro&ntilde;o,
+not far off, on the borders of Navarre and Castille,
+dragged on a trial for two years, ending in the poorest
+way by a small <i>auto-da-f&eacute;</i>, and the release of a whole
+crowd of women.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_77_77" id="Footnote_77_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a> For this and other facts regarding Germany, see Soldan.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_78_78" id="Footnote_78_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a> A famous Italian physician, who lived through the greater
+part of the sixteenth century.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_79_79" id="Footnote_79_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a> Cornelius Agrippa, of Cologne, born in 1486, sometime
+Secretary of the Emperor Maximilian, and author of two works
+famous in their day, <i>Vanity of the Sciences</i>, and <i>Occult Philosophy</i>.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_80_80" id="Footnote_80_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a> A friend of Sir Philip Sydney, who sent for him when
+dying.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_81_81" id="Footnote_81_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a> Catholicon, or purgative panacea: <i>i.&nbsp;e.</i> the Inquisition.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_82_82" id="Footnote_82_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_82_82"><span class="label">[82]</span></a> The wars of the Catholic League against Henry of Navarre
+began in 1576.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_83_83" id="Footnote_83_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_83_83"><span class="label">[83]</span></a> The infamous Spanish Inquisitor, who died at the close of
+the fifteenth century, after sixteen years of untold atrocities
+against the heretics of Spain.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2 class="chs"><a name="CHAPTER_IV_2" id="CHAPTER_IV_2"></a>CHAPTER IV.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>THE WITCHES OF THE BASQUE COUNTRY: 1609.<a name="FNanchor_84_84" id="FNanchor_84_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a></h3>
+
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="smcap">That</span> strong-handed execution of the priests shows
+M. Lancre to have been a man of independent spirit.
+In politics he is the same. In his book on <i>The Prince</i>
+(1617), he openly declares &#8220;the law to be above the
+King.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Never was the Basque character better drawn than
+in his book on <i>The Fickleness of Demons</i>. In
+France, as in Spain, the Basque people had privileges
+which almost made them a republic. On our side they
+owed the King no service but that of arms: at the first
+beat of drum they were bound to gather two thousand
+armed men commanded by Basque captains. They
+were not oppressed by their clergy, who seldom prosecuted
+wizards, being wizards themselves. The priests
+danced, wore swords, and took their mistresses to the
+Witches&#8217; Sabbath. These mistresses acted as their sextonesses
+or <i>b&eacute;n&eacute;dictes</i>, to keep the churches in order.
+The parson quarrelled with nobody, offered the White
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span>Mass to God by day, the Black by night to the Devil,
+and sometimes, according to Lancre, in the same
+church.</p>
+
+<p>The Basques of Bayonne and St. Jean de Luz, a
+race of men quaint, venturesome, and fabulously bold,
+left many widows, from their habit of sailing out into
+the roughest seas to harpoon whales. Leaving their
+wives to God or the Devil, they threw themselves in
+crowds into the Canadian settlements of Henry IV.
+As for the children, these honest worthy sailors would
+have thought about them more, if they had been clear
+as to their parentage. But on their return home they
+would reckon up the months of their absence, and
+they never found the reckoning right.</p>
+
+<p>The women, bold, beautiful, imaginative, spent their
+day seated on tombs in the grave-yards, talking of the
+Sabbath, whither they expected to go in the evening.
+This was their passion, their craze.</p>
+
+<p>They are born witches, daughters of the sea and of
+enchantment. They sport among the billows, swimming
+like fish. Their natural master is the Prince of
+the Air, King of Winds and Dreams, the same who inspired
+the Sibyl and breathed to her the future.</p>
+
+<p>The judge who burns them is charmed with them,
+nevertheless. &#8220;When you see them pass,&#8221; says he,
+&#8220;their hair flowing in the breeze about their shoulders,
+they walk so trim, so bravely armed in that
+fair head-dress, that the sun playing through it as
+through a cloud, causes a mighty blaze which shoots<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span>
+forth hot lightning-flashes. Hence the fascination of
+their eyes, as dangerous in love as in witchcraft.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This amiable Bordeaux magistrate, the earliest
+sample of those worldly judges who enlivened the
+gown in the seventeenth century, plays the lute between
+whiles, and even makes the witches dance before
+sending them to the stake. And he writes well, far
+more clearly than anyone else. But for all that, one
+discovers in his work a new source of obscurity, inherent
+to those times. The witches being too numerous
+for the judge to burn them all, the most of them
+have a shrewd idea that he will show some indulgence
+to those who enter deepest into his thoughts and
+passions! What passions? you ask. First, his love of
+the frightfully marvellous, a passion common enough;
+the delight of feeling afraid; and also, if it must be
+said, the enjoyment of unseemly pleasures. Add to
+these a touch of vanity: the more dreadful and enraged
+those clever women show the Devil to be, the greater
+the pride taken by the judge in subduing so mighty
+an adversary. He arrays himself as it were in his
+victory, enthrones himself in his foolishness, triumphs
+in his senseless twaddling.</p>
+
+<p>The prettiest thing of this kind is the report of the
+procedure in the Spanish <i>auto-da-f&eacute;</i> of Logro&ntilde;o, as
+furnished to us by Llorente. Lancre, while quoting
+him jealously and longing to disparage him, owns to
+the surpassing charm of the festival, the splendour of
+the sight, the moving power of the music. On one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span>
+platform were the few condemned to the flames, on
+another a crowd of reprieved criminals. The confession
+of a repentant heroine who had dared all things,
+is read aloud. Nothing could be wilder. At the
+Sabbaths they ate children made into hash, and by way
+of second course, the bodies of wizards disentombed.
+Toads dance, and talk and complain lovingly of their
+mistresses, getting them scolded by the Devil. The
+latter politely escorts the witches home, lighting them
+with the arm of a child who died unchristened, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>Among our Basques witchcraft put on a less fantastic
+guise. It seems that at this time the Sabbath was
+only a grand feast to which all, the nobles included,
+went for purposes of amusement. In the foremost line
+would be seen persons in veils and masks, by some
+supposed to be princes. &#8220;Once on a time,&#8221; says
+Lancre, &#8220;none but idiots of the Landes appeared
+there: now people of quality are seen to go.&#8221; To entertain
+these local grandees, Satan sometimes created a
+<i>Bishop of the Sabbath</i>. Such was the title he gave the
+young lord Lancinena, with whom the Devil in person
+was good enough to open the ball.</p>
+
+<p>So well supported, the witches held their sway,
+wielding over the land an amazing terrorism of the
+fancy. Numbers regarded themselves as victims, and
+became in fact seriously ill. Many were stricken with
+epilepsy, and barked like dogs. In one small town of
+Acqs were counted as many as forty of these barkers.
+The Witch had so fearful a hold upon them, that one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span>
+lady being called as witness, began barking with uncontrollable
+fury as the Witch, unawares to herself,
+drew near.</p>
+
+<p>Those to whom was ascribed so terrible a power
+lorded it everywhere. No one would dare shut his
+door against them. One magistrate, the criminal
+assessor of Bayonne, allowed the Sabbath to be held in
+his own house. Urtubi, Lord of Saint P&eacute;, was forced
+to hold the festival in his castle. But his head was
+shaken to that degree, that he imagined a witch was
+sucking his blood. Emboldened, however, by his fear,
+he, with another gentleman, repaired to Bordeaux, and
+persuaded the Parliament to obtain from the King the
+commissioning of two of its members, Espagnet and
+Lancre, to try the wizards in the Basque country. This
+commission, absolute and without appeal, worked with
+unheard-of vigour; in four months, from May to
+August, 1609, condemned sixty or eighty witches, and
+examined five hundred more, who, though equally
+marked with the sign of the Devil, figured in the
+proceedings as witnesses only.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>It was no safe matter for two men and a few
+soldiers to carry on these trials amongst a violent, hot-headed
+people, a multitude of wild and daring sailors&#8217;
+wives. Another source of danger was in the priests,
+many of whom were wizards, needing to be tried by
+the lay commissioners, despite the lively opposition of
+the clergy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When the judges appeared, many persons saved
+themselves in the hills. Others boldly remained,
+saying, it was the judges who would be burnt. So
+little fear had the witches themselves, that before the
+audience they would sink into the Sabbatic slumber,
+and affirm on awaking that, even in court, they had
+enjoyed the blessedness of Satan. Many said, they
+only suffered from not being able to prove to him how
+much they burned to suffer for his sake.</p>
+
+<p>Those who were questioned said they could not
+speak. Satan rising into their throats blocked up their
+gullets. Lancre, who wrote this narrative, though the
+younger of the commissioners, was a man of the world.
+The witches guessed that, with a man of his sort, there
+were means of saving themselves. The league between
+them was broken. A beggar-girl of seventeen, La
+Murgui, or Margaret, who had found witchcraft
+gainful, and, while herself almost a child, had brought
+away children as offerings to the Devil, now betook
+herself, with another girl, Lisalda, of the same age, to
+denouncing all the rest. By word of mouth or in
+writing she revealed all; with the liveliness, the noise,
+the emphatic gestures of a Spaniard, entering truly or
+falsely into a hundred impure details. She frightened,
+amused, wheedled her judges, drawing them after her
+like fools. To this corrupt, wanton, crazy girl, they
+entrusted the right of searching about the bodies of
+girls and boys, for the spot whereon Satan had set his
+mark. This spot discovered itself by a certain numbness,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span>
+by the fact that you might stick needles into it
+without causing pain. While a surgeon thus tormented
+the elder ones, she took in hand the young,
+who, though called as witnesses, might themselves be
+accused, if she pronounced them to bear the mark. It
+was a hateful thing to see this brazen-faced girl made
+sole mistress of the fate of those wretched beings, commissioned
+to prod them all over with needles, and able
+at will to assign those bleeding bodies to death!</p>
+
+<p>She had gotten so mighty a sway over Lancre, as to
+persuade him that, while he was sleeping in Saint P&eacute;,
+in his own house, guarded by his servants and his
+escort, the Devil came by night into his room, to say
+the Black Mass; while the witches getting inside his
+very curtains, would have poisoned him, had he not
+been well protected by God Himself. The Black Mass
+was offered by the Lady of Lancinena, to whom Satan
+made love in the very bedroom of the judge. We can
+guess the likely aim of this wretched tale: the beggar
+bore a grudge against the lady, who was good-looking,
+and, but for this slander, might have come to bear
+sway over the honest commissioner.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Lancre and his colleague taking fright, went forward;
+never dared to draw back. They had their royal
+gallows set up on the very spots where Satan had held
+a Sabbath. People were alarmed thereat, deeming them
+strongly backed by the arm of royalty. Impeachments
+hailed about them. The women all came in one long<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span>
+string to accuse each other. Children were brought
+forward to impeach their mothers. Lancre gravely
+ruled that a child of eight was a good, sufficient, reputable
+witness!</p>
+
+<p>M. d&#8217;Espagnet could give but a few moments to
+this matter, having speedily to show himself in the
+Estates of B&eacute;arn. Lancre being pushed unwittingly
+forward by the violence of the younger informers, who
+would have fallen into great danger, if they had failed
+to get the old ones burnt, threw the reins on the neck
+of the business, and hurried it on at full gallop. A
+due amount of witches were condemned to the stake.
+These, too, on finding themselves lost, ended by impeaching
+others. When the first batch were brought
+to the stake, a frightful scene took place. Executioner,
+constables, and sergeants, all thought their last hour
+was come. The crowd fell savagely upon the carts,
+seeking to force the wretches to withdraw their accusations.
+The men put daggers to their throats: their
+furious companions were like to finish them with their
+nails.</p>
+
+<p>Justice, however, got out of the scrape with some
+credit; and then the commissioners went on to the
+harder work of sentencing eight priests whom they had
+taken up. The girls&#8217; confessions had brought these
+men to light. Lancre speaks of their morals like one
+who knew all about them of himself. He rebukes
+them, not only for their gay proceedings on Sabbath
+nights, but, most of all, for their sextonesses and female<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>
+churchwardens. He even repeats certain tales about
+the priests having sent off the husbands to Newfoundland,
+and brought back Devils from Japan who gave
+up the wives into their hands.</p>
+
+<p>The clergy were deeply stirred: the Bishop of
+Bayonne would have made resistance. His courage
+failing him, he appointed his vicar-general to act as
+judge-assistant in his own absence. Luckily the Devil
+gave the accused more help than their Bishop. He
+opened all the doors, so that one morning five of the
+eight were found missing. The commissioners lost no
+time in burning the three still left to them.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>This happened about August, 1609. The Spanish
+inquisitors at Logro&ntilde;o did not crown their proceedings
+with an <i>auto-da-f&eacute;</i> before the 8th November, 1610.
+They had met with far more trouble than our own
+countrymen, owing to the frightful number of persons
+accused. How burn a whole people? They sought
+advice of the Pope, of the greatest doctors in Spain.
+The word was given to draw back. Only the wilful
+who persisted in denying their guilt, were to be burnt;
+while they who pleaded guilty should be let go. The
+same method had already been used to rescue priests
+in trials for loose living. According to Llorente, it
+was deemed sufficient, if they owned their crime, and
+went through a slight penance.</p>
+
+<p>The Inquisition, so deadly to heretics, so cruel to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span>
+Moors and Jews, was much less so to wizards. These,
+being mostly shepherds, had no quarrel with the
+Church. The rejoicings of goatherds were too low, if
+not too brutish, to disturb the enemies of free thought.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Lancre wrote his book mainly to show how much
+the justice of French Parliaments and laymen excelled
+the justice of the priests. It is written lightly, merrily,
+with flowing pen. It seems to express the joy felt by
+one who has come creditably out of a great risk. It
+is a gasconading, an over-boastful joy. He tells with
+pride how, the Sabbath following the first execution of
+the witches, their children went and wailed to Satan,
+who replied that their mothers had not been burnt,
+but were alive and happy. From the midst of the
+crowd the children thought they heard their mothers&#8217;
+voices saying how thoroughly blest they were. Satan
+was frightened nevertheless. He absented himself for
+four Sabbaths, sending a small commonplace devil in
+his stead. He did not show himself again till the
+22nd July. When the wizards asked him the reason
+of his absence, he said, &#8220;I have been away, pleading
+your cause against <i>Little John</i>,&#8221; the name by which he
+called Jesus. &#8220;I have won the suit, and they who are
+still in prison will not be burnt.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The lie was given to the great liar. And the conquering
+magistrate avers that, while the last witch was
+burning, they saw a swarm of toads come out of her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span>
+head. The people fell on them with stones, so that
+she was rather stoned than burnt. But for all their
+attacks, they could not put an end to one black toad
+which escaped from flames, sticks, and stones, to hide,
+like the Devil&#8217;s imp it was, in some spot where it could
+never be found.<a name="FNanchor_85_85" id="FNanchor_85_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a></p>
+
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_84_84" id="Footnote_84_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84_84"><span class="label">[84]</span></a> The Basques of the Lower Pyrenees, the Aquitani of C&aelig;sar,
+belonged to the old Iberian race which peopled Western Europe
+before the Celtic era.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_85_85" id="Footnote_85_85"></a><a href="#FNanchor_85_85"><span class="label">[85]</span></a> For a more detailed account of these Basque Witches, the
+English reader may turn to Wright&#8217;s <i>Narratives of Sorcery and
+Magic</i>. Bentley, 1851.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2 class="chs"><a name="CHAPTER_V_2" id="CHAPTER_V_2"></a>CHAPTER V.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>SATAN TURNS PRIEST.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="smcap">Whatever</span> semblance of Satanic fanaticism was still
+preserved by the witches, it transpires from the narratives
+of Lancre and other writers of the seventeenth
+century, that the Sabbath then was mainly an affair of
+money. They raised contributions almost by force,
+charged something for right of entrance, and extracted
+fines from those who stayed away. At Brussels and in
+Picardy, they had a fixed scale of payment for rewarding
+those who brought new members into the brotherhood.</p>
+
+<p>In the Basque country no mystery was kept up.
+The gatherings there would amount to twelve thousand
+persons, of all classes, rich or poor, priests and gentlemen.
+Satan, himself a gentleman, wore a hat upon
+his three horns, like a man of quality. Finding his
+old seat, the druidic stone, too hard for him, he treats
+himself to an easy well-gilt arm-chair. Shall we say
+he is growing old? More nimble now than when he
+was young, he frolics about, cuts capers, and leaps
+from the bottom of a large pitcher. He goes through
+the service head downwards, his feet in the air.</p>
+
+<p>He likes everything to go off quite respectably, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span>
+spares no cost in his scenic arrangements. Besides
+the customary flames, red, yellow, and blue, which
+entertain the eye, as they show forth or hide the
+flickering shadows, he charms the ear with strange
+music, mainly of little bells that tickle the nerves with
+something like the searching vibrations of musical-glasses.
+To crown this splendour Satan bids them
+bring out his silver plate. Even his toads give themselves
+airs, become fashionable, and, like so many lordlings,
+go about in green velvet.</p>
+
+<p>The general effect is that of a large fair, of a great
+masked ball with very transparent disguises. Satan,
+who understands his epoch, opens the ball with the
+Bishop of the Sabbath; or the King and Queen: offices
+devised in compliment to the great personages, wealthy
+or well-born, who honour the meeting by their presence.</p>
+
+<p>Here may be seen no longer the gloomy feast of rebels,
+the baleful orgie of serfs and boors, sharing by night
+the sacrament of love, by day the sacrament of death.
+The violent Sabbath-round is no more the one only
+dance of the evening. Thereto are now added the
+Moorish dances, lively or languishing, but always
+amorous and obscene, in which girls dressed up for the
+purpose, like <i>La Murgui</i> or <i>La Lisalda</i>, feigned and
+showed off the most provoking characters. Among
+the Basques these dances formed, we are told, the invincible
+charm which sent the whole world of women,
+wives, daughters, widows&mdash;the last in great numbers&mdash;headlong
+into the Sabbath.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Without such amusements and the accompanying
+banquet, one could hardly understand this general rage
+for these Sabbaths. It is a kind of love without love;
+a feast of barrenness undisguised. Boguet has settled
+that point to a nicety. Differing in one passage,
+where he dismisses the women as afraid of coming
+to harm, Lancre is generally at one with Boguet, besides
+being more sincere. The cruel and foul researches he
+pursues on the very bodies of witches, show clearly
+that he deemed them barren, and that a barren passive
+love underlay the Sabbath itself.</p>
+
+<p>The feast ought therefore to have been a dismal one,
+if the men had owned the smallest heart.</p>
+
+<p>The silly girls who went to dance and eat were victims
+in every way. But they were resigned to everything
+save the prospect of bearing children. They
+bore indeed a far heavier load of wretchedness than the
+men. Sprenger tells of the strange cry, which even in
+his day burst forth in the hour of love, &#8220;May the
+Devil have the fruits!&#8221; In his day, moreover, people
+could live for two <i>sous</i> a day, while in the reign of
+Henry IV., about 1600, they could barely live for
+twenty. Through all that century the desire, the need
+for barrenness grew more and more.</p>
+
+<p>Under this growing dread of love&#8217;s allurements the
+Sabbath would have become quite dull and wearisome,
+had not the conductresses cleverly made the most of its
+comic side, enlivening it with farcical interludes. Thus,
+the opening scene in which Satan, like the Priapus of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span>
+olden times, bestowed his coarse endearments on the
+Witch, was followed by another game, a kind of chilly
+purification, which the sorceress underwent with much
+grimacing, and a great show of unpleasant shuddering.
+Then came another swinish farce, described by Lancre
+and Boguet, in which some young and pretty wife
+would take the Witch&#8217;s place as Queen of the Sabbath,
+and submit her body to the vilest handling. A farce
+not less repulsive was the &#8220;Black Sacrament,&#8221; performed
+with a black radish, which Satan would cut
+into little pieces and gravely swallow.</p>
+
+<p>The last act of all, according to Lancre, or at least
+according to the two bold hussies who made him their
+fool, was an astounding event to happen in such
+crowded meetings. Since witchcraft had become
+hereditary in whole families, there was no further need
+of openly divulging the old incestuous ways of producing
+witches, by the intercourse of a mother with
+her son. Some sort of comedy perhaps was made out
+of the old materials, in the shape of a grotesque Semiramis
+or an imbecile Ninus. But the more serious
+game, which doubtless really took place, attests the
+existence of great profligacy in the upper walks of
+society: it took the form of a most hateful and
+barbarous hoax.</p>
+
+<p>Some rash husband would be tempted to the spot,
+so fuddled with a baleful draught of datura or belladonna,
+that, like one entranced, he came to lose all
+power of speech and motion, retaining only his sight.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span>
+His wife, on the other hand, being so bewitched with
+erotic drinks as to lose all sense of what she was doing,
+would appear in a woeful state of nature, letting herself
+be caressed under the indignant eyes of one who could
+no longer help himself in the least. His manifest
+despair, his bootless efforts to unshackle his tongue,
+and set free his powerless limbs, his dumb rage and
+wildly rolling eyes, inspired beholders with a cruel joy,
+like that produced by some of Moli&egrave;re&#8217;s comedies.
+The poor woman, stung with a real delight, yielded
+herself up to the most shameful usage, of which on
+the morrow neither herself nor her husband would
+have the least remembrance. But those who had seen
+or shared in the cruel farce, would they, too, fail to
+remember?</p>
+
+<p>In such heinous outrages an aristocratic element
+seems traceable. In no way do they remind us of the
+old brotherhood of serfs, of the original Sabbath, which,
+though ungodly, and foul enough, was still a free
+straightforward matter, in which all was done readily
+and without constraint.</p>
+
+<p>Clearly, Satan, depraved as he was from all time,
+goes on spoiling more and more. A polite, a crafty
+Satan is he now become, sweetly insipid, but all the
+more faithless and unclean. It is a new, a strange
+thing to see at the Sabbaths, his fellowship with priests.
+Who is yon parson coming along with his <i>B&eacute;n&eacute;dicte</i>,
+his sextoness, he who jobs the things of the Church,
+saying the White Mass of mornings, the Black at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span>
+night? &#8220;Satan,&#8221; says Lancre, &#8220;persuades him to make
+love to his daughters in the spirit, to debauch his fair
+penitents.&#8221; Innocent magistrate! He pretends to be
+unaware that for a century back the Devil had been
+working away at the Church livings, like one who
+knew his business! He had made himself father-confessor;
+or, if you would rather have it so, the father-confessor
+had turned Devil.</p>
+
+<p>The worthy M. de Lancre should have remembered
+the trials that began in 1491, and helped perchance to
+bring the Parliament of Paris into a tolerant frame of
+mind. It gave up burning Satan, for it saw nothing
+of him but a mask.</p>
+
+<p>A good many nuns were conquered by his new
+device of borrowing the form of some favourite confessor.
+Among them was Jane Pothierre, a holy
+woman of Quesnoy, of the ripe age of forty-five, but
+still, alas! all too impressible. She owns her passion
+to her ghostly counsellor, who loth to listen to her,
+flies to Falempin, some leagues off. The Devil, who
+never sleeps, saw his advantage, and perceiving her,
+says the annalist, &#8220;goaded by the thorns of Venus, he
+slily took the shape of the aforesaid &#8216;Father,&#8217; and
+returning every night to the convent, was so successful
+in befooling her, that she owned to having received
+him 434 times.&#8221;<a name="FNanchor_86_86" id="FNanchor_86_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a> Great pity was felt for her on her
+repenting; and she was speedily saved from all need
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span>of blushing, being put into a fine walled-tomb built for
+her in the Castle of Selles, where a few days after she
+died the death of a good Catholic. Is it not a deeply
+moving tale? But this is nothing to that fine business
+of Gauffridi, which happened at Marseilles while
+Lancre was drawing up deeds at Bayonne.</p>
+
+<p>The Parliament of Provence had no need to envy the
+success attained by that of Bordeaux. The lay authorities
+caught at the first occasion of a trial for witchcraft
+to institute a reform in the morals of the clergy.
+They sent forth a stern glance towards the close-shut
+convent-world. A rare opportunity was offered by the
+strange concurrence of many causes, by the fierce
+jealousies, the revengeful longings which severed priest
+from priest. But for those mad passions which ere
+long began to burst forth at every moment, we should
+have gained no insight into the real lot of that great
+world of women who died in those gloomy dwellings;
+not one word should we have heard of the things that
+passed behind those parlour gratings, within those
+mighty walls which only the confessor could overleap.</p>
+
+<p>The example of the Basque priest, whom Lancre
+presents to us as worldly, trifling, going with his sword
+upon him, and his deaconess by his side, to dance all
+night at the Sabbath, was not one to inspire fear. It
+was not such as he whom the Inquisition took such
+pains to screen, or towards whom a body so stern for
+others, proved itself, for once, indulgent. It is easy to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span>
+see through all Lancre&#8217;s reticences the existence of
+<i>something else</i>. And the States-General of 1614,
+affirming that priests should not be tried by priests,
+are also thinking of <i>something else</i>. This very mystery
+it is which gets torn in twain by the Parliament
+of Provence. The director of nuns gaining the
+mastery over them and disposing of them, body and
+soul, by means of witchcraft,&mdash;such is the fact which
+comes forth from the trial of Gauffridi; at a later date
+from the dreadful occurrences at Loudun and Louviers;
+and also in the scenes described by Llorente, Ricci, and
+several more.</p>
+
+<p>One common method was employed alike for reducing
+the scandal, for misleading the public, for
+hiding away the inner fact while it was busied with
+the outer aspects of it. On the trial of a priestly
+wizard, all was done to juggle away the priest by
+bringing out the wizard; to impute everything to the
+art of the magician, and put out of sight the natural
+fascination wielded by the master of a troop of women
+all abandoned to his charge.</p>
+
+<p>But there was no way of hushing up the first affair.
+It had been noised abroad in all Provence, in a land
+of light, where the sun pierces without any disguise.
+The chief scene of it lay not only in Aix and Marseilles,
+but also in Sainte-Baume, the famous centre of pilgrimage
+for a crowd of curious people, who thronged
+from all parts of France to be present at a deadly
+duel between two bewitched nuns and their demons.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span>
+The Dominicans, who attacked the affair as inquisitors,
+committed themselves by the noise they made about it
+through their partiality for one of these nuns. For
+all the care Parliament presently took to hurry the
+conclusion, these monks were exceedingly anxious to
+excuse her and justify themselves. Hence the important
+work of the monk Micha&euml;lis, a mixture of truth
+and fable; wherein he raises Gauffridi, the priest he had
+sent to the flames, into the Prince of Magicians, not
+only in France, but even in Spain, Germany, England,
+Turkey, nay, in the whole inhabited earth.</p>
+
+<p>Gauffridi seems to have been a talented, agreeable
+man. Born in the mountains of Provence, he had
+travelled much in the Low Countries and the East.
+He bore the highest character in Marseilles, where he
+served as priest in the Church of Acoules. His bishop
+made much of him: the most devout of the ladies
+preferred him for their confessor. He had a wondrous
+gift, they say, of endearing himself to all. Nevertheless,
+he might have preserved his fair reputation had
+not a noble lady of Provence, whom he had already
+debauched, carried her blind, doting fondness to the
+extent of entrusting him, perhaps for her religious
+training, with the care of a charming child of twelve,
+Madeline de la Palud, a girl of fair complexion and
+gentle nature. Thereon, Gauffridi lost his wits, and
+respected neither the youth nor the holy ignorance, the
+utter unreserve of his pupil.</p>
+
+<p>As she grew older, however, the young highborn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span>
+girl discovered her misfortune, in loving thus beneath
+her, without hope of marriage. To keep his hold on
+her, Gauffridi vowed he would wed her before the
+Devil, if he might not wed her before God. He soothed
+her pride by declaring that he was the Prince of Magicians,
+and would make her his queen. He put on
+her finger a silver ring, engraved with magic characters.
+Did he take her to the Sabbath, or only make
+her believe she had been there, by confusing her with
+strange drinks and magnetic witcheries? Certain it
+is, at least, that torn by two different beliefs, full of
+uneasiness and fear, the girl thenceforth became mad
+at certain times, and fell into fits of epilepsy. She
+was afraid of being carried off alive by the Devil. She
+durst no longer stay in her father&#8217;s house, and took
+shelter in the Ursuline Convent at Marseilles.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_86_86" id="Footnote_86_86"></a><a href="#FNanchor_86_86"><span class="label">[86]</span></a> Mass&eacute;e, <i>Chronique du Monde</i>, 1540; and the Chroniclers
+of Hainault, &amp;c.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2 class="chs"><a name="CHAPTER_VI_2" id="CHAPTER_VI_2"></a>CHAPTER VI.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>GAUFFRIDI: 1610.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="smcap">The</span> order of Ursuline nuns seemed to be the calmest,
+the least irrational of them all. They were not wholly
+idle, but found some little employment in the bringing
+up of young girls. The Catholic reaction which, aiming
+at a higher flight of ecstasy than was possible
+at that time even in Spain, had foolishly built a
+number of convents, Carmelite, Bernardine, and Capuchin,
+soon found itself at the end of its motive-powers.
+The girls of whom people got rid by shutting
+them up so strictly therein, died off immediately, and
+their swift decease led to frightful statements of the
+cruelty shown by their families. They perished,
+indeed, not by their excessive penances, but rather of
+heart-sickness and despair. After the first heats of
+zeal were over, the dreadful disease of the cloister,
+described by Cassieu as dating from the fifteenth
+century, that crushing, sickening sadness which came
+on of an afternoon&mdash;that tender listlessness which
+plunged them into a state of unutterable exhaustion,
+speedily wore them away. A few among them would
+turn as if raging mad, choking, as it were, with the
+exceeding strength of their blood.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A nun who hoped to die decently, without bequeathing
+too large a share of remorse to her kindred, was
+bound to live on about ten years, the mean term of life
+in the cloister. She needed to be let gently down;
+and men of sense and experience felt that her days
+could only be prolonged by giving her something to do,
+by leaving her not quite alone. St. Francis of Sales<a name="FNanchor_87_87" id="FNanchor_87_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a>
+founded the Visitandine order, whose duty it was to
+visit the sick in pairs. C&aelig;sar of Bus and Romillion,
+who had established the Teaching Priests in connection
+with the Oratorians<a name="FNanchor_88_88" id="FNanchor_88_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_88_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a>, afterwards ordained what might
+be called the Teaching Sisters, the Ursulines, who
+taught under the direction of the said priests. The
+whole thing was under the supervision of the bishops,
+and had very little of the monastic about it: the nuns
+were not shut up again in cloisters. The Visitandines
+went out; the Ursulines received, at any rate, their
+pupils&#8217; kinsfolk. Both of them had connection with
+the world under guardians of good repute. The result
+was a certain mediocrity. Though the Oratorians and
+the Doctrinaries numbered among them persons of
+high merit, the general character of the order was
+uniformly moderate, commonplace; it took care never
+to soar too high. Romillion, founder of the Ursulines,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span>was an oldish man, a convert from Protestantism, who
+had roamed everywhere, and come back again to his
+starting point. He deemed his young Provencials
+wise enough already, and counted on keeping his little
+flock on the slender pasturage of an Oratorian faith,
+at once monotonous and rational. And being such, it
+came in time to be utterly wearisome. One fine morning
+all had disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Gauffridi, the mountaineer of Provence, the travelled
+mystic, the man of strong feelings and restless mind,
+had quite another effect upon them, when he came
+thither as Madeline&#8217;s ghostly guide. They felt a certain
+power, and by those who had already passed out of
+their wild, amorous youth, were doubtless assured that
+it was nothing less than a power begotten of the
+Devil. All were seized with fear, and more than one
+with love also. Their imaginations soared high; their
+heads began to turn. Already six or seven may be seen
+weeping, shrieking, yelling, fancying themselves caught
+by the Devil. Had the Ursulines lived in cloisters,
+within high walls, Gauffridi, being their only director,
+might one way or another have made them all agree.
+As in the cloisters of Quesnoy, in 1491, so here also it
+might have happened that the Devil, who gladly takes
+the form of one beloved, had under that of Gauffridi
+made himself lover-general to the nuns. Or rather,
+as in those Spanish cloisters named by Llorente, he
+would have persuaded them that the priestly office
+hallowed those to whom the priest made love, that to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span>
+sin with him, was only to be sanctified. A notion, indeed,
+ripe through France, and even in Paris, where the
+mistresses of priests were called &#8220;the hallowed ones.&#8221;<a name="FNanchor_89_89" id="FNanchor_89_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_89_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a></p>
+
+<p>Did Gauffridi, thus master of all, keep to Madeline
+only? Did not the lover change into the libertine?
+We know not. The sentence points to a nun who
+never showed herself during the trial, but reappeared
+at the end, as having given herself up to the Devil and
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>The Ursuline convent was open to all visitors. The
+nuns were under the charge of their Doctrinaries, men
+of fair character, and jealous withal. The founder
+himself was there, indignant, desperate. How woeful
+a mishap for the rising order, just as it was thriving
+amain and spreading all over France! After all its
+pretensions to wisdom, calmness, good sense, thus
+suddenly to go mad! Romillion would have hushed
+up the matter if he could. He caused one of his
+priests to exorcise the maidens. But the demons
+laughed the exorciser to scorn. He who dwelt in the
+fair damsel, even the noble demon Beelzebub, Spirit
+of Pride, never deigned to unclose his teeth.</p>
+
+<p>Among the possessed was one sister from twenty to
+twenty-five years old, who had been specially adopted
+by Romillion; a girl of good culture, bred up in controversy;
+a Protestant by birth, but left an orphan, to
+fall into the hands of the Father, a convert like herself
+from Protestantism. Her name, Louisa Capeau,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span>sounds plebeian. She showed herself but too clearly
+a girl of exceeding wit, and of a raging passion. Her
+strength, moreover, was fearful to see. For three
+months, in addition to the hellish storm within, she
+carried on a desperate struggle, which would have
+killed the strongest man in a week.</p>
+
+<p>She said she had three devils: Verrine, a good
+Catholic devil, a volatile spirit of the air; Leviathan, a
+wicked devil, an arguer and a Protestant; lastly,
+another, acknowledged by her to be the spirit of
+uncleanness. One other she forgot to name, the
+demon of jealousy.</p>
+
+<p>She bore a savage hate to the little fair-faced damsel,
+the favoured rival, the proud young woman of rank.
+This latter, in one of her fits, had said that she went
+to the Sabbath, where she was made queen, and received
+homage, and gave herself up, but only to the prince&mdash;&#8220;What
+prince?&#8221; To Louis Gauffridi, prince of magicians.</p>
+
+<p>Pierced by this revelation as by a dagger, Louisa
+was too wild to doubt its truth. Mad herself, she
+believed the mad woman&#8217;s story in order to ruin her.
+Her own devil was backed by all the jealous demons.
+The women all exclaimed that Gauffridi was the very
+king of wizards. The report spread everywhere, that
+a great prize had been taken, a priest-king of magicians,
+even the prince of universal magic. Such was
+the dreadful diadem of steel and flame which these
+feminine demons drove into his brow.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Everyone lost his head, even to old Romillion himself.
+Whether from hatred of Gauffridi, or fear of the
+Inquisition, he took the matter out of the bishop&#8217;s
+hands, and brought his two bewitched ones, Louisa and
+Madeline, to the Convent of Sainte-Baume, whose prior
+was the Dominican Micha&euml;lis, papal inquisitor in the
+Pope&#8217;s domain of Avignon, and, as he himself pretended,
+over all Provence. The great point was to get
+them exorcised. But as the two women were obliged
+to accuse Gauffridi, the business ended in making him
+fall into the hands of the Inquisition.</p>
+
+<p>Micha&euml;lis had to preach on Advent Sunday at Aix,
+before the Parliament. He felt how much so striking
+a drama would exalt him. He grasped at it with all
+the eagerness of a barrister in a Criminal Court, when
+a very dramatic murder, or a curious case of adultery
+comes before him.</p>
+
+<p>The right thing in matters of this sort was, to spin
+out the play through Advent, Christmas, Lent, and
+burn no one before the Holy Week, the vigil, as it
+were, of the great day of Easter. Micha&euml;lis kept
+himself for the last act, entrusting the bulk of the
+business to a Flemish Dominican in his service, Doctor
+Dompt, from Louvain, who had already exorcised, was
+well-skilled in fooleries of that nature.</p>
+
+<p>The best thing the Fleming could do, was to do
+nothing. In Louisa, he found a terrible helpmate,
+with thrice as much zeal in her as the Inquisition
+itself, unquenchable in her rage, of a burning eloquence,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span>
+whimsical, and sometimes very odd, but always
+raising a shudder; a very torch of Hell.</p>
+
+<p>The matter was reduced to a public duel between the
+two devils, Louisa and Madeline.</p>
+
+<p>Some simple folk who came thither on a pilgrimage
+to Sainte-Baume, a worthy goldsmith, for instance,
+and a draper, both from Troyes, in Champagne, were
+charmed to see Louisa&#8217;s devil deal such cruel blows at
+the other demons, and give so sound a thrashing to the
+magicians. They wept for joy, and went away thanking
+God.</p>
+
+<p>It is a terrible sight, however, even in the dull wording
+of the Fleming&#8217;s official statement, to look upon
+this unequal strife; to watch the elder woman, the
+strong and sturdy Provencial, come of a race hard as
+the flints of its native Crau, as day after day she stones,
+knocks down, and crushes her young and almost
+childish victim, who, wasted with love and shame, has
+already been fearfully punished by her own distemper,
+her attacks of epilepsy.</p>
+
+<p>The Fleming&#8217;s volume, which, with the additions
+made by Micha&euml;lis, reaches to four hundred pages in
+all, is one condensed epitome of the invectives, threats,
+and insults spewed forth by this young woman in five
+months; interspersed with sermons also, for she used
+to preach on every subject, on the sacraments, on the
+next coming of Antichrist, on the frailty of women,
+and so forth. Thence, on the mention of her devils,
+she fell into the old rage, and renewed twice a-day,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span>
+the execution of the poor little girl; never taking
+breath, never for one minute staying the frightful
+torrent, until at least the other in her wild distraction,
+&#8220;with one foot in hell&#8221;&mdash;to use her own words&mdash;should
+have fallen into a convulsive fit, and begun
+beating the flags with her knees, her body, her swooning
+head.</p>
+
+<p>It must be acknowledged that Louisa herself is a
+trifle mad: no amount of mere knavishness would
+have enabled her to maintain so long a wager. But
+her jealousy points with frightful clearness to every
+opening by which she may prick or rend the sufferer&#8217;s
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>Everything gets turned upside down. This Louisa,
+possessed of the Devil, takes the sacrament whenever
+she pleases. She scolds people of the highest
+authority. The venerable Catherine of France, the
+oldest of the Ursulines, came to see the wonder, asked
+her questions, and at the very outset caught her telling
+a flagrant and stupid falsehood. The impudent woman
+got out of the mess by saying in the name of her evil
+spirit, &#8220;The Devil is the Father of Lies.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A sensible Minorite who was present, took up the
+word and said, &#8220;Now, thou liest.&#8221; Turning to the
+exorcisers, he added, &#8220;Cannot ye make her hold her
+tongue?&#8221; Then he quoted to them the story of one
+Martha, a sham demoniac of Paris. By way of answer,
+she was made to take the communion before him. The
+Devil communicate, the Devil receive the body of God!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span>
+The poor man was bewildered; humbled himself before
+the Inquisition. They were too many for him, so
+he said not another word.</p>
+
+<p>One of Louisa&#8217;s tricks was to frighten the bystanders,
+by saying she could see wizards among them;
+which made every one tremble for himself.</p>
+
+<p>Triumphant over Sainte-Baume, she hits out even
+at Marseilles. Her Flemish exorciser, being reduced
+to the strange part of secretary and bosom-counsellor
+to the Devil, writes, under her dictation, five letters:
+first, to the Capuchins of Marseilles, that they may
+call upon Gauffridi to recant; second, to the same
+Capuchins, that they may arrest Gauffridi, bind him
+fast with a stole, and keep him prisoner in a house of
+her describing; thirdly, several letters to the moderate
+party, to Catherine of France, to the Doctrinal Priests,
+who had declared against her; and then this lewd,
+outrageous termagant ends with insulting her own
+prioress: &#8220;When I left, you bade me be humble and
+obedient. Now take back your own advice.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Her devil Verrine, spirit of air and wind, whispered
+to her some trivial nonsense, words of senseless pride
+which harmed friends and foes, and the Inquisition
+itself. One day she took to laughing at Micha&euml;lis,
+who was shivering at Aix, preaching in a desert while
+all the world was gone to hear strange things at Sainte-Baume.
+&#8220;Micha&euml;lis, you preach away, indeed, but
+you get no further forward; while Louisa has reached,
+has caught hold of the quintessence of all perfection.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This savage joy was mainly caused by her having
+quite conquered Madeline at last. One word had done
+more for her than a hundred sermons: &#8220;Thou shalt
+be burnt.&#8221; Thenceforth in her distraction the young
+girl said whatever the other pleased, and upheld her
+statements in the meanest way. Humbling herself
+before them all, she besought forgiveness of her mother,
+of her superior Romillion, of the bystanders, of Louisa.
+According to the latter, the frightened girl took her
+aside, and begged her to be merciful, not to chasten
+her too much.</p>
+
+<p>The other woman, tender as a rock and merciful as
+a hidden reef, felt that Madeline was now hers, to do
+whatever she might choose. She caught her, folded
+her round, and bedazed her out of what little spirit
+she had left. It was a second enchantment; but all
+unlike that by Gauffridi, a <i>possession</i> by means of
+terror. The poor downtrodden wretch, moving under
+rod and scourge, was pushed onward in a path of exquisite
+suffering which led her to accuse and murder
+the man she loved still.</p>
+
+<p>Had Madeline stood out, Gauffridi would have
+escaped, for every one was against Louisa. Micha&euml;lis
+himself at Aix, eclipsed by her as a preacher, treated
+by her with so much coolness, would have stopped the
+whole business rather than leave the honour of it in
+her hands.</p>
+
+<p>Marseilles supported Gauffridi, being fearful of seeing
+the Inquisition of Avignon pushed into her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span>
+neighbourhood, and one of her own children carried
+off from her threshold. The Bishop and Chapter
+were specially eager to defend their priest, maintaining
+that the whole affair sprang from nothing but a rivalry
+between confessors, nothing but the hatred commonly
+shown by monks towards secular priests.</p>
+
+<p>The Doctrinaries would have quashed the matter.
+They were sore troubled by the noise it made. Some
+of them in their annoyance were ready to give up
+everything and forsake their house.</p>
+
+<p>The ladies were very wroth, especially Madame
+Libertat, the lady of the Royalist leader who had given
+Marseilles up to the King.</p>
+
+<p>The Capuchins whom Louisa had so haughtily commanded
+to seize on Gauffridi, were, like all other of
+the Franciscan orders, enemies of the Dominicans.
+They were jealous of the prominence gained for these
+latter by their demoniac friend. Their wandering life,
+moreover, by throwing them into continual contact
+with the women, brought them a good deal of moral
+business. They had no wish to see too close a scrutiny
+made into the lives of clergymen; and so they also
+took the side of Gauffridi. Demoniacs were not so
+scarce, but that one was easily found and brought
+forward at the first summons. Her devil, obedient to
+the rope-girdle of St. Francis, gainsaid everything said
+by the Dominicans&#8217; devil: it averred&mdash;and the words
+were straightway written down&mdash;that &#8220;Gauffridi was
+no magician at all, and could not therefore be arrested.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They were not prepared for this at Sainte-Baume.
+Louisa seemed confounded. She could only manage
+to say that apparently the Capuchins had not made
+their devil swear to tell the truth: a sorry reply,
+backed up, however, by the trembling Madeline, who,
+like a beaten hound that fears yet another beating, was
+ready for anything, ready even to bite and tear.
+Through her it was that Louisa at such a crisis inflicted
+an awful bite.</p>
+
+<p>She herself merely said that the Bishop was offending
+God unawares. She clamoured against &#8220;the
+wizards of Marseilles&#8221; without naming any one. But
+the cruel, the deadly word was spoken at her command
+by Madeline. A woman who had lost her child two
+years before, was pointed out by her as having throttled
+it. Afraid of being tortured, she fled or hid herself.
+Her husband, her father, went weeping to Sainte-Baume,
+hoping of course to soften the inquisitors. But
+Madeline durst not unsay her words; so she renewed
+the charge.</p>
+
+<p>No one now could feel safe. As soon as the Devil
+came to be accounted God&#8217;s avenger, from the moment
+that people under his dictation began writing the
+names of those who should pass through the fire, every
+one had before him, day and night, the hideous nightmare
+of the stake.</p>
+
+<p>To withstand these bold attempts of the Papal Inquisition,
+Marseilles ought to have been backed up by
+the Parliament of Aix. Unluckily she knew herself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span>
+to be little liked at Aix. That small official town of
+magistrates and nobles was always jealous of the wealth
+and splendour of Marseilles, the Queen of the South.
+On the other hand, the great opponent of Marseilles,
+the Papal Inquisitor, forestalled Gauffridi&#8217;s appeal to
+the Parliament by carrying his own suit thither first.
+This was a body of utter fanatics, headed by some heavy
+nobles, whose wealth had been greatly increased in a
+former century by the massacre of the Vaudois. As
+lay judges, too, they were charmed to see a Papal Inquisitor
+set the precedent of acknowledging that, in a
+matter touching a priest, in a case of witchcraft, the
+Inquisition could not go beyond the preliminary inquiry.
+It was just as though the inquisitors had formally
+laid aside their old pretensions. The people of
+Aix, like those of Bordeaux before them, were also
+bitten by the flattering thought, that these lay-folk
+had been set up by the Church herself as censors and
+reformers of the priestly morals.</p>
+
+<p>In a business where all would needs be strange and
+miraculous, not least among those marvels was it to
+see so raging a demon grow all at once so fair-spoken
+towards the Parliament, so politic and fine-mannered.
+Louisa charmed the Royalists by her praises of the late
+King. Henry IV.&mdash;who would have thought it?&mdash;was
+canonized by the Devil. One morning, without
+any invitation, he broke forth into praises of &#8220;that
+pious and saintly King who had just gone up to
+heaven.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Such an agreement between two old enemies, the
+Parliament and the Inquisition, which latter was
+thenceforth sure of the secular arm, its soldiers, and
+executioner; this and the sending of a commission to
+Sainte-Baume to examine the possessed, take down
+their statements, hear their charges, and impannel a
+jury, made up a frightful business indeed. Louisa
+openly pointed out the Capuchins, Gauffridi&#8217;s champions,
+and proclaimed &#8220;their coming punishment
+<i>temporally</i>&#8221; in their bodies, and in their flesh.</p>
+
+<p>The poor Fathers were sorely bruised. Their devil
+would not whisper one word. They went to find the
+Bishop, and told him that indeed they might not
+refuse to bring Gauffridi forward at Sainte-Baume, in
+obedience to the secular power; but afterwards the
+Bishop and Chapter could claim him back, and replace
+him under the shelter of episcopal justice.</p>
+
+<p>Doubtless they had also reckoned on the agitation
+that would be shown by the two young women at the
+sight of one they loved; on the extent to which even
+the terrible Louisa might be shaken by the reproaches
+of her own heart.</p>
+
+<p>That heart indeed woke up at the guilty one&#8217;s approach:
+for one moment the furious woman seemed to
+grow tender. I know nothing more fiery than her
+prayer for God to save the man she has driven to
+death: &#8220;Great God, I offer thee all the sacrifices that
+have been offered since the world began, that will be
+offered until it ends. All, all, for Lewis. I offer thee<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span>
+all the tears of every saint, all the transports of every
+angel. All, all, for Lewis. Oh, that there were yet
+more souls to reckon up, that so the oblation might
+be all the greater! It should be all for Lewis. O
+God, the Father of Heaven, have pity on Lewis! O
+God the Son, Redeemer of the world, have pity on
+Lewis!&#8221; &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>Bootless pity! baneful as well as bootless! Her
+real desire was that the accused <i>should not harden his
+heart</i>, should plead guilty. In that case by our laws
+he would most assuredly be burnt.</p>
+
+<p>She herself, in short, was worn out, unable to do
+anything more. The inquisitor Micha&euml;lis was so
+humbled by a victory he could not have gained without
+her, so wroth with the Flemish exorciser who had
+become her obedient follower, and let her see into all
+the hidden springs of the tragedy, that he came simply
+to crush Louisa, and save Madeline by substituting
+the one for the other, if he could, in this popular
+drama. This move of his implies some skill, and
+a knowing eye for scenery. The winter and the
+Advent season had been wholly taken up with the acting
+of that awful sibyl, that raging bacchante. In
+the milder days of a Provencial spring, in the season
+of Lent, he would bring upon the scene a more moving
+personage, a demon all womanly, dwelling in a sick
+child, in a fair-haired frightened girl. The nobles and
+the Parliament of Provence would feel an interest in a
+little lady who belonged to an eminent house.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Far from listening to his Flemish agent, Louisa&#8217;s
+follower, Micha&euml;lis shut the door upon him when he
+sought to enter the select council of Parliament-men.
+A Capuchin who also came, on the first words spoken
+by Louisa, cried out, &#8220;Silence, accursed devil!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Gauffridi had arrived at Sainte-Baume,
+where he cut a sorry figure. A man of sense, but
+weak and blameworthy, he foreboded but too truly how
+that kind of popular tragedy would end; and in
+coming to a strait so dreadful, he saw himself forsaken
+and betrayed by the child he loved. He now
+entirely forsook himself. When he was confronted
+with Louisa, she seemed to him like a judge, like one
+of those cruel and subtle schoolmen who judged the
+causes of the Church. To all her questions concerning
+doctrine, he only answered <i>yes</i>, assenting even to
+points most open to dispute; as, for instance, to the
+assumption &#8220;that the Devil in a court of justice might
+be believed on his word and his oath.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This lasted only a week, from the 1st to the 8th
+January. The clergy of Marseilles demanded Gauffridi
+back. His friends, the Capuchins, declared that they
+had found no signs of magic in his room. Four canons
+of Marseilles came with authority to take him, and
+carried him away home.</p>
+
+<p>If Gauffridi had fallen very low, his adversaries had
+not risen much. Even the two inquisitors, Micha&euml;lis
+and the Fleming, were in shameful variance with each
+other. The partiality of the former for Madeline, of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span>
+the latter for Louisa, went beyond mere words, leading
+them into opposite lines of action. That chaos of
+accusations, sermons, revelations, which the Devil had
+dictated by the mouth of Louisa, the Fleming who
+wrote it down maintained to be the very word of God,
+and expressed his fear that somebody might tamper
+with the same. He owned to a great mistrust of his
+chief, Micha&euml;lis, who, he was sore afraid, would so
+amend the papers in behalf of Madeline, as to ensure
+the ruin of Louisa. To guard them to the best of his
+power, he shut himself up in his room and underwent
+a regular siege. Micha&euml;lis, with the Parliament-men
+on his side, could only get at the manuscript by using
+the King&#8217;s name and breaking the door open.</p>
+
+<p>Louisa, afraid of nothing, sought to array the Pope
+against the King. The Fleming carried an appeal to
+the legate at Avignon, against his chief, Micha&euml;lis.
+But the Papal Court had a prudent fear of causing
+scandal by letting one inquisitor accuse another. Lacking
+its support, the Fleming had no resource but to
+submit. To keep him quiet Micha&euml;lis gave him back
+his papers.</p>
+
+<p>Those of Micha&euml;lis, forming a second report, dull
+and nowise comparable with the former, are full of
+nought but Madeline. They played music to try and
+soothe her: care was taken to note down when she ate,
+and when she did not eat. Too much time indeed was
+taken up about her, often in a way but little edifying.
+Strange questions are put to her touching the Magician,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span>
+and what parts of his body might bear the mark
+of the Devil. She herself was examined. This would
+have to be done at Aix by surgeons and doctors; but
+meanwhile, in the height of his zeal, Micha&euml;lis examined
+her at Sainte-Baume, and put down the issue
+of his researches. No matron was called to see her. The
+judges, lay and monkish, agreeing in this one matter,
+and having no fear of each other&#8217;s overlooking, seem
+to have quietly passed over this contempt of outward
+forms.</p>
+
+<p>In Louisa, however, they found a judge. The bold
+woman branded the indecency as with hot iron. &#8220;They
+who were swallowed up by the Flood never behaved so
+ill!... Even of thee, O Sodom, the like was never
+said!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She also averred that Madeline was given over to
+uncleanness. This was the saddest thing of all. In
+her blind joy at being alive, at escaping the flames, or
+else from some cloudy notion that it was her turn now
+to act upon her judges, the poor simpleton would sing
+and dance at times with a shameful freedom, in a coarse,
+indecent way. The old Doctrinal father, Romillion,
+blushed for his Ursuline. Shocked to remark the admiration
+of the men for her long hair, he said that such
+a vanity must be taken from her, be cut away.</p>
+
+<p>In her better moments she was gentle and obedient.</p>
+
+<p>They would have liked to make her a second Louisa;
+but her devils were vain and amorous; not, like the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span>
+other&#8217;s, eloquent and raging. When they wanted her
+to preach, she could only utter sorry things. Micha&euml;lis
+was fain to play out the piece by himself. As chief
+inquisitor, and bound greatly to outdo his Flemish
+underling, he avowed that he had already drawn out of
+this small body a host of six thousand, six hundred,
+and sixty devils: only a hundred still remained. By
+way of convincing the public, he made her throw up
+the charm or spell which by his account she had swallowed,
+and he drew it from her mouth in some slimy
+matter. Who could hold out any longer? Assurance
+itself stood stupefied and convinced.</p>
+
+<p>Madeline was in a fair way to escape: the only
+hindrance was herself. Every moment she would be
+saying something rash, something to arouse the misgivings
+of her judges, and urge them beyond all
+patience. She declared that everything to her recalled
+Gauffridi, that everywhere she saw him present. Nor
+would she hide from them her dreams of love. &#8220;To-night,&#8221;
+she said, &#8220;I was at the Sabbath. To my statue
+all covered with gilding the magicians offered their
+homage. Each of them, in honour thereof, made oblation
+of some blood drawn from his hands with a lancet.
+<i>He</i> was also there, on his knees, a rope round his neck,
+beseeching me to go back and betray him not. I held
+out. Then said he, &#8216;Is there anyone here who would
+die for her?&#8217; &#8216;I,&#8217; said a young man, and he was
+sacrificed by the magician.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>At another time she saw him, and he asked her only
+for one of her fine fair locks. &#8220;And when I refused,
+he said, &#8216;Only the half of one hair.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She swore, however, that she never yielded. But
+one day, the door happening to be open, behold our
+convert running off at the top of her speed to rejoin
+Gauffridi!</p>
+
+<p>They took her again, at least her body. But her
+soul? Micha&euml;lis knew not how to catch that again.
+Luckily he caught sight of her magic ring, which was
+taken off, cut up, destroyed, and thrown into the fire.
+Fancying, moreover, that this perverseness on the part
+of one so gentle was due to unseen wizards who found
+their way into her room, he set there a very substantial
+man at arms, with a sword to slash about him everywhere,
+and cut the invisible imps into pieces.</p>
+
+<p>But the best physic for the conversion of Madeline
+was the death of Gauffridi. On the 5th February, the
+inquisitor went to Aix for his Lent preachings, saw the
+judges, and stirred them up. The Parliament, swiftly
+yielding to such a pressure, sent off to Marseilles an
+order to seize the rash man, who, finding himself so
+well backed by Bishop, Chapter, Capuchins, and all the
+world, had fancied they would never dare so far.</p>
+
+<p>Madeline from one quarter, Gauffridi from another,
+arrived at Aix. She was so disturbed that they were
+forced to bind her. Her disorder was frightful, and all
+were in great perplexity what to do. They bethought
+them at least of one bold way of dealing with this sick<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span>
+child; one of those fearful tricks that throw a woman
+into fits, and sometimes kill her outright. A vicar-general
+of the archbishopric said that the palace contained
+a dark narrow charnel-house, such as you may
+see in the Escurial, and called in Spain a &#8220;rotting vat.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There, in olden days, old bones of unknown dead
+were left to waste away. Into this tomb-like cave the
+trembling girl was led. They exorcised her by putting
+those chilly bones to her face. She did not die of
+fright, but thenceforth gave herself up to their will and
+pleasure; and so they got what they wanted, the death
+of the conscience, the destruction of all that remained
+to her of moral insight and free will.</p>
+
+<p>She became their pliant tool, ready to obey their
+least desire, to flatter them, to try and guess beforehand
+what would give them most pleasure. Huguenots were
+brought before her: she called them names. Confronted
+with Gauffridi, she told forth by heart her grievances
+against him, better than the King&#8217;s own officers could
+have done. This did not prevent her from squalling
+violently, when she was brought to the church to excite
+the people against Gauffridi, by making her devil blaspheme
+in the magician&#8217;s name. Beelzebub speaking
+through her said, &#8220;In the name of Gauffridi I abjure
+God;&#8221; and again, at the lifting up of the Host, &#8220;Let
+the blood of the just be upon me, in the name of
+Gauffridi!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>An awful fellowship indeed! This twofold devil
+condemns one out of the other&#8217;s mouth; whatever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span>
+Madeline says, is ascribed to Gauffridi. And the
+scared crowd were impatient to behold the burning of
+the dumb blasphemer, whose ungodliness so loudly
+declared itself by the voice of the girl.</p>
+
+<p>The exorcisers then put to her this cruel question,
+to which they themselves could have given the best
+answer:&mdash;&#8220;Why, Beelzebub, do you speak so ill of
+your great friend?&#8221; Her answer was frightful: &#8220;If
+there be traitors among men, why not among demons
+also? When I am with Gauffridi, I am his to do all
+his will. But when you constrain me, I betray him
+and turn him to scorn.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>However, she could not keep up this hateful mockery.
+Though the demon of fear and fawning seemed to
+have gotten fast hold of her, there was room still for
+despair. She could no longer take the slightest food;
+and they who for five months had been killing her
+with exorcisms and pretending to relieve her of six or
+seven thousand devils, were fain to admit that she
+longed only to die, and greedily sought after any means
+of self-destruction. Courage alone was wanting to her.
+Once she pricked herself with a lancet, but lacked the
+spirit to persevere. Once she caught up a knife, and
+when that was taken from her, tried to strangle herself.
+She dug needles into her body, and then made
+one last foolish effort to drive a long pin through her
+ear into her head.</p>
+
+<p>What became of Gauffridi? The inquisitor, who
+dwells so long on the two women, says almost nothing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span>
+about him. He walks as it were over the fire. The
+little he does say is very strange. He relates that
+having bound Gauffridi&#8217;s eyes, they pricked him with
+needles all over the body, to find out the callous places
+where the Devil had made his mark. On the removal
+of the bandage, he learned, to his horror and amazement,
+that the needle had thrice been stuck into him
+without his feeling it; so he was marked in three places
+with the sign of Hell. And the inquisitor added, &#8220;If
+we were in Avignon, this man should be burnt to-morrow.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He felt himself a lost man; and defended himself no
+more. His only thought now was to see if he could
+save his life through any of the Dominicans&#8217; foes. He
+wished, he said, to confess himself to the Oratorians.
+But this new order, which might have been called the
+right mean of Catholicism, was too cold and wary to
+take up a matter already so hopeless and so far
+advanced.</p>
+
+<p>Thereon he went back again to the Begging Friars,
+confessing himself to the Capuchins, and acknowledging
+all and more than all the truth, that he might
+purchase life with dishonour. In Spain he would
+assuredly have been enlarged, barring a term of
+penance in some convent. But our Parliaments were
+sterner: they felt bound to prove the greater purity of
+the lay jurisdiction. The Capuchins, themselves a
+little shaky in the matter of morals, were not the people
+to draw the lightning down on their own body. They<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span>
+surrounded Gauffridi, sheltered him, gave him comfort
+day and night; but only in order that he might own
+himself a magician, and so, because magic formed the
+main head of his indictment, the seduction wrought
+by a confessor to the great discredit of the clergy might
+be left entirely in the background.</p>
+
+<p>So his friends the Capuchins, by dint of tender
+caresses and urgent counsel, drew from him the fatal
+confession which, by their showing, was to save his
+soul, but which was very certain to hand his body over
+to the stake.</p>
+
+<p>The man thus lost and done for, they made an end
+with the girls whom it was not their part to burn. A
+farcical scene took place. In a large gathering of the
+clergy and the Parliament, Madeline was made to
+appear, and, in words addressed to herself, her devil
+Beelzebub was summoned to quit the place or else offer
+some opposition. Not caring to do the latter, he went
+off in disgrace.</p>
+
+<p>Then Louisa, with her demon Verrine, was made to
+appear. But before they drove away a spirit so
+friendly to the Church, the monks regaled the Parliamentaries,
+who were new to such things, with the
+clever management of this devil, making him perform
+a curious pantomime. &#8220;How do the Seraphim, the
+Cherubim, the Thrones, behave before God?&#8221; &#8220;A
+hard matter this:&#8221; says Louisa, &#8220;they have no
+bodies.&#8221; But on their repeating the command, she
+made an effort to obey, imitating the flight of the one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span>
+class, the fiery longing of the others; and ending with
+the adoration, when she bowed herself before the
+judges, falling prostrate with her head downwards.
+Then was the far-famed Louisa, so proud and so untamable,
+seen to abase herself, kissing the pavement,
+and with outstretched arms laying all her length
+thereon.</p>
+
+<p>It was a strange, frivolous, unseemly exhibition, by
+which she was made to atone for her terrible success
+among the people. Once more she won the assembly
+by dealing a cruel dagger-stroke at Gauffridi, who
+stood there strongly bound. &#8220;Where,&#8221; said they, &#8220;is
+Beelzebub now, the devil who went out of Madeline?&#8221;
+&#8220;I see him plainly at Gauffridi&#8217;s ear.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Have you had shame and horror enough? We
+should like further to know what the poor wretch said,
+when put to the torture. Both the ordinary and the
+extraordinary forms were used upon him. His revelations
+must undoubtedly have thrown light on the
+curious history of the nunneries. Those tales the
+Parliament stored up with greediness, as weapons that
+might prove serviceable to itself; but it retained them
+&#8220;under the seal of the Court.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The inquisitor Micha&euml;lis, who was fiercely assailed
+in public for an excess of animosity so closely resembling
+jealousy, was summoned by his order to a meeting at
+Paris, and never saw the execution of Gauffridi, who
+was burnt alive four days afterwards, 30th April,
+1611, at Aix.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The name of the Dominicans, damaged by this trial,
+was not much exalted by another case of <i>possession</i>
+got up at Beauvais in such a way as to ensure them
+all the honours of a war, the account of which they
+got printed in Paris. Louisa&#8217;s devil having been reproached
+for not speaking Latin, the new demoniac,
+Denise Lacaille, mingled a few words of it in her gibberish.
+They made a plenty of noise about her, often
+displayed her in the midst of a procession, and even
+carried her from Beauvais to Our Lady of Liesse. But
+the matter kept quite cool. This Picard pilgrimage
+lacked the horror, the dramatic force of the affair at
+Sainte-Baume. This Lacaille, for all her Latin, had
+neither the burning eloquence, nor the mettle, nor the
+fierce rage, that marked the woman of Provence. The
+only end of all her proceedings was to amuse the
+Huguenots.</p>
+
+<p>What became of the two rivals, Madeline and
+Louisa? The former, or at least her shadow, was kept
+on Papal ground, for fear of her being led to speak
+about so mournful a business. She was never shown
+in public, save in the character of a penitent. She
+was taken out among the poor women to cut wood,
+which was afterwards sold for alms; the parents, whom
+she had brought to shame, having forsworn and forsaken
+her.</p>
+
+<p>Louisa, for her part, had said during the trial: &#8220;I
+shall make no boast about it. The trial over, I shall
+soon be dead.&#8221; But this was not to be. Instead of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span>
+dying, she went on killing others. The murdering
+devil within her waxed stormier than ever. She set
+about revealing to the inquisitors the names, both
+Christian and surnames, of all whom she fancied to
+have any dealings with magic; among others a poor
+girl named Honoria, &#8220;blind of both eyes,&#8221; who was
+burnt alive.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;God grant,&#8221; says Father Micha&euml;lis, in conclusion,
+&#8220;that all this may redound to His own glory and to
+that of His Church!&#8221;</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_87_87" id="Footnote_87_87"></a><a href="#FNanchor_87_87"><span class="label">[87]</span></a> St. Francis of Sales, famous for his successful missions
+among the Protestants, and Bishop of Geneva in his later years,
+died in 1622.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_88_88" id="Footnote_88_88"></a><a href="#FNanchor_88_88"><span class="label">[88]</span></a> The Brethren of the Oratory, founded at Rome in 1564.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_89_89" id="Footnote_89_89"></a><a href="#FNanchor_89_89"><span class="label">[89]</span></a> Lestoile, edit. Michaud, p. 561.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2 class="chs"><a name="CHAPTER_VII_2" id="CHAPTER_VII_2"></a>CHAPTER VII.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>THE DEMONIACS OF LOUDUN&mdash;URBAN GRANDIER:
+1632-1634.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="smcap">In</span> the <i>State Memoirs</i>, written by the famous
+Father Joseph, and known to us by extracts only&mdash;the
+work itself having, no doubt, been wisely suppressed
+as too instructive&mdash;the good Father explained how, in
+1633, he had the luck to discover a heresy, a huge
+heresy, in which ever so many confessors and directors
+were concerned. That excellent army of Church-constables,
+those dogs of the Holy Troop, the Capuchins,
+had, not only in the wildernesses, but even in the
+populous parts of France&mdash;at Chartres, in Picardy,
+everywhere&mdash;got scent of some dreadful game; the
+<i>Alumbrados</i> namely, or Illuminate, of Spain, who
+being sorely persecuted there, had fled for shelter into
+France, where, in the world of women, especially among
+the convents, they dropped the gentle poison which
+was afterwards called by the name of Molinos.<a name="FNanchor_90_90" id="FNanchor_90_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a></p>
+
+<p>The wonder was, that the matter had not been
+sooner known. Having spread so far, it could not
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span>have been wholly hidden. The Capuchins swore that
+in Picardy alone, where the girls are weak and warmer-blooded
+than in the South, this amorously mystic folly
+owned some sixty thousand professors. Did all the
+clergy share in it&mdash;all the confessors and directors?
+We must remember, that attached to the official directors
+were a good many laymen, who glowed with
+the same zeal for the souls of women. One of them,
+who afterwards made some noise by his talent and
+boldness, is the author of <i>Spiritual Delights</i>, Desmarets
+of Saint Sorlin.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Without remembering the new state of things, we
+should fail to understand the all-powerful attitude of
+the director towards the nuns, of whom he was now
+a hundred-fold more the master than he had been in
+days of yore.</p>
+
+<p>The reforming movement of the Council of Trent,
+for the better enclosing of monasteries, was not much
+followed up in the reign of Henry IV., when the nuns
+received company, gave balls, danced, and so forth. In
+the reign, however, of Louis XIII., it began afresh
+with greater earnestness. The Cardinal Rochefoucauld,
+or rather the Jesuits who drew him on, insisted on a
+great deal of outward decency. Shall we say, then,
+that all entrance into the convents was forbidden?
+One man only went in every day, not only into the
+house, but also, if he chose, into each of the cells; a
+fact made evident from several known cases, especially<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span>
+that of David at Louviers. By this reform, this closing
+system, the door was shut upon the world at large,
+on all inconvenient rivals, while the director enjoyed
+the sole command of his nuns, the special right of
+private interviews with them.</p>
+
+<p>What would come of this? The speculative might
+treat it as a problem; not so practical men or physicians.
+The physician Wyer tells some plain stories
+to show what did come of it from the sixteenth century
+onwards. In his Fourth Book he quotes a number
+of nuns who went mad for love. And in Book
+III. he talks of an estimable Spanish priest who, going
+by chance into a nunnery, came out mad, declaring
+that the brides of Jesus were his also, brides of the
+priest, who was a vicar of Jesus. He had masses said
+in return for the favour which God had granted him in
+this speedy marriage with a whole convent.</p>
+
+<p>If this was the result of one passing visit, we may
+understand the plight of a director of nuns when he
+was left alone with them, and could take advantage of
+the new restrictions to spend the day among them,
+listening hour by hour to the perilous secret of their
+languishings and their weaknesses.</p>
+
+<p>In the plight of these girls the mere senses are not
+all in all. Allowance must be made for their listlessness
+of mind; for the absolute need of some change in
+their way of life; of some dream or diversion to relieve
+their lifelong monotony. Strange things are happening
+constantly at this period. Travels, events in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span>
+Indies, the discovery of a world, the invention of
+printing: what romance there is everywhere! While
+all this goes on without, putting men&#8217;s minds into a
+flutter, how, think you, can those within bear up
+against the oppressive sameness of monastic life&mdash;the
+irksomeness of its lengthy services, seasoned by
+nothing better than a sermon preached through the
+nose?</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The laity themselves, living amidst so many distractions,
+desire, nay insist, that their confessors shall absolve
+them for their acts of inconstancy. The priests,
+on their side, are drawn or forced on, step by step.
+There grows up a vast literature, at once various and
+learned, of casuistry, of the art of allowing all things;
+a progressive literature, in which the indulgence of to-night
+seems to become the severity of the morrow.</p>
+
+<p>This casuistry was meant for the world; that mysticism
+for the convent. The annihilation of the person
+and the death of the will form the great mystic principle.
+The true moral bearings of that principle are
+well shown by Desmarets. &#8220;The devout,&#8221; he says,
+&#8220;having offered up and annihilated their own selves,
+exist no longer but in God. <i>Thenceforth they can do
+no wrong.</i> The better part of them is so divine that it
+no longer knows what the other is doing.&#8221;<a name="FNanchor_91_91" id="FNanchor_91_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_91_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span></p>
+<p>It might have been thought that the zealous Joseph
+who had raised so loud a cry of alarm against these
+corrupt teachers, would have gone yet further; that a
+grand searching inquiry would have taken place; that
+the countless host whose number, in one province
+only, were reckoned at sixty thousand, would be found
+out and closely examined. But not so: they disappear,
+and nothing more is known about them. A few, it is
+said, were imprisoned; but trial there was none: only
+a deep silence. To all appearance Richelieu cared but
+little about fathoming the business. In his tenderness
+for the Capuchins he was not so blind as to follow their
+lead in a matter which would have thrown the supervision
+of all confessors into their hands.</p>
+
+<p>As a rule, the monks had a jealous dislike of the
+secular clergy. Entire masters of the Spanish women,
+they were too dirty to be relished by those of France;
+who preferred going to their own priests or to some
+Jesuit confessor, an amphious creature, half monk,
+half worldling. If Richelieu had once let loose the pack
+of Capuchins, Recollects, Carmelites, Dominicans, &amp;c.,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span>who among the clergy would have been safe? What
+director, what priest, however upright, but had used,
+and used amiss, the gentle language of the Quietists
+towards their penitents?</p>
+
+<p>Richelieu took care not to trouble the clergy, while
+he was already bringing about the General Assembly
+from which he was soon to ask a contribution towards
+the war. One trial alone was granted the monks, the
+trial of a vicar, but a vicar who dealt in magic; a
+trial wherein matters were allowed, as in the case of
+Gauffridi, to get so entangled, that no confessor, no
+director, saw his own likeness there, but everyone in
+full security could say, &#8220;This is not I.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Thanks to these strict precautions the Grandier
+affair is involved in some obscurity.<a name="FNanchor_92_92" id="FNanchor_92_92"></a><a href="#Footnote_92_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a> Its historian,
+the Capuchin Tranquille, proves convincingly that
+Grandier was a wizard, and, still more, a devil; and on
+the trial he is called, as Ashtaroth might have been
+called, <i>Grandier of the Dominations</i>. On the other
+hand, M&eacute;nage is ready to rank him with great men
+accused of magic, with the martyrs of free thought.</p>
+
+<p>In order to see a little more clearly, we must not set
+Grandier by himself; we must keep his place in the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span>devilish trilogy of those times, in which he figured
+only as a second act; we must explain him by the
+first act, already shown to us in the dreadful business
+of Sainte-Baume, and the death of Gauffridi; we must
+explain him by the third act, by the affair at Louviers,
+which copied Loudun, as Loudun had copied Sainte-Baume,
+and which in its turn owned a Gauffridi and
+an Urban Grandier.</p>
+
+<p>The three cases are one and selfsame. In each case
+there is a libertine priest, in each a jealous monk, and
+a frantic nun by whose mouth the Devil is made to
+speak; and in all three the priest gets burnt at last.</p>
+
+<p>And here you may notice one source of light which
+makes these matters clearer to our eyes than if we saw
+them through the miry shades of a monastery in Spain
+or Italy. In those lands of Southern laziness, the nuns
+were astoundingly passive, enduring the life of the
+seraglio and even worse.<a name="FNanchor_93_93" id="FNanchor_93_93"></a><a href="#Footnote_93_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a> Our French women, on the
+contrary, gifted with a personality at once strong,
+lively, and hard to please, were equally dreadful in
+their jealousy and in their hate; and being devils indeed
+without metaphor, were accordingly rash, blusterous,
+and prompt to accuse. Their revelations were
+very plain, so plain indeed at the last, that everyone
+felt ashamed; and after thirty years and three special
+cases, the whole thing, begun as it was through terror,
+got fairly extinguished in its own dulness beneath
+hisses of general disgust.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span></p>
+<p>It was not in Loudun, amidst crowds of Poitevins,
+in the presence of so many scoffing Huguenots, in the
+very town where they held their great national synods,
+that one would have looked for an event so discreditable
+to the Catholics. But these latter, living, as it were, in
+a conquered country,<a name="FNanchor_94_94" id="FNanchor_94_94"></a><a href="#Footnote_94_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a> in the old Protestant towns,
+with the greatest freedom, and thinking, not without
+cause, of the people they had often massacred and but
+lately overcome, were not the persons to say a word
+about it. Catholic Loudun, composed of magistrates,
+priests, monks, a few nobles, and some workmen,
+dwelled aloof from the rest, like a true conquering settlement.
+This settlement, as one might easily guess,
+was rent in twain by the rivalry of the priests and the
+monks.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The monks, being numerous and proud, as men specially
+sent forth to make converts, kept the pick of the
+pavement against the Protestants, and were confessing
+the Catholic ladies, when there arrived from Bordeaux
+a young vicar, brought up by the Jesuits, a man of
+letters, of pleasing manners, who wrote well and spoke
+better. He made a noise in the pulpit, and ere long
+in the world. By birth a townsman of Mantes, of a
+wrangling turn, he was Southern by education, with all
+the readiness of a Bordelais, boastful and frivolous as a
+Gascon. He soon managed to set the whole town by
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span>the ears, drawing the women to his side, while the
+men were mostly against him. He became lofty, insolent,
+unbearable, devoid of respect for everything. The
+Carmelites he overwhelmed with jibes; he would rail
+away from his pulpit against monks in general. They
+choked with rage at his sermons. Proud and stately,
+he went along the streets of Loudun like a Father of
+the Church; but by night he would steal, with less of
+bluster, down the byeways and through back-doors.</p>
+
+<p>They all surrendered themselves to his pleasure.
+The wife of the Crown Counsel was aware of his
+charms; still more so the daughter of the Public
+Prosecutor, who had a child by him. This did not
+satisfy him. Master of the ladies, this conqueror
+pushed his advantage until he had gained the nuns.</p>
+
+<p>By that time the Ursulines abounded everywhere,
+sisters devoted to education, feminine missionaries in a
+Protestant land, who courted and pleased the mothers,
+while they won over the little girls. The nuns of
+Loudun formed a small convent of young ladies, poor
+and well-born. The convent in itself was poor, the
+nuns for whom it was founded, having been granted
+nothing but their house, an old Huguenot college.
+The prioress, a lady of good birth and high connections,
+burned to exalt her nunnery, to enlarge it, make
+it wealthier and wider known. Perhaps she would
+have chosen Grandier, as being then the fashion, had she
+not already gotten for her director a priest with very
+different rootage in the country, a near kinsman of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span>
+two chief magistrates. The Canon Mignon, as he was
+called, held the prioress fast. These two were enraged
+at learning through the confessional&mdash;the &#8220;Ladies
+Superior&#8221; might confess their nuns&mdash;that the young
+nuns dreamed of nothing but this Grandier, of whom
+there was so much talk.</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon three parties, the threatened director,
+the cheated husband, the outraged father, joined together
+by a common jealousy, swore together the
+destruction of Grandier. To ensure success, they only
+needed to let him go on. He was ruining himself
+quite fast enough. An incident that came to light
+made noise enough almost to bring down the town.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The nuns placed in that old Huguenot mansion,
+were far from easy in their minds. Their boarders,
+children of the town, and perhaps also some of the
+younger nuns, had amused themselves with frightening
+the rest by playing at ghosts and apparitions. Little
+enough of order was there among this throng of rich
+spoilt girls. They would run about the passages at
+night, until they frightened themselves. Some of
+them were sick, or else sick at heart. But these fears
+and fancies mingled with the gossip of the town, of
+which they heard but too much during the day, until
+the ghost by night took the form of Grandier himself.
+Several said they saw him, felt him near them in the
+night, and yielded unawares to his bold advances.
+Was all this fancy, or the fun of novices? Had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span>
+Grandier bribed the porteress or ventured to climb
+the walls? This part of the business was never
+cleared up.</p>
+
+<p>From that time the three felt sure of catching him.
+And first, among the small folk under their protection,
+they stirred up two good souls to declare that they
+could no longer keep as vicar a profligate, a wizard, a
+devil, a freethinker, who bent one knee in church
+instead of two, who scoffed at rules and granted dispensations
+contrary to the rights of the Bishop. A shrewd
+accusation, which turned against him his natural defender,
+the Bishop of Poitiers, and delivered him over
+to the fury of the monks.</p>
+
+<p>To say truth, all this was planned with much skill.
+Besides raising up two poor people as accusers, they
+thought it advisable to have him cudgelled by a noble.
+In those days of duelling a man who let himself be
+cudgelled with impunity lost ground with the public,
+and sank in the esteem of the women. Grandier deeply
+felt the blow. Fond of making a noise in all cases, he
+went to the King, threw himself on his knees, and besought
+vengeance for the insult to his gown. From so
+devout a king he might have gained it; but here there
+chanced to be some persons who told the King that it
+was all an affair of love, the fury of a betrayed husband
+wreaking itself on his foe.</p>
+
+<p>At the spiritual court of Poitiers, Grandier was condemned
+to do penance, to be banished from Loudun,
+and disgraced as a priest. But the civil court took up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span>
+the matter and found him innocent. He had still to
+await the orders of him by whom Poitiers was spiritually
+overruled, Sourdis, Archbishop of Bordeaux.
+That warlike prelate, an admiral and brave sailor more
+than a priest, shrugged his shoulders on hearing of
+such peccadilloes. He acquitted the vicar, but at the
+same time wisely recommended him to go and live
+anywhere out of Loudun.</p>
+
+<p>This the proud man did not care to do. He wanted
+to enjoy his triumph on the very field of battle, to
+show off before the ladies. He came back to Loudun
+in broad day, with mighty noise; the women all looking
+out of window, as he went by with a laurel-branch
+in his hand.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Not satisfied with that piece of folly, he began to
+threaten, to demand reparation. Thus pushed and
+imperilled in their turn, his enemies called to remembrance
+the affair of Gauffridi, where the Devil, the
+Father of Lies, was restored to his honours and accepted
+in a court of justice as a right truthful witness,
+worthy of belief on the side of the Church, worthy of
+belief on the side of His Majesty&#8217;s servants. In despair
+they invoked a devil and found one at their command.
+He showed himself among the Ursulines.</p>
+
+<p>A dangerous thing; but then, how many were nearly
+concerned in its success! The prioress saw her poor
+humble convent suddenly attracting the gaze of the
+Court, of the provinces, of all the world. The monks<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span>
+saw themselves victorious over their rivals the priests.
+They pictured anew those popular battles waged
+with the Devil in a former century, and often, as at
+Soissons, before the church doors; the terror of the
+people, and their joy at the triumph of the Good
+Spirit; the confession drawn from the Devil touching
+God&#8217;s presence in the Sacrament; and the humiliation
+of the Huguenots at being refuted by the Demon himself.</p>
+
+<p>In these tragi-comedies the exorciser represented
+God, or at any rate the Archangel, overthrowing the
+dragon. He came down from the platform in utter
+exhaustion, streaming with sweat, but victorious, to be
+borne away in the arms of the crowd, amidst the
+blessings of good women who shed tears of joy the
+while.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore it was that in these trials a dash of witchcraft
+was always needful. The Devil alone roused the
+interest of the vulgar. They could not always see
+him coming out of a body in the shape of a black
+toad, as at Bordeaux in 1610. But it was easy to
+make it up to them by a grand display of splendid
+stage scenery. The affair of Provence owed much of
+its success to Madeline&#8217;s desolate wildness and the
+terror of Sainte-Baume. Loudun was regaled with
+the uproar and the bacchanal frenzy of a host of exorcisers
+distributed among several churches. Lastly,
+Louviers, as we shall presently see, put a little new life
+into this fading fashion by inventing midnight scenes,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span>
+in which the demons who possessed the nuns began
+digging by the glimmer of torches, until they drew
+forth certain charms from the holes wherein they had
+been concealed.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The Loudun business began with the prioress and
+a lay sister of hers. They had convulsive fits, and
+talked infernal gibberish. Other of the nuns began
+copying them, one bold girl especially taking up
+Louisa&#8217;s part at Marseilles, with the same devil Leviathan,
+the leading demon of trickery and evil speaking.</p>
+
+<p>The little town was all in a tremble. Monks of
+every hue provided themselves with nuns, shared them
+all round, and exorcised them by threes and fours.
+The churches were parcelled out among them; the
+Capuchins alone taking two for themselves. The
+crowd go after them, swollen by all the women in the
+place, and in this frightened audience, throbbing with
+anxiety, more than one cries out that she, too, is feeling
+the devils.<a name="FNanchor_95_95" id="FNanchor_95_95"></a><a href="#Footnote_95_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a> Six girls of the town are possessed.
+And the bare recital of these alarming events begets
+two new cases of possession at Chinon.</p>
+
+<p>Everywhere the thing was talked of, at Paris, at the
+Court. Our Spanish queen,<a name="FNanchor_96_96" id="FNanchor_96_96"></a><a href="#Footnote_96_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a> who is imaginative and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span>devout, sends off her almoner; nay more, sends her
+faithful follower, the old papist, Lord Montague, who
+sees, who believes everything, and reports it all to the
+Pope. It is a miracle proven. He had seen the
+wounds on a certain nun, and the marks made by the
+Devil on the Lady Superior&#8217;s hands.</p>
+
+<p>What said the King of France to this? All his
+devotion was turned on the Devil, on hell, on thoughts
+of fear. It is said that Richelieu was glad to keep him
+thus. I doubt it; the demons were essentially Spanish,
+taking the Spanish side: if ever they talked politics,
+they must have spoken against Richelieu. Perhaps
+he was afraid of them. At any rate, he did them
+homage, and sent his niece to prove the interest he
+took in the matter.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The Court believed, but Loudun itself did not. Its
+devils, but sorry imitators of the Marseilles demons,
+rehearsed in the morning what they had learnt the
+night before from the well-known handbook of Father
+Micha&euml;lis. They would never have known what to
+say but for the secret exorcisms, the careful rehearsal
+of the day&#8217;s farce, by which night after night they
+were trained to figure before the people.</p>
+
+<p>One sturdy magistrate, bailiff of the town, made a
+stir: going himself to detect the knaves, he threatened
+and denounced them. Such, too, was the tacit
+opinion of the Archbishop of Bordeaux, to whom
+Grandier appealed. He despatched a set of rules for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span>
+the guidance at least of the exorcisers, for putting a
+stop to their arbitrary doings; and, better still, he
+sent his surgeon, who examined the girls, and found
+them to be neither bewitched, nor mad, nor even sick.
+What were they then? Knaves, to be sure.<a name="FNanchor_97_97" id="FNanchor_97_97"></a><a href="#Footnote_97_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a></p>
+
+<p>So through the century keeps on this noble duel
+between the Physician and the Devil, this battle of
+light and knowledge with the dark shades of falsehood.
+We saw its beginning in Agrippa and Wyer. Doctor
+Duncan carried it bravely on at Loudun, and fearlessly
+impressed on others the belief that this affair was
+nothing but a farce.</p>
+
+<p>For all his alleged resistance, the Demon was frightened,
+held his tongue, quite lost his voice. But people&#8217;s
+passions had been too fiercely roused for the matter to
+end there. The tide flowed again so strongly in favour
+of Grandier, that the assailed became in their turn
+assailants. An apothecary of kin to the accusers was
+sued by a rich young lady of the town for speaking of
+her as the vicar&#8217;s mistress. He was condemned to
+apologise for his slander.</p>
+
+<p>The prioress was a lost woman. It would have been
+easy to prove, what one witness afterwards saw, that
+the marks upon her were made with paint renewed
+daily. But she was kinswoman to one of the King&#8217;s
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span>judges, Laubardemont, and he saved her. He was
+simply charged to overthrow the strong places of
+Loudun. He got himself commissioned to try Grandier.
+The Cardinal was given to understand that the
+accused was vicar and friend of the <i>Loudun shoemaker</i>,<a name="FNanchor_98_98" id="FNanchor_98_98"></a><a href="#Footnote_98_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a>
+was one of the numerous agents of Mary
+of Medici, had made himself his parishioner&#8217;s secretary,
+and written a disgraceful pamphlet in her name.</p>
+
+<p>Richelieu, for his part, would have liked to show a
+high-minded scorn of the whole business, if he could
+have done so with safety to himself. The Capuchins
+and Father Joseph had an eye to that also. Richelieu
+would have given them a fine handle against him with
+the King, had he displayed a want of zeal. One
+Quillet, after much grave reflection, went to see the
+Minister and give him warning. But the other, afraid
+to listen, regarded him with so stern a gaze that the
+giver of advice deemed it prudent to seek shelter in
+Italy.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Laubardemont arrived at Loudun on the 6th December,
+1633, bringing along with him great fear, and
+unbounded powers; even those of the King himself.
+The whole strength of the kingdom became, as it were,
+a dreadful bludgeon to crush one little fly.</p>
+
+<p>The magistrates were wroth; the civic lieutenant
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span>warned Grandier that he would have to arrest him on
+the morrow. The latter paid no heed to him, and was
+arrested accordingly. In a moment he was carried off,
+without form of trial, to the dungeons of Angers. Presently
+he was taken back and thrown, where think
+you? Into the house, the room of one of his enemies,
+who had the windows walled up so as well-nigh to
+choke him. The loathsome scrutiny of the wizard&#8217;s
+body, in order to find out the Devil&#8217;s marks by sticking
+needles all over it, was carried on by the hands of the
+accusers themselves, who took their revenge upon him
+beforehand in the foretaste thus given him of his future
+punishment.</p>
+
+<p>They led him to the churches, confronted him with
+the girls, who had got their cue from Laubardemont.
+These Bacchanals, for such they became under the
+fuddling effect of some drugs administered by the condemned
+apothecary above-named, flung out in such
+frantic rages, that Grandier was nearly perishing one
+day beneath their nails.</p>
+
+<p>Unable to imitate the eloquence of the Marseilles
+demoniac, they tried obscenity in its stead. It was a
+hideous thing to see these girls give full vent in public
+to their sensual fury, on the plea of scolding their
+pretended devils. Thus indeed it was that they
+managed to swell their audiences. People flocked to
+hear from the lips of these women what no woman
+would else have dared to utter.</p>
+
+<p>As the matter grew more hateful, so it also grew<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span>
+more laughable. They were sure to repeat all awry
+what little Latin was ever whispered to them. The
+public found that the devils had never gone through
+<i>their lower classes</i>. The Capuchins, however, coolly
+said that if these demons were weak in Latin, they
+were marvellous speakers of Iroquois and Tupinambi.<a name="FNanchor_99_99" id="FNanchor_99_99"></a><a href="#Footnote_99_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>A farce so shameful, seen from a distance of sixty
+leagues, from St. Germain or the Louvre, appeared
+miraculous, awful, terrifying. The Court admired and
+trembled. Richelieu to please them did a cowardly
+thing. He ordered money to be paid to the exorcisers,
+to the nuns.</p>
+
+<p>The height of favour to which they had risen, drove
+the plotters altogether mad. Senseless words were
+followed by shameful deeds. Pleading that the nuns
+were tired, the exorcisers got them outside the town,
+took them about by themselves. One of them, at least
+to all appearance, returned pregnant. In the fifth or
+sixth month all outward trace of it disappeared, and
+the devil within her acknowledged how wickedly he
+had slandered the poor nun by making her look so
+large. This tale concerning Loudun we learn from the
+historian of Louviers.<a name="FNanchor_100_100" id="FNanchor_100_100"></a><a href="#Footnote_100_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is stated that Father Joseph, after a secret journey
+to the spot, saw to what end the matter was coming,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span>and noiselessly backed out of it. The Jesuits also
+went, tried their exorcisms, did next to nothing, got
+scent of the general feeling, and stole off in like
+manner.</p>
+
+<p>But the monks, the Capuchins, were gone so far,
+that they could only save themselves by frightening
+others. They laid some treacherous snares for the
+daring bailiff and his wife, seeking to destroy them,
+and thereby quench the coming reaction of justice.
+Lastly, they urged on the commissioners to despatch
+Grandier. Things could be carried no further: the
+nuns themselves were slipping out of their hands.
+After that dreadful orgie of sensual rage and immodest
+shouting in order to obtain the shedding of human
+blood, two or three of them swooned away, were seized
+with disgust and horror; vomited up their very selves.
+Despite the hideous doom that awaited them if
+they spoke the truth, despite the certainty of ending
+their days in a dungeon, they owned in church that
+they were damned, that they had been playing with
+the Devil, and Grandier was innocent.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>They ruined themselves, but could not stay the
+issue. A general protest by the town to the King
+failed to stay it also. On the 18th August, 1634,
+Grandier was condemned to the stake. So violent
+were his enemies that, for the second time before
+burning him, they insisted on having him stuck with
+needles in order to find out the Devil&#8217;s marks. One<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span>
+of his judges would have had even his nails torn out
+of him, had not the surgeon withheld his leave.</p>
+
+<p>They were afraid of the last words their victim might
+say on the scaffold. Among his papers there had
+been found a manuscript condemning the celibacy of
+priests, and those who called him a wizard themselves
+believed him to be a freethinker. They remembered
+the brave words which the martyrs of free thought had
+thrown out against their judges; they called to mind
+the last speech of Giordano Bruno, the bold defiance of
+Vanini.<a name="FNanchor_101_101" id="FNanchor_101_101"></a><a href="#Footnote_101_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a> So they agreed with Grandier, that if he
+were prudent, he should be saved from burning, perhaps
+be strangled. The weak priest, being a man of
+flesh, yielded to this demand of the flesh, and promised
+to say nothing. He spoke not a word on the road,
+nor yet upon the scaffold. When he was fairly fastened
+to the post, with everything ready, and the fire so
+arranged as to enfold him swiftly in smoke and flames,
+his own confessor, a monk, set the faggots ablaze without
+waiting for the executioner. The victim, pledged to
+silence, had only time to say, &#8220;So, you have deceived
+me!&#8221; when the flames whirled fiercely upwards, and
+the furnace of pain began, and nothing was audible
+save the wretch&#8217;s screams.</p>
+
+<p>Richelieu in his Memoirs says little, and that with
+evident shame, concerning this affair. He gives one
+to believe that he only followed the reports that reached
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span>him, the voice of general opinion. Nevertheless, by
+rewarding the exorcisers, by throwing the reins to the
+Capuchins, and letting them triumph over France, he
+gave no slight encouragement to that piece of knavery.
+Gauffridi, thus renewed in Grandier, is about to reappear
+in yet fouler plight in the Louviers affair.</p>
+
+<p>In this very year, 1634, the demons hunted from
+Poitou pass over into Normandy, copying again and
+again the fooleries of Sainte-Baume, without any trace
+of invention, of talent, or of imagination. The frantic
+Leviathan of Provence, when counterfeited at Loudun,
+loses his Southern sting, and only gets out of a scrape
+by talking fluently to virgins in the language of Sodom.
+Presently, alas! at Louviers he loses even his old
+daring, imbibes the sluggish temper of the North, and
+sinks into a sorry sprite.<a name="FNanchor_102_102" id="FNanchor_102_102"></a><a href="#Footnote_102_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a></p>
+
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_90_90" id="Footnote_90_90"></a><a href="#FNanchor_90_90"><span class="label">[90]</span></a> Molinos, born at Saragossa in 1627, died a prisoner to the
+Inquisition in 1696. His followers were called Quietists.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_91_91" id="Footnote_91_91"></a><a href="#FNanchor_91_91"><span class="label">[91]</span></a> An old doctrine which often turns up again in the Middle
+Ages. In the seventeenth century it prevails among the convents
+of France and Spain. A Norman angel, in the Louviers
+business, teaches a nun to despise the body and disregard the
+flesh, after the example of Jesus, who bared himself for a
+scourging before all the people. He enforces an utter surrendering
+of the soul and the will by the example of the Virgin,
+&#8220;who obeyed the angel Gabriel and conceived, without risk of
+evil, for impurity could not come of a spirit.&#8221; At Louviers,
+David, an old director of some authority, taught &#8220;that sin
+could be killed by sin, as the better way of becoming innocent
+again.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_92_92" id="Footnote_92_92"></a><a href="#FNanchor_92_92"><span class="label">[92]</span></a> The <i>History of the Loudun Devils</i>, by the Protestant Aubin,
+is an earnest, solid book, confirmed by the <i>Reports</i> of Laubardemont
+himself. That of the Capuchin Tranquille is a piece of
+grotesquerie. The <i>Proceedings</i> are in the Great Library of Paris.
+M. Figuier has given a long and excellent account of the whole
+affair, in his <i>History of the Marvellous</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_93_93" id="Footnote_93_93"></a><a href="#FNanchor_93_93"><span class="label">[93]</span></a> See Del Rio, Llorente Ricci, &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_94_94" id="Footnote_94_94"></a><a href="#FNanchor_94_94"><span class="label">[94]</span></a> The capture of Rochelle, the last of the Huguenot strongholds
+took place in 1628.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_95_95" id="Footnote_95_95"></a><a href="#FNanchor_95_95"><span class="label">[95]</span></a> The same hysteric contagion marks the &#8220;Revivals&#8221; of a
+later period, down to the last mad outbreak in Ireland. The
+translator hopes some day to work out the physical question
+here stated.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_96_96" id="Footnote_96_96"></a><a href="#FNanchor_96_96"><span class="label">[96]</span></a> Anne of Austria, wife of Louis XIII.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_97_97" id="Footnote_97_97"></a><a href="#FNanchor_97_97"><span class="label">[97]</span></a> Not of necessity knaves, Mr. Michelet; at least not wilfully
+so; but silly hysteric patients, of the spirit-rapping,
+revivalist order, victims of nervous derangement, or undue
+nervous sensibility.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_98_98" id="Footnote_98_98"></a><a href="#FNanchor_98_98"><span class="label">[98]</span></a> A woman named Hammon, of low birth, who entered the
+service, and rose high in the good graces of Mary of Medici.
+See Dumas&#8217; <i>Celebrated Crimes</i>.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_99_99" id="Footnote_99_99"></a><a href="#FNanchor_99_99"><span class="label">[99]</span></a> Indians of the coast of Brazil.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_100_100" id="Footnote_100_100"></a><a href="#FNanchor_100_100"><span class="label">[100]</span></a> Esprit de Bosroger, p. 135.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_101_101" id="Footnote_101_101"></a><a href="#FNanchor_101_101"><span class="label">[101]</span></a> Both Neapolitans, burnt alive, the former at Venice in
+1600, the latter at Toulouse in 1619.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_102_102" id="Footnote_102_102"></a><a href="#FNanchor_102_102"><span class="label">[102]</span></a> Wright and Dumas both differ from M. Michelet in their
+view of Urban Grandier&#8217;s character. The latter especially,
+regards him as an innocent victim to his own fearlessness and
+the hate of his foes, among whom not the least deadly was
+Richelieu himself, who bore him a deep personal grudge.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<h2 class="chs"><a name="CHAPTER_VIII_2" id="CHAPTER_VIII_2"></a>CHAPTER VIII.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>THE DEMONIACS OF LOUVIERS&mdash;MADELINE BAVENT:
+1633-1647.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="smcap">Had</span> Richelieu allowed the inquiry demanded by Father
+Joseph into the doings of the Illuminate Confessors,
+some strange light would have been thrown into the
+depth of the cloisters, on the daily life of the nuns.
+Failing that, we may still learn from the Louviers
+story, which is far more instructive than those of Aix
+and Loudun, that, notwithstanding the new means of
+corruption furnished by Illuminism, the director still
+resorted to the old trickeries of witchcraft, of apparitions,
+heavenly or infernal, and so forth.<a name="FNanchor_103_103" id="FNanchor_103_103"></a><a href="#Footnote_103_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a></p>
+
+<p>Of the three directors successively appointed to the
+Convent of Louviers in the space of thirty years, David,
+the first, was an Illuminate, who forestalled Molinos;
+the second, Picart, was a wizard dealing with the Devil;
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span>and Boull&eacute;, the third, was a wizard working in the
+guise of an angel.</p>
+
+<p>There is an excellent book about this business; it is
+called <i>The History of Magdalen Bavent</i>, a nun of
+Louviers; with her Examination, &amp;c., 1652: Rouen.<a name="FNanchor_104_104" id="FNanchor_104_104"></a><a href="#Footnote_104_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a>
+The date of this book accounts for the thorough
+freedom with which it was written. During the wars
+of the Fronde, a bold Oratorian priest, who discovered
+the nun in one of the Rouen prisons, took courage
+from her dictation to write down the story of her
+life.</p>
+
+<p>Born at Rouen in 1607, Madeline was left an
+orphan at nine years old. At twelve she was apprenticed
+to a milliner. The confessor, a Franciscan,
+held absolute sway in the house of this milliner, who
+as maker of clothes for the nuns, was dependent on
+the Church. The monk caused the apprentices, whom
+he doubtless made drunk with belladonna and other
+magical drinks, to believe that they had been taken to
+the Sabbath and there married to the devil Dagon.
+Three were already possessed by him, and Madeline at
+fourteen became the fourth.</p>
+
+<p>She was a devout worshipper, especially of St.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span>Francis. A Franciscan monastery had just been
+founded at Louviers, by a lady of Rouen, widow of
+lawyer Hennequin, who was hanged for cheating. She
+hoped by this good deed of hers to help in saving her
+husband&#8217;s soul. To that end she sought counsel of a
+holy man, the old priest David, who became director
+to the new foundation. Standing at the entrance of
+the town, with a wood surrounding it, this convent,
+born of so tragical a source, seemed quite gloomy and
+poor enough for a place of stern devotion. David was
+known as author of a <i>Scourge for Rakes</i>, an odd and
+violent book against the abuses that defiled the
+Cloister.<a name="FNanchor_105_105" id="FNanchor_105_105"></a><a href="#Footnote_105_105" class="fnanchor">[105]</a> All of a sudden this austere person took
+up some very strange ideas concerning purity. He
+became an Adamite, preached up the nakedness of
+Adam in his days of innocence. The docile nuns of
+Louviers sought to subdue and abase the novices, to
+break them into obedience, by insisting&mdash;of course in
+summer-time&mdash;that these young Eves should return to
+the plight of their common mother. In this state they
+were sent out for exercise in some secluded gardens,
+and were taken into the chapel itself. Madeline, who
+at sixteen had come to be received as a novice, was too
+proud, perhaps in those days too pure also, to submit
+to so strange a way of life. She got an angry scolding
+for having tried at communion to hide her bosom with
+the altar-cloth.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span></p>
+<p>Not less unwilling was she to uncover her soul, to
+confess to the Lady Superior, after the usual monastic
+custom of which the abbesses were particularly fond.
+She would rather trust herself with old David, who kept
+her apart from the rest. He himself confided his own
+ailments into her ear. Nor did he hide from her his
+inner teaching, the Illuminism, which governed the
+convent: &#8220;You must kill sin by being made humble
+and lost to all sense of pride through sin.&#8221; Madeline
+was frightened at the depths of depravity reached by
+the nuns, who quietly carried out the teaching with
+which they had been imbued. She avoided their company,
+kept to herself, and succeeded in getting made
+one of the doorkeepers.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>David died when she was eighteen. Old age prevented
+his going far with the girl. But the vicar
+Picart, who succeeded him, was furious in his pursuit
+of her; at the confessional spoke to her only of his
+love. He made her his sextoness, that he might meet
+her alone in chapel. She liked him not; but the nuns
+forbade her to have another confessor, lest she might
+divulge their little secrets. And thus she was given
+over to Picart. He beset her when she was sick almost
+to death; seeking to frighten her by insisting that
+from David he had received some infernal prescriptions.
+He sought to win her compassion by feigning illness
+and begging her to come and see him. Thenceforth
+he became her master, upset her mind with magic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span>
+potions, and worked her into believing that she had
+gone with him to the Sabbath, there to officiate as altar
+and victim. At length, exceeding even the Sabbath
+usages and daring the scandal that would follow, he
+made her to be with child.</p>
+
+<p>The nuns were afraid of one who knew the state of
+their morals; and their interest also bound them to
+him. The convent was enriched by his energy, his
+good repute, the alms and gifts he attracted towards it
+from every quarter. He was building them a large
+church. We saw in the Loudun business by what
+rivalries and ambitions these houses were led away,
+how jealously they strove each to outdo the others.
+Through the trust reposed in him by the wealthy,
+Picart saw himself raised into the lofty part of benefactor
+and second founder of the convent. &#8220;Sweetheart,&#8221;
+he said to Madeline, &#8220;that noble church is
+all my building! After my death you will see wonders
+wrought there. Do you not agree to that?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This fine gentleman did not put himself out at
+all regarding Madeline. He paid a dowry for her, and
+made a nun of her who was already a lay-sister. Thus,
+being no longer a doorkeeper, she could live in one of
+the inner rooms, and there be brought to bed at her
+convenience. By means of certain drugs, and practices
+of their own, the convents could do without the help of
+doctors. Madeline said that she was delivered several
+times. She never said what became of the newly-born.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Picart being now an old man, feared lest Madeline
+might in her fickleness fly off some day, and utter
+words of remorse to another confessor. So he took a
+detestable way of binding her to himself beyond recall,
+by forcing her to make a will in which she promised
+&#8220;to die when he died, and to be wherever he was.&#8221;
+This was a dreadful thought for the poor soul. Must
+she be drawn along with him into the bottomless pit?
+Must she go down with him, even into hell? She
+deemed herself for ever lost. Become his property, his
+mere tool, she was used and misused by him for all
+kinds of purposes. He made her do the most shameful
+things. He employed her as a magical charm to
+gain over the rest of the nuns. A holy wafer steeped
+in Madeline&#8217;s blood, and buried in the garden, would
+be sure to disturb their senses and their minds.</p>
+
+<p>This was the very year in which Urban Grandier was
+burnt. Throughout France, men spoke of nothing
+but the devils of Loudun. The Penitentiary of Evreux,
+who had been one of the actors on that stage, carried
+the dreadful tale back with him to Normandy. Madeline
+fancied herself bewitched and knocked about by
+devils; followed about by a lewd cat with eyes of fire.
+By degrees, other nuns caught the disorder, which
+showed itself in odd supernatural jerks and writhings.
+Madeline had besought aid of a Capuchin, afterwards
+of the Bishop of Evreux. The prioress was not sorry
+for a step of which she must have been aware, for she
+saw what wealth and fame a like business had brought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span>
+to the Convent of Loudun. But for six years the
+bishop turned a deaf ear to the prayer, doubtless
+through fear of Richelieu, who was then at work on a
+reform of the cloisters.</p>
+
+<p>Richelieu wanted to bring these scandals to an end.
+It was not till his own death, and that of Louis XIII.,
+during the break-up which followed on the rule of the
+Queen and Mazarin, that the priests again betook
+themselves to working wonders, and waging war with
+the Devil. Picart being dead, they were less shy of a
+matter in which so dangerous a man might have
+accused others in his turn. They met the visions of
+Madeline, by looking out a visionary for themselves.
+They got admission into the convent for a certain
+Sister Anne of the Nativity, a girl of sanguine,
+hysteric temperament, frantic at need and half-mad,
+so far at least as to believe in her own lies. A kind
+of dogfight was got up between the two. They
+besmeared each other with false charges. Anne saw
+the Devil quite naked, by Madeline&#8217;s side. Madeline
+swore to seeing Anne at the Sabbath, along with the
+Lady Superior, the Mother-Assistant, and the Mother
+of the Novices. Besides this, there was nothing new;
+merely a hashing up of the two great trials at Aix and
+Loudun. They read and followed the printed narratives
+only. No wit, no invention, was shown by
+either.</p>
+
+<p>Anne, the accuser, and her devil Leviathan, were
+backed by the Penitentiary of Evreux, one of the chief<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span>
+actors in the Loudun affair. By his advice, the Bishop
+of Evreux gave orders to disinter the body of Picart, so
+that the devils might leave the convent when Picart
+himself was taken away from the neighbourhood.
+Madeline was condemned, without a hearing, to be disgraced,
+to have her body examined for the marks of the
+Devil. They tore off her veil and gown, and made her
+the wretched sport of a vile curiosity, that would have
+pierced her till she bled again, in order to win the
+right of sending her to the stake. Leaving to no one
+else the care of a scrutiny which was in itself a torture,
+these virgins acting as matrons, ascertained if she was
+with child or no, shaved all her body, and dug their
+needles into her quivering flesh, to find out the insensible
+spots that betrayed the mark of the Devil. At
+every dig they discovered signs of pain: if they had
+not the luck to prove her a Witch, at any rate, they
+could revel in her tears and cries.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>But Sister Anne was not satisfied, until, on the mere
+word of her own devil, Madeline, though acquitted by
+the results of this examination, was condemned for the
+rest of her life to an <i>In pace</i>. It was said that the
+convent would be quieted by her departure; but such
+was not the case. The Devil was more violent than
+ever; some twenty nuns began to cry out, to prophesy,
+to beat themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Such a sight drew thither a curious crowd from
+Rouen, and even from Paris. Yvelin, a young Parisian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span>
+surgeon, who had already seen the farce at Loudun,
+came to see that of Louviers. He brought with him a
+very clear-headed magistrate, the Commissioner of
+Taxes at Rouen. They devoted unwearying attention
+to the matter, settled themselves at Louviers, and
+carried on their researches for seventeen days.</p>
+
+<p>From the first day they saw into the plot. A conversation
+they had had with the Penitentiary of Evreux
+on their entrance into the town, was repeated back to
+them by Sister Anne&#8217;s demon, as if it had been a revelation.
+The scenic arrangements were very bewitching.
+The shades of night, the torches, the flickering and
+smoking lights, produced effects which had not been
+seen at Loudun. The rest of the process was simple
+enough. One of the bewitched said that in a certain
+part of the garden they would find a charm. They
+dug for it, and it was found. Unluckily, Yvelin&#8217;s friend,
+the sceptical magistrate, never budged from the side of
+the leading actress, Sister Anne. At the very edge of
+a hole they had just opened he grasped her hand, and
+on opening it, found the charm, a bit of black thread,
+which she was about to throw into the ground.</p>
+
+<p>The exorcisers, the penitentiary, priests, and Capuchins,
+about the spot, were overwhelmed with confusion.
+The dauntless Yvelin, on his own authority, began a
+scrutiny, and saw to the uttermost depth of the affair.</p>
+
+<p>Among the fifty-two nuns, said he, there were six
+<i>possessed</i>, but deserving of chastisement. Seventeen
+more were victims under a spell, a pack of girls upset<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span>
+by the disease of the cloisters. He describes it with
+great precision: the girls are regular but hysterical,
+blown out with certain inward storms, lunatics mainly,
+and disordered in mind. A nervous contagion has
+ruined them; and the first thing to do is to keep them
+apart.</p>
+
+<p>He then, with the liveliness of Voltaire, examines the
+tokens by which the priests were wont to recognize the
+supernatural character of the bewitched. They foretel,
+he allows, but only what never happens. They
+translate, indeed, but without understanding; as when,
+for instance, they render &#8220;<i>ex parte virginis</i>,&#8221; by &#8220;the
+departure of the Virgin.&#8221; They know Greek before
+the people of Louviers, but cannot speak it before the
+doctors of Paris. They cut capers, take leaps of the
+easiest kind, climb up the trunk of a tree which a child
+three years old might climb. In short, the only thing
+they do that is really dreadful and unnatural, is to use
+dirtier language than men would ever do.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>In tearing off the mask from these people, the surgeon
+rendered a great service to humanity. For the
+matter was being pushed further; other victims were
+about to be made. Besides the charms were found some
+papers, ascribed to David or Picart, in which this and
+that person were called witches, and marked out for
+death. Each one shuddered lest his name should be
+found there. Little by little the fear of the priesthood
+made its way among the people.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The rotten age of Mazarin, the first days of the
+weak Anne of Austria, were already come. Order and
+government were no more. &#8220;But one phrase was left
+in the language: <i>The Queen is so good.</i>&#8221; Her goodness
+gave the clergy a chance of getting the upper
+hand. The power of the laity entombed with Richelieu,
+bishops, priests, and monks, were about to reign. The
+bold impiety of the magistrate and his friend Yvelin
+imperilled so sweet a hope. Groans and wailings went
+forth to the Good Queen, not from the victims, but
+from the knaves thus caught in the midst of their
+offences. Up to the Court they went, weeping for the
+outrage to their religion.</p>
+
+<p>Yvelin was not prepared for this stroke: he deemed
+himself firm at Court, having for ten years borne the
+title of Surgeon to the Queen. Before he returned
+from Louviers to Paris, the weakness of Anne of
+Austria had been tempted into granting another commission
+named by his opponents, consisting of an old
+fool in his dotage, one Diafoirus of Rouen, and his
+nephew, both attached to the priesthood. These did
+not fail to discover that the Louviers affair was supernatural,
+transcending all art of man.</p>
+
+<p>Any other than Yvelin would have been discouraged.
+The Rouen physicians treated with utter scorn this
+surgeon, this barber fellow, this mere sawbones. The
+Court gave him no encouragement. Still, he held on
+his way in a treatise which will live yet. He accepts
+this battle of science against priestcraft, declaring, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span>
+Wyer did in the sixteenth century, that &#8220;in all such
+matters the right judge is not the priest but the man
+of science.&#8221; With great difficulty he found some one
+bold enough to print, but no one willing to sell his
+little work. So in broad daylight the heroic young
+man set about distributing it with his own hands.
+Placing himself on the Pont Neuf, the most frequented
+spot in Paris, at the foot of Henry the Fourth&#8217;s statue,
+he gave out copies of his memoir to the passers by.
+At the end of it they found a formal statement of the
+shameful fraud, how in the hand of the female demons
+the magistrate had caught the unanswerable evidence
+of their dishonour.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Return we to the wretched Madeline. Her enemy,
+the Penitentiary of Evreux, by whose influence she had
+been searched with needles, carried her off as his prey
+to the heart of the episcopal dungeons in that town.
+Below an underground passage dipped a cave, below
+the cave a cell, where the poor human creature lay
+buried in damps and darkness. Reckoning upon her
+speedy death, her dread companions had not even the
+kindness to give her a piece of linen for the dressing
+of her ulcer. There, as she lay in her own filth, she
+suffered alike from pain and want of cleanliness. The
+whole night long she was disturbed by the running to
+and fro of ravenous rats, those terrors of every prison,
+who were wont to nibble men&#8217;s ears and noses.</p>
+
+<p>But all these horrors fell short of those which her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span>
+tyrant, the Penitentiary, dealt out to her himself. Day
+after day he would come into the upper vault and speak
+to her through the mouth of her pit, threatening her,
+commanding her, and making her, whether she would
+or no, confess to this or that crime as having been
+wrought by others. At length she ceased to eat.
+Fearing that she might die at once, he drew her for
+a while out of her <i>In Pace</i>, and laid her in the upper
+vault. Then, in his rage against Yvelin&#8217;s memoir, he
+cast her back into her sewer below.</p>
+
+<p>That glimpse of light, that short renewal and sudden
+death of hope, gave the crowning impulse to her
+despair. Her wound was closing, so that her strength
+was greater. She was seized with a deep and violent
+thirst for death. She swallowed spiders, but instead
+of dying, only brought them up again. Pounded
+glass she swallowed, but in vain. Finding an old bit
+of sharp iron, she tried to cut her throat, but could
+not. Then, as an easier way, she dug the iron into
+her belly. For four hours she worked and bled, but
+without success. Even this wound shortly began to
+close. To crown all, the life she hated so returned to
+her stronger than before. Her heart&#8217;s death was of
+no avail.</p>
+
+<p>She became once more a woman; still, alas! an
+object of desire, of temptation for her jailers, those
+brutish varlets of the bishopric, who, notwithstanding
+the horror of the place, and the unhappy creature&#8217;s
+own sad and filthy plight, would come to make sport<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span>
+of her, believing that they might do all their pleasure
+against a Witch. But an angel succoured her, so she
+said. From men and rats alike she defended herself.
+But against herself, herself she could not protect. Her
+prison corrupted her mind. She dreamed of the Devil,
+besought him to come and see her, to restore to her the
+shameful pleasures in which she had wallowed at
+Louviers. He never deigned to come back. Once
+more amidst this corruption of her senses, she fell
+back on her old desire for death. One of the jailers
+had given her a drug to kill the rats. She was just
+going to swallow it herself, when an angel&mdash;an angel,
+was it, or a devil?&mdash;stayed her hand, reserving her
+for other crimes.</p>
+
+<p>Thenceforward&mdash;sunk into the lowest depths of vileness,
+become an unspeakable cipher of cowardice and
+servility&mdash;she signed endless lists of crimes which she
+had never committed. Was she worth the trouble of
+burning? Many had given up that idea, but the ruthless
+Penitentiary clung to it still. He offered money
+to a Wizard of Evreux, then in prison, if he would
+bear such witness as might bring about the death of
+Madeline.</p>
+
+<p>For the future, however, they could use her for other
+purposes&mdash;to bear false witness, to become a tool for
+any slander. Whenever they sought the ruin of any
+man, they had only to drag down to Louviers or to
+Evreux this accursed ghost of a dead woman, living
+only to make others die. In this way she was brought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span>
+out to kill with her words a poor man named Duval.
+What the Penitentiary dictated to her, she repeated
+readily: when he told her by what marks she should
+know Duval, whom she had never seen, she pointed
+him out and said she had seen him at the Sabbath.
+Through her it fell out that he was burnt!</p>
+
+<p>She owned her dreadful crime, and shuddered to
+think what answer she could make before God. She
+was fallen into such contempt that no one now deigned
+to look after her. The doors stood wide open: sometimes
+she had the keys herself. But where now should
+she go, object as she was of so much dread? Thenceforth
+the world repelled her&mdash;cast her out: the only
+world she had left was her dungeon.</p>
+
+<p>During the anarchy of Mazarin and his Good Lady
+the chief authority remained with the Parliaments.
+That of Rouen, hitherto the friendliest to the clergy,
+grew wroth at last at their arrogant way of examining,
+ordering, and burning people. A mere decree of the
+Bishop had caused Picart&#8217;s body to be disinterred and
+thrown into the common sewer. And now they were
+passing on to the trial of Boull&eacute;, the curate, and supposed
+abettor of Picart. Listening to the plaint of
+Picart&#8217;s family, the Parliament sentenced the Bishop of
+Evreux to replace him at his own expense in his tomb
+at Louviers. They called up Boull&eacute;, undertook his
+trial themselves, and at the same time sent for the
+wretched Madeline from Evreux to Rouen.</p>
+
+<p>People were afraid that Yvelin and the magistrate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span>
+who had caught the nuns in the very act of cheating,
+would be made to appear. Hieing away to Paris, they
+found the knave Mazarin ready to protect their knavish
+selves. The whole matter was appealed to the King&#8217;s
+Council&mdash;an indulgent court, without eyes or ears&mdash;whose
+care it was to bury, hush up, bedarken everything
+connected with justice.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, some honey-tongued priests had comforted
+Madeline in her Rouen dungeon; they heard
+her confessions, and enjoined her, by way of penance,
+to ask forgiveness of her persecutors, the nuns of
+Louviers. Thenceforth, happen what might, Madeline
+could never more be brought in evidence against those
+who had thus bound her fast. It was a triumph indeed
+for the clergy, and the victory was sung by a
+knave of an exorciser, the Capuchin Esprit de Bosroger,
+in his <i>Piety Afflicted</i>, a farcical monument of
+stupidity, in which he accuses, unawares, the very people
+he fancies himself defending.</p>
+
+<p>The Fronde, as I said before, was a revolution for
+honest ends. Fools saw only its outer form&mdash;its
+laughable aspects; but at bottom it was a serious
+business, a moral reaction. In August, 1647, with the
+first breath of freedom, Parliament stepped forward
+and cut the knot. It ordered, in the first place, the
+destruction of the Louviers Sodom; the girls were to
+be dispersed and sent back to their kinsfolk. In the
+next, it decreed that thenceforth the bishops of the
+province should, four times a-year, send special confessors<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span>
+to the nunneries, to ascertain that such foul
+abuses were not renewed.</p>
+
+<p>One comfort, however, the clergy were to receive.
+They were allowed to burn the bones of Picart and the
+living body of Boull&eacute;, who, after making public confession
+in the cathedral, was drawn on a hurdle to the
+Fish Market, and there, on the 21st August, 1647,
+devoured by the flames. Madeline, or rather her corpse,
+remained in the prisons of Rouen.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_103_103" id="Footnote_103_103"></a><a href="#FNanchor_103_103"><span class="label">[103]</span></a> It was very easy to cheat those who wished to be cheated.
+By this time celibacy was harder to practise than in the Middle
+Ages, the number of fasts and bloodlettings being greatly
+reduced. Many died from the nervous plethora of a life so
+cruelly sluggish. They made no secret of their torments,
+owning them to their sisters, to their confessor, to the Virgin
+herself. A pitiful thing, a thing to sorrow for, not to ridicule.
+In Italy, a nun besought the Virgin for pity&#8217;s sake to grant
+her a lover.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_104_104" id="Footnote_104_104"></a><a href="#FNanchor_104_104"><span class="label">[104]</span></a> I know of no book more important, more dreadful, or
+worthier of being reprinted. It is the most powerful narrative
+of its class. <i>Piety Afflicted</i>, by the Capuchin Esprit de
+Bosroger, is a work immortal in the annals of tomfoolery. The
+two excellent pamphlets by the doughty surgeon, Yvelin, the
+<i>Inquiry</i> and the <i>Apology</i>, are in the Library of Ste. Genevieve.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_105_105" id="Footnote_105_105"></a><a href="#FNanchor_105_105"><span class="label">[105]</span></a> See Floquet; <i>Parliament of Normandy</i>, vol. v. p. 636.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2 class="chs"><a name="CHAPTER_IX_2" id="CHAPTER_IX_2"></a>CHAPTER IX.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>THE DEVIL TRIUMPHS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="smcap">The</span> Fronde was a kind of Voltaire. The spirit of
+Voltaire, old as France herself, but long restrained,
+burst forth in the political, and anon in the religious,
+world. In vain did the Great King seek to establish
+a solemn gravity. Beneath it laughter went on.</p>
+
+<p>Was there nought else, then, but laughter and jesting?
+Nay, it was the Advent of Reason. By means
+of Kepler, of Galileo, Descartes, Newton, there was
+now triumphantly enthroned the reasonable dogma of
+faith in the unchangeable laws of nature. Miracle
+dared no longer show itself, or, when it did dare, was
+hissed down. In other and better words, the fantastic
+miracles of mere whim had vanished, and in their
+stead was seen the mighty miracle of the universe&mdash;more
+regular, and therefore more divine.</p>
+
+<p>The great rebellion decidedly won the day. You
+may see it working in the bold forms of those earlier
+outbursts; in the irony of Galileo; in the absolute
+doubt wherewith Descartes leads off his system. The
+Middle Ages would have said, &#8220;&#8217;Tis the spirit of the
+Evil One.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The victory, however, is not a negative one, but very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span>
+affirmative and surely based. The spirit of nature
+and the natural sciences, those outlaws of an elder
+day, return in might irresistible. All idle shadows
+are hunted out by the real, the substantial.</p>
+
+<p>They had said in their folly, &#8220;Great Pan is dead.&#8221;
+Anon, observing that he was yet alive, they had made
+him a god of evil: amid such a chaos they might well
+be deceived. But, lo! he lives, and lives harmonious,
+in the grand stability of laws that govern alike the
+star and the deep-hidden mystery of life.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Of this period two things, by no means contradictory,
+may be averred: the spirit of Satan conquers,
+while the reign of witchcraft is at an end.</p>
+
+<p>All marvel-mongering, hellish or holy, is fallen very
+sick at last. Wizards and theologians are powerless
+alike. They are become, as it were, empirics, who
+pray in vain for some supernatural change, some whim
+of Providence, to work the wonders which science asks
+of nature and reason only.</p>
+
+<p>For all their zeal, the Jansenists of this century
+succeed only in bringing forth a miracle very small
+and very ridiculous. Still less lucky are the rich and
+powerful Jesuits, who cannot get a miracle done at
+any price; who have to be satisfied with the visions of
+a hysteric girl, Sister Mary Alacoque, of an exceedingly
+sanguine habit, with eyes for nothing but blood.
+In view of so much impotence, magic and witchcraft
+may find some solace for themselves.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>While the old faith in the supernatural was thus declining,
+priests and witches shared a common fate. In
+the fears, the fancies of the Middle Ages, these two
+were bound up together. Together they were still to
+face the general laughter and disdain. When Moli&egrave;re
+made fun of the Devil and his &#8220;seething cauldrons,&#8221;
+the clergy were deeply stirred, deeming that the belief
+in Paradise had fallen equally low.</p>
+
+<p>A government of laymen only, that of the great
+Colbert, who was long the virtual King of France,
+could not conceal its scorn for such old questions. It
+emptied the prisons of the wizards whom the Rouen
+Parliament still crowded into them, and, in 1672, forbade
+the law courts from entertaining any prosecutions
+for witchcraft. The Parliament protested, and gave
+people to understand that by this denial of sorcery
+many other things were put in peril. Any doubting
+of these lower mysteries would cause many minds to
+waver from their belief in mysteries of a higher sort.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The Sabbath disappears, but why? Because it
+exists everywhere. It enters into the people&#8217;s habits,
+becomes the practice of their daily life. The Devil,
+the Witches, had long been reproached with loving
+death more than life, with hating and hindering the
+generative powers of nature. And now in the pious
+seventeenth century, when the Witch is fast dying out,
+a love of barrenness, and a fear of being fruitful, are
+found to be, in very truth, the one prevalent disease.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>If Satan ever read, he would have good cause for
+laughter as he read the casuists who took him up
+where he left off. For there was one difference at
+least between them. In times of terror Satan made
+provision for the famished, took pity on the poor. But
+these fellows have compassion only for the rich. With
+his vices, his luxury, his court life, the rich man is still
+a needy miserable beggar. He comes to confession
+with a humbly threatening air, in order to wrest from
+his doctor permission to sin with a good conscience.
+Some day will be told, by him who may have the
+courage to tell it, an astounding tale of the cowardly
+things done, and the shameful tricks so basely ventured
+by the casuist who wished to keep his penitent.
+From Navarro to Escobar the strangest bargains were
+continually made at the wife&#8217;s expense, and some little
+wrangling went on after that. But all this would not
+do. The casuist was conquered, was altogether a
+coward. From Zoccoli to Liguori&mdash;1670 to 1770&mdash;he
+gave up banning Nature.</p>
+
+<p>The Devil, so it was said, showed two countenances
+at the Sabbath: the one in front seemed threatening,
+the other behind was farcical. Now that he has nothing
+to do with it, he has generously given the latter
+to the casuist.</p>
+
+<p>It must have amused him to see his trusty friends
+settled among honest folk, in the serious households
+swayed by the Church. The worldling who bettered
+himself by that great resource of the day, lucrative<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span>
+adultery, laughed at prudence, and boldly followed his
+natural bent. Pious families, on the other hand, followed
+nothing but their Jesuits. In order to preserve,
+to concentrate their property, to leave each one wealthy
+heir, they entered on the crooked ways of the new
+spiritualism. Buried in a mysterious gloom, losing at
+the faldstool all heed and knowledge of themselves,
+the proudest of them followed the lesson taught by
+Molinos: &#8220;In this world we live to suffer. But in
+time that suffering is soothed and lulled to sleep by a
+habit of pious indifference. We thus attain to a negation.
+Death do you say? Not altogether. Without
+mingling in the world, or heeding its voices, we get
+thereof an echo dim and soft. It is like a windfall of
+Divine Grace, so mild and searching; never more so
+than in moments of self-abasement, when the will is
+wholly obscured.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Exquisite depths of feeling! Alas, poor Satan!
+how art thou left behind! Bend low, acknowledge,
+and admire thy children!</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The physicians who, having sprung from the popular
+empiricism which men called witchcraft, were far more
+truly his lawful children, were too forgetful of him
+who had left them his highest patrimony, as being his
+favoured heirs. They were ungrateful to the Witch,
+who laid the way for themselves. Nay, they went
+further than that. On this fallen king, their father
+and creator, they dealt some hard strokes with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span>
+whip. &#8220;<i>Thou, too, my son?</i>&#8221; They gave the jesters
+cruel weapons against him.</p>
+
+<p>Even in the sixteenth century there were some to
+scoff at the spirit who through all time, from the days of
+the Sibyl to those of the Witch, had filled and troubled
+the woman. They maintained that he was neither
+God nor Devil, but only &#8220;the Prince of the Air,&#8221; as
+the Middle Ages called him. Satan was nothing but
+a disease!</p>
+
+<p><i>Possession</i> to them was only a result of the prison-like,
+sedentary, dry, unyielding life of the cloister. As
+for the 6500 devils in Gauffridi&#8217;s little Madeline, and
+the hosts that fought in the bodies of maddened nuns at
+Loudun and Louviers, these doctors called them physical
+storms. &#8220;If &AElig;olus can shake the earth,&#8221; said Yvelin,
+&#8220;why not also the body of a girl?&#8221; La Cadi&egrave;re&#8217;s
+surgeon, of whom more anon, had the coolness to say,
+&#8220;it was nothing more than a choking of the womb.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Wonderful descent! Routed by the simplest remedies,
+by exorcisms after Moli&egrave;re, the terror of the
+Middle Ages would flee away and vanish utterly!</p>
+
+<p>This is too sweeping a reduction of the question.
+Satan was more than that. The doctors saw neither
+the height nor the depth of him; neither his grand
+revolt in the form of science, nor that strange mixture
+of impurity and pious intrigue, that union of
+Tartuffe and Priapus, which he brought to pass about
+the year 1700.</p>
+
+<p>People fancy they know something about the eighteenth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span>
+century, and yet have never seen one of its
+most essential features. The greater its outward civilization,
+the clearer and fuller the light that bathed its
+uppermost layers, so much the more hermetically
+sealed lay all those widespread lower realms, of priests
+and monks, and women credulous, sickly, prone to believe
+whatever they heard or saw. In the years before
+Cagliostro, Mesmer, and the magnetisers, who appeared
+towards the close of the century, a good many priests
+still worked away at the old dead witchcraft. They
+talked of nothing but enchantments, spread the fear of
+them abroad, and undertook to hunt out the devils
+with their shameful exorcisms. Many set up for
+wizards, well knowing how little risk they ran, now
+that people were no longer burnt. They knew they
+were sheltered by the milder spirit of their age, by the
+tolerant teachings of their foes the philosophers, by
+the levity of the great jesters, who thought that anything
+could be extinguished with a laugh. Now it
+was just because people laughed, that these gloomy
+plot-spinners went their way without much fear. The
+new spirit, that of the Regent namely, was sceptical
+and easy-natured. It shone forth in the <i>Persian
+Letters</i>, it shone forth everywhere in the all-powerful
+journalist who filled that century, Voltaire. At any
+shedding of human blood his whole heart rises indignant.
+All other matters only make him laugh. Little
+by little, the maxim of the worldly public seems to be,
+&#8220;Punish nothing, and laugh at all.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This tolerant spirit suffered Cardinal Tencin to appear
+in public as his sister&#8217;s husband. This, too, it
+was that ensured to the masters of convents the peaceful
+possession of their nuns, who were even allowed to
+make declarations of pregnancy, to register the births
+of their children.<a name="FNanchor_106_106" id="FNanchor_106_106"></a><a href="#Footnote_106_106" class="fnanchor">[106]</a> This tolerant temper made excuses
+for Father Apollinaire, when he was caught in a shameful
+piece of exorcism. That worthy Jesuit, Cauvrigny,
+idol of the provincial convents, paid for his adventures
+only by a recall to Paris, in other words&mdash;by fresh
+preferment.</p>
+
+<p>Such also was the punishment awarded the famous
+Jesuit, Girard, who was loaded with honours when he
+should have got the rope. He died in the sweetest
+savour of holiness. His was the most curious affair of
+that century. It enables us to probe the peculiar methods
+of that day, to realize the coarse jumble of jarring
+machinery which was then at work. As a thing of
+course, it was preluded by the dangerous suavities of
+the Song of Songs. It was carried on by Mary
+Alacoque, with a marriage of Bleeding Hearts spiced
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span>with the morbid blandishments of Molinos. To these
+Girard added the whisperings of Satan and the terrors
+of enchantment. He was at once the Devil and the
+Devil&#8217;s exorciser. At last, horrible to say, instead of
+getting justice done to her, the unhappy girl whom he
+sacrificed with so much cruelty, was persecuted to
+death. She disappeared, shut up perhaps by a <i>lettre
+de cachet</i>, and buried alive in her tomb.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_106_106" id="Footnote_106_106"></a><a href="#FNanchor_106_106"><span class="label">[106]</span></a> The noble Chapter of Canons of Pignan were sixteen in
+number. In one year the provost received from the nuns sixteen
+declarations of pregnancy. (See MS. History of Besse,
+by M. Renoux.) One good fruit of this publicity was the decrease
+of infanticide among the religious orders. At the price
+of a little shame, the nuns let their children live, and doubtless
+became good mothers. Those of Pignan put their babes out
+to nurse with the neighbouring peasants, who brought them up
+as their own.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<h2 class="chs"><a name="CHAPTER_X_2" id="CHAPTER_X_2"></a>CHAPTER X.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>FATHER GIRARD AND LA CADIERE: 1730.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="smcap">The</span> Jesuits were unlucky. Powerful at Versailles,
+where they ruled the Court, they had not the slightest
+credit with Heaven. Not one tiny miracle could they
+do. The Jansenists overflowed, at any rate, with
+touching stories of miracles done. Untold numbers
+of sick, infirm, halt, and paralytic obtained a momentary
+cure at the tomb of the Deacon P&acirc;ris. Crushed by a
+terrible succession of plagues, from the time of the
+Great King to the Regency, when so many were reduced
+to beggary, these unfortunate people went to
+entreat a poor, good fellow, a virtuous imbecile, a
+saint in spite of his absurdities, to make them whole.
+And what need, after all, of laughter? His life is far
+more touching than ridiculous. We are not to be
+surprised if these good folk, in the emotion of seeing
+their benefactor&#8217;s tomb, suddenly forgot their own
+sufferings. The cure did not last, but what matter?
+A miracle indeed had taken place, a miracle of devotion,
+of lovingkindness, of gratitude. Latterly, with
+all this some knavery began to mingle, but at that
+time, in 1728, these wonderful popular scenes were
+very pure.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Jesuits would have given anything for the least
+of the miracles they denied. For well-nigh fifty years
+they worked away, embellishing with fables and anecdotes
+their Legend of the Sacred Heart, the story of
+Mary Alacoque. For twenty-five or thirty years they
+had been trying to convince the world that their helpmate,
+James II. of England, not content with healing
+the king&#8217;s evil (in his character of King of France),
+amused himself after his death in making the dumb to
+speak, the lame to walk straight, and the squint-eyed
+to see properly. They who were cured squinted worse
+than ever. As for the dumb, it so chanced that she
+who played this part was a manifest rogue, caught in
+the very act of stealing. She roamed the provinces:
+at every chapel of any renowned saint she was healed
+by a miracle and received alms, and then began her
+work again elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>For getting wonders wrought the South was a better
+country. There might be found a plenty of nervous
+women, easy to excite, the very ones to make into
+somnambulists, subjects of miracle, bearers of mystic
+marks, and so forth.</p>
+
+<p>At Marseilles the Jesuits had on their side a bishop,
+Belzunce, a bold, hearty sort of man, renowned in the
+memorable plague,<a name="FNanchor_107_107" id="FNanchor_107_107"></a><a href="#Footnote_107_107" class="fnanchor">[107]</a> but credulous and narrow-minded
+withal; under whose countenance many a bold venture
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span>might be made. Beside him they had placed a Jesuit
+of Franche-Comt&eacute;, not wanting in mind, whose austere
+outside did not prevent his preaching pleasantly, in
+an ornate and rather worldly style, such as the ladies
+loved. A true Jesuit, he made his way by two different
+methods, now by feminine intrigue, anon by his
+holy utterances. Girard had on his side neither years
+nor figure; he was a man of forty-seven, tall, withered,
+weak-looking, of dirty aspect, and given to spitting
+without end.<a name="FNanchor_108_108" id="FNanchor_108_108"></a><a href="#Footnote_108_108" class="fnanchor">[108]</a> He had long been a tutor, even till he
+was thirty-seven; and he preserved some of his college
+tastes. For the last ten years, namely, ever since the
+great plague, he had been confessor to the nuns. With
+them he had fared well, winning over them a high
+degree of power by enforcing a method seemingly
+quite at variance with the Provencial temperament, by
+teaching the doctrine and the discipline of a mystic
+death, of absolute passiveness, of entire forgetfulness
+of self. The dreadful crisis through which they had
+just passed had deadened their spirits, and weakened
+hearts already unmanned by a kind of morbid languor.
+Under Girard&#8217;s leading, the Carmelites of Marseilles
+carried their mysticism to great lengths; and first
+among them was Sister Remusat, who passed for a
+saint.</p>
+
+<p>In spite, or perhaps by reason, of this success, the
+Jesuits took Girard away from Marseilles: they wanted
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span>to employ him in raising anew their house at Toulon.
+Colbert&#8217;s splendid institution, the Seminary for Naval
+Chaplains, had been entrusted to the Jesuits, with the
+view of cleansing the young chaplains from the influence
+of the Lazarists, who ruled them almost everywhere.
+But the two Jesuits placed in charge were
+men of small capacity. One was a fool; the other,
+Sabatier, remarkable, in spite of his age, for heat of
+temper. With all the insolence of our old navy he
+never kept himself under the least control. In
+Toulon he was reproached, not for having a mistress,
+nor yet a married woman, but for intriguing in a way
+so insolent and outrageous as to drive the husband
+wild. He sought to keep the husband specially alive
+to his own shame, to make him wince with every kind
+of pang. Matters were pushed so far that at last the
+husband died outright.</p>
+
+<p>Still greater was the scandal caused by the Jesuits&#8217;
+rivals, the Observantines, who, having spiritual charge
+of a sisterhood at Ollioules, made mistresses openly of
+the nuns, and, not content with this, dared even to
+seduce the little boarders. One Aubany, the Father
+Guardian, violated a girl of thirteen; when her parents
+pursued him, he found shelter at Marseilles.</p>
+
+<p>As Director of the Seminary for Chaplains, Girard
+began, through his seeming sternness and his real
+dexterity, to win for the Jesuits an ascendant over
+monks thus compromised, and over parish-priests of
+very vulgar manners and scanty learning.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In those Southern regions, where the men are abrupt,
+not seldom uncouth of speech and appearance, the
+women have a lively relish for the gentle gravity of the
+men of the North: they feel thankful to them for
+speaking a language at once aristocratic, official, and
+French.</p>
+
+<p>When Girard reached Toulon, he must already have
+gained full knowledge of the ground before him.
+Already had he won over a certain Guiol, who sometimes
+came to Marseilles, where she had a daughter, a
+Carmelite nun. This Guiol, wife of a small carpenter,
+threw herself entirely into his hands, even more so
+than he wanted. She was of ripe age, extremely vehement
+for a woman of forty-seven, depraved and ready
+for anything, ready to do him service of whatever kind,
+no matter what he might do or be, whether he were a
+sinner or a saint.</p>
+
+<p>This Guiol, besides her Carmelite daughter at Marseilles,
+had another, a lay-sister to the Ursulines of
+Toulon. The Ursulines, an order of teaching nuns,
+formed everywhere a kind of centre; their parlour, the
+resort of mothers, being a half-way stage between the
+cloister and the world. At their house, and doubtless
+through their means, Girard saw the ladies of the
+town, among them one of forty years, a spinster, Mdlle.
+Gravier, daughter of an old contractor for the royal
+works at the Arsenal. This lady had a shadow who
+never left her, her cousin La Reboul, daughter of a
+skipper and sole heiress to herself; a woman, too, who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span>
+really meant to succeed her, though very nearly
+her own age, being five-and-thirty. Around these
+gradually grew a small roomful of Girard&#8217;s admirers,
+who became his regular penitents. Among them were
+sometimes introduced a few young girls, such as
+La Cadi&egrave;re, a tradesman&#8217;s daughter and herself a
+sempstress, La Laugier, and La Batarelle, the daughter
+of a waterman. They had godly readings together,
+and now and then small suppers. But they were
+specially interested in certain letters which recounted
+the miracles and ecstacies of Sister Remusat, who was
+still alive; her death occurring in February, 1730.
+What a glorious thing for Father Girard, who had led
+her to a pitch so lofty! They read, they wept, they
+shouted with admiration. If they were not ecstatic
+yet, they were not far from being so. Already, to
+please her kinswoman, would La Reboul throw herself
+at times into a strange plight by holding her breath
+and pinching her nose.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Among these girls and women the least frivolous
+certainly was Catherine Cadi&egrave;re, a delicate, sickly girl
+of seventeen, taken up wholly with devotion and
+charity, of a mournful countenance, which seemed to
+say that, young as she was, she had felt more keenly
+than anyone else the great misfortunes of the time,
+those, namely, of Provence and Toulon. This is easily
+explained. She was born during the frightful famine
+of 1709; and just as the child was growing into a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span>
+maiden, she witnessed the fearful scenes of the great
+plague. Those two events seemed to have left their
+mark upon her, to have taken her out of the present
+into a life beyond.</p>
+
+<p>This sad flower belonged wholly to Toulon, to the
+Toulon of that day. To understand her better we
+must remember what that town is and what it was.</p>
+
+<p>Toulon is a thoroughfare, a landing-place, the entrance
+of an immense harbour and a huge arsenal.
+The sense of this carries the traveller away, and prevents
+his seeing Toulon itself. There is a town however
+there, indeed an ancient city. It contains two
+different sets of people, the stranger functionaries, and
+the genuine Toulonnese, who are far from friendly to
+the former, regarding them with envy, and often
+roused to rebellion by the swaggering of the naval
+officers. All these differences were concentred in the
+gloomy streets of a town in those days choked up
+within its narrow girdle of fortifications. The most
+peculiar feature about this small dark town is, that it
+lies exactly between two broad seas of light, between
+the marvellous mirror of its roadstead and its glorious
+amphitheatre of mountains, baldheaded, of a dazzling
+grey, that blinds you in the noonday sun. All the
+gloomier look the streets themselves. Such as do not
+lead straight to the harbour and draw some light
+therefrom, are plunged at all hours in deep gloom.
+Filthy byeways, and small tradesmen with shops ill-furnished,
+invisible to anyone coming for the day,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span>
+such is the general aspect of the place. The interior
+forms a maze of passages in which you may find plenty
+of churches, and old convents now turned into barracks.
+Copious kennels, laden and foul with sewage
+water, run down in torrents. The air is almost stagnant,
+and in so dry a climate you are surprised at
+seeing so much moisture.</p>
+
+<p>In front of the new theatre a passage called La
+Rue de l&#8217;H&ocirc;pital leads from the narrow Rue Royale
+into the narrow Rue des Cannoniers. It might almost
+be called a blind alley. The sun, however, just looks
+down upon it at noon, but, finding the place so dismal,
+passes on forthwith, and leaves the passage to its
+wonted darkness.</p>
+
+<p>Among these gloomy dwellings the smallest was that
+of the Sister Cadi&egrave;re, a retail dealer, or huckster.
+There was no entrance but by the shop, and only one
+room on each floor. The Cadi&egrave;res were honest pious
+folk, and Madame Cadi&egrave;re the mirror of excellence
+itself. These good people were not altogether poor.
+Besides their small dwelling in the town, they too,
+like most of their fellow-townsmen, had a country-house
+of their own. This latter is, commonly, a
+mere hut, a little stony plot of ground yielding a
+little wine. In the days of its naval greatness, under
+Colbert and his son, the wondrous bustle in the harbour
+brought some profit to the town. French money
+flowed in. The many great lords who passed that
+way brought their households along with them, an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span>
+army of wasteful domestics, who left a good many
+things behind them. All this came to a sudden end.
+The artificial movement stopped short: even the
+workmen at the arsenal could no longer get their
+wages; shattered vessels were left unrepaired; and at
+last the timbers themselves were sold.</p>
+
+<p>Toulon was keenly sensible of the rebound. At
+the siege of 1707 it seemed as if dead. What, then,
+was it in the dreadful year 1709, the 71st of Louis
+XIV., when every plague at once, a hard winter, a
+famine, and an epidemic, seemed bent on utterly destroying
+France? The very trees of Provence were
+not spared. All traffic came to an end. The roads
+were covered with starving beggars. Begirt with
+bandits who stopped up every outlet, Toulon quaked
+for fear.</p>
+
+<p>To crown all, Madame Cadi&egrave;re, in this year of
+sorrow, was with child. Three boys she had borne
+already. The eldest stayed in the shop to help his
+father. The second was with the Friar Preachers, and
+destined to become a Dominican, or a Jacobin as they
+were then called. The third was studying in the
+Jesuit seminary as a priest to be. The wedded couple
+wanted a daughter; Madame prayed to Heaven for a
+saint. She spent her nine months in prayer, fasting,
+or eating nought but rye bread. She had a daughter,
+namely Catherine. The babe was very delicate and,
+like her brothers, unhealthy. The dampness of an
+ill-aired dwelling, and the poor nourishment gained<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span>
+from a mother so thrifty and more than temperate, had
+something to do with this. The brothers had scrofulous
+glands, and in her earlier years the little thing
+suffered from the same cause. Without being altogether
+ill, she had all the suffering sweetness of a sickly
+child. She grew up without growing stronger. At
+an age when other children have all the strength and
+gladness of upswelling life in them, she was already
+saying, &#8220;I have not long to live.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She took the small-pox, which left her rather marked.
+I know not if she was handsome, but it is clear that
+she was very winning, with all the charming contrasts,
+the twofold nature of the maidens of Provence. Lively
+and pensive, gay and sad, by turns, she was a good
+little worshipper, but given to harmless pranks withal.
+Between the long church services, if she went into the
+country with girls of her own age, she made no fuss
+about doing as they did, but would sing and dance
+away and flourish her tambourine. But such days
+were few. Most times her chief delight was to climb
+up to the top of the house, to bring herself nearer
+heaven, to obtain a glimpse of daylight, to look out,
+perhaps, on some small strip of sea, or some pointed
+peak in the vast wilderness of hills. Thenceforth to
+her eyes they were serious still, but less unkindly than
+before, less bald and leafless, in a garment thinly
+strewn with arbutus and larch.</p>
+
+<p>This dead town of Toulon numbered 26,000 inhabitants
+when the plague began. It was a huge<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span>
+throng cooped up in one spot. But from this centre
+let us take away a girdle of great convents with their
+backs upon the ramparts, convents of Minorites,
+Ursulines, Visitandines, Bernardines, Oratorians,
+Jesuits, Capuchins, Recollects; those of the Refuge,
+the Good Shepherd, and, midmost of all, the enormous
+convent of Dominicans. Add to these the parish
+churches, parsonages, bishop&#8217;s palace, and it seems
+that the clergy filled up the place, while the people
+had no room at all, to speak of.<a name="FNanchor_109_109" id="FNanchor_109_109"></a><a href="#Footnote_109_109" class="fnanchor">[109]</a></p>
+
+<p>On a centre so closely thronged, we may guess how
+savagely the plague would fasten. Toulon&#8217;s kind heart
+was also to prove her bane. She received with generous
+warmth some fugitives from Marseilles. These are just
+as likely to have brought the plague with them, as certain
+bales of wool to which was traced the first appearance
+of that scourge. The chief men of the place were
+about to fly, to scatter themselves over the country.
+But the First Consul, M. d&#8217;Antrechaus, a man of heroic
+soul, withheld them, saying, with a stern air, &#8220;And
+what will the people do, sirs, in this impoverished town,
+if the rich folk carry their purses away?&#8221; So he held
+them back, and compelled all persons to stay where
+they were. Now the horrors of Marseilles had been
+ascribed to the mutual intercourse of its inhabitants.
+D&#8217;Antrechaus, however, tried a system entirely the
+reverse, tried to isolate the people of Toulon, by shutting
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span>them up in their houses. Two huge hospitals
+were established, in the roadstead and in the hills. All
+who did not come to these, had to keep at home on
+pain of death. For seven long months D&#8217;Antrechaus
+carried out a wager, which would have been held impossible,
+the keeping, namely, and feeding in their own
+houses, of a people numbering 26,000 souls. All that
+time Toulon was one vast tomb. No one stirred save
+in the morning, to deal out bread from door to door,
+and then to carry off the dead. Most of the doctors
+perished, and the magistrates all but D&#8217;Antrechaus.
+The gravediggers also perished, and their places were
+filled by condemned deserters, who went to work with
+brutal and headlong violence. Bodies were thrown into
+the tumbril, head downwards, from the fourth storey.
+One mother, having just lost her little girl, shrunk
+from seeing her poor wee body thus hurled below, and
+by dint of bribing, managed to get it lowered the
+proper way. As they were bearing it off, the child
+came to; it lived still. They took her up again, and
+she survived, to become the grandmother of the learned
+M. Brun, who wrote an excellent history of the port.</p>
+
+<p>Poor little Cadi&egrave;re was exactly the same age as this
+girl who died and lived again, being twelve years old,
+an age for her sex so full of danger. In the general
+closing of the churches, in the putting down of all
+holidays, and chiefly of Christmas, wont to be so merry
+a season at Toulon, the child&#8217;s fancy saw the end of all
+things. It seems as though she never quite shook off<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span>
+that fancy. Toulon never raised her head again. She
+retained her desert-like air. Everything was in ruins,
+everyone in mourning; widowers, orphans, desperate
+beings were everywhere seen. In the midst, a mighty
+shadow, moved D&#8217;Antrechaus himself; he had seen all
+about him perish, his sons, his brothers, and his colleagues;
+and was now so gloriously ruined, that he was
+fain to look to his neighbours for his daily meals. The
+poor quarrelled among themselves for the honour of
+feeding him.</p>
+
+<p>The young girl told her mother that she would never
+more wear any of her smarter clothes, and she must,
+therefore, sell them. She would do nothing but wait
+upon the sick, and she was always dragging her to the
+hospital at the end of the street. A little neighbour-girl
+of fourteen, Laugier by name, who had lost her
+father, was living with her mother in great wretchedness.
+Catherine was continually going to them with
+food and clothes, and anything she could get for them.
+She begged her parents to defray the cost of
+apprenticing Laugier to a dressmaker; and such was
+her sway over them that they could not refuse to incur
+so heavy an outlay. Her piety, her many little charms
+of soul, rendered her all-powerful. She was impassioned
+in her charity, giving not alms only, but love as
+well. She longed to make Laugier perfect, rejoiced to
+have her by her side, and often gave her half her bed.
+The pair had been admitted among the <i>Daughters of
+Saint Theresa</i>, the third order established by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span>
+Carmelites. Mdlle. Cadi&egrave;re was their model nun, and
+seemed at thirteen a Carmelite complete. Already she
+devoured some books of mysticism borrowed from a
+Visitandine. In marked contrast with herself seemed
+Laugier, now a girl of fifteen, who would do nothing
+but eat and look handsome. So indeed she was, and
+on that account had been made sextoness to the chapel
+of Saint Theresa. This led her into great familiarities
+with the priests, and so, when her conduct called for
+her expulsion from the congregation, another authority,
+the vicar-general, flew into such a rage as to declare
+that, if she were expelled, the chapel itself would be
+interdicted.</p>
+
+<p>Both these girls had the temperament of their
+country, suffering from great excitement of the nerves,
+and from what was called flatulence of the womb. But
+in each the result was entirely different; being very
+carnal in the case of Laugier, who was gluttonous, lazy,
+passionate; but wholly cerebral with regard to the pure
+and gentle Catherine, who owing to her ailments or to
+a lively imagination that took everything up into itself,
+had no ideas concerning sex. &#8220;At twenty she was like
+a child of seven.&#8221; For nothing cared she but praying
+and giving of alms; she had no wish at all to marry.
+At the very word &#8220;marriage,&#8221; she would fall a-weeping,
+as if she had been asked to abandon God.</p>
+
+<p>They had lent her the life of her patroness, Catherine
+of Genoa, and she had bought for herself <i>The Castle of
+the Soul</i>, by St. Theresa. Few confessors could follow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span>
+her in these mystic flights. They who spoke clumsily
+of such things gave her pain. She could not keep
+either her mother&#8217;s confessor, the cathedral-priest, or
+another, a Carmelite, or even the old Jesuit Sabatier.
+At sixteen she found a priest of Saint Louis, a highly
+spiritual person. She spent days in church, to such a
+degree that her mother, by this time a widow and
+often in want of her, had to punish her, for all her
+own piety, on her return home. It was not the girl&#8217;s
+fault, however: during her ecstasies she quite forgot
+herself. So great a saint was she accounted by the
+girls of her own age, that sometimes at mass they
+seemed to see the Host drawn on by the moving
+power of her love, until it flew up and placed itself of
+its own accord in her mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Her two young brothers differed from each other in
+their feelings towards Girard. The elder, who lived
+with the Friar Preachers, shared the natural dislike of
+all Dominicans for the Jesuit. The other, who was
+studying with the Jesuits in order to become a priest,
+regarded Girard as a great man, a very saint, a man to
+honour as a hero. Of this younger brother, sickly
+like herself, Catherine was very fond. His ceaseless
+talking about Girard was sure to do its work upon
+her. One day she met the father in the street. He
+looked so grave, but so good and mild withal, that a
+voice within her said, &#8220;Behold the man to whose
+guidance thou art given!&#8221; The next Saturday, when
+she came to confess to him, he said that he had been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span>
+expecting her. In her amazed emotion she never
+dreamed that her brother might have given him
+warning, but fancied that the mysterious voice had
+spoken to him also, and that they two were sharing the
+heavenly communion of warnings from the world
+above.</p>
+
+<p>Six months of summer passed away, and yet Girard,
+who confessed her every Saturday, had taken no step
+towards her. The scandal about old Sabatier had set
+him on his guard. His own prudence would have
+held him to an attachment of a darker kind for such a
+one as the Guiol, who was certainly very mature, but
+also ardent and a devil incarnate.</p>
+
+<p>It was Cadi&egrave;re who made the first advances towards
+him, innocent as they were. Her brother, the giddy
+Jacobin, had taken it into his head to lend a lady and
+circulate through the town a satire called <i>The Morality
+of the Jesuits</i>. The latter were soon apprised of this.
+Sabatier swore that he would write to the Court for a
+sealed order (lettre-de-cachet) to shut up the Jacobin.
+In her trouble and alarm, his sister, with tears in her
+eyes, went to beseech Father Girard for pity&#8217;s sake to
+interfere. On her coming again to him a little later,
+he said, &#8220;Make yourself easy; your brother has
+nothing to fear; I have settled the matter for him.&#8221;
+She was quite overcome. Girard saw his advantage.
+A man of his influence, a friend of the King, a friend of
+Heaven as well, after such proof of goodness as he had
+just been giving, would surely have the very strongest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span>
+sway over so young a heart! He made the venture,
+and in her own uncertain language said to her, &#8220;Put
+yourself in my hands; yield yourself up to me altogether.&#8221;
+Without a blush she answered, in the fulness
+of her angelic purity, &#8220;Yes;&#8221; meaning nought else
+than to have him for her sole director.</p>
+
+<p>What were his plans concerning her? Would he
+make her a mistress or the tool of his charlatanry?
+Girard doubtless swayed to and fro, but he leant, I
+think, most towards the latter idea. He had to make
+his choice, might manage to seek out pleasures free
+from risk. But Mdlle. Cadi&egrave;re was under a pious
+mother. She lived with her family, a married brother
+and the two churchmen, in a very confined house, whose
+only entrance lay through the shop of the elder
+brother. She went no whither except to church.
+With all her simplicity she knew instinctively what
+things were impure, what houses dangerous. The
+Jesuit penitents were fond of meeting together at the
+top of a house, to eat, and play the fool, and cry out, in
+their Provencial tongue, &#8220;Vivent les <i>Jesuitons</i>!&#8221; A
+neighbour, disturbed by their noise, went and found
+them lying on their faces, singing and eating fritters,
+all paid for, it was said, out of the alms-money. Cadi&egrave;re
+was also invited, but taking a disgust to the
+thing she never went a second time.</p>
+
+<p>She was assailable only through her soul. And
+it was only her soul that Girard seemed to desire.
+That she should accept those lessons of passive faith<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span>
+which he had taught at Marseilles, this apparently was
+all his aim. Hoping that example would do more for
+him than precept, he charged his tool Guiol to escort
+the young saint to Marseilles, where lived the friend of
+Cadi&egrave;re&#8217;s childhood, a Carmelite nun, a daughter of
+Guiol&#8217;s. The artful woman sought to win her trust by
+pretending that she, too, was sometimes ecstatic. She
+crammed her with absurd stories. She told her, for
+instance, that on finding a cask of wine spoilt in her
+cellar, she began to pray, and immediately the wine
+became good. Another time she felt herself pierced by
+a crown of thorns, but the angels had comforted her by
+serving up a good dinner, of which she partook with
+Father Girard.</p>
+
+<p>Cadi&egrave;re gained her mother&#8217;s leave to go with this
+worthy Guiol to Marseilles, and Madame Cadi&egrave;re paid
+her expenses. It was now the most scorching month&mdash;that
+of August, 1729&mdash;in a scorching climate, when
+the country was all dried up, and the eye could see
+nothing but a rugged mirror of rocks and flintstone.
+The weak, parched brain of a sick girl suffering from the
+fatigues of travel, was all the more easily impressed by
+the dismal air of a nunnery of the dead. The true
+type of this class was the Sister Remusat, already a
+corpse to outward seeming, and soon to be really dead.
+Cadi&egrave;re was moved to admire so lofty a piece of perfection.
+Her treacherous companion allured her with
+the proud conceit of being such another and filling her
+place anon.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>During this short trip of hers, Girard, who remained
+amid the stifling heats of Toulon, had met with a dismal
+fall. He would often go to the girl Laugier, who
+believed herself to be ecstatic, and &#8220;comfort&#8221; her to
+such good purpose that he got her presently with
+child. When Mdlle. Cadi&egrave;re came back in the highest
+ecstasy, as if like to soar away, he for his part was
+become so carnal, so given up to pleasure, that he &#8220;let
+fall on her ears a whisper of love.&#8221; Thereat she took
+fire, but all, as anyone may see, in her own pure, saintly,
+generous way; as eager to keep him from falling, as
+devoting herself even to die for his sake.</p>
+
+<p>One of her saintly gifts was her power of seeing
+into the depths of men&#8217;s hearts. She had sometimes
+chanced to learn the secret life and morals of her confessors,
+to tell them of their faults; and this, in their
+fear and amazement, many of them had borne with
+great humility. One day this summer, on seeing
+Guiol come into her room, she suddenly said, &#8220;Wicked
+woman! what have you been doing?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And she was right,&#8221; said Guiol herself, at a later
+period; &#8220;for I had just been doing an evil deed.&#8221;
+Perhaps she had just been rendering Laugier the same
+midwife&#8217;s service which next year she wished to render
+Batarelle.</p>
+
+<p>Very likely, indeed, Laugier had entrusted to Catherine,
+at whose house she often slept, the secret of
+her good fortune, the love, the fatherly caresses of her
+saint. It was a hard and stormy trial for Catherine&#8217;s<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span>
+spirits. On the one side, she had learnt by heart
+Girard&#8217;s maxim, that whatever a saint may do is holy.
+But on the other hand, her native honesty and the
+whole course of her education compelled her to believe
+that over-fondness for the creature was ever a mortal
+sin. This woeful tossing between two different doctrines
+quite finished the poor girl, brought on within
+her dreadful storms, until at last she fancied herself
+possessed with a devil.</p>
+
+<p>And here her goodness of heart was made manifest.
+Without humbling Girard, she told him she had a
+vision of a soul tormented with impure thoughts and
+deadly sin; that she felt the need of rescuing that
+soul, by offering the Devil victim for victim, by agreeing
+to yield herself into his keeping in Girard&#8217;s stead.
+He never forbade her, but gave her leave to be possessed
+for one year only.</p>
+
+<p>Like the rest of the town, she had heard of the
+scandalous loves of Father Sabatier&mdash;an insolent passionate
+man, with none of Girard&#8217;s prudence. The
+scorn which the Jesuits&mdash;to her mind, such pillars of
+the Church&mdash;were sure to incur, had not escaped her
+notice. She said one day to Girard, &#8220;I had a vision
+of a gloomy sea, with a vessel full of souls tossed by
+a storm of unclean thoughts. On this vessel were
+two Jesuits. Said I to the Redeemer, whom I saw in
+heaven, &#8216;Lord, save them, and let me drown! The
+whole of their shipwreck do I take upon myself,&#8217; And
+God, in His mercy, granted my prayer.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>All through the trial, and when Girard, become her
+foe, was aiming at her death, she never once recurred
+to this subject. These two parables, so clear in meaning,
+she never explained. She was too high-minded
+to say a word about them. She had doomed herself to
+very damnation. Some will say that in her pride she
+deemed herself so deadened and impassive as to defy
+the impurity with which the Demon troubled a man of
+God. But it is quite clear that she had no accurate
+knowledge of sensual things, foreseeing nought in
+such a mystery save pains and torments of the Devil.
+Girard was very cold, and quite unworthy of all this
+sacrifice. Instead of being moved to compassion, he
+sported with her credulity through a vile deceit. Into
+her casket he slipped a paper, in which God declared
+that, for her sake, He would indeed save the vessel.
+But he took care not to leave so absurd a document
+there: she would have read it again and again
+until she came to perceive how spurious it was. The
+angel who brought the paper carried it off the next
+day.</p>
+
+<p>With the same coarseness of feeling Girard lightly
+allowed her, all unsettled and incapable of praying as
+she plainly was, to communicate as much as she pleased
+in different churches every day. This only made her
+worse. Filled already with the Demon, she harboured
+the two foes in one place. With equal power they
+fought within her against each other. She thought
+she would burst asunder. She would fall into a dead<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span>
+faint, and so remain for several hours. By December
+she could not move even from her bed.</p>
+
+<p>Girard had now but too good a plea for seeing her.
+He was prudent enough to let himself be led by the
+younger brother at least as far as her door. The sick
+girl&#8217;s room was at the top of the house. Her mother
+stayed discreetly in the shop. He was left alone as
+long as he pleased, and if he chose could turn the key.
+At this time she was very ill. He handled her
+as a child, drawing her forward a little to the front of the
+bed, holding her head, and kissing her in a fatherly
+way.</p>
+
+<p>She was very pure, but very sensitive. A slight
+touch, that no one else would have remarked, deprived
+her of her senses: this Girard found out for himself,
+and the knowledge of it possessed him with evil
+thoughts. He threw her at will into this trance,<a name="FNanchor_110_110" id="FNanchor_110_110"></a><a href="#Footnote_110_110" class="fnanchor">[110]</a> and
+she, in her thorough trust in him, never thought of
+trying to prevent it, feeling only somewhat troubled
+and ashamed at causing such a man to waste upon her
+so much of his precious time. His visits were very
+long. It was easy to foresee what would happen at
+last. Ill as she was, the poor girl inspired Girard with
+a passion none the less wild and uncontrollable. One
+freedom led to another, and her plaintive remonstrances
+were met with scornful replies. &#8220;I am your master&mdash;your
+god. You must bear all for obedience sake.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[325]</a></span>At length, about Christmas-time, the last barrier of
+reserve was broken down; and the poor girl awoke
+from her trance to utter a wail which moved even him
+to pity.</p>
+
+<p>An issue which she but dimly realized, Girard, as
+better enlightened, viewed with growing alarm. Signs
+of what was coming began to show themselves in her
+bodily health. To crown the entanglement, Laugier
+also found herself with child. Those religious meetings,
+those suppers watered with the light wine of the
+country, led to a natural raising of the spirits of a race
+so excitable, and the trance that followed spread from
+one to another. With the more artful all this was
+mere sham; but with the sanguine, vehement Laugier
+the trance was genuine enough. In her own little
+room she had real fits of raving and swooning, especially
+when Girard came in. A little later than Cadi&egrave;re she,
+too became fruitful.</p>
+
+<p>The danger was great. The girls were neither in a
+desert nor in the heart of a convent, but rather, as one
+might say, in the open street: Laugier in the midst
+of prying neighbours, Cadi&egrave;re in her own family.
+The latter&#8217;s brother, the Jacobin, began to take
+Girard&#8217;s long visits amiss. One day when Girard
+came, he ventured to stay beside her as though to
+watch over her safety. Girard boldly turned him out
+of the room, and the mother angrily drove her son
+from the house.</p>
+
+<p>This was very like to bring on an explosion. Of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</a></span>
+course, the young man, swelling with rage at this hard
+usage, at this expulsion from his home, would cry
+aloud to the Preaching Friars, who in their turn would
+seize so fair an opening, to go about repeating the
+story and stirring up the whole town against the
+Jesuit. The latter, however, resolved to meet them
+with a strangely daring move, to save himself by a
+crime. The libertine became a scoundrel.</p>
+
+<p>He knew his victim, had seen the scrofulous traces
+of her childhood, traces healed up but still looking
+different from common scars. Some of these were on
+her feet, others a little below her bosom. He formed
+a devilish plan of renewing the wounds and passing
+them off as &#8220;<i>stigmata</i>,&#8221; like those procured from
+heaven by St. Francis and other saints, who sought
+after the closest conformity with their pattern, the
+crucified Redeemer, even to bearing on themselves
+the marks of the nails and the spear-wound in the
+side. The Jesuits were distressed at having nought
+to show against the miracles of the Jansenists. Girard
+felt sure of pleasing them by an unlooked-for miracle.
+He could not but receive the support of his own order,
+of their house at Toulon. One of them, old Sabatier,
+was ready to believe anything: he had of yore been
+Cadi&egrave;re&#8217;s confessor, and this affair would bring him
+into credit. Another of these was Father Grignet, a
+pious old dotard, who would see whatever they pleased.
+If the Carmelites or any others were minded to have
+their doubts, they might be taught, by warnings from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</a></span>
+a high quarter, to consult their safety by keeping
+silence. Even the Jacobin Cadi&egrave;re, hitherto a stern
+and jealous foe, might find his account in turning
+round and believing in a tale which made his family
+illustrious and himself the brother of a saint.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But,&#8221; some will say, &#8220;did not the thing come
+naturally? We have instances numberless, and well-attested,
+of persons really marked with the sacred
+wounds.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The reverse is more likely. When she was aware
+of the new wounds, she felt ashamed and distressed
+with the fear of displeasing Girard by this return of
+her childish ailments; for such she deemed the sores
+which he had opened afresh while she lay unconscious
+in the trance. So she sped away to a neighbour, one
+Madame Truc, who dabbled in physic, and of her she
+bought, as if for her youngest brother, an ointment to
+burn away the sores.</p>
+
+<p>She would have thought herself guilty of a great sin,
+if she had not told everything to Girard. So, however
+fearful she might be of displeasing and disgusting
+him, she spoke of this matter also. Looking at the
+wounds, he began playing his comedy, rebuked her
+attempt to heal them, and thus set herself against God.
+They were the marks, he said, of Heaven. Falling on
+his knees, he kissed the wounds on her feet. She
+crossed herself in self-abasement, struggled long-time
+against such a belief. Girard presses and scolds,
+makes her show him her side, and looks admiringly at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328]</a></span>
+the wound. &#8220;I, too,&#8221; he said, &#8220;have a wound;
+but mine is within.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And now she is fain to believe in herself as a living
+miracle. Her acceptance of a thing so startling was
+greatly quickened by the fact, that Sister Remusat was
+just then dead. She had seen her in glory, her heart
+borne upward by the angels. Who was to take her
+place on earth? Who should inherit her high gifts,
+the heavenly favours wherewith she had been crowned?
+Girard offered her the succession, corrupting her
+through her pride.</p>
+
+<p>From that time she was changed. In her vanity
+she set down every natural movement within her as
+holy. The loathings, the sudden starts of a woman
+great with child, of all which she knew nothing, were
+accounted for as inward struggles of the Spirit. As
+she sat at table with her family on the first day of
+Lent, she suddenly beheld the Saviour, who said, &#8220;I
+will lead thee into the desert, where thou shalt share
+with Me all the love and all the suffering of the holy
+Forty Days.&#8221; She shuddered for dread of the suffering
+she must undergo. But still she would offer up
+her single self for a whole world of sinners. Her
+visions were all of blood; she had nothing but blood
+before her eyes. She beheld Jesus like a sieve running
+blood. She herself began to spit blood, and lose it in
+other ways. At the same time her nature seemed
+quite changed. The more she suffered, the more
+amorous she grew. On the twentieth day of Lent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[329]</a></span>
+she saw her name coupled with that of Girard. Her
+pride, raised and quickened by these new sensations,
+enabled her to comprehend the <i>special sway</i> enjoyed
+by Mary, the Woman, with respect to God. She felt
+<i>how much lower angels are</i> than the least of saints,
+male or female. She saw the Palace of Glory, and
+mistook herself for the Lamb. To crown these illusions
+she felt herself lifted off the ground, several feet into
+the air. She could hardly believe it, until Mdlle.
+Gravier, a respectable person, assured her of the fact.
+Everyone came, admired, worshipped. Girard brought
+his colleague Grignet, who knelt before her and wept
+with joy.</p>
+
+<p>Not daring to go to her every day, Girard often made
+her come to the Jesuits&#8217; Church. There, before the
+altar, before the cross, he surrendered himself to a
+passion all the fiercer for such a sacrilege. Had she
+no scruples? did she still deceive herself? It seems as
+if, in the midst of an elation still unfeigned and earnest,
+her conscience was already dazed and darkened.
+Under cover of her bleeding wounds, those cruel favours
+of her heavenly Spouse, she began to feel some curious
+compensations....</p>
+
+<p>In her reveries there are two points especially touching.
+One is the pure ideal she had formed of a faithful
+union, when she fancied that she saw her name
+and that of Girard joined together for ever in the Book
+of Life. The other is her kindliness of heart, the
+charmingly childlike nature which shines out through<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[330]</a></span>
+all her extravagances. On Palm Sunday, looking at
+the joyous party around their family table, she wept
+three hours together, for thinking that &#8220;on that very
+day no one had asked Jesus to dinner.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Through all that Lent, she could hardly eat anything:
+the little she took was thrown up again. The last
+fifteen days she fasted altogether, until she reached the
+last stage of weakness. Who would have believed that
+against this dying girl, to whom nothing remained but
+the mere breath, Girard could practise new barbarities?
+He had kept her sores from closing. A new one was
+now formed on her right side. And at last, on Good
+Friday, he gave the finishing touch to his cruel
+comedy, by making her wear a crown of iron-wire,
+which pierced her forehead, until drops of blood rolled
+down her face. All this was done without much
+secresy. He began by cutting off her long hair and
+carrying it away. He ordered the crown of one
+Bitard, a cagemaker in the town. She did not show
+herself to her visitors with the crown on: they saw
+the result only, the drops of blood and the bleeding
+visage. Impressions of the latter, like so many <i>Veronicas</i>,<a name="FNanchor_111_111" id="FNanchor_111_111"></a><a href="#Footnote_111_111" class="fnanchor">[111]</a>
+were taken off on napkins, and doubtless given
+away by Girard to people of great piety.</p>
+
+<p>The mother, in her own despite, became an abettor
+in all this juggling. In truth, she was afraid of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[331]</a></span>Girard; she began to find him capable of anything,
+and somebody, perhaps the Guiol, had told her, in the
+deepest confidence, that, if she said a word against him,
+her daughter would not be alive twenty-four hours.</p>
+
+<p>Cadi&egrave;re, for her part, never lied about the matter.
+In the narrative taken down from her own lips of
+what happened this Lent, she expressly tells of a
+crown, with sharp points, which stuck in her head, and
+made it bleed. Nor did she then make any secret of
+the source whence came the little crosses she gave her
+visitors. From a model supplied by Girard, they were
+made to her order by one of her kinsfolk, a carpenter
+in the Arsenal.</p>
+
+<p>On Good Friday, she remained twenty-four hours in
+a swoon, which they called a trance; remained in
+special charge of Girard, whose attentions weakened
+her, and did her deadly harm. She was now three
+months gone with child. The saintly martyr, the
+transfigured marvel, was already beginning to fill out.
+Desiring, yet dreading the more violent issues of
+a miscarriage, he plied her daily with reddish powders
+and dangerous drinks.</p>
+
+<p>Much rather would he have had her die, and so have
+rid himself of the whole business. At any rate, he
+would have liked to get her away from her mother, to
+bury her safe in a convent. Well acquainted with
+houses of that sort, he knew, as Picard had done in the
+Louviers affair, how cleverly and discreetly such cases
+as Cadi&egrave;re&#8217;s could be hidden away. He talked of it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[332]</a></span>
+this very Good Friday. But she seemed too weak to
+be taken safely from her bed. At last, however, four
+days after Easter, a miscarriage took place.</p>
+
+<p>The girl Laugier had also been having strange
+convulsive fits, and absurd beginnings of <i>stigmata</i>:
+one of them being an old wound, caused by her
+scissors when she was working as a seamstress, the
+other an eruptive sore in her side. Her transports
+suddenly turned to impious despair. She spat upon
+the crucifix: she cried out against Girard, &#8220;that devil
+of a priest, who had brought a poor girl of two-and-twenty
+into such a plight, only to forsake her afterwards!&#8221;
+Girard dared not go and face her passionate
+outbreaks. But the women about her, being all in
+his interest, found some way of bringing this matter
+to a quiet issue.</p>
+
+<p>Was Girard a wizard, as people afterwards maintained?
+They might well think so, who saw how
+easily, being neither young nor handsome, he had
+charmed so many women. Stranger still it was, that
+after getting thus compromised, he swayed opinion to
+such a degree. For a while, he seemed to have
+enchanted the whole town.</p>
+
+<p>The truth was, that everyone knew the strength of
+the Jesuits. Nobody cared to quarrel with them. It
+was hardly reckoned safe to speak ill of them, even in
+a whisper. The bulk of the priesthood consisted of
+monklings of the Mendicant orders, who had no
+powerful friends or high connections. The Carmelites<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[333]</a></span>
+themselves, jealous and hurt as they were at losing
+Cadi&egrave;re, kept silence. Her brother, the young Jacobin,
+was lectured by his trembling mother into resuming
+his old circumspect ways. Becoming reconciled to
+Girard, he came at length to serve him as devotedly
+as did his younger brother, even lending himself to a
+curious trick by which people were led to believe that
+Girard had the gift of prophecy.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Such weak opposition as he might have to fear,
+would come only from the very person whom he seemed
+to have most thoroughly mastered. Submissive hitherto,
+Cadi&egrave;re now gave some slight tokens of a coming
+independence which could not help showing itself. On
+the 30th of April, at a country party got up by the
+polite Girard, and to which he sent his troop of young
+devotees in company with Guiol, Cadi&egrave;re fell into deep
+thought. The fair spring-time, in that climate so very
+charming, lifted her heart up to God. She exclaimed
+with a feeling of true piety, &#8220;Thee, Thee only, do I
+seek, O Lord! Thine angels are not enough for me.&#8221;
+Then one of the party, a blithesome girl, having, in the
+Provencial fashion, hung a tambourine round her neck,
+Cadi&egrave;re skipped and danced about like the rest; with
+a rug thrown across her shoulders, she danced the
+Bohemian measure, and made herself giddy with a
+hundred mad capers.</p>
+
+<p>She was very unsettled. In May she got leave from
+her mother to make a trip to Sainte-Baume, to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[334]</a></span>
+Church of St. Mary Magdalen, the chief saint of girls
+on penance. Girard would only let her go under
+charge of two faithful overlookers, Guiol and Reboul.
+But though she had still some trances on the way, she
+showed herself weary of being a passive tool to the
+violent spirit, whether divine or devilish, that annoyed
+her. The end of her year&#8217;s <i>possession</i> was not far off.
+Had she not won her freedom? Once issued forth
+from the gloom and witcheries of Toulon, into the open
+air, in the midst of nature, beneath the full sunshine,
+the prisoner regained her soul, withstood the stranger
+spirit, dared to be herself, to use her own will.
+Girard&#8217;s two spies were far from edified thereat. On
+their return from this short journey, from the 17th
+to the 22nd May, they warned him of the change.
+He was convinced of it from his own experience. She
+fought against the trance, seeming no longer wishful
+to obey aught save reason.</p>
+
+<p>He had thought to hold her both by his power of
+charming and through the holiness of his high office,
+and, lastly, by right of possession and carnal usage.
+But he had no hold upon her at all. The youthful
+soul, which, after all, had not been so much conquered
+as treacherously surprised, resumed its own nature.
+This hurt him. Besides his business of pedant, his
+tyranny over the children he chastised at will, over
+nuns not less at his disposal, there remained within
+a hard bottom of domineering jealousy. He determined
+to snatch Cadi&egrave;re back by punishing this first<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[335]</a></span>
+little revolt, if such a name could be given to the
+timid fluttering of a soul rising again from its long
+compression. On the 22nd May she confessed to
+him after her wont; but he refused to absolve her,
+declaring her to be so guilty that on the morrow
+he would have to lay upon her a very great penance
+indeed.</p>
+
+<p>What would that be? A fast? But she was weakened
+and wasted already. Long prayers, again, were
+not in fashion with Quietist directors,&mdash;were in fact
+forbidden. There remained the <i>discipline</i>, or bodily
+chastisement. This punishment, then everywhere
+habitual, was enforced as prodigally in convents as in
+colleges. It was a simple and summary means of
+swift execution, sometimes, in a rude and simple age,
+carried out in the churches themselves. The <i>Fabliaux</i>
+show us an artless picture of manners, where, after confessing
+husband and wife, the priest gave them the
+discipline without any ceremony, just as they were,
+behind the confessional. Scholars, monks, nuns, were
+all punished in the same way.<a name="FNanchor_112_112" id="FNanchor_112_112"></a><a href="#Footnote_112_112" class="fnanchor">[112]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[336]</a></span></p>
+<p>Girard knew that a girl like Cadi&egrave;re, all unused to
+shame, and very modest&mdash;for what she had hitherto
+suffered took place unknown to herself in her sleep&mdash;would
+feel so cruelly tortured, so fatally crushed by
+this unseemly chastisement, as utterly to lose what
+little buoyancy she had. She was pretty sure too, if
+we must speak out, to be yet more cruelly mortified
+than other women, in respect of the pang endured by
+her woman&#8217;s vanity. With so much suffering, and so
+many fasts, followed by her late miscarriage, her body,
+always delicate, seemed worn away to a shadow. All
+the more surely would she shrink from any exposure
+of a form so lean, so wasted, so full of aches. Her
+swollen legs and such-like small infirmities would serve
+to enhance her humiliation.</p>
+
+<p>We lack the courage to relate what followed. It
+may all be read in those three depositions, so artless,
+so manifestly unfeigned, in which, without being
+sworn, she made it her duty to avow what self-interest
+bade her conceal, owning even to things which were
+afterwards turned to the cruellest account against
+her.</p>
+
+<p>Her first deposition was made on the spur of the
+moment, before the spiritual judge who was sent to
+take her by surprise. In this we seem to be ever
+hearing the utterances of a young heart that speaks as
+though in God&#8217;s own presence. The second was taken
+before the King&mdash;I should rather say before the magistrate
+who represented him, the Lieutenant Civil and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[337]</a></span>
+Criminal of Toulon. The last was heard before the
+great assembly of the Parliament of Aix.</p>
+
+<p>Observe that all three, agreeing as they do wonderfully
+together, were printed at Aix under the eye of
+her enemies, in a volume where, as I shall presently
+prove, an attempt was made to extenuate the guilt of
+Girard, and fasten the reader&#8217;s gaze on every point
+likely to tell against Cadi&egrave;re. And yet the editor
+could not help inserting depositions like these, which
+bear with crushing weight on the man he sought to
+uphold.</p>
+
+<p>It was a monstrous piece of inconsistency on Girard&#8217;s
+part. He first frightened the poor girl, and then
+suddenly took a base, a cruel advantage of her fears.</p>
+
+<p>In this case no plea of love can be offered in extenuation.
+The truth is far otherwise: he loved her
+no more. And this forms the most dreadful part of
+the story. We have seen how cruelly he drugged her;
+we have now to see her utterly forsaken. He owed her
+a grudge for being of greater worth than those other
+degraded women. He owed her a grudge for having
+unwittingly tempted him and brought him into danger.
+Above all, he could not forgive her for keeping her
+soul in safety. He sought only to tame her down, but
+caught hopefully at her oft-renewed assurance, &#8220;I feel
+that I shall not live.&#8221; Villanous profligate that he
+was, bestowing his shameful kisses on that poor
+shattered body whose death he longed to see!</p>
+
+<p>How did he account to her for this shocking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[338]</a></span>
+antagonism of cruelty and caresses? Was it meant
+to try her patience and obedience, or did he boldly
+pass on to the true depths of Molinos&#8217; teaching, that
+&#8220;only by dint of sinning can sin be quelled&#8221;? Did
+she take it all in full earnest, never perceiving that all
+this show of justice, penitence, expiation, was downright
+profligacy and nothing else?</p>
+
+<p>She did not care to understand him in the strange
+moral crash that befell her after that 23rd May, under
+the influence of a mild warm June. She submitted to
+her master, of whom she was rather afraid, and with a
+singularly servile passion carried on the farce of undergoing
+small penances day by day. So little regard did
+Girard show for her feelings that he never hid from
+her his relations with other women. All he wanted
+was to get her into a convent. Meanwhile she was
+his plaything: she saw him, let him have his way.
+Weak, and yet further weakened by the shame that
+unnerved her, growing sadder and more sad at heart,
+she had now but little hold on life, and would keep on
+saying, in words that brought no sorrow to Girard&#8217;s
+soul, &#8220;I feel that I shall soon be dead.&#8221;</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_107_107" id="Footnote_107_107"></a><a href="#FNanchor_107_107"><span class="label">[107]</span></a> The great plague of 1720, which carried off 60,000 people
+about Marseilles. Belzunce is the &#8220;Marseilles&#8217; good bishop&#8221;
+of Pope&#8217;s line&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_108_108" id="Footnote_108_108"></a><a href="#FNanchor_108_108"><span class="label">[108]</span></a> See &#8220;The Proceedings in the Affair of Father Girard and
+La Cadi&egrave;re,&#8221; Aix, 1733.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_109_109" id="Footnote_109_109"></a><a href="#FNanchor_109_109"><span class="label">[109]</span></a> See the work by M. d&#8217;Antrechaus, and the excellent
+treatise by M. Gustave Lambert.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_110_110" id="Footnote_110_110"></a><a href="#FNanchor_110_110"><span class="label">[110]</span></a> A case of mesmerism applied to a very susceptible
+patient.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_111_111" id="Footnote_111_111"></a><a href="#FNanchor_111_111"><span class="label">[111]</span></a> After the saint of that name, whose handkerchief received
+the impress of Christ&#8217;s countenance.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_112_112" id="Footnote_112_112"></a><a href="#FNanchor_112_112"><span class="label">[112]</span></a> The Dauphin was cruelly flogged. A boy of fifteen,
+according to St. Simon, died from the pain of a like infliction.
+The prioress of the Abbey-in-the-Wood, pleaded before the King
+against the &#8220;afflictive chastisement&#8221; threatened by her superior.
+For the credit of the convent, she was spared the
+public shame; but the superior, to whom she was consigned,
+doubtless punished her in a quiet way. The immoral tendency
+of such a practice became more and more manifest. Fear and
+shame led to woeful entreaties and unworthy bargains.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2 class="chs"><a name="CHAPTER_XI_2" id="CHAPTER_XI_2"></a>CHAPTER XI.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[339]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>CADIERE IN THE CONVENT: 1730.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="smcap">The</span> Abbess of the Ollioules Convent was young for an
+abbess, being only thirty-eight years old. She was
+not wanting in mind. She was lively, swift alike in
+love and in hatred, hurried away by her heart and her
+senses also, endowed with very little of the tact and
+the moderation needed for the governing of such a
+body.</p>
+
+<p>This nunnery drew its livelihood from two sources.
+On the one side, there came to it from Toulon two or
+three nuns of consular families, who brought good
+dowers with them, and therefore did what they
+pleased. They lived with the Observantine monks who
+had the ghostly direction of the convent. On the
+other hand, these monks, whose order had spread to
+Marseilles and many other places, picked up some
+little boarders and novices who paid for their keep: a
+contact full of danger and unpleasantness for the
+children, as one may see by the Aubany affair.</p>
+
+<p>There was no real confinement, nor much internal
+order. In the scorching summer nights of that
+African climate, peculiarly oppressive and wearying in
+the airless passes of Ollioules, nuns and novices went<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[340]</a></span>
+to and fro with the greatest freedom. The very same
+things were going on at Ollioules in 1730 which we
+saw in 1630 at Loudun. The bulk of nuns, well-nigh
+a dozen out of the fifteen who made up the house,
+being rather forsaken by the monks, who preferred
+ladies of loftier position, were poor creatures, sick at
+heart, and disinherited, with nothing to console them
+but tattling, child&#8217;s play, and other school-girls&#8217; tricks.</p>
+
+<p>The abbess was afraid that Cadi&egrave;re would soon see
+through all this. She made some demur about taking
+her in. Anon, with some abruptness, she entirely
+changed her cue. In a charming letter, all the more
+flattering as sent so unexpectedly from such a lady to
+so young a girl, she expressed a hope of her leaving
+the ghostly guidance of Father Girard. The girl
+was not, of course, to be transferred to her Observantines,
+who were far from capable of the charge.
+The abbess had formed the bold, enlivening idea of
+taking her into her own hands and becoming her sole
+director.</p>
+
+<p>She was very vain. Deeming herself more agreeable
+than an old Jesuit confessor, she reckoned on
+making this prodigy her own, on conquering her without
+trouble. She would have worked the young saint
+for the benefit of her house.</p>
+
+<p>She paid her the marked compliment of receiving
+her on the threshold, at the street-door. She kissed
+her, caught her up, led her into the abbess&#8217;s own fine
+room, and bade her share it with herself. She was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[341]</a></span>
+charmed with her modesty, with her invalid grace,
+with a certain strangeness at once mysterious and melting.
+In that short journey the girl had suffered a
+great deal. The abbess wanted to lay her down in
+her own bed, saying she loved her so that she would
+have them sleep together like sisters in one bed.</p>
+
+<p>For her purpose this was probably more than was
+needful. It would have been quite enough to have the
+saint under her own roof. She would now have too
+much the look of a little favourite. The lady, however,
+was surprised at the young girl&#8217;s hesitation,
+which doubtless sprang from her modesty or her
+humility; in part, perhaps, from a comparison of her
+own ill-health with the young health and blooming
+beauty of the other. But the abbess tenderly urged
+her request.</p>
+
+<p>Under the influence of a fondling so close and so
+continual, she deemed that Girard would be forgotten.
+With all abbesses it had become the ruling fancy, the
+pet ambition, to confess their own nuns, according to
+the practice allowed by St. Theresa. By this pleasant
+scheme of hers the same result would come out of
+itself, the young woman telling her confessors only
+of small things, but keeping the depths of her heart
+for one particular person. Caressed continually by
+one curious woman, at eventide, in the night, when
+her head was on the pillow, she would have let out
+many a secret, whether her own or another&#8217;s.</p>
+
+<p>From this living entanglement she could not free<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[342]</a></span>
+herself at the first. She slept with the abbess. The
+latter thought she held her fast by a twofold tie, by
+the opposite means employed on the saint and on the
+woman; that is, on the nervous, sensitive, and, through
+her weakness, perhaps sensual girl. Her story, her
+sayings, whatever fell from her lips, were all written
+down. From other sources she picked up the meanest
+details of her physical life, and forwarded the report
+thereof to Toulon. She would have made her an idol,
+a pretty little pet doll. On a slope so slippery the
+work of allurement doubtless moved apace. But the
+girl had scruples and a kind of fear. She made one
+great effort, of which her weak health would have
+made her seem incapable. She humbly asked leave
+to quit that dove&#8217;s-nest, that couch too soft and delicate,
+to go and live in common with the novices or the
+boarders.</p>
+
+<p>Great was the abbess&#8217;s surprise; great her mortification.
+She fancied herself scorned. She took a
+spite against the thankless girl, and never forgave her.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>From the others Cadi&egrave;re met with a very pleasant
+welcome. The mistress of the novices, Madame de
+Lescot, a nun from Paris, refined and good, was a
+worthier woman than the abbess. She seemed to
+understand the other&mdash;to see in her a poor prey of fate,
+a young heart full of God, but cruelly branded by
+some eccentric spell which seemed like to hurry her onward
+to disgrace, to some unhappy end. She busied herself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[343]</a></span>
+entirely with looking after the girl, saving her from
+her own rashness, interpreting her to others, excusing
+those things which might in her be least excusable.</p>
+
+<p>Saving the two or three noble ladies who lived with
+the monks and had small relish for the higher mysticism,
+they were all fond of her, and took her for an
+angel from heaven. Their tender feelings having little
+else to engage them, became concentred in her and
+her alone. They found her not only pious and wonderfully
+devout, but a good child withal, kind-hearted,
+winning, and entertaining. They were no longer listless
+and sick at heart. She engaged and edified them
+with her dreams, with stories true, or rather, perhaps,
+unfeigned, mingled ever with touches of purest tenderness.
+She would say, &#8220;At night I go everywhere,
+even to America. Everywhere I leave letters bidding
+people repent. To-night I shall go and seek you out,
+even when you have locked yourselves in. We will all
+go together into the Sacred Heart.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The miracle was wrought. Each of them at midnight,
+so she said, received the delightful visit. They
+all fancied they felt Cadi&egrave;re embracing them, and
+making them enter the heart of Jesus. They were
+very frightened and very happy. Tenderest, most
+credulous of all, was Sister Raimbaud, a woman of
+Marseilles, who tasted this happiness fifteen times in
+three months, or nearly once in every six days.</p>
+
+<p>It was purely the effect of imagination. The proof
+is, that Cadi&egrave;re visited all of them at one same moment.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[344]</a></span>
+The abbess meanwhile was hurt, being roused
+at the first to jealousy by the thought that she only
+had been left out, and afterwards feeling assured that,
+lost as the girl might be in her own dreams, she would
+get through so many intimate friends but too clear an
+inkling into the scandals of the house.</p>
+
+<p>These were scarcely hidden from her at all. But as
+nothing came to Cadi&egrave;re save by the way of spiritual
+insight, she fancied they had been told her in a revelation.
+Here her kindliness shone out. She felt a large
+compassion for the God who was thus outraged. And
+once again she imagined herself bound to atone for the
+rest, to save the sinners from the punishment they deserved,
+by draining herself the worst cruelties which
+the rage of devils would have power to wreak.</p>
+
+<p>All this burst upon her on the 25th June, the
+Feast of St. John. She was spending the evening with
+the sisters in the novices&#8217; rooms. With a loud cry she
+fell backward in contortions, and lost all consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>When she came to, the novices surrounded her, waiting
+eager to hear what she was going to say. But the
+governess, Madame Lescot, guessed what she would
+say, felt that she was about to ruin herself. So she
+lifted her up, and led her straight to her room, where
+she found herself quite flayed, and her linen covered
+with blood.</p>
+
+<p>Why did Girard fail her amidst these struggles inward
+and from without? She could not make him
+out. She had much need of support, and yet he never<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[345]</a></span>
+came, except for one moment at rare intervals, to the
+parlour.</p>
+
+<p>She wrote to him on the 28th June, by her brothers;
+for though she could read, she was scarcely
+able to write. She called to him in the most stirring,
+the most urgent tones, and he answers by putting her
+off. He has to preach at Hy&egrave;res, he has a sore throat,
+and so on.</p>
+
+<p>Wonderful to tell, it is the abbess herself who brings
+him thither. No doubt she was uneasy at Cadi&egrave;re&#8217;s
+discovering so much of the inner life of the convent.
+Making sure that the girl would talk of it to Girard,
+she wished to forestal her. In a very flattering and
+tender note of the 3rd July, she besought the Jesuit
+to come and see herself first, for she longed, between
+themselves, to be his pupil, his disciple, as humble
+Nicodemus had been of Christ. &#8220;Under your guidance,
+by the blessing of that holy freedom which my post
+ensures me, I should move forward swiftly and noiselessly
+in the path of virtue. The state of our young
+candidate here will serve me as a fair and useful pretext.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A startling, ill-considered step, betraying some unsoundness
+in the lady&#8217;s mind. Having failed to supplant
+Girard with Cadi&egrave;re, she now essayed to supplant
+Cadi&egrave;re with Girard. Abruptly, without the least preface,
+she stepped forward. She made her decision, like
+a great lady, who was still agreeable and quite sure of
+being taken at her word, who would go so far as even
+to talk of the <i>freedom</i> she enjoyed!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[346]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In taking so false a step she started from a true belief
+that Girard had ceased to care much for Cadi&egrave;re.
+But she might have guessed that he had other things
+to perplex him in Toulon. He was disturbed by an
+affair no longer turning upon a young girl, but on a
+lady of ripe age, easy circumstances, and good standing;
+on his wisest penitent, Mdlle. Gravier. Her forty years
+failed to protect her. He would have no self-governed
+sheep in his fold. One day, to her surprise and mortification,
+she found herself pregnant, and loud was
+her wail thereat.</p>
+
+<p>Taken up with this new adventure, Girard looked
+but coldly on the abbess&#8217;s unforeseen advances. He
+mistrusted them as a trap laid for him by the Observantines.
+He resolved to be cautious, saw the abbess,
+who was already embarrassed by her rash step, and
+then saw Cadi&egrave;re, but only in the chapel where he
+confessed her.</p>
+
+<p>The latter was hurt by his want of warmth. In
+truth his conduct showed strange inconsistencies. He
+unsettled her with his light, agreeable letters, full of
+little sportive threats which might have been called
+lover-like. And yet he never deigned to see her save
+in public.</p>
+
+<p>In a note written the same evening she revenged
+herself in a very delicate way. She said that when
+he granted her absolution, she felt wonderfully dissevered
+both from herself and from <i>every other
+creature</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[347]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was just what Girard would have wanted. His
+plots had fallen into a sad tangle, and Cadi&egrave;re was in
+the way. Her letter enchanted him: far from being
+annoyed with her, he enjoined her to keep dissevered.
+At the same time, he hinted at the need he had for
+caution. He had received a letter, he said, warning
+him sharply of her faults. However, as he would set
+off on the 6th July for Marseilles, he would see
+her on the road.</p>
+
+<p>She awaited him, but no Girard came. Her agitation
+was very great. It brought on a sharp fit of her
+old bodily distemper. She spoke of it to her dear
+Sister Raimbaud, who would not leave her, who slept
+with her, against the rules. This was on the night of
+the 6th July, when the heat in that close oven of
+Ollioules was most oppressive and condensed. At four
+or five o&#8217;clock, seeing her writhe in sharp suffering,
+the other &#8220;thought she had the colic, and went to
+fetch some fire from the kitchen.&#8221; While she was
+gone, Cadi&egrave;re tried by one last effort to bring Girard
+to her side forthwith. Whether with her nails she
+had re-opened the wounds in her head, or whether she
+had stuck upon it the sharp iron crown, she somehow
+made herself all bloody. The pain transfigured her,
+until her eyes sparkled again.</p>
+
+<p>This lasted not less than two hours. The nuns
+flocked to see her in this state, and gazed admiringly.
+They would even have brought their Observantines
+thither, had Cadi&egrave;re not prevented them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[348]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The abbess would have taken good care to tell
+Girard nothing, lest he should see her in a plight so
+touching, so very pitiful. But good Madame Lescot
+comforted the girl by sending the news to the father.
+He came, but like a true juggler, instead of going up
+to her room at once, had himself an ecstatic fit in the
+chapel, staying there a whole hour on his knees, prostrate
+before the Holy Sacrament. Going at length
+upstairs, he found Cadi&egrave;re surrounded by all the nuns.
+They tell him how for a moment she looked as if she
+was at mass, how she seemed to open her lips to receive
+the Host. &#8220;Who should know that better than
+myself?&#8221; said the knave. &#8220;An angel had told me.
+I repeated the mass, and gave her the sacrament from
+Toulon.&#8221; They were so upset by the miracle, that
+one of them was two days ill. Girard then addressed
+Cadi&egrave;re with unseemly gaiety: &#8220;So, so, little glutton!
+would you rob me of half my share?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They withdraw respectfully, leaving these two alone.
+Behold him face to face with his bleeding victim, so
+pale, so weak, but agitated all the more! Anyone
+would have been greatly moved. The avowal expressed
+by her blood, her wounds, rather than spoken words,
+was likely to reach his heart. It was a humbling
+sight; but who would not have pitied her? This
+innocent girl could for one moment yield to
+nature! In her short unhappy life, a stranger as she
+was to the charms of sense, the poor young saint could
+still show one hour of weakness! All he had hitherto<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[349]</a></span>
+enjoyed of her without her knowledge, became mere
+nought. With her soul, her will, he would now be
+master of everything.</p>
+
+<p>In her deposition Cadi&egrave;re briefly and bashfully
+said that she lost all knowledge of what happened
+next. In a confession made to one of her friends she
+uttered no complaints, but let her understand the
+truth.</p>
+
+<p>And what did Girard do in return for so charmingly
+bold a flight of that impatient heart? He scolded
+her. He was only chilled by a warmth which would
+have set any other heart on fire. His tyrannous soul
+wanted nothing but the dead, the merest plaything of
+his will. And this girl, by the boldness of her first
+move, had forced him to come. The scholar had
+drawn the master along. The peevish pedant treated
+the matter as he would have treated a rebellion at
+school. His lewd severities, his coolly selfish pursuit
+of a cruel pleasure, blighted the unhappy girl, who
+now had nothing left her but remorse.</p>
+
+<p>It was no less shocking a fact, that the blood poured
+out for his sake had no other effect than to tempt him
+to make the most of it for his own purposes. In this,
+perhaps his last, interview he sought to make so far
+sure of the poor thing&#8217;s discretion, that, however
+forsaken by him, she herself might still believe in
+him. He asked if he was to be less favoured than
+the nuns who had seen the miracle. She let herself
+bleed before him. The water with which he washed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[350]</a></span>
+away the blood he drank himself,<a name="FNanchor_113_113" id="FNanchor_113_113"></a><a href="#Footnote_113_113" class="fnanchor">[113]</a> and made her
+drink also, and by this hateful communion, he thought
+to bind fast her soul.</p>
+
+<p>This lasted two or three hours, and it was now near
+noon. The abbess was scandalized. She resolved to
+go with the dinner herself, and make them open the
+door. Girard took some tea: it being Friday, he
+pretended to be fasting; though he had doubtless
+armed himself well at Toulon. Cadi&egrave;re asked for
+coffee. The lay sister who managed the kitchen was
+surprised at this on such a day. But without that
+strengthening draught she would have fainted away.
+It set her up a little, and she kept hold of Girard
+still. He stayed with her, no longer indeed locked
+in, till four o&#8217;clock, seeking to efface the gloomy impression
+caused by his conduct in the morning. By
+dint of lying about friendship and fatherhood, he
+somewhat reassured the susceptible creature, and
+calmed her troubled spirits. She showed him the
+way out, and, walking after him, took, childlike, two
+or three skips for joy. He said, drily, &#8220;Little fool!&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>She paid heavily for her weakness. At nine of
+that same night she had a dreadful vision, and was
+heard crying out, &#8220;O God! keep off from me! get
+back!&#8221; On the morning of the 8th, at mass she
+did not stay for the communion, deeming herself, no
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[351]</a></span>doubt, unworthy, but made her escape to her own
+room. Thereon arose much scandal. Yet so greatly
+was she beloved, that one of the nuns ran after her,
+and, telling a compassionate falsehood, swore she had
+beheld Jesus giving her the sacrament with His own
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Lescot delicately and cleverly wrote a legend
+out of the mystic ejaculations, the holy sighs, the
+devout tears, and whatever else burst forth from this
+shattered heart. Strange to say, these women tenderly
+conspired to shield a woman. Nothing tells more
+than this in behalf of poor Cadi&egrave;re and her delightful
+gifts. Already in one month&#8217;s time she had become
+the child of all. They defended her in everything she
+did. Innocent though she might be, they saw in her
+only the victim of the Devil&#8217;s attacks. One kind sturdy
+woman of the people, Matherone, daughter of the
+Ollioules locksmith, and porteress herself to the convent,
+on seeing some of Girard&#8217;s indecent liberties,
+said, in spite of them, &#8220;No matter: she is a saint.&#8221;
+And when he once talked of taking her from the
+convent, she cried out, &#8220;Take away our Mademoiselle
+Cadi&egrave;re! I will have an iron door made to keep her
+from going.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Alarmed at the state of things, and at the use to
+which it might be turned by the abbess and her monks,
+Cadi&egrave;re&#8217;s brethren who came to her every day, took
+courage to be beforehand; and in a formal letter
+written in her name to Girard, reminded him of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[352]</a></span>
+revelation given to her on the 25th June regarding
+the morals of the Observantines. It was time, they
+said, &#8220;to carry out God&#8217;s purposes in this matter,&#8221;
+namely, of course, to demand an inquiry, to accuse
+the accusers.</p>
+
+<p>Their excess of boldness was very rash. Cadi&egrave;re,
+now all but dying, had no such thoughts in her head.
+Her women-friends imagined that he who had caused
+the disturbance would, perhaps, bring back the calm.
+They besought Girard to come and confess her. A
+dreadful scene took place. At the confessional she
+uttered cries and wailings audible thirty paces off. The
+curious among them found some amusement listening
+to her, and were not disappointed. Girard was inflicting
+chastisement. Again and again he said, &#8220;Be
+calm, mademoiselle!&#8221; In vain did he try to absolve
+her. She would not be absolved. On the 12th, she
+had so sharp a pang below her heart, that she felt as
+though her sides were bursting. On the 14th, she
+seemed fast dying, and her mother was sent for. She
+received the viaticum; and on the morrow made a
+public confession, &#8220;the most touching, the most expressive
+that had ever been heard. We were drowned
+in tears.&#8221; On the 20th, she was in a state of heart-rending
+agony. After that she had a sudden and
+saving change for the better, marked by a very soothing
+vision. She beheld the sinful Magdalen pardoned,
+caught up into glory, filling in heaven the place which
+Lucifer had lost.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[353]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Girard, however, could only ensure her discretion
+by corrupting her yet further, by choking her remorse.
+Sometimes he would come to the parlour and greet
+her with bold embraces. But oftener he sent his
+faithful followers, Guiol and others, who sought to
+initiate her into their own disgraceful secrets, while
+seeming to sympathise tenderly with the sufferings of
+their outspoken friend. Girard not only winked at
+this, but himself spoke freely to Cadi&egrave;re of such matters
+as the pregnancy of Mdlle. Gravier. He wanted her
+to ask him to Ollioules, to calm his irritation, to
+persuade him that such a circumstance might be a
+delusion of the Devil&#8217;s causing, which could perchance
+be dispelled.</p>
+
+<p>These impure teachings made no way with Cadi&egrave;re.
+They were sure to anger her brethren, to whom they
+were not unknown. The letters they wrote in her name
+are very curious. Enraged at heart and sorely wounded,
+accounting Girard a villain, but obliged to make
+their sister speak of him with respectful tenderness,
+they still, by snatches, let their wrath become visible.</p>
+
+<p>As for Girard&#8217;s letters, they are pieces of laboured
+writing, manifestly meant for the trial which might
+take place. Let us talk of the only one which he did
+not get into his hands to tamper with. It is dated
+the 22nd July. It is at once sour and sweet, agreeable,
+trifling, the letter of a careless man. The meaning of
+it is thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The bishop reached Toulon this morning, and will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[354]</a></span>
+go to see Cadi&egrave;re.... They will settle together what
+to do and say. If the Grand Vicar and Father Sabatier
+wish to see her, and ask to see her wounds, she
+will tell them that she has been forbidden to do or
+say aught.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I am hungering to see you again, to see the whole
+of you. You know that I only demand <i>my right</i>. It
+is so long since I have seen more than half of you (he
+means to say, at the parlour grating). Shall I tire
+you? Well, do you not also tire me?&#8221; And so on.</p>
+
+<p>A strange letter in every way. He distrusts alike
+the bishop and the Jesuit, his own colleague, old
+Sabatier. It is at bottom the letter of a restless
+culprit. He knows that in her hands she holds his
+letters, his papers, the means, in short, of ruining him.
+The two young men write back in their sister&#8217;s name a
+spirited answer&mdash;the only one that has a truthful sound.
+They answer him line for line, without insult, but
+with a roughness often ironical, and betraying the
+wrath pent-up within them. The sister promises to
+obey him, to say nothing either to the bishop or the
+Jesuit. She congratulates him on having &#8220;boldness
+enough to exhort others to suffer.&#8221; She takes up
+and returns him his shocking gallantry, but in a
+shocking way; and here we trace a man&#8217;s hand, the
+hand of those two giddy heads.</p>
+
+<p>Two days after, they went and told her to decide on
+leaving the convent forthwith. Girard was dismayed.
+He thought his papers would disappear with her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[355]</a></span>
+The greatness of his terror took away his senses. He
+had the weakness to go and weep at the Ollioules
+parlour, to fall on his knees before her, and ask her if
+she had the heart to leave him. Touched by his words,
+the poor girl said &#8220;No,&#8221; went forward, and let him embrace
+her. And yet this Judas wanted only to deceive
+her, to gain a few days&#8217; time for securing help from a
+higher quarter.</p>
+
+<p>On the 29th there is an utter change. Cadi&egrave;re
+stays at Ollioules, begs him to excuse her, vows submission.
+It is but too clear that he has set some
+mighty influences at work; that from the 29th threats
+come in, perhaps from Aix, and presently from Paris.
+The Jesuit bigwigs have been writing, and their courtly
+patrons from Versailles.</p>
+
+<p>In such a struggle, what were the brethren to do?
+No doubt they took counsel with their chiefs, who
+would certainly warn them against setting too hard on
+Girard as a <i>libertine confessor</i>; for thereby offence
+would be given to all the clergy, who deemed confession
+their dearest prize. It was needful, on the contrary;
+to sever him from the priests by proving the
+strangeness of his teaching, by bringing him forward
+as a <i>Quietist</i>. With that one word they might lead
+him a long way. In 1698, a vicar in the neighbourhood
+of Dijon had been burnt for Quietism. They
+conceived the idea of drawing up a memoir, dictated
+apparently by their sister, to whom the plan was really
+unknown, in which the high and splendid Quietism of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[356]</a></span>
+Girard should be affirmed, and therefore in effect
+denounced. This memoir recounted the visions she
+had seen in Lent. In it the name of Girard was
+already in heaven. She saw it joined with her own
+in the Book of Life.</p>
+
+<p>They durst not take this memoir to the bishop.
+But they got their friend, little Camerle, his youthful
+chaplain, to steal it from them. The bishop read it,
+and circulated some copies about the town. On the
+21st August, Girard being at the palace, the bishop
+laughingly said to him, &#8220;Well, father, so your name
+is in the Book of Life!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He was overcome, fancied himself lost, wrote to
+Cadi&egrave;re in terms of bitter reproach. Once more with
+tears he asked for his papers. Cadi&egrave;re in great surprise
+vowed that her memoir had never gone out of
+her brother&#8217;s hands. But when she found out her
+mistake, her despair was unbounded. The sharpest
+pangs of body and soul beset her. Once she thought
+herself on the point of death. She became like one
+mad. &#8220;I long so much to suffer. Twice I caught
+up the rod of penance, and wielded it so savagely as
+to draw a great deal of blood.&#8221; In the midst of this
+dreadful outbreak, which proved at once the weakness
+of her head and the boundless tenderness of her conscience,
+Guiol finished her by describing Girard as
+nearly dead. This raised her compassion to the
+highest pitch.</p>
+
+<p>She was going to give up the papers. And yet it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[357]</a></span>
+was but too clear that these were her only safeguard
+and support, the only proofs of her innocence, and the
+tricks of which she had been made the victim. To
+give them up was to risk a change of characters, to
+risk the imputation of having herself seduced a saint,
+the chance, in short, of seeing all the blame transferred
+to her own side.</p>
+
+<p>But, if she must either be ruined herself or else ruin
+Girard, she would far sooner accept the former result.
+A demon, Guiol of course, tempted her in this very
+way, with the wondrous sublimity of such a sacrifice.
+God, she wrote, asked of her a bloody offering. She
+could tell her of saints who, being accused, did not
+justify, but rather accused themselves, and died like
+lambs. This example Cadi&egrave;re followed. When Girard
+was accused before her, she defended him, saying,
+&#8220;He is right, and I told a falsehood.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>She might have yielded up the letters of Girard
+only; but in so great an outflowing of heart she
+would have no haggling, and so gave him even copies
+of her own.</p>
+
+<p>Thus at the same time he held these drafts
+written by the Jacobin, and the copies made and sent
+him by the other brother. Thenceforth he had nothing
+to fear: no further check could be given him.
+He might make away with them or put them back
+again; might destroy, blot out, and falsify at pleasure.
+He was perfectly free to carry on his forger&#8217;s work,
+and he worked away to some purpose. Out of twenty-four<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[358]</a></span>
+letters, sixteen remain; and these still read like
+elaborately forged afterthoughts.</p>
+
+<p>With everything in his own hands, Girard could
+laugh at his foes. It was now their turn to be afraid.
+The bishop, a man of the upper world, was too well
+acquainted with Versailles and the name won by the
+Jesuits not to treat them with proper tenderness. He
+even thought it safest to make Girard some small amends
+for his unkind reproach about The Book of Life; and
+so he graciously informed him that he would like to
+stand godfather to the child of one of his kinsmen.</p>
+
+<p>The Bishops of Toulon had always been high lords.
+The list of them shows all the first names of Provence,
+and some famous names from Italy. From
+1712 to 1737, under the Regency and Fleury, the
+bishop was one of the La Tours of Pin. He was
+very rich, having also the Abbeys of Aniane and
+St. William of the Desert, in Languedoc. He behaved
+well, it was said, during the plague of 1721.
+However, he stayed but seldom at Toulon, lived quite
+as a man of the world, never said mass, and passed
+for something more than a lady&#8217;s man.</p>
+
+<p>In July he went to Toulon, and though Girard
+would have turned him aside from Ollioules and
+Cadi&egrave;re, he was curious to see her nevertheless. He
+saw her in one of her best moments. She took his
+fancy, seemed to him a pretty little saint; and so far
+did he believe in her enlightenment from above, as to
+speak to her thoughtlessly of all his affairs, his interests,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[359]</a></span>
+his future doings, consulting her as he would
+have consulted a teller of fortunes.</p>
+
+<p>In spite, however, of the brethren&#8217;s prayers he
+hesitated to take her away from Ollioules and from
+Girard. A means was found of resolving him. A
+report was spread about Toulon, that the girl had
+shown a desire to flee into the wilderness, as her
+model saint, Theresa, had essayed to do at twelve years
+old. Girard, they said, had put this fancy into her
+head, that he might one day carry her off beyond the
+diocese whose pride she was, and box-up his treasure
+in some far convent, where the Jesuits, enjoying the
+whole monopoly, might turn to the most account her
+visions, her miracles, her winsome ways as a young
+saint of the people. The bishop felt much hurt. He
+instructed the abbess to give Mdlle. Cadi&egrave;re up to no
+one save her mother, who was certain to come very
+shortly and take her away from the convent to a
+country-house belonging to the family.</p>
+
+<p>In order not to offend Girard, they got Cadi&egrave;re to
+write and say that, if such a change incommoded him,
+he could find a colleague and give her a second
+confessor. He saw their meaning, and preferred disarming
+jealousy by abandoning Cadi&egrave;re. He gave
+her up on the 15th September, in a note most carefully
+worded and piteously humble, by which he strove to
+leave her friendly and tender towards himself. &#8220;If I
+have sometimes done wrong as concerning you, you
+will never at least forget how wishful I have been to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[360]</a></span>
+help you.... I am, and ever will be, all yours in
+the Secret Heart of Jesus.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The bishop, however, was not reassured. He fancied
+that the three Jesuits, Girard, Sabatier, and
+Grignet, wanted to beguile him, and some day, with
+some order from Paris, rob him of his little woman.
+On the 17th September, he decided once for all to
+send his carriage, a light fashionable <i>phaeton</i>, as it was
+called, and have her taken off at once to her mother&#8217;s
+country-house.</p>
+
+<p>By way of soothing and shielding her, of putting
+her in good trim, he looked out for a confessor, and
+applied first to a Carmelite who had confessed her
+before Girard came. But he, being an old man,
+declined. Some others also probably hung back. The
+bishop had to take a stranger, but three months come
+from the County (Avignon), one Father Nicholas,
+prior of the Barefooted Carmelites. He was a man of
+forty, endowed with brains and boldness, very firm
+and even stubborn. He showed himself worthy of
+such a trust by rejecting it. It was not the Jesuits he
+feared, but the girl herself. He foreboded no good
+therefrom, thought that the angel might be an angel
+of darkness, and feared that the Evil One under the
+shape of a gentle girl would deal his blows with all
+the more baleful effect.</p>
+
+<p>But he could not see her without feeling somewhat
+reassured. She seemed so very simple, so pleased
+at length to have a safe, steady person, on whom she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[361]</a></span>
+might lean. The continual wavering in which she
+had been kept by Girard, had caused her the greatest
+suffering. On the first day she spoke more than she
+had done for a month past, told him of her life, her
+sufferings, her devotions, and her visions. Night
+itself, a hot night in mid-September, did not stop her.
+In her room everything was open, the windows, and
+the three doors. She went on even to daybreak, while
+her brethren lay near her asleep. On the morrow she
+resumed her tale under the vine-bower. The Carmelite
+was amazed, and asked himself if the Devil
+could ever be so earnest in praise of God.</p>
+
+<p>Her innocence was clear. She seemed a nice
+obedient girl, gentle as a lamb, frolicsome as a puppy.
+She wanted to play at bowls, a common game in those
+country-places, nor did he for his part refuse to
+join her.</p>
+
+<p>If there was a spirit in her, it could not at any rate
+be called the spirit of lying. On looking at her closely
+for a long time, you could not doubt that her wounds
+now and then did really bleed. He took care to
+make no such immodest scrutiny of them as Girard
+had done, contenting himself with a look at the wound
+upon her foot. Of her trances he saw quite enough.
+On a sudden, a burning heat would diffuse itself
+everywhere from her heart. Losing her consciousness,
+she went into convulsions and talked wildly.</p>
+
+<p>The Carmelite clearly perceived that in her were
+two persons, the young woman and the Demon. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[362]</a></span>
+former was honest, nay, very fresh of heart; ignorant,
+for all that had been done to her; little able to understand
+the very things that had brought her into
+such sore trouble. When, before confession, she spoke
+of Girard&#8217;s kisses, the Carmelite roughly said, &#8220;But
+those are very great sins.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;O God!&#8221; she answered, weeping, &#8220;I am lost
+indeed, for he has done much more than that to me!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The bishop came to see. For him the country-house
+was only the length of a walk. She answered his
+questions artlessly, told him at least how things began.
+The bishop was angry, mortified, very wroth. No
+doubt he guessed the remainder. There was nought
+to keep him from raising a great outcry against
+Girard. Not caring for the danger of a struggle with
+the Jesuits, he entered thoroughly into the Carmelite&#8217;s
+views, allowed that she was bewitched, and added that
+<i>Girard himself was the wizard</i>. He wanted to lay him
+that very moment under a solemn ban, to bring him to
+disgrace and ruin. Cadi&egrave;re prayed for him who had
+done her so much wrong; vengeance she would not
+have. Falling on her knees before the bishop, she
+implored him to spare Girard, to speak no more of
+things so sorrowful. With touching humility, she
+said, &#8220;It is enough for me to be enlightened at last, to
+know that I was living in sin.&#8221; Her Jacobin brother
+took her part, foreseeing the perils of such a war, and
+doubtful whether the bishop would stand fast.</p>
+
+<p>Her attacks of disorder were now fewer. The season<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[363]</a></span>
+had changed. The burning summer was over. Nature
+at length showed mercy. It was the pleasant
+month of October. The bishop had the keen delight
+of feeling that she had been saved by him. No longer
+under Girard&#8217;s influence in the stifling air of Ollioules,
+but well cared-for by her family, by the brave and
+honest monk, protected, too, by the bishop, who never
+grudged his visits, and who shielded her with his
+steady countenance, the young girl became altogether
+calm.</p>
+
+<p>For seven weeks or so she seemed quite well-behaved.
+The bishop&#8217;s happiness was so great that
+he wanted the Carmelite, with Cadi&egrave;re&#8217;s help, to look
+after Girard&#8217;s other penitents, and bring them also
+back to their senses. They should go to the country-house;
+how unwillingly, and with how ill a grace we
+can easily guess. In truth, it was strangely ill-judged
+to bring those women before the bishop&#8217;s ward, a girl
+so young still, and but just delivered from her own
+ecstatic ravings.</p>
+
+<p>The state of things became ridiculous and sorely
+embittered. Two parties faced each other, Girard&#8217;s
+women and those of the bishop. On the side of the
+latter were a German lady and her daughter, dear
+friends of Cadi&egrave;re&#8217;s. On the other side were the
+rebels, headed by the Guiol. With her the bishop
+treated, in hopes of getting her to enter into relations
+with the Carmelite, and bring her friends over to him.
+He sent her his own clerk, and then a solicitor, an old<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[364]</a></span>
+lover of Guiol&#8217;s. All this failing of any effect, the
+bishop came to his last resource, determined to summon
+them all to his palace. Here they mostly denied those
+trances and mystic marks of which they had made
+such boast. One of them, Guiol, of course, astonished
+him yet more by her shamelessly treacherous
+offer to prove to him, on the spot, that they had no
+marks whatever about their bodies. They had deemed
+him wanton enough to fall into such a snare. But he
+kept clear of it very well, declining the offer with
+thanks to those who, at the cost of their own modesty,
+would have had him copy Girard, and provoke the
+laughter of all the town.</p>
+
+<p>The bishop was not lucky. On the one hand, these
+bold wenches made fun of him. On the other, his
+success with Cadi&egrave;re was now being undone. She
+had hardly entered her own narrow lane in gloomy
+Toulon, when she began to fall off. She was just in
+those dangerous and baleful centres where her illness
+began, on the very field of the battle waged by the two
+hostile parties. The Jesuits, whose rearguard everyone
+saw in the Court, had on their side the crafty,
+the prudent, the knowing. The Carmelite had none
+but the bishop with him, was not even backed by his
+own brethren, nor yet by the clergy. He had one
+weapon, however, in reserve. On the 8th November,
+he got out of Cadi&egrave;re a written power to reveal her
+confession in case of need.</p>
+
+<p>It was a daring, dauntless step, which made Girard<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[365]</a></span>
+shudder. He was not very brave, and would have
+been undone had his cause not been that of the Jesuits
+also. He cowered down in the depths of their college.
+But his colleague Sabatier, an old, sanguine, passionate
+fellow, went straight to the bishop&#8217;s palace. He
+entered into the prelate&#8217;s presence, like another Popilius,
+bearing peace or war in his gown. He pushed
+him to the wall, made him understand that a suit with
+the Jesuits would lead to his own undoing; that he
+would remain for ever Bishop of Toulon; would never
+rise to an archbishopric. Yet further, with the freedom
+of an apostle strong at Versailles, he assured
+him that if this affair exposed the morals of a Jesuit,
+it would shed no less light on the morals of a bishop.
+In a letter, clearly planned by Girard, it was pretended
+that the Jesuits held themselves ready in the background,
+to hurl dreadful recriminations against the
+prelate, declaring his way of life not only unepiscopal,
+but <i>abominable</i> withal. The sly, faithless Girard and
+the hot-headed Sabatier, swollen with rage and spitefulness,
+would have pressed the calumnious charge.
+They would not have failed to say that all this matter
+was about a girl; that if Girard had taken care of her
+when ill, the bishop had gotten her when she was well.
+What a commotion would be caused by such a scandal
+in the well-regulated life of the great worldly lord!
+It were too laughable a piece of chivalry to make war
+in revenge for the maidenhood of a weak little fool,
+to embroil oneself for her sake with all honest people!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[366]</a></span>
+The Cardinal of Bonzi died indeed of grief at Toulouse,
+but that was on account of a fair lady, the
+Marchioness of Ganges. The bishop, on his part,
+risked his ruin, risked the chance of being overwhelmed
+with shame and ridicule, for the child of a retail-dealer
+in the Rue de l&#8217;H&ocirc;pital!</p>
+
+<p>Sabatier&#8217;s threatenings made all the greater impression,
+because the bishop himself clung less firmly to
+Cadi&egrave;re. He did not thank her for falling ill again;
+for giving the lie to his former success; for doing
+him a wrong by her relapse. He bore her a grudge
+for having failed to cure her. He said to himself that
+Sabatier was in the right; that he had better come to
+a compromise. The change was sudden&mdash;a kind of
+warning from above. All at once, like Paul on the
+way to Damascus, he beheld the light, and became a
+convert to the Jesuits.</p>
+
+<p>Sabatier would not let him go. He put paper before
+him, and made him write and sign a decree forbidding
+the Carmelite, his agent with Cadi&egrave;re, and another
+forbidding her brother, the Jacobin.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_113_113" id="Footnote_113_113"></a><a href="#FNanchor_113_113"><span class="label">[113]</span></a> This communion of blood prevailed among the Northern
+<i>Reiters</i>. See my <i>Origines</i>.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2 class="chs"><a name="CHAPTER_XII_2" id="CHAPTER_XII_2"></a>CHAPTER XII.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[367]</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>THE TRIAL OF CADIERE: 1730-1731.</h3>
+
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="smcap">We</span> can guess how this alarming blow was taken by
+the Cadi&egrave;re family. The sick girl&#8217;s attacks became
+frequent and fearful. By a cruel chance they brought
+on a kind of epidemic among her intimate friends.
+Her neighbour, the German lady, who had trances
+also, which she had hitherto deemed divine, now fell
+into utter fright, and fancied they came from hell.
+This worthy dame of fifty years remembered that she,
+too, had often had unclean thoughts: she believed
+herself given over to the Devil; saw nothing but
+devils about her; and escaping from her own house in
+spite of her daughter&#8217;s watchfulness, entreated shelter
+from the Cadi&egrave;res. From that time the house became
+unbearable; business could not be carried on.
+The elder Cadi&egrave;re inveighed furiously against Girard,
+crying, &#8220;He shall be served like Gauffridi: he, too,
+shall be burnt!&#8221; And the Jacobin added, &#8220;Rather
+would we waste the whole of our family estate!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>On the night of the 17th November, Cadi&egrave;re
+screamed, and was like one choking. They thought
+she was going to die. The eldest Cadi&egrave;re, the tradesman,
+lost his wits, and called out to his neighbours<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[368]</a></span>
+from the window, &#8220;Help! the Devil is throttling my
+sister!&#8221; They came running up almost in their shirts.
+The doctors and surgeons wanted to apply the cupping-glasses
+to a case of what they called &#8220;suffocation
+of the womb.&#8221; While some were gone to fetch these,
+they succeeded in unlocking her teeth and making her
+swallow a drop of brandy, which brought her to herself.
+Meanwhile there also came to the girl some
+doctors of the soul; first an old priest confessor to
+Cadi&egrave;re&#8217;s mother, and then some parsons of Toulon.
+All this noise and shouting, the arrival of the priests
+in full dress, the preparations for exorcising, had
+brought everyone out into the street. The newcomers
+kept asking what was the matter. &#8220;Cadi&egrave;re has been
+bewitched by Girard,&#8221; was the continual reply. We
+may imagine the pity and the wrath of the people.</p>
+
+<p>Greatly alarmed, but anxious to cast the fear back
+on others, the Jesuits did a very barbarous thing.
+They returned to the bishop, ordered and insisted that
+Cadi&egrave;re should be brought to trial; that the attack
+should be made that very day; that justice should
+make an unforeseen descent on this poor girl, as she
+lay rattling in the throat after the last dreadful
+seizure.</p>
+
+<p>Sabatier never left the bishop until the latter had
+called his judge, his officer, the Vicar-general Larmedieu,
+and his prosecutor or episcopal advocate, Esprit
+Reybaud, and commanded them to go to work forthwith.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[369]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>By the Canon Law this was impossible, illegal. A
+<i>preliminary inquiry was needed</i> into the facts, before
+the judicial business could begin. There was another
+difficulty: the spiritual judge had no right to make
+such an arrest save for <i>a rejection of the Sacrament</i>.
+The two church-lawyers must have made these objections.
+But Sabatier would hear of no excuses. If
+matters were allowed to drag in this cold legal way, he
+would miss his stroke of terror.</p>
+
+<p>Larmedieu was a compliant judge, a friend of the
+clergy. He was not one of your rude magistrates
+who go straight before them, like blind boars, on the
+high-road of the law, without seeing or respecting anyone.
+He had shown great regard for Aubany, the
+patron of Ollioules, during his trial; helping him to
+escape by the slowness of his own procedure. Afterwards,
+when he knew him to be at Marseilles, as if
+that was far from France, in the <i>ultima thule</i> or <i>terra
+incognita</i> of ancient geographers, he would not budge
+any further. This, however, was a very different case:
+the judge who was so paralytic against Aubany, had
+wings, and wings of lightning, for Cadi&egrave;re. It was nine
+in the morning when the dwellers in the lane saw with
+much curiosity a grand procession arrive at the Cadi&egrave;res&#8217;
+door, with Master Larmedieu and the episcopal advocate
+at the head, honoured by an escort of two clergymen,
+doctors of theology. The house was invaded:
+the sick girl was summoned before them. They made
+her swear to tell the truth against herself; swear to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[370]</a></span>
+defame herself by speaking out in the ears of justice
+matters that touched her conscience and the confessional
+only.</p>
+
+<p>She might have dispensed with an answer, for none
+of the usual forms had been observed: but she would
+not raise the question. She took the oath that was
+meant to disarm and betray her. For, being once
+bound thereby, she told everything, even to those
+shameful and ridiculous details which it must be very
+painful for any girl to acknowledge.</p>
+
+<p>Larmedieu&#8217;s official statement and his first examination
+point to a clearly settled agreement between
+him and the Jesuits. Girard was to be brought forward
+as the dupe and prey of Cadi&egrave;re&#8217;s knavery.
+Fancy a man of sixty, a doctor, professor, director of
+nuns, being therewithal so innocent and credulous,
+that a young girl, a mere child, was enough to draw
+him into the snare! The cunning, shameless wanton
+had beguiled him with her visions, but failed to draw
+him into her own excesses. Enraged thereat, she
+endowed him with every baseness that the fancy of a
+Messalina could suggest to her!</p>
+
+<p>So far from giving grounds for any such idea, the
+examination brings out the victim&#8217;s gentleness in a
+very touching way. Evidently she accuses others only
+through constraint, under the pressure of her oath
+just taken. She is gentle towards her enemies, even
+to the faithless Guiol who, in her brother&#8217;s words, had
+betrayed her; had done her worst to corrupt her; had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[371]</a></span>
+ruined her, last of all, by making her give up the
+papers which would have insured her safety.</p>
+
+<p>The Cadi&egrave;re brothers were frightened at their sister&#8217;s
+artlessness. In her regard for her oath she gave herself
+up without reserve to be vilified, alas! for ever;
+to have ballads sung about her; to be mocked by
+the very foes of Jesuits and silly scoffing libertines.</p>
+
+<p>The mischief done, they wanted at least to have it
+defined, to have the official report of the priests
+checked by some more serious measure. Seeming
+though she did to be the party accused, they made her
+the accuser, and prevailed on Marteli Chantard, the
+King&#8217;s Lieutenant Civil and Criminal, to come and
+take her deposition. In this document, short and
+clear, the fact of her seduction is clearly established;
+likewise the reproaches she uttered against Girard for
+his lewd endearments, reproaches at which he only
+laughed; likewise the advice he gave her, to let herself
+be possessed by the Demon; likewise the means
+he used for keeping her wounds open, and so on.</p>
+
+<p>The King&#8217;s officer, the Lieutenant, was bound to
+carry the matter before his own court. For the spiritual
+judge in his hurry had failed to go through the
+forms of ecclesiastic law, and so made his proceedings
+null. But the lay magistrate lacked the courage for
+this. He let himself be harnessed to the clerical
+inquiry, accepted Larmedieu for his colleague, went
+himself to sit and hear the evidence in the bishop&#8217;s
+court. The clerk of the bishopric wrote it down, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[372]</a></span>
+not the clerk of the King&#8217;s Lieutenant. Did he
+write it down faithfully? We have reason to doubt that,
+when we find him threatening the witnesses, and going
+every night to show their statements to the Jesuits.</p>
+
+<p>The two curates of Cadi&egrave;re&#8217;s parish, who were heard
+first, deposed drily, not in her favour, yet by no
+means against her, certainly not in favour of the
+Jesuits. These latter saw that everything was going
+amiss for them. Lost to all shame, at the risk of
+angering the people, they determined to break all
+down. They got from the bishop an order to imprison
+Cadi&egrave;re and the chief witnesses she wanted to be heard.
+These were the German lady and Batarelle. The girl
+herself was placed in the Refuge, a convent-prison;
+the ladies in a bridewell, the <i>Good-Shepherd</i>, where
+mad women and foul streetwalkers needing punishment
+were thrown. On the 26th November, Cadi&egrave;re
+was dragged from her bed and given over to the Ursulines,
+penitents of Girard&#8217;s, who laid her duly on some
+rotten straw.</p>
+
+<p>A fear of them thus established, the witnesses might
+now be heard. They began with two, choice and
+respectable. One was the Guiol, notorious for being
+Girard&#8217;s pander, a woman of keen and clever tongue,
+who was commissioned to hurl the first dart and open
+the wound of slander. The other was Laugier, the
+little seamstress, whom Cadi&egrave;re had supported and for
+whose apprenticeship she had paid. While she lay
+with child by Girard, this Laugier had cried out against<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[373]</a></span>
+him; now she washed away her fault by sneering at
+Cadi&egrave;re and defiling her benefactress, but in a very
+clumsy way, like the shameless wanton she was;
+ascribing to her impudent speeches quite contrary to
+her known habits. Then came Mdlle. Gravier and her
+cousin Reboul&mdash;all the <i>Girardites</i>, in short, as they
+were called in Toulon.</p>
+
+<p>But, do as they would, the light would burst forth
+now and then. The wife of a purveyor in the house
+where these Girardites met together, said, with cruel
+plainness, that she could not abide them, that they
+disturbed the whole house; she spoke of their noisy
+bursts of laughter, of their suppers paid for out of the
+money collected for the poor, and so forth.</p>
+
+<p>They were sore afraid lest the nuns should speak out
+for Cadi&egrave;re. The bishop&#8217;s clerk told them, as if
+from the bishop himself, that those who spoke evil
+should be chastised. As a yet stronger measure, they
+ordered back from Marseilles the gay Father Aubany,
+who had some ascendant over the nuns. His affair
+with the girl he had violated was got settled for him.
+Her parents were made to understand that justice could
+do nothing in their case. The child&#8217;s good name was
+valued at eight hundred livres, which were paid on Aubany&#8217;s
+account. So, full of zeal, he returned, a thorough
+Jesuit, to his troop at Ollioules. The poor troop
+trembled indeed, when this worthy father told them
+of his commission to warn them that, if they did not
+behave themselves, &#8220;they should be put to the torture.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[374]</a></span>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>For all that, they could not get as much as they
+wanted from these fifteen nuns. Two or three at
+most were on Girard&#8217;s side, but all stated facts, especially
+about the 7th July, which bore directly against
+him.</p>
+
+<p>In despair the Jesuits came to an heroic decision, in
+order to make sure of their witnesses. They stationed
+themselves in an outer hall which led into the court.
+There they stopped those going in, tampered with
+them, threatened them, and, if they were against
+Girard, coolly debarred their entrance by thrusting
+them out of doors.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the clerical judge and the King&#8217;s officer were
+only as puppets in the Jesuits&#8217; hands. The whole town
+saw this and trembled. During December, January,
+and February, the Cadi&egrave;re family drew up and diffused
+a complaint touching the way in which justice was
+denied them and witnesses suborned. The Jesuits
+themselves felt that the place would no longer hold
+them. They evoked help from a higher quarter. This
+seemed best available in the shape of a decree of the
+Great Council, which would have brought the matter
+before itself and hushed up everything, as Mazarin
+had done in the Louviers affair. But the Chancellor
+was D&#8217;Aguesseau; and the Jesuits had no wish to
+let the matter go up to Paris. They kept it still in
+Provence. On the 16th January, 1731, they got
+the King to determine that the Parliament of Provence,
+where they had plenty of friends, should pass sentence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[375]</a></span>
+on the inquiry which two of its councillors were conducting
+at Toulon.</p>
+
+<p>M. Faucon, a layman, and M. de Charleval, a councillor
+of the Church, came in fact and straightway
+marched down among the Jesuits. These eager commissioners
+made so little secret of their loud and
+bitter partiality, as to toss out an order for Cadi&egrave;re&#8217;s
+remand, just as they might have done to an accused
+prisoner; whilst Girard was most politely called up
+and allowed to go free, to keep on saying mass and
+hearing confessions. And so the plaintiff was kept
+under lock and key, in her enemies&#8217; hands, exposed to
+all manner of cruelty from Girard&#8217;s devotees.</p>
+
+<p>From these honest Ursulines she met with just such
+a reception as if they had been charged to bring about
+her death. The room they gave her was the cell of a
+mad nun who made everything filthy. In the nun&#8217;s
+old straw, in the midst of a frightful stench, she lay.
+Her kinsmen on the morrow had much ado to get in a
+coverlet and mattress for her use. For her nurse and
+keeper she was allowed a poor tool of Girard&#8217;s, a lay-sister,
+daughter to that very Guiol who had betrayed
+her; a girl right worthy of her mother, capable of any
+wickedness, a source of danger to her modesty, perhaps
+even to her life. They submitted her to a course
+of penance in her case specially painful, refusing her
+the right of confessing herself or taking the sacrament.
+She relapsed into her illness from the time she
+was debarred the latter privilege. Her fierce foe, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[376]</a></span>
+Jesuit Sabatier, came into her cell, and formed a new
+and startling scheme to win her by a bribe of the
+holy wafer. The bargaining began. They offered
+her terms: she should communicate if she would only
+acknowledge herself a slanderer, unworthy of communicating.
+In her excessive humbleness she might have
+done so. But, while ruining herself, she would also
+have ruined the Carmelite and her own brethren.</p>
+
+<p>Reduced to Pharisaical tricks, they took to expounding
+her speeches. Whatever she uttered in a mystic
+sense they feigned to accept in its material hardness.
+To free herself from such snares she displayed, what
+they had least expected, very great presence of mind.</p>
+
+<p>A yet more treacherous plan for robbing her of the
+public sympathy and setting the laughers against her,
+was to find her a lover. They pretended that she had
+proposed to a young blackguard that they should set
+off together and roam the world.</p>
+
+<p>The great lords of that day, being fond of having
+children and little pages to wait on them, readily took
+in the better-mannered of their peasant&#8217;s sons. In
+this way had the bishop dealt with the boy of one of
+his tenants. He washed his face, as it were; made
+him tidy. Presently, when the favourite grew up, he
+gave him the tonsure, dressed him up like an abb&eacute;, and
+dubbed him his chaplain at the age of twenty. This
+person was the Abb&eacute; Camerle. Brought up with the
+footmen and made to do everything, he was, like many
+a half-scrubbed country youth, a sly, but simple lout.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[377]</a></span>
+He saw that the prelate since his arrival at Toulon
+had been curious about Cadi&egrave;re and far from friendly
+to Girard. He thought to please and amuse his master
+by turning himself, at Ollioules, into a spy on their
+suspected intercourse. But after the bishop changed
+through fear of the Jesuits, Camerle became equally
+zealous in helping Girard with active service against
+Cadi&egrave;re.</p>
+
+<p>He came one day, like another Joseph, to say that
+Mdlle. Cadi&egrave;re had, like Potiphar&#8217;s wife, been tempting
+him, and trying to shake his virtue. Had this been
+true, it was all the more cowardly of him thus to
+punish her for a moment&#8217;s weakness, to take so mean
+an advantage of some light word. But his education
+as page and seminarist was not such as to bring him
+either honour or the love of women.</p>
+
+<p>She extricated herself with spirit and success,
+covering him with shame. The two angry commissioners
+saw her making so triumphant an answer, that
+they cut the investigation short, and cut down the
+number of her witnesses. Out of the sixty-eight she
+summoned, they allowed but thirty-eight to appear.
+Regardless alike of the delays and the forms of justice,
+they hurried forward the confronting of witnesses.
+Yet nothing was gained, thereby. On the 25th and
+again on the 26th February, she renewed her crushing
+declarations.</p>
+
+<p>Such was their rage thereat, that they declared their
+regret at the want of torments and executioners in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[378]</a></span>
+Toulon, &#8220;who might have made her sing out a little.&#8221;
+These things formed their <i>ultima ratio</i>. They were
+employed, by the Parliaments through all that century.
+I have before me a warm defence of torture,<a name="FNanchor_114_114" id="FNanchor_114_114"></a><a href="#Footnote_114_114" class="fnanchor">[114]</a> written
+in 1780, by a learned member of Parliament, who also
+became a member of the Great Council; it was dedicated
+to the King, Louis XVI., and crowned with the
+flattering approval of His Holiness Pius VI.</p>
+
+<p>But, in default of the torture that would have made
+her sing, she was made to speak by a still better
+process. On the 27th February, Guiol&#8217;s daughter, the
+lay-sister who acted as her jailer, came to her at an
+early hour with a glass of wine. She was astonished:
+she was not at all thirsty: she never drank wine,
+especially pure wine, of a morning. The lay-sister, a
+rough, strong menial, such as they keep in convents to
+manage crazy or refractory women, and to punish
+children, overwhelmed the feeble sufferer with remonstrances
+that looked like threats. Unwilling as she
+was, she drank. And she was forced to drink it all,
+to the very dregs, which she found unpleasantly salt.</p>
+
+<p>What was this repulsive draught? We have already
+seen how clever these old confessors of nuns were at
+remedies of various kinds. In this case the wine
+alone would have done for so weakly a patient. It
+had been quite enough to make her drunk, to draw
+from her at once some stammering speeches, which
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[379]</a></span>the clerk might have moulded into a downright falsehood.
+But a drug of some kind, perhaps some
+wizard&#8217;s simple, which would act for several days, was
+added to the wine, in order to prolong its effects and
+leave her no way of disproving anything laid to her
+charge.</p>
+
+<p>In her declaration of the 27th February, how
+sudden and entire a change! It is nothing but a
+defence of Girard! Strange to say, the commissioners
+make no remark on so abrupt a change. The
+strange, shameful sight of a young girl drunk causes
+no astonishment, fails to put them on their guard.
+She is made to own that all which had passed between
+herself and Girard was merely the offspring of her own
+diseased fancy; that all she had spoken of as real, at
+the bidding of her brethren and the Carmelite, was
+nothing more than a dream. Not content with
+whitening Girard, she must blacken her own friends,
+must crush them, and put the halter round their necks.</p>
+
+<p>Especially wonderful is the clearness of her deposition,
+the neat way in which it is worded. The
+hand of the skilful clerk peeps out therefrom. It is
+very strange, however, that now they are in so fair a
+way, they do not follow it up. From the 27th to the
+6th of March there is no further questioning.</p>
+
+<p>On the 28th, the poison having doubtless done its
+work, and plunged her into a perfect stupor, or else a
+kind of Sabbatic frenzy, it was impossible to bring
+her forth. After that, while her head was still disordered,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[380]</a></span>
+they could easily give her other potions of
+which she would know and remember nothing. What
+happened during those six days seems to have been so
+shocking, so sad for poor Cadi&egrave;re, that neither she
+nor her brother had the heart to speak of it twice.
+Nor would they have spoken at all, had not the
+brethren themselves incurred a prosecution aiming at
+their own lives.</p>
+
+<p>Having won his cause through Cadi&egrave;re&#8217;s falsehood,
+Girard dared to come and see her in her prison, where
+she lay stupefied or in despair, forsaken alike of earth
+and heaven, and if any clear thoughts were left her,
+possessed with the dreadful consciousness of having
+by her last deposition murdered her own near kin.
+Her own ruin was complete already. But another
+trial, that of her brothers and the bold Carmelite,
+would now begin. She may in her remorse have been
+tempted to soften Girard, to keep him from proceeding
+against them, above all to save herself from being put
+to the torture. Girard, at any rate, took advantage of
+her utter weakness, and behaved like the determined
+scoundrel he really was.</p>
+
+<p>Alas! her wandering spirit came but slowly back to
+her. It was on the 6th March that she had to face
+her accusers, to renew her former admissions, to ruin
+her brethren beyond repair. She could not speak;
+she was choking. The commissioners had the kindness
+to tell her that the torture was there, at her side;
+to describe to her the wooden horse, the points of iron,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[381]</a></span>
+the wedges for jamming fast her bones. Her courage
+failed her, so weak she was now of body. She submitted
+to be set before her cruel master, who might
+laugh triumphant now that he had debased not only
+her body, but yet more her conscience, by making her
+the murderess of her own friends.</p>
+
+<p>No time was lost in profiting by her weakness.
+They prevailed forthwith on the Parliament of Aix to
+let the Carmelite and the two brothers be imprisoned,
+that they might undergo a separate trial for their lives,
+as soon as Cadi&egrave;re should have been condemned.</p>
+
+<p>On the 10th March, she was dragged from the
+Ursulines of Toulon to Sainte-Claire of Ollioules.
+Girard, however, was not sure of her yet. He got
+leave to have her conducted, like some dreaded highway
+robber, between some soldiers of the mounted
+police. He demanded that she should be carefully
+locked up at Sainte-Claire. The ladies were moved to
+tears at the sight of a poor sufferer who could not
+drag herself forward, approaching between those drawn
+swords. Everyone pitied her. Two brave men, M.
+Aubin, a solicitor, and M. Claret, a notary, drew up
+for her the deeds in which she withdrew her late confession,
+fearful documents that record the threats of
+the commissioners and of the Ursuline prioress, and
+above all, the fact of the drugged wine she had been
+forced to drink.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time these daring men drew up for the
+Chancellor&#8217;s court at Paris a plea of error, as it is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[382]</a></span>
+called, exposing the irregular and blameable proceedings,
+the wilful breaches of the law, effected in the coolest
+way, first by the bishop&#8217;s officer and the King&#8217;s Lieutenant,
+secondly by the two commissioners. The
+Chancellor D&#8217;Aguesseau showed himself very slack
+and feeble. He let these foul proceedings stand; left
+the business in charge of the Parliament of Aix,
+sullied as it already seemed to be by the disgrace with
+which two of its members had just been covering
+themselves.</p>
+
+<p>So once more they laid hands on their victim, and
+had her dragged, in charge as before of the mounted
+police, from Ollioules to Aix. In those days people
+slept at a public house midway. Here the corporal
+explained that, by virtue of his orders, he would sleep
+in the young girl&#8217;s room. They pretended to believe
+that an invalid unable to walk, might flee away by
+jumping out of window. Truly, it was a most villanous
+device, to commit such a one to the chaste keeping
+of the heroes of the <i>dragonnades</i>.<a name="FNanchor_115_115" id="FNanchor_115_115"></a><a href="#Footnote_115_115" class="fnanchor">[115]</a> Happily, her
+mother had come to see her start, had followed her in
+spite of everything, and they did not dare to beat her
+away with their butt-ends. She stayed in the room,
+kept watch&mdash;neither of them, indeed, lying down&mdash;and
+shielded her child from all harm.</p>
+
+<p>Cadi&egrave;re was forwarded to the Ursulines of Aix, who
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[383]</a></span>had the King&#8217;s command to take her in charge. But
+the prioress pretended that the order had not yet come.
+We may see here how savage a woman who was once
+impassioned will grow, until she has lost all her
+woman&#8217;s nature. She kept the other four hours at
+her street-door, as if she were a public show. There
+was time to fetch a mob of Jesuits&#8217; followers, of honest
+Church artizans, to hoot and hiss, while children might
+help by throwing stones. For these four hours she
+was in the pillory. Some, however, of the more dispassionate
+passers-by asked if the Ursulines had
+gotten orders to let them kill the girl. We may guess
+what tender jailers their sick prisoner would find in
+these good sisters!</p>
+
+<p>The ground was prepared with admirable effect. By a
+spirited concert between Jesuit magistrates and plotting
+ladies, a system of deterring had been set on foot.
+No pleader would ruin himself by defending a girl
+thus heavily aspersed. No one would digest the poisonous
+things stored up by her jailers, for him who should
+daily show his face in their parlour to await an interview
+with Cadi&egrave;re. The defence in that case would
+devolve on M. Chaudon, syndic of the Aix bar. He
+did not decline so hard a duty. And yet he was so
+uneasy as to desire a settlement, which the Jesuits
+refused. Thereupon he showed what he really was, a
+man of unswerving honesty, of amazing courage. He
+exposed, with the learning of a lawyer, the monstrous
+character of the whole proceeding. So doing, he would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[384]</a></span>
+for ever embroil himself with the Parliament no less
+than the Jesuits. He brought into sharp outline the
+spiritual incest of the confessor, though he modestly
+refrained from specifying how far he had carried his
+profligacy. He also withheld himself from speaking
+of Girard&#8217;s girls, the loose-lived devotees, as a matter
+well-known, but to which no one would have liked to
+bear witness. In short, he gave Girard the best case
+he could by assailing him <i>as a wizard</i>. People laughed,
+made fun of the advocate. He undertook to prove the
+existence of demons by a series of sacred texts, beginning
+with the Gospels. This made them laugh the
+louder.</p>
+
+<p>The case had been cleverly disfigured by the turning
+of an honest Carmelite into Cadi&egrave;re&#8217;s lover, and the
+weaver of a whole chain of libels against Girard and
+the Jesuits. Thenceforth the crowd of idlers, of
+giddy worldlings, scoffers and philosophers alike, made
+merry with either side, being thoroughly impartial as
+between Carmelite and Jesuit, and exceedingly rejoiced
+to see this battle of monk with monk. Those who
+were presently to be called <i>Voltairites</i>, were even better
+inclined towards the polished Jesuits, those men of the
+world, than towards any of the old mendicant orders.</p>
+
+<p>So the matter became more and more tangled.
+Jokes kept raining down, but raining mostly on the
+victim. They called it a love-intrigue. They saw in
+it nothing but food for fun. There was not a scholar
+nor a clerk who did not turn a ditty on Girard and his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[385]</a></span>
+pupil, who did not hash up anew the old provincial
+jokes about Madeline in the Gauffridi affair, her six
+thousand imps, their dread of a flogging, and the
+wonderful chastening-process whereby Cadi&egrave;re&#8217;s devils
+were put to flight.</p>
+
+<p>On this latter point the friends of Girard had no
+difficulty in proving him clean. He had acted by his
+right as director, in accordance with the common
+wont. The rod is the symbol of fatherhood. He had
+treated his penitent with a view to the healing of her
+soul. They used to thrash demoniacs, to thrash the
+insane and sufferers in other ways. This was the
+favourite mode of hunting out the enemy, whether in
+the shape of devil or disease. With the people it
+was a very common idea. One brave workman of
+Toulon, who had witnessed Cadi&egrave;re&#8217;s sad plight,
+declared that a bull&#8217;s sinew was the poor sufferer&#8217;s
+only cure.</p>
+
+<p>Thus strongly supported, Girard had only to act
+reasonably. He would not take the trouble. His defence
+is charmingly flippant. He never deigns even
+to agree with his own depositions. He gives the lie
+to his own witnesses. He seems to be jesting, and
+says, with the coolness of a great lord of the Regency,
+that if, as they charge him, he was ever shut up with
+her, &#8220;it could only have happened nine times.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And why did the good father do so,&#8221; would his
+friends say, &#8220;save to watch, to consider, to search
+out the truth concerning her? &#8217;Tis the confessor&#8217;s<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[386]</a></span>
+duty in all such cases. Read the life of the most
+holy Catherine of Genoa. One evening her confessor
+hid himself in her room, waiting to see the wonders
+she would work, and to catch her in the act miraculous.
+But here, unhappily, the Devil, who never
+sleeps, had laid a snare for this lamb of God, had
+belched forth this devouring monster of a she-dragon,
+this mixture of maniac and demoniac, to swallow him
+up, to overwhelm him in a cataract of slander.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It was an old and excellent custom to smother
+monsters in the cradle. Then why not later also?
+Girard&#8217;s ladies charitably advised the instant using
+against her of fire and sword. &#8220;Let her perish!&#8221;
+cried the devotees. Many of the great ladies also
+wished to have her punished, deeming it rather too bad
+that such a creature should have dared to enter such a
+plea, to bring into court the man who had done her
+but too great an honour.</p>
+
+<p>Some determined Jansenists there were in the
+Parliament, but these were more inimical to the
+Jesuits than friendly to the girl. And they might
+well be downcast and discouraged, seeing they had
+against them at once the terrible Society of Jesus, the
+Court of Versailles, the Cardinal Minister (Fleury),
+and, lastly, the drawing-rooms of Aix. Should they
+be bolder than the head of the law, the Chancellor
+D&#8217;Aguesseau, who had proved so very slack? The
+Attorney-General did not waver at all: being charged
+with the indictment of Girard, he avowed himself his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[387]</a></span>
+friend, advised him how to meet the charges against
+him.</p>
+
+<p>There was, indeed, but one question at issue, to
+ascertain by what kind of reparation, of solemn
+atonement, of exemplary chastening, the plaintiff thus
+changed into the accused might satisfy Girard and
+the Company of Jesus. The Jesuits, with all their
+good-nature, affirmed the need of an example, in the
+interests of religion, by way of some slight warning
+both to the Jansenist Convulsionaries and the scribbling
+philosophers who were beginning to swarm.</p>
+
+<p>There were two points by which Cadi&egrave;re might be
+hooked, might receive the stroke of the harpoon.</p>
+
+<p>Firstly, she had borne false witness. But, then, by
+no law could slander be punished with death. To
+gain that end you must go a little further, and say,
+&#8220;The old Roman text, <i>De famosis libellis</i>, pronounces
+death on those who have uttered libels hurtful to the
+Emperor or to <i>the religion</i> of the Empire. The
+Jesuits represent that religion. Therefore, a memorial
+against a Jesuit deserves the last penalty.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A still better handle, however, was their second. At
+the opening of the trial the episcopal judge, the prudent
+Larmedieu, had asked her if she had never <i>divined</i>
+the secrets of many people, and she had answered yes.
+Therefore they might charge her with the practice
+named in the list of forms employed in trials for
+witchcraft, as <i>Divination and imposture</i>. This alone
+in ecclesiastic law deserved the stake. They might,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[388]</a></span>
+indeed, without much effort, call her a <i>Witch</i>, after the
+confession made by the Ollioules ladies, that at one
+same hour of the night she used to be in several cells
+together. Their infatuation, the surprising tenderness
+that suddenly came over them, had all the air of an
+enchantment.</p>
+
+<p>What was there to prevent her being burnt? They
+were still burning everywhere in the eighteenth century.
+In one reign only, that of Philip V., sixteen
+hundred people were burnt in Spain: one Witch was
+burnt as late as 1782. In Germany one was burnt in
+1751; in Switzerland one also in 1781. Rome was
+always burning her victims, on the sly indeed, in the
+dark holes and cells of the Inquisition.<a name="FNanchor_116_116" id="FNanchor_116_116"></a><a href="#Footnote_116_116" class="fnanchor">[116]</a></p>
+
+<p>&#8220;But France, at least, is surely more humane?&#8221;
+She is very inconsistent. In 1718, a Wizard is burnt
+at Bordeaux.<a name="FNanchor_117_117" id="FNanchor_117_117"></a><a href="#Footnote_117_117" class="fnanchor">[117]</a> In 1724 and 1726, the faggots were
+lighted in Gr&egrave;ve for offences which passed as schoolboy
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[389]</a></span>jokes at Versailles. The guardians of the Royal
+child, the Duke and Fleury, who are so indulgent to
+the Court, are terrible to the town. A donkey-driver
+and a noble, one M. des Chauffours, are burnt alive.
+The advent of the Cardinal Minister could not be
+celebrated more worthily than by a moral reformation,
+by making a severe example of those who corrupted
+the people. Nothing more timely than to pass some
+terrible and solemn sentence on this infernal girl,
+who made so heinous an assault on the innocent
+Girard!</p>
+
+<p>Observe what was needed to wash that father clean.
+It was needful to show that, even if he had done
+wrong and imitated Des Chauffours, he had been the
+sport of some enchantment. The documents were
+but too plain. By the wording of the Canon Law,
+and after these late decrees, somebody ought to be
+burnt. Of the five magistrates on the bench, two
+only would have burnt Girard. Three were against
+Cadi&egrave;re. They came to terms. The three who
+formed the majority would not insist on burning her,
+would forego the long, dreadful scene at the stake,
+would content themselves with a simple award of
+death.</p>
+
+<p>In the name of these five, it was settled, pending
+the final assent of Parliament, &#8220;That Cadi&egrave;re,
+having first been put to the torture in both kinds,
+should afterwards be removed to Toulon, and suffer
+death by hanging on the Place des Pr&ecirc;cheurs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[390]</a></span>&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This was a dreadful blow. An immense revulsion
+of feeling at once took place. The worldlings, the
+jesters ceased to laugh: they shuddered. Their love
+of trifling did not lead them to slur over a result so
+horrible. That a girl should be seduced, ill-used,
+dishonoured, treated as a mere toy, that she should
+die of grief, or of frenzy, they had regarded as right
+and good; with all that they had no concern. But
+when it was a case of punishment, when in fancy they
+saw before them the woeful victim, with rope round her
+neck, by the gallows where she was about to hang, their
+hearts rose in revolt. From all sides went forth the
+cry, &#8220;Never, since the world began, was there seen so
+villanous a reversal of things; the law of rape administered
+the wrong way, the girl condemned for having
+been made a tool, the victim hanged by her seducer!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In this town of Aix, made up of judges, priests,
+and the world of fashion, a thing unforeseen occurred:
+a whole people suddenly rose, a violent popular movement
+was astir. A crowd of persons of every class
+marched in one close well-ordered body straight
+towards the Ursulines. Cadi&egrave;re and her mother were
+bidden to show themselves. &#8220;Make yourself easy,
+mademoiselle,&#8221; they shouted: &#8220;we stand by you:
+fear nothing!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The grand eighteenth century, justly called by
+Hegel the &#8220;reign of mind,&#8221; was still grander as the
+&#8220;reign of humanity.&#8221; Ladies of distinction, such as
+the granddaughter of Mde. de S&eacute;vign&eacute;, the charming<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[391]</a></span>
+Madame de Simiane, took possession of the young
+girl and sheltered her in their bosoms.</p>
+
+<p>A thing yet prettier and more touching was it, to
+see the Jansenist ladies, elsewhile so sternly pure, so
+hard towards each other, in their austerities so severe,
+now in this great conjuncture offer up Law on the
+altar of Mercy, by flinging their arms round the poor
+threatened child, purifying her with kisses on the
+forehead, baptizing her anew in tears.</p>
+
+<p>If Provence be naturally wild, she is all the more
+wonderful in these wild moments of generosity and
+real greatness. Something of this was later seen in
+the earliest triumphs of Mirabeau, when he had a
+million of men gathered round him at Marseilles.
+But here already was a great revolutionary scene, a
+vast uprising against the stupid Government of the
+day, and Fleury&#8217;s pets the Jesuits: a unanimous uprising
+in behalf of humanity, of compassion, in
+defence of a woman, a very child, thus barbarously
+offered up. The Jesuits fancied that among their
+own rabble, among their clients and their beggars,
+they might array a kind of popular force, armed with
+handbells and staves to beat back the party of
+Cadi&egrave;re. This latter, however, included almost everyone.
+Marseilles rose up as one man to bear in
+triumph the son of the Advocate Chaudon. Toulon
+went so far for the sake of her poor townswoman, as
+to think of burning the Jesuit college.</p>
+
+<p>The most touching of all these tokens in Cadi&egrave;re&#8217;s<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[392]</a></span>
+favour, reached her from Ollioules. A simple boarder,
+Mdlle. Agnes, for all her youthful shyness, followed the
+impulse of her own heart, threw herself into the press
+of pamphlets, and published a defence of Cadi&egrave;re.</p>
+
+<p>So widespread and deep a movement had its effect
+on the Parliament itself. The foes of the Jesuits
+raised their heads, took courage to defy the threats of
+those above, the influence of the Jesuits, and the bolts
+that Fleury might hurl upon them from Versailles.<a name="FNanchor_118_118" id="FNanchor_118_118"></a><a href="#Footnote_118_118" class="fnanchor">[118]</a></p>
+
+<p>The very friends of Girard, seeing their numbers
+fall off, their phalanx grow thin, were eager for the
+sentence. It was pronounced on the 11th October,
+1731.</p>
+
+<p>In sight of the popular feeling, no one dared to
+follow up the savage sentence of the bench, by getting
+Cadi&egrave;re hanged. Twelve councillors sacrificed their
+honour, by declaring Girard innocent. Of the twelve
+others, some Jansenists condemned him to the flames
+as a wizard; and three or four, with better reason, condemned
+him to death as a scoundrel. Twelve being
+against twelve, the President Lebret had to give the
+casting vote. He found for Girard. Acquitted of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[393]</a></span>the capital crime of witchcraft, the latter was then
+made over, as priest and confessor, to the Toulon
+magistrate, his intimate friend Larmedieu, for trial in
+the bishop&#8217;s court.</p>
+
+<p>The great folk and the indifferent ones were satisfied.
+And so little heed was given to this award, that
+even in these days it has been said that &#8220;both were
+<i>acquitted</i>.&#8221; The statement is not correct. Cadi&egrave;re
+was treated as a slanderer, was condemned to see her
+memorials and other papers burnt by the hand of the
+executioner.</p>
+
+<p>There was still a dreadful something in the background.
+Cadi&egrave;re being so marked, so branded for the
+use of calumny, the Jesuits were sure to keep pushing
+underhand their success with Cardinal Fleury, and to
+urge her being punished in some secret, arbitrary
+way. Such was the notion imbibed by the town of
+Aix. It felt that, instead of sending her home, Parliament
+would rather <i>yield her up</i>. This caused so
+fearful a rage, such angry menaces, against President
+Lebret, that he asked to have the regiment of
+Flanders sent thither.</p>
+
+<p>Girard was fleeing away in a close carriage, when
+they found him out and would have killed him, had he
+not escaped into the Jesuits&#8217; Church. There the rascal
+betook himself to saying mass. After his escape
+thence he returned to D&ocirc;le, to reap honour and glory
+from the Society. Here, in 1733, he died, <i>in the perfume
+of holiness</i>. The courtier Lebret died in 1735.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[394]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Cardinal Fleury did whatever the Jesuits pleased.
+At Aix, Toulon, Marseilles, many were banished, or cast
+into prison. Toulon was specially guilty, as having
+borne Girard&#8217;s effigy to the doors of his <i>Girardites</i>, and
+carried about the thrice holy standard of the Jesuits.</p>
+
+<p>According to the terms of the award, Cadi&egrave;re should
+have been free to return home, to live again with her
+mother. But I venture to say that she was never
+allowed to re-enter her native town, that flaming
+theatre wherein so many voices had been raised in
+her behalf.</p>
+
+<p>If only to feel an interest in her was a crime deserving
+imprisonment, we cannot doubt but that she
+herself was presently thrown into prison; that the
+Jesuits easily obtained a special warrant from Versailles
+to lock up the poor girl, to hush up, to bury
+with her an affair so dismal for themselves. They
+would wait, of course, until the public attention was
+drawn off to something else. Thereon the fatal clutch
+would have caught her anew; she would have been
+buried out of sight in some unknown convent, snuffed
+out in some dark <i>In pace</i>.</p>
+
+<p>She was but one-and-twenty at the time of the
+award, and she had always hoped to die soon. May
+God have granted her that mercy!<a name="FNanchor_119_119" id="FNanchor_119_119"></a><a href="#Footnote_119_119" class="fnanchor">[119]</a></p>
+
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_114_114" id="Footnote_114_114"></a><a href="#FNanchor_114_114"><span class="label">[114]</span></a> Muyart de Vouglans, in the sequel to his <i>Loix Criminelles</i>,
+1780.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_115_115" id="Footnote_115_115"></a><a href="#FNanchor_115_115"><span class="label">[115]</span></a> Alluding to the cruelties dealt on the Huguenots by the
+French dragoons, at the close of Louis the Fourteenth&#8217;s
+reign.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_116_116" id="Footnote_116_116"></a><a href="#FNanchor_116_116"><span class="label">[116]</span></a> This fact comes to us from an adviser to the Holy Office,
+still living.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_117_117" id="Footnote_117_117"></a><a href="#FNanchor_117_117"><span class="label">[117]</span></a> I am not speaking of executions done by the people of
+their own accord. A hundred years ago, in a village of Provence,
+an old woman on being refused alms by a landowner,
+said in her fury, &#8220;You will be dead to-morrow.&#8221; He was
+smitten and died. The whole village, high and low, seized the
+old woman, and set her on a bundle of vine-twigs. She was
+burnt alive. The Parliament made a feint of inquiring, but
+punished nobody.&mdash;[In 1751 an old couple of Tring, in Hertfordshire,
+according to Wright, were tortured, kicked, and
+beaten to death, on the plea of witchcraft, by a maddened
+country mob.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span>]</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_118_118" id="Footnote_118_118"></a><a href="#FNanchor_118_118"><span class="label">[118]</span></a> There is a laughable tale which expresses the state of
+Parliament with singular nicety. The Recorder was reading
+his comments on the trial, on the share the Devil might have
+had therein, when a loud noise was heard. A black man fell
+down the chimney. In their fright they all ran away, save
+the Recorder only, who, being entangled in his robe, could not
+move. The man made some excuse. It was simply a chimneysweep
+who had mistaken his chimney.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_119_119" id="Footnote_119_119"></a><a href="#FNanchor_119_119"><span class="label">[119]</span></a> Touching this matter, Voltaire is very flippant: he scoffs
+at both parties, especially the Jansenists. The historians of
+our own day, MM. Cabasse, Fabre, M&eacute;ry, not having read the
+<i>Trial</i>, believe themselves impartial, while they are bearing
+down the victim.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<h2><a name="EPILOGUE" id="EPILOGUE"></a>EPILOGUE.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[395]</a></span></h2>
+
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="smcap">A woman</span> of genius, in a burst of noble tenderness,
+has figured to herself the two spirits whose strife
+moulded the Middle Ages, as coming at last to recognise
+each other, to draw together, to renew their
+olden friendship. Looking closer at each other, they
+discern, though somewhat late, the marks of a common
+parentage. How if they were indeed brethren, and
+this long battle nought but a mistake? Their hearts
+speak, and they are softened. The haughty outlaw
+and the gentle persecutor have forgotten everything:
+they dart forward and throw themselves into each
+other&#8217;s arms.&mdash;(<i>Consuelo.</i>)</p>
+
+<p>A charming, womanly idea. Others, too, have
+dreamed the same dream. The sweet Montanelli
+turned it into a beautiful poem. Ay, who would not
+welcome the delightful hope of seeing the battle here
+hushed down and finished by an embrace so moving?</p>
+
+<p>What does the wise Merlin think of it? In the
+mirror of his lake, whose depths are known to himself
+only, what did he behold? What said he in the colossal
+epic produced by him in 1860? Why, that Satan
+will not disarm, if disarm he ever do, until the Day of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[396]</a></span>
+Judgment. Then, side by side, at peace with each
+other, the two will fall asleep in a common death.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>It is not so hard, indeed, to bend them into a kind
+of compromise. The weakening, relaxing effects of so
+long a battle allow of their mingling in a certain way.
+In the last chapter we saw two shadows agreeing to
+form an alliance in deceit; the Devil appearing as the
+friend of Loyola, devotees and demoniacs marching
+abreast, Hell touched to softness in the Sacred Heart.</p>
+
+<p>It is a quiet time now, and people hate each other
+less than formerly. They hate few indeed but their
+own friends. I have seen Methodists admiring
+Jesuits. Those lawyers and physicians whom the
+Church in the Middle Ages called the children of
+Satan, I have seen making shrewd covenant with the
+old conquered Spirit.</p>
+
+<p>But get we away from these pretences. They who
+gravely propose that Satan should make peace and
+settle down, have they thought much about the matter?</p>
+
+<p>There is no hindrance as regards ill-will. The dead
+are dead. The millions of former victims sleep in
+peace, be they Albigenses, Vaudois, or Protestants,
+Moors, Jews, or American Indians. The Witch,
+universal martyr of the Middle Ages, has nought to
+say. Her ashes have been scattered to the winds.</p>
+
+<p>Know you, then, what it is that raises a protest, that
+keeps these two spirits steadily apart, preventing them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[397]</a></span>
+from coming nearer? It is a huge reality, born five
+hundred years ago; a gigantic creation accursed by
+the Church, even that mighty fabric of science and
+modern institutions, which she excommunicated stone
+by stone, but which with every anathema has grown a
+storey higher. You cannot name one science which
+has not been itself a rebellion.</p>
+
+<p>There is but one way of reconciling the two spirits,
+of joining into one the two churches. Demolish the
+younger, that one which from its first beginning was
+pronounced guilty and doomed as such. Let us, if
+we can, destroy the natural sciences, the observatory,
+the museum, the botanical garden, the schools of
+medicine, and all the modern libraries. Let us burn
+our laws, our bodies of statutes, and return to the
+Canon Law.</p>
+
+<p>All these novelties came of Satan. Each step forward
+has been a crime of his doing.</p>
+
+<p>He was the wicked logician who, despising the
+clerical law, preserved and renewed that of jurists and
+philosophers, grounded on an impious faith, on the
+freedom of the will.</p>
+
+<p>He was that dangerous magician who, while men
+were discussing the sex of angels and other questions
+of like sublimity, threw himself fiercely on realities,
+and created chemistry, physics, mathematics&mdash;ay,
+even mathematics. He sought to revive them, and
+that was rebellion. People were burnt for saying that
+three made three.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[398]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Medicine especially was a Satanic thing, a rebellion
+against disease, the scourge so justly dealt by God.
+It was clearly sinful to check the soul on its way
+towards heaven, to plunge it afresh into life!</p>
+
+<p>What atonement shall we make for all this? How
+are we to put down, to overthrow, this pile of insurrections,
+whereof at this moment all modern life is
+made up? Will Satan destroy his work, that he
+may tread once more the way of angels? That work
+rests on three everlasting rocks, Reason, Right, and
+Nature.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>So great is the triumph of the new spirit, that he
+forgets his battles, hardly at this moment deigns to
+remember that he has won.</p>
+
+<p>It were not amiss to remind him of his wretched
+beginnings, how coarsely mean, how rude and painfully
+comic were the shapes he wore in the season of
+persecution, when through a woman, even the unhappy
+Witch, he made his first homely flights in science.
+Bolder than the heretic, the half-Christian reasoner,
+the scholar who kept one foot within the sacred circle,
+this woman eagerly escaped therefrom, and under the
+open sunlight tried to make herself an altar of rough
+moorland stones.</p>
+
+<p>She has perished, as she was certain to perish. By
+what means? Chiefly by the progress of those very
+sciences which began with her, through the physician,
+the naturalist, for whom she had once toiled.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[399]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Witch has perished for ever, but not the Fay.
+She will reappear in the form that never dies.</p>
+
+<p>Busied in these latter days with the affairs of men,
+Woman has in return given up her rightful part, that
+of the physician, the comforter, the healing Fairy.
+Herein lies her proper priesthood&mdash;a priesthood that
+does belong to her, whatever the Church may say.</p>
+
+<p>Her delicate organs, her fondness for the least detail,
+her tender consciousness of life, all invite her to
+become Life&#8217;s shrewd interpreter in every science of
+observation. With her tenderly pitiful heart, her
+power of divining goodness, she goes of her own
+accord to the work of doctoring. There is but small
+difference between children and sick people. For both
+of them we need the Woman.</p>
+
+<p>She will return into the paths of science, whither,
+as a smile of nature, gentleness and humanity will
+enter by her side.</p>
+
+<p>The Anti-natural is growing dim, nor is the day far
+off when its eclipse will bring back daylight to the
+earth.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The gods may vanish, but God is still there. Nay,
+but the less we see of them, the more manifest is He.
+He is like a lighthouse eclipsed at moments, but
+alway shining again more clearly than before.</p>
+
+<p>It is a remarkable thing to see Him discussed so
+fully, even in the journals themselves. People begin
+to feel that all questions of education, government,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[400]</a></span>
+childhood, and womanhood, turn on that one ruling
+and underlying question. As God is, so must the
+world be.</p>
+
+<p>From this we gather that the times are ripe.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>So near, indeed, is that religious dayspring that I
+seemed momently to see it breaking over the desert
+where I brought this book to an end.</p>
+
+<p>How full of light, how rough and beautiful looked
+this desert of mine! I had made my nest on a rock
+in the mighty roadstead of Toulon, in a lowly villa
+surrounded with aloe and cypress, with the prickly
+pear and the wild rose. Before me was a spreading
+basin of sparkling sea; behind me the bare-topt amphitheatre,
+where, at their ease, might sit the Parliament
+of the world.</p>
+
+<p>This spot, so very African, bedazzles you in the
+daytime with flashings as of steel. But of a winter
+morning, especially in December, it seemed full of a
+divine mystery. I was wont to rise exactly at six
+o&#8217;clock, when the signal for work was boomed from
+the Arsenal gun. From six to seven I enjoyed a
+delicious time of it. The quick&mdash;may I call it piercing?&mdash;twinkle
+of the stars made the moon ashamed,
+and fought against the daybreak. Before its coming,
+and during the struggle between two lights, the
+wonderful clearness of the air would let things be
+seen and heard at incredible distances. Two leagues
+away I could make everything out. The smallest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[401]</a></span>
+detail about the distant mountains, a tree, a cliff, a
+house, a bend in the ground, was thrown out with
+the most delicate sharpness. New senses seemed to
+be given me. I found myself another being, released
+from bondage, free to soar away on my new wings.
+It was an hour of utter purity, all hard and clear.
+I said to myself, &#8220;How is this? Am I still a
+man?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>An unspeakable bluish hue, respected, left untouched
+by the rosy dawn, hung round me like a sacred
+ether, a spirit that made all things spiritual.</p>
+
+<p>One felt, however, a forward movement, through
+changes soft and slow. The great marvel was drawing
+nearer, to shine forth and eclipse all other things. It
+came on in its own calm way: you felt no wish to
+hurry it. The coming transfiguration, the expected
+witcheries of the light, took not a whit away from the
+deep enjoyment of being still under the divinity of
+night, still, as it were, half-hidden, and slow to emerge
+from so wonderful a spell.... Come forth, O Sun!
+We worship thee while yet unseen, but will reap all
+of good we yet may from these last moments of our
+dream!</p>
+
+<p>He is about to break forth. In hope let us await
+his welcome.</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="padding-top: 2em">THE END.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="LIST_OF_LEADING_AUTHORITIES" id="LIST_OF_LEADING_AUTHORITIES"></a>LIST OF LEADING AUTHORITIES.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[402]</a></span></h2>
+
+<ul>
+<li>Graesse, <i>Bibliotheca Magi&aelig;</i>, Leipsic, 1843.</li>
+<li><i>Magie Antique</i>&mdash;as edited by Soldan, A. Maury, &amp;c.</li>
+<li>Calcagnini, <i>Miscell., Magia Amatoria Antiqua</i>, 1544.</li>
+<li>J. Grimm, <i>German Mythology</i>.</li>
+<li><i>Acta Sanctorum.</i>&mdash;Acta SS. Ordinis S. Benedicti.</li>
+<li>Michael Psellus, <i>Energie des D&eacute;mons</i>, 1050.</li>
+<li>C&aelig;sar of Heisterbach, <i>Illustria Miracula</i>, 1220.</li>
+<li><i>Registers of the Inquisition</i>, 1307-1326, in Limburch; and the extracts given by Magi, Llorente, Lamothe-Langon, &amp;c.</li>
+<li><i>Directorium.</i> Eymerici, 1358.</li>
+<li>Llorente, <i>The Spanish Inquisition</i>.</li>
+<li>Lamothe-Langon, <i>Inquisition de France</i>.</li>
+<li><i>Handbooks of the Monk-Inquisitors of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries</i>: Nider&#8217;s <i>Formicarius</i>; Sprenger&#8217;s <i>Malleus</i>.</li>
+<li>C. Bernardus&#8217;s <i>Lucerna</i>; Spina, Grillandus, &amp;c.</li>
+<li>H. Corn. Agripp&aelig; <i>Opera</i>, Lyons.</li>
+<li>Paracelsi <i>Opera</i>.</li>
+<li>Wyer, <i>De Prestigiis D&aelig;monum</i>, 1569.</li>
+<li>Bodin, <i>D&eacute;monomanie</i>, 1580.</li>
+<li>Remigius, <i>Demonolatria</i>, 1596.</li>
+<li>Del Rio, <i>Disquisitiones Magic&aelig;</i>, 1599.</li>
+<li>Boguet, <i>Discours des Sorciers</i>, Lyons, 1605.</li>
+<li>Leloyer, <i>Histoire des Spectres</i>, Paris, 1605.</li>
+<li>Lancre, <i>Inconstance</i>, 1612: <i>Incredulit&eacute;</i>, 1622.</li>
+<li>Micha&euml;lis, <i>Histoire d&#8217;une P&eacute;nitente, &amp;c.</i>, 1613.</li>
+<li>Tranquille, <i>Relation de Loudun</i>, 1634.</li>
+<li><i>Histoire des Diables de Loudun</i> (by Aubin), 1716.</li>
+<li><i>Histoire de Madeleine Bavent</i>, de Louviers, 1652.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[403]</a></span></li>
+<li><i>Examen de Louviers. Apologie de l&#8217;Examen</i> (by Yvelin), 1643.</li>
+<li><i>Proc&egrave;s du P. Girard et de la Cadi&egrave;re</i>; Aix, 1833.</li>
+<li><i>Pi&egrave;ces relatives &agrave; ce Proc&egrave;s</i>; 5 vols., Aix, 1833.</li>
+<li><i>Factum, Chansons, relatifs, &amp;c.</i> MSS. in the Toulon Library.</li>
+<li>Eug&egrave;ne Salverte, <i>Sciences Occultes</i>, with Introduction by Littr&eacute;.</li>
+<li>A. Maury, <i>Les F&eacute;es</i>, 1843; <i>Magie</i>, 1860.</li>
+<li>Soldan, <i>Histoire des Proc&egrave;s de Sorcellerie</i>, 1843.</li>
+<li>Thos. Wright, <i>Narratives of Sorcery, &amp;c.</i>, 1851.</li>
+<li>L. Figuier, <i>Histoire du Merveilleux</i>, 4 vols.</li>
+<li>Ferdinand Denis, <i>Sciences Occultes: Monde Enchant&eacute;</i>.</li>
+<li><i>Histoire des Sciences au Moyen Age</i>, by Sprenger, Pouchet, Cuvier, &amp;c.</li>
+</ul>
+
+
+
+<p class="end">Printed by Woodfall and Kinder, Angel Court, Skinner Street, London.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of La Sorci�re: The Witch of the Middle
+Ages, by Jules Michelet
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+</pre>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages, by
+Jules Michelet
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages
+
+Author: Jules Michelet
+
+Translator: Lionel James Trotter
+
+Release Date: February 27, 2010 [EBook #31420]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LA SORCIERE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Irma Spehar and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+LA SORCIERE.
+
+J. MICHELET.
+
+LONDON:
+PRINTED BY WOODFALL AND KINDER,
+ANGEL COURT, SKINNER STREET.
+
+
+
+
+THE WITCH OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
+
+FROM THE FRENCH OF J. MICHELET.
+
+BY L. J. TROTTER.
+
+
+(_The only Authorized English Translation._)
+
+
+LONDON:
+SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, AND CO.,
+STATIONERS' HALL COURT.
+MDCCCLXIII.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+In this translation of a work rich in the raciest beauties and defects
+of an author long since made known to the British public, the present
+writer has striven to recast the trenchant humour, the scornful
+eloquence, the epigrammatic dash of Mr. Michelet, in language not all
+unworthy of such a word-master. How far he has succeeded others may be
+left to judge. In one point only is he aware of having been less true
+to his original than in theory he was bound to be. He has slurred or
+slightly altered a few of those passages which French readers take as
+a thing of course, but English ones, because of their different
+training, are supposed to eschew. A Frenchman, in short, writes for
+men, an Englishman rather for drawing-room ladies, who tolerate
+grossness only in the theatres and the columns of the newspapers. Mr.
+Michelet's subject, and his late researches, lead him into details,
+moral and physical, which among ourselves are seldom mixed up with
+themes of general talk. The coarsest of these have been pruned away,
+but enough perhaps remain to startle readers of especial prudery. The
+translator, however, felt that he had no choice between shocking
+these and sinning against his original. Readers of a larger culture
+will make allowance for such a strait, will not be so very frightened
+at an amount of plain-speaking, neither in itself immoral, nor, on the
+whole, impertinent. Had he docked his work of everything condemned by
+prudish theories, he might have made it more conventionally decent;
+but Michelet would have been puzzled to recognize himself in the poor
+maimed cripple that would then have borne his name.
+
+Nor will a reader of average shrewdness mistake the religious drift of
+a book suppressed by the Imperial underlings in the interests neither
+of religion nor of morals, but merely of Popery in its most outrageous
+form. If its attacks on Rome seem, now and then, to involve
+Christianity itself, we must allow something for excess of warmth, and
+something for the nature of inquiries which laid bare the rotten
+outgrowths of a religion in itself the purest known among men. In
+studying the so-called Ages of Faith, the author has only found them
+worthy of their truer and older title, the Ages of Darkness. It is
+against the tyranny, feudal and priestly, of those days, that he
+raises an outcry, warranted almost always by facts which a more
+mawkish philosophy refuses to see. If he is sometimes hasty and
+onesided; if the Church and the Feudal System of those days had their
+uses for the time being; it is still a gain to have the other side of
+the subject kept before us by way of counterpoise to the doctrines
+now in vogue. We need not be intolerant; but Rome is yet alive.
+
+Taken as a whole, Mr. Michelet's book cannot be called unchristian.
+Like most thoughtful minds of the day, he yearns for some nobler and
+larger creed than that of the theologians; for a creed which,
+understanding Nature, shall reconcile it with Nature's God. Nor may he
+fairly be called irreverent for talking, Frenchman like, of things
+spiritual with the same freedom as he would of things temporal.
+Perhaps in his heart of hearts he has nearly as much religious
+earnestness as they who call Dr. Colenso an infidel, and shake their
+heads at the doubtful theology of Frederic Robertson. At any rate, no
+translator who should cut or file away so special a feature of French
+feeling would be doing justice to so marked an original.
+
+For English readers who already know the concise and sober volumes of
+their countryman, Mr. Wright, the present work will offer mainly an
+interesting study of the author himself. It is a curious compound of
+rhapsody and sound reason, of history and romance, of coarse realism
+and touching poetry, such as, even in France, few save Mr. Michelet
+could have produced. Founded on truth and close inquiry, it still
+reads more like a poem than a sober history. As a beautiful
+speculation, which has nearly, but not quite, grasped the physical
+causes underlying the whole history of magic and illusion in all ages,
+it may be read with profit as well as pleasure in this age of vulgar
+spirit-rapping. But the true history of Witchcraft has yet to be
+written by some cooler hand.
+
+                                          L. T.
+
+  _May 11th, 1863._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+
+INTRODUCTION                                                        1
+  To One Wizard Ten Thousand Witches                                1
+  The Witch was the sole Physician of the People                    4
+  Terrorism of the Middle Ages                                      5
+  The Witch was the Offspring of Despair                            9
+  She in her Turn created Satan                                    12
+  Satan, Prince of the World, Physician, Innovator                 13
+  His School--of Witches, Shepherds, and Headsmen                  15
+  His Decline                                                      16
+
+
+BOOK I.
+
+CHAPTER I.--THE DEATH OF THE GODS                                  19
+  Christianity thought the World was Dying                         20
+  The World of Demons                                              24
+  The Bride of Corinth                                             26
+
+CHAPTER II.--WHY THE MIDDLE AGES FELL INTO DESPAIR                 30
+  The People make their own Legends                                31
+  But are forbidden to do so any more                              35
+  The People guard their Territory                                 38
+  But are made Serfs                                               40
+
+CHAPTER III.--THE LITTLE DEVIL OF THE FIRESIDE                     43
+  Ancient Communism of the _Villa_                                 43
+  The Hearth made independent                                      44
+  The Wife of the Serf                                             45
+  Her Loyalty to the Olden Gods                                    46
+  The Goblin                                                       53
+
+CHAPTER IV.--TEMPTATIONS                                           57
+  The Serf invokes the Spirit of Hidden Treasures                  58
+  Feudal Raids                                                     59
+  The Wife turns her Goblin into a Devil                           66
+
+CHAPTER V.--POSSESSION                                             69
+  The Advent of Gold in 1300                                       69
+  The Woman makes Terms with the Demon of Gold                     71
+  Impure Horrors of the Middle Ages                                75
+  The Village Lady                                                 78
+  Hatred of the Lady of the Castle                                 84
+
+CHAPTER VI.--THE COVENANT                                          88
+  The Woman-serf gives Herself up to the Devil                     90
+  The Moor and the Witch                                           93
+
+CHAPTER VII.--THE KING OF THE DEAD                                 96
+  The dear Dead are brought back to Earth                          97
+  The Idea of Satan is softened                                   103
+
+CHAPTER VIII.--THE PRINCE OF NATURE                               106
+  The Thaw in the Middle Ages                                     108
+  The Witch calls forth the East                                  109
+  She conceives Nature                                            112
+
+CHAPTER IX.--THE DEVIL A PHYSICIAN                                116
+  Diseases of the Middle Ages                                     116
+  The _Comforters_, or Solaneae                                    121
+  The Middle Ages anti-natural                                    128
+
+CHAPTER X.--CHARMS AND PHILTRES                                   131
+  Blue-Beard and Griselda                                         133
+  The Witch consulted by the Castle                               137
+  Her Malice                                                      141
+
+CHAPTER XI.--THE REBELS' COMMUNION--SABBATHS--THE BLACK MASS      143
+  The old Half-heathen Sabasies                                   144
+  The Four Acts of the Black Mass                                 150
+  Act I. The Introit, the Kiss, the Banquet                       151
+  Act II. The Offering: the Woman as Altar and Host               153
+
+CHAPTER XII.--THE SEQUEL--LOVE AND DEATH--SATAN DISAPPEARS        157
+  Act III. Love of near Kindred                                   158
+  Act IV. Death of Satan and the Witch                            165
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+CHAPTER I.--THE WITCH IN HER DECLINE--SATAN MULTIPLIED AND MADE
+    COMMON                                                        168
+  Witches and Wizards employed by the Great                       172
+  The Wolf-lady                                                   174
+  The last Philtre                                                179
+
+CHAPTER II.--PERSECUTIONS                                         180
+  The Hammer for Witches                                          181
+  Satan Master of the World                                       193
+
+CHAPTER III.--CENTURY OF TOLERATION IN FRANCE: REACTION           198
+  Spain begins when France stops short                            199
+  Reaction: French Lawyers burn as many as the Priests            203
+
+CHAPTER IV.--THE WITCHES OF THE BASQUE COUNTRY                    207
+  They give Instructions to their own Judges                      212
+
+CHAPTER V.--SATAN TURNS PRIEST                                    218
+  Jokes of the Modern Sabbath                                     221
+
+CHAPTER VI.--GAUFFRIDI: 1610                                      228
+  Wizard Priests prosecuted by Monks                              232
+  Jealousies of the Nuns                                          234
+
+CHAPTER VII.--THE DEMONIACS OF LOUDUN: URBAN GRANDIER             255
+  The Vicar a fine Speaker, and a Wizard                          263
+  Sickly Rages of the Nuns                                        264
+
+CHAPTER VIII.--THE DEMONIACS OF LOUVIERS--MADELINE BAVENT         277
+  Illuminism: the Devil a Quietist                                277
+  Fight between the Devil and the Doctor                          285
+
+CHAPTER IX.--THE DEVIL TRIUMPHS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY        294
+
+CHAPTER X.--FATHER GIRARD AND LA CADIERE                          303
+
+CHAPTER XI.--CADIERE IN THE CONVENT                               339
+
+CHAPTER XII.--TRIAL OF CADIERE                                    367
+
+EPILOGUE                                                          395
+  Can Satan and Jesus be reconciled?                              396
+  The Witch is dead, but the Fairy will live again                399
+  Oncoming of the Religious Revival                               399
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+It was said by Sprenger, before the year 1500, "_Heresy of witches_,
+not of wizards, must we call it, for these latter are of very small
+account." And by another, in the time of Louis XIII.: "To one wizard,
+ten thousand witches."
+
+"Witches they are by nature." It is a gift peculiar to woman and her
+temperament. By birth a fay, by the regular recurrence of her ecstasy
+she becomes a sibyl. By her love she grows into an enchantress. By her
+subtlety, by a roguishness often whimsical and beneficent, she becomes
+a Witch; she works her spells; does at any rate lull our pains to rest
+and beguile them.
+
+All primitive races have the same beginning, as so many books of
+travel have shown. While the man is hunting and fighting, the woman
+works with her wits, with her imagination: she brings forth dreams and
+gods. On certain days she becomes a seeress, borne on boundless wings
+of reverie and desire. The better to reckon up the seasons, she
+watches the sky; but her heart belongs to earth none the less. Young
+and flower-like herself, she looks down toward the enamoured flowers,
+and forms with them a personal acquaintance. As a woman, she beseeches
+them to heal the objects of her love.
+
+In a way so simple and touching do all religion and all science begin.
+Ere long everything will get parcelled out; we shall mark the
+beginning of the professional man as juggler, astrologer, or prophet,
+necromancer, priest, physician. But at first the woman is everything.
+
+A religion so strong and hearty as that of Pagan Greece begins with
+the Sibyl to end in the Witch. The former, a lovely maiden in the
+broad daylight, rocked its cradle, endowed it with a charm and glory
+of its own. Presently it fell sick, lost itself in the darkness of the
+Middle Ages, and was hidden away by the Witch in woods and wilds:
+there, sustained by her compassionate daring, it was made to live
+anew. Thus, of every religion woman is the mother, the gentle
+guardian, the faithful nurse. With her the gods fare like men: they
+are born and die upon her bosom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Alas! her loyalty costs her dear. Ye magian queens of Persia;
+bewitching Circe; sublime Sibyl! Into what have ye grown, and how
+cruel the change that has come upon you! She who from her throne in
+the East taught men the virtues of plants and the courses of the
+stars; who, on her Delphic tripod beamed over with the god of light,
+as she gave forth her oracle to a world upon its knees;--she also it
+is whom, a thousand years later, people hunt down like a wild beast;
+following her into the public places, where she is dishonoured,
+worried, stoned, or set upon the burning coals!
+
+For this poor wretch the priesthood can never have done with their
+faggots, nor the people with their insults, nor the children with
+their stones. The poet, childlike, flings her one more stone, for a
+woman the cruellest of all. On no grounds whatever, he imagines her to
+have been always old and ugly. The word "witch" brings before us the
+frightful old women of _Macbeth_. But their cruel processes teach us
+the reverse of that. Numbers perished precisely for being young and
+beautiful.
+
+The Sibyl foretold a fortune, the Witch accomplishes one. Here is the
+great, the true difference between them. The latter calls forth a
+destiny, conjures it, works it out. Unlike the Cassandra of old, who
+awaited mournfully the future she foresaw so well, this woman herself
+creates the future. Even more than Circe, than Medea, does she bear in
+her hand the rod of natural miracle, with Nature herself as sister and
+helpmate. Already she wears the features of a modern Prometheus. With
+her industry begins, especially that queen-like industry which heals
+and restores mankind. As the Sibyl seemed to gaze upon the morning, so
+she, contrariwise, looks towards the west; but it is just that gloomy
+west, which long before dawn--as happens among the tops of the
+Alps--gives forth a flush anticipant of day.
+
+Well does the priest discern the danger, the bane, the alarming
+rivalry, involved in this priestess of nature whom he makes a show of
+despising. From the gods of yore she has conceived other gods. Close
+to the Satan of the Past we see dawning within her a Satan of the
+Future.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The only physician of the people for a thousand years was the Witch.
+The emperors, kings, popes, and richer barons had indeed their doctors
+of Salerno, their Moors and Jews; but the bulk of people in every
+state, the world as it might well be called, consulted none but the
+_Saga_, or wise-woman. When she could not cure them, she was insulted,
+was called a Witch. But generally, from a respect not unmixed with
+fear, she was called good lady or fair lady (_belle dame_--_bella
+donna_[1]), the very name we give to the fairies.
+
+    [1] Whence our old word _Beldam_, the more courteous meaning
+    of which is all but lost in its ironical one.--TRANS.
+
+Soon there came upon her the lot which still befalls her favourite
+plant, belladonna, and some other wholesome poisons which she employed
+as antidotes to the great plagues of the Middle Ages. Children and
+ignorant passers-by would curse those dismal flowers before they knew
+them. Affrighted by their questionable hues, they shrink back, keep
+far aloof from them. And yet among them are the _comforters_
+(Solaneae) which, when discreetly employed, have cured so many, have
+lulled so many sufferings to sleep.
+
+You find them in ill-looking spots, growing all lonely and ill-famed
+amidst ruins and rubbish-heaps. Therein lies one other point of
+resemblance between these flowers and her who makes use of them. For
+where else than in waste wildernesses could live the poor wretch whom
+all men thus evilly entreated; the woman accursed and proscribed as a
+poisoner, even while she used to heal and save; as the betrothed of
+the Devil and of evil incarnate, for all the good which, according to
+the great physician of the Renaissance, she herself had done? When
+Paracelsus, at Basle, in 1527, threw all medicine into the fire,[2] he
+avowed that he knew nothing but what he had learnt from witches.
+
+    [2] Alluding to the bonfire which Paracelsus, as professor of
+    medicine, made of the works of Galen and Avicenna.--TRANS.
+
+This was worth a requital, and they got it. They were repaid with
+tortures, with the stake. For them new punishments, new pangs, were
+expressly devised. They were tried in a lump; they were condemned by a
+single word. Never had there been such wastefulness of human life. Not
+to speak of Spain, that classic land of the faggot, where Moor and Jew
+are always accompanied by the Witch, there were burnt at Treves seven
+thousand, and I know not how many at Toulouse; five hundred at Geneva
+in three months of 1513; at Wurtzburg eight hundred, almost in one
+batch, and fifteen hundred at Bamberg; these two latter being very
+small bishoprics! Even Ferdinand II., the savage Emperor of the Thirty
+Years' War, was driven, bigot as he was, to keep a watch on these
+worthy bishops, else they would have burned all their subjects. In the
+Wurtzburg list I find one Wizard a schoolboy, eleven years old; a
+Witch of fifteen: and at Bayonne two, infernally beautiful, of
+seventeen years.
+
+Mark how, at certain seasons, hatred wields this one word _Witch_, as
+a means of murdering whom she will. Woman's jealousy, man's greed,
+take ready hold of so handy a weapon. Is such a one wealthy? _She is a
+Witch._ Is that girl pretty? _She is a Witch._ You will even see the
+little beggar-woman, La Murgui, leave a death-mark with that fearful
+stone on the forehead of a great lady, the too beautiful dame of
+Lancinena.
+
+The accused, when they can, avert the torture by killing themselves.
+Remy, that excellent judge of Lorraine, who burned some eight hundred
+of them, crows over this very fear. "So well," said he, "does my way
+of justice answer, that of those who were arrested the other day,
+sixteen, without further waiting, strangled themselves forthwith."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Over the long track of my History, during the thirty years which I
+have devoted to it, this frightful literature of witchcraft passed to
+and fro repeatedly through my hands. First I exhausted the manuals of
+the Inquisition, the asinine foolings of the Dominicans. (_Scourges_,
+_Hammers_, _Ant-hills_, _Floggings_, _Lanterns_, &c., are the titles
+of their books.) Next, I read the Parliamentarists, the lay judges who
+despised the monks they succeeded, but were every whit as foolish
+themselves. One word further would I say of them here: namely, this
+single remark, that, from 1300 to 1600, and yet later, but one kind of
+justice may be seen. Barring a small interlude in the Parliament of
+Paris, the same stupid savagery prevails everywhere, at all hours.
+Even great parts are of no use here. As soon as witchcraft comes into
+question, the fine-natured De Lancre, a Bordeaux magistrate and
+forward politician under Henry IV., sinks back to the level of a
+Nider, a Sprenger; of the monkish ninnies of the fifteenth century.
+
+It fills one with amazement to see these different ages, these men of
+diverse culture, fail in taking the least step forward. Soon, however,
+you begin clearly to understand how all were checked alike, or let us
+rather say blinded, made hopelessly drunk and savage, by the poison of
+their guiding principle. That principle lies in the statement of a
+radical injustice: "On account of one man all are lost; are not only
+punished but worthy of punishment; _depraved and perverted
+beforehand_, dead to God even before their birth. The very babe at the
+breast is damned."
+
+Who says so? Everyone, even Bossuet himself. A leading doctor in Rome,
+Spina, a Master of the Holy Palace, formulates the question neatly:
+"Why does God suffer the innocent to die?--For very good reasons:
+even if they do not die on account of their own sins, they are always
+liable to death as guilty of the original sin." (_De Strigibus_, ch.
+9.)
+
+From this atrocity spring two results, the one pertaining to justice,
+the other to logic. The judge is never at fault in his work: the
+person brought before him is certainly guilty, the more so if he makes
+a defence. Justice need never beat her head, or work herself into a
+heat, in order to distinguish the truth from the falsehood. Everyhow
+she starts from a foregone conclusion. Again, the logician, the
+schoolman, has only to analyse the soul, to take count of the shades
+it passes through, of its manifold nature, its inward strifes and
+battles. He had no need, as we have, to explain how that soul may grow
+wicked step by step. At all such niceties and groping efforts, how, if
+even he could understand them, would he laugh and wag his head! And,
+oh! how gracefully then would quiver those splendid ears which deck
+his empty skull!
+
+Especially in treating of the _compact with the Devil_, that awful
+covenant whereby, for the poor profit of one day, the spirit sells
+itself to everlasting torture, we of another school would seek to
+trace anew that road accursed, that frightful staircase of mishaps and
+crimes, which had brought it to a depth so low. Much, however, cares
+our fine fellow for all that! To him soul and Devil seem born for each
+other, insomuch that on the first temptation, for a whim, a desire, a
+passing fancy, the soul will throw itself at one stroke into so
+horrible an extremity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Neither do I find that the moderns have made much inquiry into the
+moral chronology of witchcraft. They cling too much to the connection
+between antiquity and the Middle Ages; connection real indeed, but
+slight, of small importance. Neither from the magician of old, nor the
+seeress of Celts and Germans, comes forth the true Witch. The harmless
+"Sabasies" (from Bacchus Sabasius), and the petty rural "Sabbath" of
+the Middle Ages, have nothing to do with the Black Mass of the
+fourteenth century, with the grand defiance then solemnly given to
+Jesus. This fearful conception never grew out of a long chain of
+tradition. It leapt forth from the horrors of the day.
+
+At what date, then, did the Witch first appear? I say unfalteringly,
+"In the age of despair:" of that deep despair which the gentry of the
+Church engendered. Unfalteringly do I say, "The Witch is a crime of
+their own achieving."
+
+I am not to be taken up short by the excuses which their sugary
+explanations seem to furnish. "Weak was that creature, and giddy, and
+pliable under temptation. She was drawn towards evil by her lust."
+Alas! in the wretchedness, the hunger of those days, nothing of that
+kind could have ruffled her even into a hellish rage. An amorous
+woman, jealous and forsaken, a child hunted out by her step-mother, a
+mother beaten by her son (old subjects these of story), if such as
+they were ever tempted to call upon the Evil Spirit, yet all this
+would make no Witch. These poor creatures may have called on Satan,
+but it does not follow that he accepted them. They are still far, ay,
+very far from being ripe for him. They have not yet learned to hate
+God.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For the better understanding of this point, you should read those
+hateful registers which remain to us of the Inquisition, not only in
+the extracts given by Llorente, by Lamothe-Langon, &c., but in what
+remains of the original registers of Toulouse. Read them in all their
+flatness, in all their dryness, so dismal, so terribly savage. At the
+end of a few pages you feel yourself stricken with a chill; a cruel
+shiver fastens upon you; death, death, death, is traceable in every
+line. Already you are in a bier, or else in a stone cell with mouldy
+walls. Happiest of all are the killed. The horror of horrors is the
+_In pace_. This phrase it is which comes back unceasingly, like an
+ill-omened bell sounding again and again the heart's ruin of the
+living dead: always we have the same word, "Immured."
+
+Frightful machinery for crushing and flattening; most cruel press for
+shattering the soul! One turn of the screw follows another, until, all
+breathless, and with a loud crack, it has burst forth from the machine
+and fallen into the unknown world.
+
+On her first appearance the Witch has neither father nor mother, nor
+son, nor husband, nor family. She is a marvel, an aerolith, alighted
+no one knows whence. Who, in Heaven's name, would dare to draw near
+her?
+
+Her place of abode? It is in spots impracticable, in a forest of
+brambles, on a wild moor where thorn and thistle intertwining forbid
+approach. The night she passes under an old cromlech. If anyone finds
+her there, she is isolated by the common dread; she is surrounded, as
+it were, by a ring of fire.
+
+And yet--would you believe it?--she is a woman still. This very life
+of hers, dreadful though it be, tightens and braces her woman's
+energy, her womanly electricity. Hence, you may see her endowed with
+two gifts. One is the _inspiration of lucid frenzy_, which in its
+several degrees, becomes poesy, second-sight, depth of insight,
+cunning simplicity of speech, the power especially of believing in
+yourself through all your delusions. Of such a gift the man, the
+wizard, knows nothing. On his side no beginning would have been made.
+
+From this gift flows that other, the sublime power of _unaided
+conception_, that parthenogenesis which our physiologists have come to
+recognise, as touching fruitfulness of the body in the females of
+several species; and which is not less a truth with regard to the
+conceptions of the spirit.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By herself did she conceive and bring forth--what? A second self, who
+resembles her in his self-delusions. The son of her hatred, conceived
+upon her love; for without love can nothing be created. For all the
+alarm this child gave her, she has become so well again, is so happily
+engrossed with this new idol, that she places it straightway upon her
+altar, to worship it, yield her life up to it, and offer herself up as
+a living and perfect sacrifice. Very often she will even say to her
+judge, "There is but one thing I fear; that I shall not suffer enough
+for him."--(_Lancre._)
+
+Shall I tell you what the child's first effort was? It was a fearful
+burst of laughter. Has he not cause for mirth on his broad prairie,
+far away from the Spanish dungeons and the "immured" of Toulouse? The
+whole world is his _In pace_. He comes, and goes, and walks to and
+fro. His is the boundless forest, his the desert with its far
+horizons, his the whole earth, in the fulness of its teeming girdle.
+The Witch in her tenderness calls him "_Robin mine_," the name of that
+bold outlaw, the joyous Robin Hood, who lived under the green bowers.
+She delights too in calling him fondly by such names as _Little
+Green_, _Pretty-Wood_, _Greenwood_; after the little madcap's
+favourite haunts. He had hardly seen a thicket when he took to playing
+the truant.[3]
+
+    [3] Here, as in some other passages, the play of words in the
+    original is necessarily lost.--TRANS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What astounds one most is, that at one stroke the Witch should have
+achieved an actual Being. He bears about him every token of reality.
+We have heard and seen him; anyone could draw his likeness.
+
+The Saints, those darling sons of the house, with their dreams and
+meditations make but little stir; _they look forward waitingly_, as
+men assured of their part in Elysium. What little energy they have is
+all centred in the narrow round of _Imitation_; a word which condenses
+the whole of the Middle Ages. He on the other hand--this accursed
+bastard whose only lot is the scourge--has no idea of waiting. He is
+always seeking and will never rest. He busies himself with all things
+between earth and heaven. He is exceedingly curious; will dig, dive,
+ferret, and poke his nose everywhere. At the _consummatum est_ he only
+laughs, the little scoffer! He is always saying "Further," or
+"Forward." Moreover, he is not hard to please. He takes every rebuff;
+picks up every windfall. For instance, when the Church throws out
+nature as impure and doubtworthy, Satan fastens on her for his own
+adornment. Nay, more; he employs her, and makes her useful to him as
+the fountain-head of the arts; thus accepting the awful name with
+which others would brand him; to wit, the _Prince of the World_.
+
+Some one rashly said, "Woe to those who laugh." Thus from the first
+was Satan intrusted with too pretty a part; he had the sole right of
+laughing, and of declaring it an _amusement_--rather let us say _a
+necessity_; for laughing is essentially a natural function. Life
+would be unbearable if we could not laugh, at least in our
+afflictions.
+
+Looking on life as nothing but a trial, the Church is careful not to
+prolong it. Her medicine is resignation, the looking for and the hope
+of death. A broad field this for Satan! He becomes the physician, the
+healer of the living. Better still, he acts as comforter: he is good
+enough to shew us our dead, to call up the shades of our beloved.
+
+One more trifle the Church rejected, namely, logic or free reason.
+Here was a special dainty, to which _the other_ greedily helped
+himself. The Church had carefully builded up a small _In pace_,
+narrow, low-roofed, lighted by one dim opening, a mere cranny. That
+was called _The School_. Into it were turned loose a few shavelings,
+with this commandment, "Be free." They all fell lame. In three or four
+centuries the paralysis was confirmed, and Ockham's standpoint is the
+very same as Abelard's.[4]
+
+    [4] Abelard flourished in the twelfth, William of Ockham
+    (pupil of Duns Scotus) in the fourteenth century.--TRANS.
+
+It is pleasant to track the Renaissance up to such a point. The
+Renaissance took place indeed, but how? Through the Satanic daring of
+those who pierced the vault, through the efforts of the damned who
+were bent on seeing the sky. And it took place yet more largely away
+from the schools and the men of letters, in the _School of the Bush_,
+where Satan had set up a class for the Witch and the shepherd.
+
+Perilous teaching it was, if so it happened; but the very dangers of
+it heightened the eager passion, the uncontrollable yearning to see
+and to know. Thus began those wicked sciences, physic debarred from
+poisoning, and that odious anatomy. There, along with his survey of
+the heavens, the shepherd who kept watch upon the stars applied also
+his shameful nostrums, made his essays upon the bodies of animals. The
+Witch would bring out a corpse stolen from the neighbouring cemetery;
+and, for the first time, at risk of being burned, you might gaze upon
+that heavenly wonder, "which men"--as M. Serres has well said--"are
+foolish enough to bury, instead of trying to understand."
+
+Paracelsus, the only doctor whom Satan admitted there, saw yet a third
+worker, who, stealing at times into that dark assembly, displayed
+there his surgical art. This was the surgeon of those happy days, the
+headsman stout of hand, who could play patly enough with the fire,
+could break bones and set them again; who if he killed, would
+sometimes save, by hanging one only for a certain time.
+
+By the more sacrilegious of its essays this convict university of
+witches, shepherds, and headsmen, emboldened the other, obliged its
+rival to study. For everyone wanted to live. The Witch would have got
+hold of everything: people would for ever have turned their backs on
+the doctor. And so the Church was fain to suffer, to countenance these
+crimes. She avowed her belief in _good poisons_ (Grillandus). She
+found herself driven and constrained to allow of public dissections.
+In 1306 one woman, in 1315 another, was opened and dissected by the
+Italian Mondino. Here was a holy revelation, the discovery of a
+greater world than that of Christopher Columbus! Fools shuddered or
+howled; but wise men fell upon their knees.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With such conquests the Devil was like enough to live on. Never could
+the Church alone have put an end to him. The stake itself was useless,
+save for some political objects.
+
+Men had presently the wit to cleave Satan's realm in twain. Against
+the Witch, his daughter, his bride, they armed his son, the doctor.
+Heartily, utterly as the Church loathed the latter, yet to extinguish
+the Witch, she established his monopoly nevertheless. In the
+fourteenth century she proclaimed, that any woman who dared to heal
+others _without having duly studied_, was a witch and should therefore
+die.
+
+But how was she to study in public? Fancy what a scene of mingled fun
+and horror would have occurred, if the poor savage had risked an
+entrance into the schools! What games and merry-makings there would
+have been! On Midsummer Day they used to chain cats together and burn
+them in the fire. But to tie up a Witch in that hell of caterwaulers,
+a Witch yelling and roasting, what fun it would have been for that
+precious crew of monklings and cowlbearers!
+
+In due time we shall see the decline of Satan. Sad to tell, we shall
+find him pacified, turned into _a good old fellow_. He will be robbed
+and plundered, until of the two masks he wore at the Sabbath, the
+dirtiest is taken by Tartuffe. His spirit is still everywhere, but of
+his bodily self, in losing the Witch he lost all. The wizards were
+only wearisome.
+
+Now that we have hurled him so far downwards, are we fully aware of
+what has happened? Was he not an important actor, an essential item in
+the great religious machine just now slightly out of gear? All
+organisms that work properly are twofold, twosided. Life can otherwise
+not go on at all. It is a kind of balance between two forces,
+opposite, symmetrical, but unequal; the lower answering to the other
+as its counterpoise. The higher chafes at it, seeks to put it down. So
+doing, it is all wrong.
+
+When Colbert, in 1672, got rid of Satan, with very little ceremony, by
+forbidding the judges to entertain pleas of witchcraft, the sturdy
+Parliament of Normandy with its sound Norman logic pointed out the
+dangerous drift of such a decision. The Devil is nothing less than a
+dogma holding on to all the rest. If you meddle with the Eternally
+Conquered, are you not meddling with the Conqueror likewise? To doubt
+the acts of the former, leads to doubting the acts of the second, the
+miracles he wrought for the very purpose of withstanding the Devil.
+The pillars of heaven are grounded in the Abyss. He who thoughtlessly
+removes that base infernal, may chance to split up Paradise itself.
+
+Colbert could not listen, having other business to mind. But the Devil
+perhaps gave heed and was comforted. Amidst such minor means of
+earning a livelihood as spirit-rapping or table-turning, he grows
+resigned, and believes at least that he will not die alone.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE DEATH OF THE GODS.
+
+
+Certain authors have declared that, shortly before the triumph of
+Christianity, a voice mysterious ran along the shores of the AEgean
+Sea, crying, "Great Pan is dead!" The old universal god of nature was
+no more; and great was the joy thereat. Men fancied that with the
+death of nature temptation itself was dead. After the troublings of so
+long a storm, the soul of man was at length to find rest.
+
+Was it merely a question touching the end of that old worship, its
+overthrow, and the eclipse of old religious rites? By no means.
+Consult the earliest Christian records, and in every line you may read
+the hope, that nature is about to vanish, life to be extinguished;
+that the end of the world, in short, is very near. It is all over with
+the gods of life, who have spun out its mockeries to such a length.
+Everything is falling, breaking up, rushing down headlong. The whole
+is becoming as nought: "Great Pan is dead!"
+
+It was nothing new that the gods must perish. Many an ancient worship
+was grounded in that very idea. Osiris, Adonis die indeed in order to
+rise again. On the stage itself, in plays which were only acted for
+the feast days of the gods, AEschylus expressly averred by the mouth of
+Prometheus, that some day they should suffer death: but how? As
+conquered and laid low by the Titans, the ancient powers of nature.
+
+Here, however, things are quite otherwise. Alike in generals and
+particulars, in the past and the future, would the early Christians
+have cursed Nature herself. So utterly did they condemn her, as to
+find the Devil incarnate in a flower. Swiftly may the angels come
+again, who erst overwhelmed the cities of the Dead Sea! Oh, that they
+may sweep off, may crumple up as a veil the hollow frame of this
+world; may at length deliver the saints from their long trial!
+
+The Evangelist said, "The day is coming:" the Fathers, "It is coming
+immediately." From the breaking-up of the Empire and the invasion of
+the Barbarians, St. Augustin draws the hope that very soon no city
+would remain but the city of God.
+
+And yet, how hard of dying is the world; how stubbornly bent on
+living! Like Hezekiah, it begs a respite, one turn more of the dial.
+Well, then, be it so until the year one thousand. But thereafter, not
+one day.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Are we quite sure of what has been so often repeated, that the gods of
+old had come to an end, themselves wearied and sickened of living;
+that they were so disheartened as almost to send in their resignation;
+that Christianity had only to blow upon these empty shades?
+
+They point to the gods in Rome; they point out those in the Capitol,
+admitted there only by a kind of preliminary death, on the surrender,
+I might say, of all their local pith; as having disowned their
+country, as having ceased to be the representative spirits of the
+nations. In order to receive them, indeed, Rome had performed on them
+a cruel operation: they were enervated, bleached. Those great
+centralized deities became in their official life the mournful
+functionaries of the Roman Empire. But the decline of that Olympian
+aristocracy had in no wise drawn down the host of home-born gods, the
+mob of deities still keeping hold of the boundless country-sides, of
+the woods, the hills, the fountains; still intimately blended with the
+life of the country. These gods abiding in the heart of oaks, in
+waters deep and rushing, could not be driven therefrom.
+
+Who says so? The Church. She rudely gainsays her own words. Having
+proclaimed their death, she is indignant because they live. Time after
+time, by the threatening voice of her councils[5] she gives them
+notice of their death--and lo! they are living still.
+
+    [5] See Mansi, Baluze; Council of Arles, 442; of Tours, 567;
+    of Leptines, 743; the Capitularies, &c., and even Gerson,
+    about 1400.
+
+"They are devils."--Then they must be alive. Failing to make an end of
+them, men suffer the simple folk to clothe, to disguise them. By the
+help of legends they come to be baptized, even to be foisted upon the
+Church. But at least they are converted? Not yet. We catch them
+stealthily subsisting in their own heathen character.
+
+Where are they? In the desert, on the moor, in the forest? Ay; but,
+above all, in the house. They are kept up by the most intimate
+household usages. The wife guards and hides them in her household
+things, even in her bed. With her they have the best place in the
+world, better than the temple,--the fireside.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Never was revolution so violent as that of Theodosius. Antiquity shows
+no trace of such proscription of any worship. The Persian
+fire-worshipper might, in the purity of his heroism, have insulted the
+visible deities, but he let them stand nevertheless. He greatly
+favoured the Jews, protecting and employing them. Greece, daughter of
+the light, made merry with the gods of darkness, the tunbellied
+Cabiri; but yet she bore with them, adopted them as workmen, even to
+shaping out of them her own Vulcan. Rome in her majesty welcomed not
+only Etruria, but even the rural gods of the old Italian labourer. She
+persecuted the Druids, but only as the centre of a dangerous national
+resistance.
+
+Christianity conquering sought and thought to slay the foe. It
+demolished the schools, by proscribing logic and uprooting the
+philosophers, whom Valens slaughtered. It razed or emptied the
+temples, shivered to pieces the symbols. The new legend would have
+been propitious to the family, had the father not been cancelled in
+Saint Joseph; had the mother been set up as an educatress, as having
+morally brought forth Jesus. A fruitful road there was, but abandoned
+at the very outset through the effort to attain a high but barren
+purity.
+
+So Christianity turned into that lonely path where the world was going
+of itself; the path of a celibacy in vain opposed by the laws of the
+emperors. Down this slope it was hurled headlong by the establishment
+of monkery.
+
+But in the desert was man alone? The Devil kept him company with all
+manner of temptations. He could not help himself, he was driven to
+create anew societies, nay whole cities of anchorites. We all know
+those dismal towns of monks which grew up in the Thebaid; how wild,
+unruly a spirit dwelt among them; how deadly were their descents on
+Alexandria. They talked of being troubled, beset by the Devil; and
+they told no lie.
+
+A huge gap was made in the world; and who was to fill it? The
+Christians said, The Devil, everywhere the Devil: _ubique daemon_.[6]
+
+    [6] See the Lives of the Desert Fathers, and the authors
+    quoted by A. Maurie, _Magie_, 317. In the fourth century, the
+    Messalians, thinking themselves full of devils, spat and blew
+    their noses without ceasing; made incredible efforts to spit
+    them forth.
+
+Greece, like all other nations, had her _energumens_, who were sore
+tried, possessed by spirits. The relation there is quite external; the
+seeming likeness is really none at all. Here we have no spirits of any
+kind: they are but black children of the Abyss, the ideal of
+waywardness. Thenceforth we see them everywhere, those poor
+melancholics, loathing, shuddering at their own selves. Think what it
+must be to fancy yourself double, to believe in that _other_, that
+cruel host who goes and comes and wanders within you, making you roam
+at his pleasure among deserts, over precipices! You waste and weaken
+more and more; and the weaker grows your wretched body, the more is it
+worried by the devil. In woman especially these tyrants dwell, making
+her blown and swollen. They fill her with an infernal _wind_, they
+brew in her storms and tempests, play with her as the whim seizes
+them, drive her to wickedness, to despair.
+
+And not ourselves only, but all nature, alas! becomes demoniac. If
+there is a devil in the flower, how much more in the gloomy forest!
+The light we think so pure teems with children of the night. The
+heavens themselves--O blasphemy!--are full of hell. That divine
+morning star, whose glorious beams not seldom lightened a Socrates, an
+Archimedes, a Plato, what is it now become? A devil, the archfiend
+Lucifer. In the eventime again it is the devil Venus who draws me into
+temptation by her light so soft and mild.
+
+That such a society should wax wroth and terrible is not surprising.
+Indignant at feeling itself so weak against devils, it persecutes them
+everywhere, in the temples, at the altars once of the ancient worship,
+then of the heathen martyrs. Let there be more feasts?--they will
+likely be so many gatherings of idolaters. The Family itself becomes
+suspected: for custom might bring it together round the ancient Lares.
+And why should there be a family?--the empire is an empire of monks.
+
+But the individual man himself, thus dumb and isolated though he be,
+still watches the sky, still honours his ancient gods whom he finds
+anew in the stars. "This is he," said the Emperor Theodosius, "who
+causes famines and all the plagues of the empire." Those terrible
+words turned the blind rage of the people loose upon the harmless
+Pagan. Blindly the law unchained all its furies against the law.
+
+Ye gods of Eld, depart into your tombs! Get ye extinguished, gods of
+Love, of Life, of Light! Put on the monk's cowl. Maidens, become nuns.
+Wives, forsake your husbands; or, if ye will look after the house, be
+unto them but cold sisters.
+
+But is all this possible? What man's breath shall be strong enough to
+put out at one effort the burning lamp of God? These rash endeavours
+of an impious piety may evoke miracles strange and monstrous. Tremble,
+guilty that ye are!
+
+Often in the Middle Ages will recur the mournful tale of the Bride of
+Corinth. Told at a happy moment by Phlegon, Adrian's freedman, it
+meets us again in the twelfth, and yet again in the sixteenth century,
+as the deep reproof, the invincible protest of nature herself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"A young man of Athens went to Corinth, to the house of one who had
+promised him his daughter. Himself being still a heathen, he knew not
+that the family which he thought to enter had just turned Christian.
+It is very late when he arrives. They are all gone to rest, except the
+mother, who serves up for him the hospitable repast and then leaves
+him to sleep. Dead tired, he drops down. Scarce was he fallen asleep,
+when a figure entered the room: 'tis a girl all clothed and veiled in
+white; on her forehead a fillet of black and gold. She sees him. In
+amazement she lifts her white hand: 'Am I, then, such a stranger in
+the house already? Alas, poor recluse!... But I am ashamed, and
+withdraw. Sleep on.'
+
+"'Stay, fair maiden! Here are Bacchus, Ceres, and with thee comes
+Love. Fear not, look not so pale!'
+
+"'Ah! Away from me, young man! I have nothing more to do with
+happiness. By a vow my mother made in her sickness my youth and my
+life are bound for ever. The gods have fled, and human victims now are
+our only sacrifices.'
+
+"'Ha! can it be thou, thou, my darling betrothed, who wast given me
+from my childhood? The oath of our fathers bound us for evermore under
+the blessing of heaven. Maiden, be mine!'
+
+"'No, my friend, not I. Thou shalt have my younger sister. If I moan
+in my chilly dungeon, do thou in her arms think of me, of me wasting
+away and thinking only of thee; of me whom the earth is about to cover
+again.'
+
+"'Nay, I swear by this flame, the torch of Hymen, thou shalt come home
+with me to my father. Rest thee, my own beloved.'
+
+"As a wedding-gift he offers her a cup of gold. She gives him her
+chain, but instead of the cup desires a curl of his hair.
+
+"It is the hour of spirits; her pale lip drinks up the dark blood-red
+wine. He too drinks greedily after her. He calls on the god of Love.
+She still resisted, though her poor heart was dying thereat. But he
+grows desperate, and falls weeping on the couch. Anon she throws
+herself by his side.
+
+"'Oh! how ill thy sorrow makes me! Yet, if thou wast to touch me----
+Oh, horror!--white as the snow, and cold as ice, such, ah me! is thy
+bride.'
+
+"'I will warm thee again: come to me, wert thou come from the very
+grave.'
+
+"Sighs and kisses many do they exchange.
+
+"'Dost thou feel how warm I am?'
+
+"Love twines and holds them fast. Tears mingle with their joy. She
+changes with the fire she drinks from his mouth: her icy blood is
+aglow with passion; but the heart in her bosom will not beat.
+
+"But the mother was there listening. Soft vows, cries of wailing and
+of pleasure.
+
+"'Hush, the cock is crowing: to-morrow night!' Then with kiss on kiss
+they say farewell.
+
+"In wrath the mother enters; sees what? Her daughter. He would have
+hidden her, covered her up. But freeing herself from him, she grew
+from the couch up to the roof.
+
+"'O mother, mother, you grudge me a pleasant night; you would drive me
+from this cosy spot! Was it not enough to have wrapped me in my
+winding-sheet and borne me to the grave? A greater power has lifted up
+the stone. In vain did your priests drone over the trench they dug for
+me. Of what use are salt and water, where burns the fire of youth? The
+earth cannot freeze up love. You made a promise; I have just reclaimed
+my own.
+
+"'Alas, dear friend, thou must die: thou wouldst but pine and dry up
+here. I have thy hair; it will be white to-morrow.... Mother, one last
+prayer! Open my dark dungeon, set up a stake, and let the loving one
+find rest in the flames. Let the sparks fly upward and the ashes
+redden. We will go to our olden gods.'"[7]
+
+    [7] Here I have suppressed a shocking phrase. Goethe, so
+    noble in the form, is not so in the spirit of his poem. He
+    spoils the marvel of the legend by sullying the Greek
+    conception with a horrible Slavish idea. As they are weeping,
+    he turns the maiden into a vampire. She comes because she
+    thirsts for blood, that she may suck the blood from his
+    heart. And he makes her coldly say this impious and unclean
+    thing: "When I have done with him, I will pass on to others:
+    the young blood shall fall a prey to my fury."
+
+    In the Middle Ages this story put on a grotesque garb, by way
+    of frightening us with the _Devil Venus_. On the finger of
+    her statue a young man imprudently places a ring, which she
+    clasps tight, guarding it like a bride, and going in the
+    night to his couch, to assert her rights. He cannot rid
+    himself of his infernal spouse without an exorcism. The same
+    tale, foolishly applied to the Virgin, is found in the
+    _Fabliaux_. If my memory does not mislead me, Luther also, in
+    his "Table Talk," takes up the old story in a very coarse
+    way, till you quite smell the body. The Spanish Del Rio
+    shifts the scene of it to Brabant. The bride dies shortly
+    before her marriage; the death-bells are rung. The bridegroom
+    rushed wildly over the country. He hears a wail. It is she
+    herself wandering about the heath. "Seest thou not"--she
+    says--"who leads me?" But he catches her up and bears her
+    home. At this point the story threatened to become too
+    moving; but the hard inquisitor, Del Rio, cuts the thread.
+    "On lifting her veil," says he, "they found only a log of
+    wood covered with the skin of a corpse." The Judge le Loyer,
+    silly though he be, has restored the older version.
+
+    Thenceforth these gloomy taletellers come to an end. The
+    story is useless when our own age begins; for then the bride
+    has triumphed. Nature comes back from the grave, not by
+    stealth, but as mistress of the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+WHY THE MIDDLE AGES FELL INTO DESPAIR.
+
+
+"Be ye as newborn babes (_quasi modo geniti infantes_); be thoroughly
+childlike in the innocence of your hearts; peaceful, forgetting all
+disputes, calmly resting under the hand of Christ." Such is the kindly
+counsel tendered by the Church to this stormy world on the morning
+after the great fall. In other words: "Volcanoes, ruins, ashes, and
+lava, become green. Ye parched plains, get covered with flowers."
+
+One thing indeed gave promise of the peace that reneweth: the schools
+were all shut up, the way of logic forsaken. A method infinitely
+simple for the doing away with argument, offered all men a gentle
+slope, down which they had nothing to do but go. If the creed was
+doubtful, the life was all traced out in the pathway of the legend.
+From first to last but the one word _Imitation_.
+
+"Imitate, and all will go well. Rehearse and copy." But is this the
+way to that true childhood which quickens the heart of man, which
+leads back to its fresh and fruitful springs? In this world that is to
+make us young and childlike, I see at first nothing but the tokens of
+age; only cunning, slavishness, want of power. What kind of
+literature is this, confronted with the glorious monuments of Greeks
+and Jews? We have just the same literary fall as happened in India
+from Brahminism to Buddhism; a twaddling flow of words after a noble
+inspiration. Books copy from books, churches from churches, until they
+cannot so much as copy. They pillage from each other: Aix-la-Chapelle
+is adorned with the marbles torn from Ravenna. It is the same with all
+the social life of those days. The bishop-king of a city, the savage
+king of a tribe, alike copy the Roman magistrates. Original as one
+might deem them, our monks in their monasteries simply restored their
+ancient _Villa_, as Chateaubriand well said. They had no notion either
+of forming a new society or of fertilizing the old. Copying from the
+monks of the East, they wanted their servants at first to be
+themselves a barren race of monkling workmen. It was in spite of them
+that the family in renewing itself renewed the world.
+
+Seeing how fast these oldsters keep on oldening; how in one age we
+fall from the wise monk St. Benedict down to the pedantic Benedict of
+Aniane;[8] we feel that such gentry were wholly guiltless of that
+great popular creation which bloomed amidst ruins; namely, the Lives
+of the Saints. If the monks wrote, it was the people made them. This
+young growth might throw out some leaves and flowers from the crannies
+of an old Roman ruin turned into a convent: but most assuredly not
+thence did it first arise. Its roots go deep into the ground: sown by
+the people and cultivated by the family, it takes help from every
+hand, from men, from women, from children. The precarious, troubled
+life of those days of violence, made these poor folk imaginative,
+prone to believe in their own dreams, as being to them full of
+comfort: strange dreams withal, rich in marvels, in fooleries; absurd,
+but charming.
+
+    [8] Benedict founded a convent at Aniane in Languedoc, in the
+    reign of Charlemagne.
+
+These families, isolated in forests and mountains, as we still see
+them in the Tyrol or the Higher Alps, and coming down thence but once
+a week, never wanted for illusions in the desert. One child had seen
+this, some woman had dreamed that. A new saint began to rise. The
+story went abroad in the shape of a ballad with doggrel rhymes. They
+sang and danced to it of an evening at the oak by the fountain. The
+priest, when he came on Sunday to perform service in the woodland
+chapel, found the legendary chant already in every mouth. He said to
+himself, "After all, history is good, is edifying.... It does honour
+to the Church. _Vox populi, vox Dei!_--But how did they light upon
+it?" He could be shown the true, the irrefragable proofs of it in some
+tree or stone which had witnessed the apparition, had marked the
+miracle. What can he say to that?
+
+Brought back to the abbey, the tale will find a monk good for nothing,
+who can only write; who is curious, believes everything, no matter
+how marvellous. It is written out, broidered with his dull rhetoric,
+and spoilt a little. But now it has come forth, confirmed and
+consecrated, to be read in the refectory, ere long in the church.
+Copied, loaded and overloaded with ornaments chiefly grotesque, it
+will go on from age to age, until at last it comes to take high rank
+in the Golden Legend.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When those fair stories are read again to us in these days, even as we
+listen to the simple, grave, artless airs into which those rural
+peoples threw all their young heart, we cannot help marking a great
+inspiration; and we are moved to pity as we reflect upon their fate.
+
+They had taken literally the touching advice of the Church: "Be ye as
+newborn babes." But they gave to it a meaning, the very last that one
+would dream of finding in the original thought. As much as
+Christianity feared and hated Nature, even so much did these others
+cherish her, deeming her all guileless, hallowing her even in the
+legends wherewith they mingled her up.
+
+Those _hairy_ animals, as the Bible sharply calls them, animals
+mistrusted by the monks who fear to find devils among them, enter in
+the most touching way into these beautiful stories; as the hind, for
+instance, who refreshes and comforts Genevieve of Brabant.
+
+Even outside the life of legends, in the common everyday world, the
+humble friends of his hearth, the bold helpmates of his work, rise
+again in man's esteem. They have their own laws,[9] their own
+festivals. If in God's unbounded goodness there is room for the
+smallest creatures, if He seems to show them a pitying preference,
+"Wherefore," says the countryman, "should my ass not have entered the
+church? Doubtless, he has his faults, wherein he only resembles me the
+more. He is a rough worker, but has a hard head; is intractable,
+stubborn, headstrong; in short, just like myself."
+
+    [9] See J. Grimm, _Rechts Alterthuemer_, and my _Origines du
+    Droit_.
+
+Thence come those wonderful feasts, the fairest of the Middle Ages;
+feasts of _Innocents_, of _Fools_, of the _Ass_. It is the people
+itself, moreover, which, in the shape of an ass, draws about its own
+image, presents itself before the altar, ugly, comical, abased.
+Verily, a touching sight! Led by Balaam, he enters solemnly between
+Virgil and the Sibyl;[10] enters that he may bear witness. If he
+kicked of yore against Balaam, it was that before him he beheld the
+sword of the ancient law. But here the law is ended, and the world of
+grace seems opening its two-leaved gate to the mean and to the simple.
+The people innocently believes it all. Thereon comes that lofty hymn,
+in which it says to the ass what it might have said to itself:--
+
+    "Down on knee and say _Amen_!
+    Grass and hay enough hast eaten.
+    Leave the bad old ways, and go!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    For the new expels the old:
+    Shadows fly before the noon:
+    Light hath hunted out the night."
+
+    [10] According to the ritual of Rouen. See Ducange on the
+    words _Festum_ and _Kalendae_: also Martene, iii. 110. The
+    Sibyl was crowned and followed by Jews and Gentiles, by
+    Moses, the Prophets, Nebuchadnezzar, &c. From a very early
+    time, and continually from the seventh to the seventeenth
+    century, the Church strove to proscribe the great people's
+    feasts of the Ass, of Innocents, of Children, and of Fools.
+    It never succeeded until the advent of the modern spirit.
+
+How bold and coarse ye are! Was it this we asked of you, children rash
+and wayward, when we told you to be as children? We offered you milk;
+you are drinking wine. We led you softly, bridle in hand, along the
+narrow path. Mild and fearful, ye hesitated to go forward: and now,
+all at once, the bridle is broken; the course is cleared at a single
+bound. Ah! how foolish we were to let you make your own saints; to
+dress out the altar; to deck, to burden, to cover it up with flowers!
+Why, it is hardly distinguishable! And what we do see is the old
+heresy condemned of the Church, _the innocence of nature_: what am I
+saying?--a new heresy, not like to end to-morrow, _the independence of
+man_.
+
+Listen and obey!--You are forbidden to invent, to create. No more
+legends, no more new saints: we have had enough of them. You are
+forbidden to introduce new chants in your worship: inspiration is not
+allowed. The martyrs you would bring to light should stay modestly
+within their tombs, waiting to be recognised by the Church. The
+clergy, the monks are forbidden to grant the tonsure of civil freedom
+to husbandmen and serfs. Such is the narrow fearful spirit that fills
+the Church of the Carlovingian days.[11] She unsays her words, she
+gives herself the lie, she says to the children, "Be old!"
+
+    [11] See the Capitularies, _passim_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A fall indeed! But is this earnest? They had bidden us all be
+young.--Ah! but priest and people are no longer one. A divorce without
+end begins, a gulf unpassable divides them for ever. The priest
+himself, a lord and prince, will come out in his golden cope, and
+chant in the royal speech of that great empire which is no more. For
+ourselves, a mournful company, bereft of human speech, of the only
+speech that God would care to hear, what else can we do but low and
+bleat with the guileless friends who never scorn us, who, in
+winter-time will keep us warm in their stable, or cover us with their
+fleeces? We will live with dumb beasts, and be dumb ourselves.
+
+In sooth there is less need than before for our going to church. But
+the church will not hold us free: she insists on our returning to hear
+what we no longer understand. Thenceforth a mighty fog, a fog heavy
+and dun as lead, enwraps the world. For how long? For a whole
+millennium of horror. Throughout ten centuries, a languor unknown to
+all former times seizes upon the Middle Ages, even in part on those
+latter days that come midway betwixt sleep and waking, and holds them
+under the sway of a visitation most irksome, most unbearable; that
+convulsion, namely, of mental weariness, which men call a fit of
+yawning.
+
+When the tireless bell rings at the wonted hours, they yawn; while the
+nasal chant is singing in the old Latin words, they yawn. It is all
+foreseen, there is nothing to hope for in the world, everything will
+come round just the same as before. The certainty of being bored
+to-morrow sets one yawning from to-day; and the long vista of
+wearisome days, of wearisome years to come, weighs men down, sickens
+them from the first with living. From brain to stomach, from stomach
+to mouth, the fatal fit spreads of its own accord, and keeps on
+distending the jaws without end or remedy. An actual disease the pious
+Bretons call it, ascribing it, however, to the malice of the Devil. He
+keeps crouching in the woods, the peasants say: if anyone passes by
+tending his cattle, he sings to him vespers and other rites, until he
+is dead with yawning.[12]
+
+    [12] An illustrious Breton, the last man of the Middle Ages,
+    who had gone on a bootless errand to convert Rome, received
+    there some brilliant offers. "What do you want?" said the
+    Pope.--"Only one thing: to have done with the Breviary."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_To be old_ is to be weak. When the Saracens, when the Norsemen
+threaten us, what will come to us if the people remain old?
+Charlemagne weeps, and the Church weeps too. She owns that her relics
+fail to guard her altars from these Barbarian devils.[13] Had she not
+better call upon the arm of that wayward child whom she was going to
+bind fast, the arm of that young giant whom she wanted to paralyse?
+This movement in two opposite ways fills the whole ninth century. The
+people are held back, anon they are hurled forward: we fear them and
+we call on them for aid. With them and by means of them we throw up
+hasty barriers, defences that may check the Barbarians, while
+sheltering the priests and their saints escaped thither from their
+churches.
+
+    [13] The famous avowal made by Hincmar.
+
+In spite of the Bald Emperor's[14] command not to build, there grows
+up a tower on the mountain. Thither comes the fugitive, crying, "In
+God's name, take me in, at least my wife and children! Myself with my
+cattle will encamp in your outer enclosure." The tower emboldens him
+and he feels himself a man. It gives him shade, and he in his turn
+defends, protects his protector.
+
+    [14] Charles the Bald.--TRANS.
+
+Formerly in their hunger the small folk yielded themselves to the
+great as serfs; but here how great the difference! He offers himself
+as a _vassal_, one who would be called brave and valiant.[15] He gives
+himself up, and keeps himself, and reserves to himself the right of
+going elsewhere. "I will go further: the earth is large: I, too, like
+the rest, can rear my tower yonder. If I have defended the outworks, I
+can surely look after myself within."
+
+    [15] A difference too little felt by those who have spoken of
+    the _personal recommendation_, &c.
+
+Thus nobly, thus grandly arose the feudal world. The master of the
+tower received his vassals with some such words as these: "Thou shalt
+go when thou willest, and if need be with my help; at least, if thou
+shouldst sink in the mire, I myself will dismount to succour thee."
+These are the very words of the old formula.[16]
+
+    [16] Grimm, _Rechts Alterthuemer_, and my _Origines du Droit_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But, one day, what do I see? Can my sight be grown dim? The lord of
+the valley, as he rides about, sets up bounds that none may overleap;
+ay, and limits that you cannot see. "What is that? I don't
+understand." That means that the manor is shut in. "The lord keeps it
+all fast under gate and hinge, between heaven and earth."
+
+Most horrible! By virtue of what law is this _vassus_ (or _valiant_
+one) held to his power? People will thereon have it, that _vassus_ may
+also mean _slave_. In like manner the word _servus_, meaning a
+_servant_, often indeed a proud one, even a Count or Prince of the
+Empire, comes in the case of the weak to signify a _serf_, a wretch
+whose life is hardly worth a halfpenny.
+
+In this damnable net are they caught. But down yonder, on his ground,
+is a man who avers that his land is free, a _freehold_, a _fief of the
+sun_. Seated on his boundary-stone, with hat pressed firmly down, he
+looks at Count or Emperor passing near. "Pass on, Emperor; go thy
+ways! If thou art firm on thy horse, yet more am I on my pillar. Thou
+mayest pass, but so will not I: for I am Freedom."
+
+But I lack courage to say what becomes of this man. The air grows
+thick around him: he breathes less and less freely. He seems to be
+_under a spell_: he cannot move: he is as one paralysed. His very
+beasts grow thin, as if a charm had been thrown over them. His
+servants die of hunger. His land bears nothing now; spirits sweep it
+clean by night.
+
+Still he holds on: "The poor man is a king in his own house." But he
+is not to be let alone. He gets summoned, must answer for himself in
+the Imperial Court. So he goes, like an old-world spectre, whom no one
+knows any more. "What is he?" ask the young. "Ah, he is neither a
+lord, nor a serf! Yet even then is he nothing?"
+
+"Who am I? I am he who built the first tower, he who succoured you, he
+who, leaving the tower, went boldly forth to meet the Norse heathens
+at the bridge. Yet more, I dammed the river, I tilled the meadow,
+creating the land itself by drawing it God-like out of the waters.
+From this land who shall drive me?"
+
+"No, my friend," says a neighbour--"you shall not be driven away. You
+shall till this land, but in a way you little think for. Remember, my
+good fellow, how in your youth, some fifty years ago, you were rash
+enough to wed my father's little serf, Jacqueline. Remember the
+proverb, 'He who courts my hen is my cock.' You belong to my
+fowl-yard. Ungird yourself; throw away your sword! From this day forth
+you are my serf."
+
+There is no invention here. The dreadful tale recurs incessantly
+during the Middle Ages. Ah, it was a sharp sword that stabbed him. I
+have abridged and suppressed much, for as often as one returns to
+these times, the same steel, the same sharp point, pierces right
+through the heart.
+
+There was one among them who, under this gross insult, fell into so
+deep a rage that he could not bring up a single word. It was like
+Roland betrayed. His blood all rushed upwards into his throat. His
+flaming eyes, his mouth so dumb, yet so fearfully eloquent, turned all
+the assembly pale. They started back. He was dead: his veins had
+burst. His arteries spurted the red blood over the faces of his
+murderers.[17]
+
+    [17] This befell the Count of Avesnes when his freehold was
+    declared a mere fief, himself a mere vassal, a serf of the
+    Earl of Hainault. Read, too, the dreadful story of the Great
+    Chancellor of Flanders, the first magistrate of Bruges, who
+    also was claimed as a serf.--Gualterius, _Scriptores Rerum
+    Francicarum_, viii. 334.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The doubtful state of men's affairs, the frightfully slippery descent
+by which the freeman becomes a vassal, the vassal a servant, and the
+servant a serf,--in these things lie the great terror of the Middle
+Ages, and the depth of their despair. There is no way of escape
+therefrom; for he who takes one step is lost. He is an _alien_, a
+_stray_, a _wild beast of the chase_. The ground grows slimy to catch
+his feet, roots him, as he passes, to the spot. The contagion in the
+air kills him; he becomes a thing _in mortmain_, a dead creature, a
+mere nothing, a beast, a soul worth twopence-halfpenny, whose murder
+can be atoned for by twopence-halfpenny.
+
+These are outwardly the two great leading traits in the wretchedness
+of the Middle Ages, through which they came to give themselves up to
+the Devil. Meanwhile let us look within, and sound the innermost
+depths of their moral life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE LITTLE DEVIL OF THE FIRESIDE.
+
+
+There is an air of dreaming about those earlier centuries of the
+Middle Ages, in which the legends were self-conceived. Among
+countryfolk so gently submissive, as these legends show them, to the
+Church, you would readily suppose that very great innocence might be
+found. This is surely the temple of God the Father. And yet the
+_penitentiaries_, wherein reference is made to ordinary sins, speak of
+strange defilements, of things afterwards rare enough under the rule
+of Satan.
+
+These sprang from two causes, from the utter ignorance of the times,
+and from the close intermingling of near kindred under one roof. They
+seem to have had but a slight acquaintance with our modern ethics.
+Those of their day, all counterpleas notwithstanding, resemble the
+ethics of the patriarchs, of that far antiquity which regarded
+marriage with a stranger as immoral, and allowed only of marriage
+amongst kinsfolk. The families thus joined together became as one. Not
+daring to scatter over the surrounding deserts, tilling only the
+outskirts of a Merovingian palace or a monastery, they took shelter
+every evening under the roof of a large homestead (_villa_). Thence
+arose unpleasant points of analogy with the ancient _ergastulum_,
+where the slaves of an estate were all crammed together. Many of these
+communities lasted through and even beyond the Middle Ages. About the
+results of such a system the lord would feel very little concern. To
+his eyes but one family was visible in all this tribe, this multitude
+of people "who rose and lay down together, ... who ate together of the
+same bread, and drank out of the same mug."
+
+Amidst such confusion the woman was not much regarded. Her place was
+by no means lofty. If the virgin, the ideal woman, rose higher from
+age to age, the real woman was held of little worth among these
+boorish masses, in this medley of men and herds. Wretched was the doom
+of a condition which could only change with the growth of separate
+dwellings, when men at length took courage to live apart in hamlets,
+or to build them huts in far-off forest-clearings, amidst the fruitful
+fields they had gone out to cultivate. From the lonely hearth comes
+the true family. It is the nest that forms the bird. Thenceforth they
+were no more things, but men; for then also was the woman born.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a very touching moment, the day she entered _her own home_.
+Then at last the poor wretch might become pure and holy. There, as she
+sits spinning alone, while her goodman is in the forest, she may brood
+on some thought and dream away. Her damp, ill-fastened cabin, through
+which keeps whistling the winter wind, is still, by way of a
+recompense, calm and silent. In it are sundry dim corners where the
+housewife lodges her dreams.
+
+And by this time she has some property, something of her own. The
+_distaff_, the _bed_, and the _trunk_, are all she has, according to
+the old song.[18] We may add a table, a seat, perhaps two stools. A
+poor dwelling and very bare; but then it is furnished with a living
+soul! The fire cheers her, the blessed box-twigs guard her bed,
+accompanied now and again by a pretty bunch of vervein. Seated by her
+door, the lady of this palace spins and watches some sheep. We are not
+yet rich enough to keep a cow; but to that we may come in time, if
+Heaven will bless our house. The wood, a bit of pasture, and some bees
+about our ground--such is our way of life! But little corn is
+cultivated as yet, there being no assurance of a harvest so long of
+coming. Such a life, however needy, is anyhow less hard for the woman:
+she is not broken down and withered, as she will be in the days of
+large farming. And she has more leisure withal. You must never judge
+of her by the coarse literature of the Fabliaux and the Christmas
+Carols, by the foolish laughter and license of the filthy tales we
+have to put up with by and by. She is alone; without a neighbour. The
+bad, unwholesome life of the dark, little, walled towns, the mutual
+spyings, the wretched dangerous gossipings, have not yet begun. No old
+woman comes of an evening, when the narrow street is growing dark, to
+tempt the young maiden by saying how for the love of her somebody is
+dying. She has no friend but her own reflections; she converses only
+with her beasts or the tree in the forest.
+
+    [18]
+
+    "Trois pas du cote du banc,
+    Et trois pas du cote du lit;
+    Trois pas du cote du coffre,
+    Et trois pas---- Revenez ici."
+
+    (_Old Song of the Dancing Master._)
+
+Such things speak to her, we know of what. They recall to her mind the
+saws once uttered by her mother and grandmother; ancient saws handed
+down for ages from woman to woman. They form a harmless reminder of
+the old country spirits, a touching family religion which doubtless
+had little power in the blustering hurly-burly of a great common
+dwellinghouse, but now comes back again to haunt the lonely cabin.
+
+It is a singular, a delicate world of fays and hobgoblins, made for a
+woman's soul. When the great creation of the saintly Legend gets
+stopped and dried up, that other older, more poetic legend comes in
+for its share of welcome; reigns privily with gentle sway. It is the
+woman's treasure; she worships and caresses it. The fay, too, is a
+woman, a fantastic mirror wherein she sees herself in a fairer guise.
+
+Who were these fays? Tradition says, that of yore some Gaulish queens,
+being proud and fanciful, did on the coming of Christ and His Apostles
+behave so insolently as to turn their backs upon them. In Brittany
+they were dancing at the moment, and never stopped dancing. Hence
+their hard doom; they are condemned to live until the Day of
+Judgment.[19] Many of them were turned into mice or rabbits; as the
+Kow-riggwans for instance, or Elves, who meeting at night round the
+old Druidic stones entangle you in their dances. The same fate befell
+the pretty Queen Mab, who made herself a royal chariot out of a
+walnut-shell. They are all rather whimsical, and sometimes
+ill-humoured. But can we be surprised at them, remembering their
+woeful lot? Tiny and odd as they are, they have a heart, a longing to
+be loved. They are good and they are bad and full of fancies. On the
+birth of a baby they come down the chimney, to endow it and order its
+future. They are fond of good spinning-women--they even spin divinely
+themselves. Do we not talk of _spinning like a fairy_?
+
+    [19] All passages bearing on this point have been gathered
+    together in two learned works by M. Maury (_Les Fees_, 1843;
+    and _La Magie_, 1860). See also Grimm.
+
+The fairy-tales, stripped of the absurd embellishments in which the
+latest compilers muffled them up, express the heart of the people
+itself. They mark a poetic interval between the gross communism of the
+primitive _villa_, and the looseness of the time when a growing
+burgess-class made our cynical Fabliaux.[20]
+
+    [20] A body of tales by the Trouveres of the twelfth and
+    thirteenth centuries.--TRANS.
+
+These tales have an historical side, reminding us, in the ogres, &c.,
+of the great famines. But commonly they soar higher than any history,
+on the _Blue Bird's_ wing, in a realm of eternal poesy; telling us our
+wishes which never vary, the unchangeable history of the heart.
+
+The poor serf's longing to breathe, to rest, to find a treasure that
+may end his sufferings, continually returns. More often, through a
+lofty aspiration, this treasure becomes a soul as well, a treasure of
+love asleep, as in _The Sleeping Beauty_: but not seldom the charming
+person finds herself by some fatal enchantment hidden under a mask.
+Hence that touching trilogy, that admirable _crescendo_ of _Riquet
+with the Tuft_, _Ass's Skin_, and _Beauty and the Beast_. Love will
+not be discouraged. Through all that ugliness it follows after and
+gains the hidden beauty. In the last of these tales that feeling
+touches the sublime, and I think that no one has ever read it without
+weeping.
+
+A passion most real, most sincere, lurks beneath it--that unhappy,
+hopeless love, which unkind nature often sets between poor souls of
+very different ranks in life. On the one hand is the grief of the
+peasant maid at not being able to make herself fair enough to win the
+cavalier's fancy; on the other the smothered sighs of the serf, when
+along his furrow he sees passing, on a white horse, too exquisite a
+glory, the beautiful, the majestic Lady of the Castle. So in the East
+arises the mournful idyll of the impossible loves of the Rose and the
+Nightingale. Nevertheless, there is one great difference: the bird and
+the flower are both beautiful; nay, are alike in their beauty. But
+here the humbler being, doomed to a place so far below, avows to
+himself that he is ugly and monstrous. But amidst his wailing he feels
+in himself a power greater than the East can know. With the will of a
+hero, through the very greatness of his desire, he breaks out of his
+idle coverings. He loves so much, this monster, that he is loved, and,
+in return, through that love grows beautiful.
+
+An infinite tenderness pervades it all. This soul enchanted thinks not
+of itself alone. It busies itself in saving all nature and all society
+as well. Victims of every kind, the child beaten by its step-mother,
+the youngest sister slighted, ill-used by her elders, are the surest
+objects of its liking. Even to the Lady of the Castle does its
+compassion extend; it mourns her fallen into the hands of so fierce a
+lord as Blue-Beard. It yearns with pity towards the beasts; it seeks
+to console them for being still in the shape of animals. Let them be
+patient, and their day will come. Some day their prisoned souls shall
+put on wings, shall be free, lovely, and beloved. This is the other
+side of _Ass's Skin_ and such like stories. There especially we are
+sure of finding a woman's heart. The rude labourer in the fields may
+be hard enough to his beasts, but to the woman they are no beasts. She
+regards them with the feeling of a child. To her fancy all is human,
+all is soul: the whole world becomes ennobled. It is a beautiful
+enchantment. Humble as she is, and ugly as she thinks herself, she
+has given all her beauty, all her grace to the surrounding universe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Is she, then, so ugly, this little peasant-wife, whose dreaming fancy
+feeds on things like these? I tell you she keeps house, she spins and
+minds the flock, she visits the forest to gather a little wood. As yet
+she has neither the hard work nor the ugly looks of the countrywoman
+as afterwards fashioned by the prevalent culture of grain crops. Nor
+is she like the fat townswife, heavy and slothful, about whom our
+fathers made such a number of fat stories. She has no sense of safety;
+she is meek and timid, and feels herself, as it were, in God's hand.
+On yonder hill she can see the dark frowning castle, whence a thousand
+harms may come upon her. Her husband she holds in equal fear and
+honour. A serf elsewhere, by her side he is a king. For him she saves
+of her best, living herself on nothing. She is small and slender like
+the women-saints of the Church. The poor feeding of those days must
+needs make women fine-bred, but lacking also in vital strength. The
+children die off in vast numbers: those pale roses are all nerves.
+Hence, will presently burst forth the epileptic dances of the
+fourteenth century. Meanwhile, towards the twelfth century, there come
+to be two weaknesses attached to this state of half-grown youth: by
+night somnambulism; in the daytime seeing of visions, trance, and the
+gift of tears.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This woman, for all her innocence, still has a secret which the Church
+may never be told. Locked up in her heart she bears the pitying
+remembrance of those poor old gods who have fallen into the state of
+spirits;[21] and spirits, you must know, are not exempt from
+suffering. Dwelling in rocks, and in hearts of oak, they are very
+unhappy in winter; being particularly fond of warmth. They ramble
+about houses; they are sometimes seen in stables warming themselves
+beside the beasts. Bereft of incense and burnt-offerings, they
+sometimes take of the milk. The housewife being thrifty, will not
+stint her husband, but lessens her own share, and in the evening
+leaves a little cream.
+
+    [21] This loyalty of hers is very touching indeed. In the
+    fifth century the peasants braved persecution by parading the
+    gods of the old religion in the shape of small dolls made of
+    linen or flour. Still the same in the eighth century. The
+    _Capitularies_ threaten death in vain. In the twelfth
+    century, Burchard, of Worms, attests their inutility. In
+    1389, the Sorbonne inveighs against certain traces of
+    heathenism, while in 1400, Gerson talks of it as still a
+    lively superstition.
+
+Those spirits who only appear at night, regret their banishment from
+the day and are greedy of lamplight. By night the housewife starts on
+her perilous trip, bearing a small lantern, to the great oak where
+they dwell, or to the secret fountain whose mirror, as it multiplies
+the flame, may cheer up those sorrowful outlaws.
+
+But if anyone should know of it, good heavens! Her husband is canny
+and fears the Church: he would certainly give her a beating. The
+priest wages fierce war with the sprites, and hunts them out of every
+place. Yet he might leave them their dwelling in the oaks! What harm
+can they do in the forest? Alas! no: from council to council they are
+hunted down. On set days the priest will go even to the oak, and with
+prayers and holy water drive away the spirits.
+
+How would it be if no kind soul took pity on them? This woman,
+however, will take them under her care. She is an excellent Christian,
+but will keep for them one corner of her heart. To them alone can she
+entrust those little natural affairs, which, harmless as they are in a
+chaste wife's dwelling, the Church at any rate would count as
+blameworthy. They are the confidants, the confessors of these touching
+womanly secrets. Of them she thinks, when she puts the holy log on the
+fire. It is Christmastide; but also is it the ancient festival of the
+Northern spirits, the _Feast of the Longest Night_. So, too, the Eve
+of May-day is the _Pervigilium of Maia_, when the tree is planted. So,
+too, with the Eve of St. John, the true feast-day of life, of flowers,
+and newly-awakened love. She who has no children makes it her especial
+duty to cherish these festivals, and to offer them a deep devotion. A
+vow to the Virgin would perhaps be of little avail, it being no
+concern of Mary's. In a low whisper, she prefers addressing some
+ancient _genius_, worshipped in other days as a rustic deity, and
+afterwards by the kindness of some local church transformed into a
+saint.[22] And thus it happens that the bed, the cradle, all the
+sweetest mysteries on which the chaste and loving soul can brood,
+belong to the olden gods.
+
+    [22] A. Maury, _Magie_, 159.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nor are the sprites ungrateful. One day she awakes, and without having
+stirred a finger, finds all her housekeeping done. In her amazement
+she makes the sign of the cross and says nothing. When the good man
+goes she questions herself, but in vain. It must have been a spirit.
+"What can it be? How came it here? How I should like to see it! But I
+am afraid: they say it is death to see a spirit."--Yet the cradle
+moves and swings of itself. She is clasped by some one, and a voice so
+soft, so low that she took it for her own, is heard saying, "Dearest
+mistress, I love to rock your babe, because I am myself a babe." Her
+heart beats, and yet she takes courage a little. The innocence of the
+cradle gives this spirit also an innocent air, causing her to believe
+it good, gentle, suffered at least by God.
+
+From that day forth she is no longer alone. She readily feels its
+presence, and it is never far from her. It rubs her gown, and she
+hears the grazing. It rambles momently about her, and plainly cannot
+leave her side. If she goes to the stable, it is there; and she
+believes that the other day it was in the churn.[23]
+
+    [23] This is a favourite haunt of the little rogue's. To this
+    day the Swiss, knowing his tastes, make him a present of some
+    milk. His name among them is _troll_ (_drole_); among the
+    Germans _kobold_, _nix_. In France he is called _follet_,
+    _goblin_, _lutin_; in England, _Puck_, _Robin Goodfellow_.
+    Shakespeare says, he does sleepy servants the kindness to
+    pinch them black and blue, in order to rouse them.
+
+Pity she cannot take it up and look at it! Once, when she suddenly
+touched the brands, she fancied she saw the tricksy little thing
+tumbling about in the sparks; another time she missed catching it in a
+rose. Small as it is, it works, sweeps, arranges, saves her a thousand
+cares.
+
+It has its faults, however; is giddy, bold, and if she did not hold it
+fast, might perhaps shake itself free. It observes and listens too
+much. It repeats sometimes of a morning some little word she had
+whispered very, very softly on going to bed, when the light was put
+out. She knows it to be very indiscreet, exceedingly curious. She is
+irked with feeling herself always followed about, complains of it, and
+likes complaining. Sometimes, having threatened him and turned him
+off, she feels herself quite at ease. But just then she finds herself
+caressed by a light breathing, as it were a bird's wing. He was under
+a leaf. He laughs: his gentle voice, free from mocking, declares the
+joy he felt in taking his chaste young mistress by surprise. On her
+making a show of great wrath, "No, my darling, my little pet," says
+the monkey, "you are not a bit sorry to have me here."
+
+She feels ashamed and dares say nothing more. But she guesses now that
+she loves him overmuch. She has scruples about it, and loves him yet
+more. All night she seems to feel him creeping up to her bed. In her
+fear she prays to God, and keeps close to her husband. What shall she
+do? She has not the strength to tell the Church. She tells her
+husband, who laughs at first incredulously. Then she owns to a little
+more,--what a madcap the goblin is, sometimes even overbold. "What
+matters? He is so small." Thus he himself sets her mind at ease.
+
+Should we too feel reassured, we who can see more clearly? She is
+quite innocent still. She would shrink from copying the great lady up
+there who, in the face of her husband, has her court of lovers and her
+page. Let us own, however, that to that point the goblin has already
+smoothed the way. One could not have a more perilous page than he who
+hides himself under a rose; and, moreover, he smacks of the lover.
+More intrusive than anyone else, he is so tiny that he can creep
+anywhere.
+
+He glides even into the husband's heart, paying him court and winning
+his good graces. He looks after his tools, works in his garden, and of
+an evening, by way of reward, curls himself up in the chimney, behind
+the babe and the cat. They hear his small voice, just like a
+cricket's; but they never see much of him, save when a faint glimmer
+lights a certain cranny in which he loves to stay. Then they see, or
+think they see, a thin little face; and cry out, "Ah! little one, we
+have seen you at last!"
+
+In church they are told to mistrust the spirits, for even one that
+seems innocent, and glides about like a light breeze, may after all be
+a devil. They take good care not to believe it. His size begets a
+belief in his innocence. Whilst he is there, they thrive. The husband
+holds to him as much as the wife, and perhaps more. He sees that the
+tricksy little elf makes the fortune of the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+TEMPTATIONS.
+
+
+I have kept this picture clear of those dreadful shadows of the hour
+by which it would have been sadly overdarkened. I refer especially to
+the uncertainty attending the lot of these rural households, to their
+constant fear and foreboding of some casual outrage which might at any
+moment descend on them from the castle.
+
+There were just two things which made the feudal rule a hell: on one
+hand, its _exceeding steadfastness_, man being nailed, as it were, to
+the ground, and emigration made impossible; on the other, a very great
+degree of _uncertainty_ about his lot.
+
+The optimist historians who say so much about fixed rents, charters,
+buying of immunities, forget how slightly all this was guaranteed. So
+much you were bound to pay the lord, but all the rest he could take if
+he chose; and this was very fitly called the _right of seizure_. You
+may work and work away, my good fellow! But while you are in the
+fields, yon dreaded band from the castle will fall upon your house and
+carry off whatever they please "for their lord's service."
+
+Look again at that man standing with his head bowed gloomily over the
+furrow! And thus he is always found, his face clouded, his heart
+oppressed, as if he were expecting some evil news. Is he meditating
+some wrongful deed? No; but there are two ideas haunting him, two
+daggers piercing him in turn. The one is, "In what state shall I find
+my house this evening?" The other, "Would that the turning up of this
+sod might bring some treasure to light! O that the good spirit would
+help to buy us free!"
+
+We are assured that, after the fashion of the Etruscan spirit which
+one day started up from under the ploughshare in the form of a child,
+a dwarf or gnome of the tiniest stature would sometimes on such an
+appeal come forth from the ground, and, setting itself on the furrow,
+would say, "What wantest thou?" But in his amazement the poor man
+would ask for nothing; he would turn pale, cross himself, and
+presently go quite away.
+
+Did he never feel sorry afterwards? Said he never to himself, "Fool
+that you are, you will always be unlucky?" I readily believe he did;
+but I also think that a barrier of dread invincible stopped him short.
+I cannot believe with the monks who have told us all things concerning
+witchcraft, that the treaty with Satan was the light invention of a
+miser or a man in love. On the contrary, nature and good sense alike
+inform us that it was only the last resource of an overwhelming
+despair, under the weight of dreadful outrages and dreadful
+sufferings.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But those great sufferings, we are told, must have been greatly
+lightened about the time of St. Louis, who forbade private wars among
+the nobles. My own opinion is quite the reverse. During the fourscore
+or hundred years that elapsed between his prohibition and the wars
+with England (1240-1340), the great lords being debarred from the
+accustomed sport of burning and plundering their neighbours' lands,
+became a terror to their own vassals. For the latter such a peace was
+simply war.
+
+The spiritual, the monkish lords, and others, as shown in the _Journal
+of Eudes Rigault_, lately published, make one shudder. It is a
+repulsive picture of profligacy at once savage and uncontrolled. The
+monkish lords especially assail the nunneries. The austere Rigault,
+Archbishop of Rouen, confessor of the holy king, conducts a personal
+inquiry into the state of Normandy. Every evening he comes to a
+monastery. In all of them he finds the monks leading the life of great
+feudal lords, wearing arms, getting drunk, fighting duels, keen
+huntsmen over all the cultivated land; the nuns living among them in
+wild confusion, and betraying everywhere the fruits of their shameless
+deeds.
+
+If things are so in the Church, what must the lay lords have been?
+What like was the inside of those dark towers which the folk below
+regarded with so much horror? Two tales, undoubtedly historical,
+namely, _Blue-Beard_ and _Griselda_, tell us something thereanent. To
+his vassals, his serfs, what indeed must have been this devotee of
+torture who treated his own family in such a way? He is known to us
+through the only man who was brought to trial for such deeds; and that
+not earlier than the fifteenth century,--Gilles de Retz, who kidnapped
+children.
+
+Sir Walter Scott's Front de Boeuf, and the other lords of melodramas
+and romances, are but poor creatures in the face of these dreadful
+realities. The Templar also in _Ivanhoe_, is a weak artificial
+conception. The author durst not assay the foul reality of celibate
+life in the Temple, or within the castle walls. Few women were taken
+in there, being accounted not worth their keep. The romances of
+chivalry altogether belie the truth. It is remarkable, indeed, how
+often the literature of an age expresses the very opposite of its
+manners, as, for instance, the washy theatre of eclogues after
+Florian,[24] during the years of the Great Terror.
+
+    [24] A writer of eclogues, fables and dramas; in youth a
+    friend of Voltaire, afterwards imprisoned during the
+    Terror.--TRANS.
+
+The rooms in these castles, in such at least as may be seen to-day,
+speak more plainly than any books. Men-at-arms, pages, footmen,
+crammed together of nights under low-vaulted roofs, in the daytime
+kept on the battlements, on narrow terraces, in a state of most
+sickening weariness, lived only in their pranks down below; in feats
+no longer of arms on the neighbouring domains, but of hunting, ay, and
+hunting of men; insults, I may say, without number, outrages untold on
+families of serfs. The lord himself well knew that such an army of
+men, without women, could only be kept in order by letting them loose
+from time to time.
+
+The awful idea of a hell wherein God employs the very guiltiest of the
+wicked spirits to torture the less guilty delivered over to them for
+their sport,--this lovely dogma of the Middle Ages was exemplified to
+the last letter. Men felt that God was not among them. Each new raid
+betokened more and more clearly the kingdom of Satan, until men came
+to believe that thenceforth their prayers should be offered to him
+alone.
+
+Up in the castle there was laughing and joking. "The women-serfs were
+too ugly." There is no question raised as to their beauty. The great
+pleasure lay in deeds of outrage, in striking and making them weep.
+Even in the seventeenth century the great ladies died with laughing,
+when the Duke of Lorraine told them how, in peaceful villages, his
+people went about harrying and torturing all the women, even to the
+old.
+
+These outrages fell most frequently, as we might suppose, on families
+well to do and comparatively distinguished among the serfs; the
+families, namely, of those serf-born mayors, who already in the
+twelfth century appear at the head of the village. By the nobles they
+were hated, jeered, cruelly plagued. Their newborn moral dignity was
+not to be forgiven. Their wives and daughters were not allowed to be
+good and wise: they had no right to be held in any respect. Their
+honour was not their own. _Serfs of the body_, such was the cruel
+phrase cast for ever in their teeth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In days to come people will be slow to believe, that the law among
+Christian nations went beyond anything decreed concerning the olden
+slavery; that it wrote down as an actual right the most grievous
+outrage that could ever wound man's heart. The lord spiritual had this
+foul privilege no less than the lord temporal. In a parish outside
+Bourges, the parson, as being a lord, expressly claimed the
+firstfruits of the bride, but was willing to sell his rights to the
+husband.[25]
+
+    [25] Lauriere, ii. 100 (on the word _Marquette_). Michelet,
+    _Origines du Droit_, 264.
+
+It has been too readily believed that this wrong was formal, not real.
+But the price laid down in certain countries for getting a
+dispensation, exceeded the means of almost every peasant. In Scotland,
+for instance, the demand was for "several cows:" a price immense,
+impossible. So the poor young wife was at their mercy. Besides, the
+Courts of Bearn openly maintain that this right grew up naturally:
+"The eldest-born of the peasant is accounted the son of his lord, for
+he perchance it was who begat him."[26]
+
+    [26] When I published my _Origines_ in 1837, I could not have
+    known this work, published in 1842.
+
+All feudal customs, even if we pass over this, compel the bride to go
+up to the castle, bearing thither the "wedding-dish." Surely it was a
+cruel thing to make her trust herself amongst such a pack of celibate
+dogs, so shameless and so ungovernable.
+
+A shameful scene we may well imagine it to have been. As the young
+husband is leading his bride to the castle, fancy the laughter of
+cavaliers and footmen, the frolics of the pages around the wretched
+poor! But the presence of the great lady herself will check them? Not
+at all. The lady in whose delicate breeding the romances tell us to
+believe,[27] but who, in her husband's absence, ruled his men,
+judging, chastising, ordaining penalties, to whom her husband himself
+was bound by the fiefs she brought him,--such a lady would be in no
+wise merciful, especially towards a girl-serf who happened also to be
+good-looking. Since, according to the custom of those days, she openly
+kept her gentleman and her page, she would not be sorry to sanction
+her own libertinism by that of her husband.
+
+    [27] This delicacy appears in the treatment these ladies
+    inflicted on their poet Jean de Meung, author of the _Roman
+    de la Rose_.
+
+Nothing will she do to hinder the fun, the sport they are making out
+of yon poor trembler who has come to redeem his bride. They begin by
+bargaining with him; they laugh at the pangs endured by "the miserly
+peasant;" they suck the very blood and marrow of him. Why all this
+fury? Because he is neatly clad; is honest, settled; is a man of mark
+in the village. Why, indeed? Because she is pious, chaste, and pure;
+because she loves him; because she is frightened and falls a-weeping.
+Her sweet eyes plead for pity.
+
+In vain does the poor wretch offer all he has, even to her dowry: it
+is all too little. Angered at such cruel injustice, he will say
+perhaps that "his neighbour paid nothing." The insolent fellow! he
+would argue with us! Thereon they gather round him, a yelling mob:
+sticks and brooms pelt upon him like hail. They jostle him, they throw
+him down. "You jealous villain, you Lent-faced villain!" they cry; "no
+one takes your wife from you; you shall have her back to-night, and to
+enhance the honour done you ... your eldest child will be a baron!"
+Everyone looks out of window at the absurd figure of this dead man in
+wedding garments. He is followed by bursts of laughter, and the noisy
+rabble, down to the lowest scullion, give chase to the "cuckold."[28]
+
+    [28] The old tales are very sportive, but rather monotonous.
+    They turn on three jokes only: the despair of the _cuckold_,
+    the cries of the _beaten_, the wry faces of the _hanged_. The
+    first is amusing, the second laughable, the third, as crown
+    of all, makes people split their sides. And the three have
+    one point in common: it is the weak and helpless who is
+    ill-used.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The poor fellow would have burst, had he nothing to hope for from the
+Devil. By himself he returns: is the house empty as well as desolate?
+No, there is company waiting for him there: by the fireside sits
+Satan.
+
+But soon his bride comes back, poor wretch, all pale and undone. Alas!
+alas! for her condition. At his feet she throws herself and craves
+forgiveness. Then, with a bursting heart, he flings his arms round her
+neck. He weeps, he sobs, he roars, till the house shakes again.
+
+But with her comes back God. For all her suffering, she is pure,
+innocent, holy still. Satan for that nonce will get no profit: the
+treaty is not yet ripe.
+
+Our silly Fabliaux, our absurd tales, assume with regard to this
+deadly outrage and all its further issues, that the woman sides with
+her oppressors against her husband; they would have us believe that
+her brutal treatment by the former makes her happy and transports her
+with delight. A likely thing indeed! Doubtless she might be seduced by
+rank, politeness, elegant manners. But no pains are ever taken to that
+end. Great would be the scoffing at anyone who made true-love's wooing
+towards a serf. The whole gang of men, to the chaplain, the butler,
+even the footmen, would think they honoured her by deeds of outrage.
+The smallest page thought himself a great lord, if he only seasoned
+his love with insolence and blows.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One day, the poor woman, having just been ill-treated during her
+husband's absence, begins weeping, and saying quite aloud, the while
+she is tying up her long hair, "Ah, those unhappy saints of the woods,
+what boots it to offer them my vows? Are they deaf, or have they grown
+too old? Why have I not some protecting spirit, strong and
+mighty--wicked even, if it need be? Some such I see in stone at the
+church-door; but what do they there? Why do they not go to their
+proper dwelling, the castle, to carry off and roast those sinners? Oh,
+who is there will give me power and might? I would gladly give myself
+in exchange. Ah, me, what is it I would give? What have I to give on
+my side? Nothing is left me. Out on this body, out on this soul, a
+mere cinder now! Why, instead of this useless goblin, have I not some
+spirit, great, strong, and mighty, to help me?"
+
+"My darling mistress! If I am small, it is your fault; and bigger I
+cannot grow. And besides, if I were very big, neither you nor your
+husband would have borne with me. You would have driven me away with
+your priests and your holy water. I can be strong, however, if you
+please. For, mistress mine, the spirits in themselves are neither
+great nor small, neither weak nor strong. For him who wishes it, the
+smallest can become a giant."
+
+"In what way?"
+
+"Why, nothing can be simpler. To make him a giant, you must grant him
+only one gift."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"A lovely woman-soul."
+
+"Ah, wicked one! What then art thou, and what wouldst thou have?"
+
+"Only what you give me every day.... Would you be better than the lady
+up yonder? She has pledged her soul to her husband and to her lover,
+and yet she yields it whole to her page. I am more than a page to you,
+more than a servant. In how many matters have I not been your little
+handmaid! Do not blush, nor be angry. Let me only say, that I am all
+about you, and already perhaps in you. Else, how could I know your
+thoughts, even those which you hide from yourself? Who am I, then?
+Your little soul, which speaks thus openly to the great one. We are
+inseparable. Do you know how long I have been with you? Some thousand
+years, for I belonged to your mother, to hers, to your ancestors. I am
+the Spirit of the Fireside."
+
+"Tempter! What wilt thou do?"
+
+"Why, thy husband shall be rich, thyself mighty, and men shall fear
+thee."
+
+"Where am I? Surely thou art the demon of hidden treasures!"
+
+"Why call me demon, if I do deeds of justice, of goodness, of piety?
+God cannot be everywhere--He cannot be always working. Sometimes He
+likes to rest, leaving us other spirits here to carry on the smaller
+husbandry, to remedy the ills which his providence passed over, which
+his justice forgot to handle.
+
+"Of this your husband is an example. Poor, deserving workman, he is
+killing himself and gaining nought in return. Heaven has had no time
+to look after him. But I, though rather jealous of him, still love my
+kind host. I pity him: his strength is going, he can bear up no
+longer. He will die, like your children, already dead of misery. This
+winter he was ill; what will become of him the next?"
+
+Thereon, her face in her hands, she wept two, three hours, and even
+more. And when she had poured out all her tears--her bosom still
+throbbing hard--the other said, "I ask nothing: only, I pray, save
+him."
+
+She had promised nothing, but from that hour she became his.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+POSSESSION.
+
+
+A dreadful age was the age of gold; for thus do I call that hard time
+when gold first came into use. This was in the year 1300, during the
+reign of that Fair King[29] who never spake a word; the great king who
+seemed to have a dumb devil, but a devil with mighty arm, strong
+enough to burn the Temple, long enough to reach Rome, and with glove
+of iron to deal the first good blow at the Pope.
+
+    [29] Philip the Fair of France, who put down the Templar in
+    Paris, and first secured the liberties of the Gallican
+    Church.--TRANS.
+
+Gold thereupon becomes a great pope, a mighty god, and not without
+cause. The movement began in Europe with the Crusades: the only wealth
+men cared for was that which having wings could lend itself to their
+enterprise; the wealth, namely, of swift exchanges. To strike blows
+afar off the king wants nothing but gold. An army of gold, a fiscal
+army, spreads over all the land. The lord, who has brought back with
+him his dreams of the East, is always longing for its wonders, for
+damascened armour, carpets, spices, valuable steeds. For all such
+things he needs gold. He pushes away with his foot the serf who
+brings him corn. "That is not all; I want gold!"
+
+On that day the world was changed. Theretofore in the midst of much
+evil there had always been a harmless certainty about the tax.
+According as the year was good or bad, the rent followed the course of
+nature and the measure of the harvest. If the lord said, "This is
+little," he was answered, "My lord, Heaven has granted us no more."
+
+But the gold, alas! where shall we find it? We have no army to seize
+it in the towns of Flanders. Where shall we dig the ground to win him
+his treasure? Oh, that the spirit of hidden treasures would be our
+guide![30]
+
+    [30] The devils trouble the world all through the Middle
+    Ages; but not before the thirteenth century does Satan put on
+    a settled shape. "_Compacts_," says M. Maury, "are very rare
+    before that epoch;" and I believe him. How could they treat
+    with one who as yet had no real existence? Neither of the
+    treating parties was yet ripe for the contract. Before the
+    will could be reduced to the dreadful pass of selling itself
+    for ever, it must be made thoroughly desperate. It is not the
+    unhappy who falls into despair, but the truly wretched, who
+    being quite conscious of his misery, and having yet more to
+    suffer, can find no escape therefrom. The wretched in this
+    way are the men of the fourteenth century, from whom they ask
+    a thing so impossible as payments in gold. In this and the
+    following chapter I have touched on the circumstances, the
+    feelings, the growing despair, which brought about the
+    enormity of _compacts_, and, worse still than these, the
+    dreadful character of the _Witch_. If the name was freely
+    used, the thing itself was then rare, being no less than a
+    marriage and a kind of priesthood. For ease of illustration,
+    I have joined together the details of so delicate a scrutiny
+    by a thread of fiction. The outward body of it matters
+    little. The essential point is to remember that such things
+    were not caused, as they try to persuade us, by _human
+    fickleness, by the inconstancy of our fallen nature, by the
+    chance persuasions of desire_. There was needed the deadly
+    pressure of an age of iron, of cruel needs: it was needful
+    that Hell itself should seem a shelter, an asylum, by
+    contrast with the hell below.
+
+While all are desperate, the woman with the goblin is already seated
+on her sacks of corn in the little neighbouring village. She is alone,
+the rest being still at their debate in the village.
+
+She sells at her own price. But even when the rest come up, everything
+favours her, some strange magical allurement working on her side. No
+one bargains with her. Her husband, before his time, brings his rent
+in good sounding coin to the feudal elm. "Amazing!" they all say, "but
+the Devil is in her!"
+
+They laugh, but she does not. She is sorrowful and afraid. In vain she
+tries to pray that night. Strange prickings disturb her slumber.
+Fantastic forms appear before her. The small gentle sprite seems to
+have grown imperious. He waxes bold. She is uneasy, indignant, eager
+to rise. In her sleep she groans, and feels herself dependent, saying,
+"No more do I belong to myself!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Here is a sensible countryman," says the lord; "he pays beforehand!
+You charm me: do you know accounts?"--"A little."--"Well then, you
+shall reckon with these folk. Every Saturday you shall sit under the
+elm and receive their money. On Sunday, before mass, you shall bring
+it up to the castle."
+
+What a change in their condition! How the wife's heart beats when of a
+Saturday she sees her poor workman, serf though he be, seated like a
+lordling under the baronial shades. At first he feels giddy, but in
+time accustoms himself to put on a grave air. It is no joking matter,
+indeed; for the lord commands them to show him due respect. When he
+has gone up to the castle, and the jealous ones look like laughing and
+designing to pay him off, "You see that battlement," says the lord,
+"the rope you don't see, but it is also ready. The first man who
+touches him shall be set up there high and quick."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This speech is repeated from one to another; until it has spread
+around these two as it were an atmosphere of terror. Everybody doffs
+his hat to them, bowing very low indeed. But when they pass by, folk
+stand aloof, and get out of the way. In order to shirk them they turn
+up cross roads, with backs bended, with eyes turned carefully down.
+Such a change makes them first savage, but afterwards sorrowful. They
+walk alone through all the district. The wife's shrewdness marks the
+hostile scorn of the castle, the trembling hate of those below. She
+feels herself fearfully isolated between two perils. No one to defend
+her but her lord, or rather the money they pay him: but then to find
+that money, to spur on the peasant's slowness, and overcome his
+sluggish antagonism, to snatch somewhat even from him who has nothing,
+what hard pressure, what threats, what cruelty, must be employed! This
+was never in the goodman's line of business. The wife brings him to
+the mark by dint of much pushing: she says to him, "Be rough; at need
+be cruel. Strike hard. Otherwise you will fall short of your
+engagements; and then we are undone."
+
+This suffering by day, however, is a trifle in comparison with the
+tortures of the night. She seems to have lost the power of sleeping.
+She gets up, walks to and fro, and roams about the house. All is
+still; and yet how the house is altered; its old innocence, its sweet
+security all for ever gone! "Of what is that cat by the hearth
+a-thinking, as she pretends to sleep, and 'tweenwhiles opens her green
+eyes upon me? The she-goat with her long beard, looking so discreet
+and ominous, knows more about it than she can tell. And yon cow which
+the moon reveals by glimpses in her stall, why does she give me such a
+sidelong look? All this is surely unnatural!"
+
+Shivering, she returns to her husband's side. "Happy man, how deep his
+slumber! Mine is over; I cannot sleep, I never shall sleep again." In
+time, however, she falls off. But oh, what suffering visits her then!
+The importunate guest is beside her, demanding and giving his orders.
+If one while she gets rid of him by praying or making the sign of the
+cross, anon he returns under another form. "Get back, devil! What
+durst thou? I am a Christian soul. No, thou shalt not touch me!"
+
+In revenge he puts on a hundred hideous forms; twining as an adder
+about her bosom, dancing as a frog upon her stomach, anon like a bat,
+sharp-snouted, covering her scared mouth with dreadful kisses. What is
+it he wants? To drive her into a corner, so that conquered and crushed
+at last, she may yield and utter the word "Yes." Still she is resolute
+to say "No." Still she is bent on braving the cruel struggles of every
+night, the endless martyrdom of that wasting strife.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"How far can a spirit make himself withal a body? What reality can
+there be in his efforts and approaches? Would she be sinning in the
+flesh, if she allowed the intrusions of one who was always roaming
+about her? Would that be sheer adultery?" Such was the sly roundabout
+way in which sometimes he stayed and weakened her resistance. "If I am
+only a breath, a smoke, a thin air, as so many doctors call me, why
+are you afraid, poor fearful soul, and how does it concern your
+husband?"
+
+It is the painful doom of the soul in these Middle Ages, that a number
+of questions which to us would seem idle, questions of pure
+scholastics, disturb, frighten, and torment it, taking the guise of
+visions, sometimes of devilish debatings, of cruel dialogues carried
+on within. The Devil, fierce as he shows himself in the demoniacs,
+remains always a spirit throughout the days of the Roman Empire, even
+in the time of St. Martin or the fifth century. With the Barbarian
+inroads he waxes barbarous, and takes to himself a body. So great a
+body does he become, that he amuses himself in breaking with stones
+the bell of the convent of St. Benedict. More and more fleshly is he
+made to appear, by way of frightening the plunderers of ecclesiastical
+goods. People are taught to believe that sinners will be tormented not
+in the spirit only, but even bodily in the flesh; that they will
+suffer material tortures, not those of ideal flames, but in very deed
+such exquisite pangs as burning coals, gridirons, and red-hot spits
+can awaken.
+
+This conception of the torturing devils inflicting material agonies on
+the souls of the dead, was a mine of gold to the Church. The living,
+pierced with grief and pity, asked themselves "if it were possible to
+redeem these poor souls from one world to another; if to these, too,
+might be applied such forms of expiation, by atonement and compromise,
+as were practised upon earth?" This bridge between two worlds was
+found in Cluny, which from its very birth, about 900, became at once
+among the wealthiest of the monastic orders.
+
+So long as God Himself dealt out his punishments, _making heavy his
+hand_, or striking _with the sword of the Angel_, according to the
+grand old phrase, there was much less of horror; if his hand was heavy
+as that of a judge, it was still the hand of a Father. The Angel who
+struck remained pure and clean as his own sword. Far otherwise is it
+when the execution is done by filthy demons, who resemble not the
+angel that burned up Sodom, but the angel that first went forth
+therefrom. In that place they stay, and their hell is a kind of Sodom,
+wherein these spirits, fouler than the sinners yielded into their
+charge, extract a horrible joy from the tortures they are inflicting.
+Such was the teaching to be found in the simple carvings hung out at
+the doors of churches. By these men learned the horrible lesson of the
+pleasures of pain. On pretence of punishing, the devils wreaked upon
+their victims the most outrageous whims. Truly an immoral and most
+shameful idea was this, of a sham justice that befriended the worse
+side, deepening its wickedness by the present of a plaything, and
+corrupting the Demon himself!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Cruel times indeed! Think how dark and low a heaven it was, how
+heavily it weighed on the head of man! Fancy the poor little children
+from their earliest years imbued with such awful ideas, and trembling
+within their cradles! Look at the pure innocent virgin believing
+herself damned for the pleasure infused in her by the spirit! And the
+wife in her marriage-bed tortured by his attacks, withstanding him,
+and yet again feeling him within her!--a fearful feeling known to
+those who have suffered from taenia. You feel in yourself a double
+life; you trace the monster's movements, now boisterous, anon soft and
+waving, and therein the more troublesome, as making you fancy yourself
+on the sea. Then you rush off in wild dismay, terrified at yourself,
+longing to escape, to die.
+
+Even at such times as the demon was not raging against her, the woman
+into whom he had once forced his way would wander about as one
+burdened with gloom. For thenceforth she had no remedy. He had taken
+fast hold of her, like an impure steam. He is the Prince of the Air,
+of storms, and not least of the storms within. All this may be seen
+rudely but forcefully presented under the great doorway of Strasburg
+Cathedral. Heading the band of _Foolish Virgins_, the wicked woman who
+lures them on to destruction is filled, blown out by the Devil, who
+overflows ignobly and passes out from under her skirts in a dark
+stream of thick smoke.
+
+This blowing-out is a painful feature in the _possession_; at once her
+punishment and her pride. This proud woman of Strasburg bears her
+belly well before her, while her head is thrown far back. She triumphs
+in her size, delights in being a monster.
+
+To this, however, the woman we are following has not yet come. But
+already she is puffed up with him, and with her new and lofty lot.
+The earth has ceased to bear her. Plump and comely in these better
+days, she goes down the street with head upright, and merciless in her
+scorn. She is feared, hated, admired.
+
+In look and bearing our village lady says, "I ought to be the great
+lady herself. And what does she up yonder, the shameless sluggard,
+amidst all those men, in the absence of her lord?" And now the rivalry
+is set on foot. The village, while it loathes her, is proud thereat.
+"If the lady of the castle is a baroness, our woman is a queen; and
+more than a queen,--we dare not say what." Her beauty is a dreadful, a
+fantastic beauty, killing in its pride and pain. The Demon himself is
+in her eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He has her and yet has her not. She is still _herself_, and preserves
+_herself_. She belongs neither to the Demon nor to God. The Demon may
+certainly invade her, may encompass her like a fine atmosphere. And
+yet he has gained nothing at all; for he has no will thereto. She is
+_possessed_, _bedevilled_, and she does not belong to the Devil.
+Sometimes he uses her with dreadful cruelty, and yet gains nothing
+thereby. He places a coal of fire on her breast, or within her bowels.
+She jumps and writhes, but still says, "No, butcher, I will stay as I
+am."
+
+"Take care! I will lash you with so cruel a scourge of vipers, I will
+smite you with such a blow, that you will afterwards go weeping and
+rending the air with your cries."
+
+The next night he will not come. In the morning--it was Sunday--her
+husband went up to the castle. He came back all undone. The lord had
+said: "A brook that flows drop by drop cannot turn the mill. You bring
+me a halfpenny at a time, which is good for nought. I must set off in
+a fortnight. The king marches towards Flanders, and I have not even a
+war-horse, my own being lame ever since the tourney. Get ready for
+business: I am in want of a hundred pounds."
+
+"But, my lord, where shall I find them?"
+
+"You may sack the whole village, if you will; I am about to give you
+men enough. Tell your churls, if the money is not forthcoming they are
+lost men; yourself especially--you shall die. I have had enough of
+you: you have the heart of a woman; you are slack and sluggish. You
+shall die--you shall pay for your cowardice, your effeminacy. Stay; it
+makes but very small difference whether you go down now, or whether I
+keep you here. This is Sunday: right loudly would the folk yonder
+laugh to see you dangling your legs from my battlements."
+
+All this the unhappy man tells again to his wife; and preparing
+hopelessly for death, commends his soul to God. She being just as
+frightened, can neither lie down nor sleep. What is to be done? How
+sorry she is now to have sent the spirit away! If he would but come
+back! In the morning, when her husband rises, she sinks crushed upon
+the bed. She has hardly done so, when she feels on her chest a heavy
+weight. Gasping for breath, she is like to choke. The weight falls
+lower till it presses on her stomach, and therewithal on her arms she
+feels the grasp as of two steel hands.
+
+"You wanted me, and here I am. So, at last, stubborn one, I have your
+soul--at last!"
+
+"But oh, sir, is it mine to give away? My poor husband! you used to
+love him--you said so: you promised----"
+
+"Your husband! You forget. Are you sure your thoughts were always kept
+upon him? Your soul! I ask for it as a favour; but it is already
+mine."
+
+"No, sir," she says--her pride once more returning to her, even in so
+dire a strait--"no, sir; that soul belongs to me, to my husband, to
+our marriage rites."
+
+"Ah, incorrigible little fool! you would struggle still, even now that
+you are under the goad! I have seen your soul at all hours; I know it
+better than you yourself. Day by day did I mark your first
+reluctances, your pains, and your fits of despair. I saw how
+disheartened you were when, in a low tone, you said that no one could
+be held to an impossibility. And then I saw you growing more resigned.
+You were beaten a little, and you cried out not very loud. As for me,
+I ask for your soul simply because you have already lost it.
+Meanwhile, your husband is dying. What is to be done? I am sorry for
+you: I have you in my power; but I want something more. You must
+grant it frankly and of free will, or else he is a dead man."
+
+She answered very low, in her sleep, "Ah me! my body and my miserable
+flesh, you may take them to save my husband; but my heart, never. No
+one has ever had it, and I cannot give it away."
+
+So, all resignedly she waited there. And he flung at her two words:
+"Keep them, and they will save you." Therewith she shuddered, felt
+within her a horrible thrill of fire, and, uttering a loud cry, awoke
+in the arms of her astonished husband, to drown him in a flood of
+tears.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She tore herself away by force, and got up, fearing lest she should
+forget those two important words. Her husband was alarmed; for,
+without looking even at him, she darted on the wall a glance as
+piercing as that of Medea. Never was she more handsome. In her dark
+eye and the yellowish white around it played such a glimmer as one
+durst not face--a glimmer like the sulphurous jet of a volcano.
+
+She walked straight to the town. The first word was "_Green_." Hanging
+at a tradesman's door she beheld a green gown--the colour of the
+Prince of the World--an old gown, which as she put it on became new
+and glossy. Then she walked, without asking anyone, straight to the
+door of a Jew, at which she knocked loudly. It was opened with great
+caution. The poor Jew was sitting on the ground, covered over with
+ashes. "My dear, I must have a hundred pounds."
+
+"Oh, madam, how am I to get them? The Prince-bishop of the town has
+just had my teeth drawn to make me say where my gold lies.[31] Look at
+my bleeding mouth."
+
+    [31] This was a common way of extracting help from the Jews.
+    King John Lackland often tried it.
+
+"I know, I know; but I come to obtain from you the very means of
+destroying your Bishop. When the Pope gets a cuffing, the Bishop will
+not hold out long."
+
+"Who says so?"
+
+"_Toledo._"[32]
+
+    [32] Toledo seems to have been the holy city of Wizards, who
+    in Spain were numberless. These relations with the civilized
+    Moors, with the Jews so learned and paramount in Spain, as
+    managers of the royal revenues, had given them a very high
+    degree of culture, and in Toledo they formed a kind of
+    University. In the sixteenth century, it was christianised,
+    remodelled, reduced to mere _white magic_. See the
+    _Deposition of the Wizard Achard, Lord of Beaumont, a
+    Physician of Poitou_. Lancre, _Incredulite_, p. 781.
+
+He hung his head. She spoke and blew: within her was her own soul and
+the Devil to boot. A wondrous warmth filled the room: he himself was
+aware of a kind of fiery fountain. "Madam," said he, looking at her
+from under his eyes, "poor and ruined as I am, I had some pence still
+in store to sustain my poor children."
+
+"You will not repent of it, Jew. I will swear to you the _great oath_
+that kills whoso breaks it. What you are about to give me, you shall
+receive back in a week, at an early hour in the morning. This I swear
+by your _great oath_ and by mine, which is yet greater: '_Toledo_.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A year went by. She had grown round and plump; had made herself one
+mass of gold. Men were amazed at her power of charming. Every one
+admired and obeyed her. By some devilish miracle the Jew had grown so
+generous as to lend at the slightest signal. By herself she maintained
+the castle, both through her own credit in the town, and through the
+fear inspired in the village by her rough extortion. The all-powerful
+green gown floated to and fro, ever newer and more beautiful. Her own
+beauty grew, as it were, colossal with success and pride. Frightened
+at a result so natural, everyone said, "At her time of life how tall
+she grows!"
+
+Meanwhile we have some news: the lord is coming home. The lady, who
+for a long time had not dared to come forth, lest she might meet the
+face of this other woman down below, now mounted her white horse.
+Surrounded by all her people, she goes to meet her husband; she stops
+and salutes him.
+
+And, first of all, she says, "How long I have been looking for you!
+Why did you leave your faithful wife so long a languishing widow? And
+yet I will not take you in to-night, unless you grant me a boon."
+
+"Ask it, ask it, fair lady," says the gentleman laughing; "but make
+haste, for I am eager to embrace you. How beautiful you have grown!"
+
+She whispered in his ear, so that no one knew what she said. Before
+going up to the castle the worthy lord dismounts by the village
+church, and goes in. Under the porch, at the head of the chief people,
+he beholds a lady, to whom without knowing her he offers a low salute.
+With matchless pride she bears high over the men's heads the towering
+horned bonnet (_hennin_[33]) of the period; the triumphal cap of the
+Devil, as it was often called, because of the two horns wherewith it
+was embellished. The real lady, blushing at her eclipse, went out
+looking very small. Anon she muttered, angrily, "There goes your serf.
+It is all over: everything has changed places: the ass insults the
+horse."
+
+    [33] The absurd head-dress of the women, with its one and
+    often two horns sloping back from the head, in the fourteenth
+    century.--TRANS.
+
+As they are going off, a bold page, a pet of the lady's, draws from
+his girdle a well-sharpened dagger, and with a single turn cleverly
+cuts the fine robe along her loins.[34] The crowd was astonished, but
+began to make it out when it saw the whole of the Baron's household
+going off in pursuit of her. Swift and merciless about her whistled
+and fell the strokes of the whip. She flies, but slowly, being already
+grown somewhat heavy. She has hardly gone twenty paces when she
+stumbles; her best friend having put a stone in her way to trip her
+up. Amidst roars of laughter she sprawls yelling on the ground. But
+the ruthless pages flog her up again. The noble handsome greyhounds
+help in the chase and bite her in the tenderest places. At last, in
+sad disorder, amidst the terrible crowd, she reaches the door of her
+house. It is shut. There with hands and feet she beats away, crying,
+"Quick, quick, my love, open the door for me!" There hung she, like
+the hapless screech-owl whom they nail up on a farm-house door; and
+still as hard as ever rained the blows. Within the house all is deaf.
+Is the husband there? Or rather, being rich and frightened, does he
+dread the crowd, lest they should sack his house?
+
+    [34] Such cruel outrages were common in those days. By the
+    French and Anglo-Saxon laws, lewdness was thus punished.
+    Grimm, 679, 711. Sternhook, 19, 326. Ducange, iii. 52.
+    Michelet, _Origines_, 386, 389. By and by, the same rough
+    usage is dealt out to honest women, to citizen's wives, whose
+    pride the nobles seek to abase. We know the kind of ambush
+    into which the tyrant Hagenbach drew the honourable ladies of
+    the chief burghers in Alsace, probably in scorn of their rich
+    and royal costume, all silks and gold. In my _Origines_ I
+    have also related the strange claim made by the Lord of Pace,
+    in Anjou, on the pretty (and honest) women of the
+    neighbourhood. They were to bring to the castle fourpence and
+    a chaplet of flowers, and to dance with his officers: a
+    dangerous trip, in which they might well fear some such
+    affronts as those offered by Hagenbach. They were forced to
+    obey by the threat of being stripped and pricked with a goad
+    bearing the impress of the lord's arms.
+
+And now she has borne such misery, such strokes, such sounding
+buffets, that she sinks down in a swoon. On the cold stone threshold
+she finds herself seated, naked, half-dead, her bleeding flesh covered
+with little else than the waves of her long hair. Some one from the
+castle says, "No more now! We do not want her to die."
+
+They leave her alone, to hide herself. But in spirit she can see the
+merriment going on at the castle. The lord however, somewhat dazed,
+said that he was sorry for it. But the chaplain says, in his meek way,
+"If this woman is _bedevilled_, as they say, my lord, you owe it to
+your good vassals, you owe it to the whole country, to hand her over
+to Holy Church. Since all that business with the Templars and the
+Pope, what way the Demon is making! Nothing but fire will do for him."
+Upon which a Dominican says, "Your reverence has spoken right well.
+This devilry is a heresy in the highest degree. The bedevilled, like
+the heretic, should be burnt. Some of our good fathers, however, do
+not trust themselves now even to the fire. Wisely they desire that,
+before all things, the soul may be slowly purged, tried, subdued by
+fastings; that it may not be burnt in its pride, that it shall not
+triumph at the stake. If you, madam, in the greatness of your piety,
+of your charity, would take the trouble to work upon this woman,
+putting her for some years _in pace_ in a safe cell, of which you
+only should have the key,--by thus keeping up the chastening process
+you might be doing good to her soul, shaming the Devil, and giving
+herself up meek and humble into the hands of the Church."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE COVENANT.
+
+
+Nothing was wanting but the victim. They knew that to bring this woman
+before her was the most charming present she could receive. Tenderly
+would she have acknowledged the devotion of anyone who would have
+given her so great a token of his love, by delivering that poor
+bleeding body into her hands.
+
+But the prey was aware of the hunters. A few minutes later and she
+would have been carried off, to be for ever sealed up beneath the
+stone. Wrapping herself in some rags found by chance in the stable,
+she took to herself wings of some kind, and before midnight gained
+some out-of-the-way spot on a lonely moor all covered with briars and
+thistles. It was on the skirts of a wood, where by the uncertain light
+she might gather a few acorns, to swallow them like a beast. Ages had
+elapsed since evening; she was utterly changed. Beauty and queen of
+the village no more, she seemed with the change in her spirit to have
+changed her postures also. Among her acorns she squatted like a boar
+or a monkey. Thoughts far from human circled within her as she heard,
+or seemed to hear the hooting of an owl, followed by a burst of
+shrill laughter. She felt afraid, but perhaps it was the merry
+mockbird mimicking all those sounds, according to its wonted fashion.
+
+But the laughter begins again: whence comes it? She can see nothing.
+Apparently it comes from an old oak. Distinctly, however, she hears
+these words: "So, here you are at last! You have come with an ill
+grace; nor would you have come now, if you had not tried the full
+depth of your last need. You were fain first to run the gauntlet of
+whips; to cry out and plead for mercy, haughty as you were; to be
+mocked, undone, forsaken, unsheltered even by your husband. Where
+would you have been this night, if I had not been charitable enough to
+show you the _in pace_ getting ready for you in the tower? Late, very
+late, you are in coming to me, and only after they have called you the
+_old woman_. In your youth you did not treat me well, when I was your
+wee goblin, so eager to serve you. Now take your turn, if so I wish
+it, to serve me and kiss my feet.
+
+"You were mine from birth through your inborn wickedness, through
+those devilish charms of yours. I was your lover, your husband. Your
+own has shut his door against you: I will not shut mine. I welcome you
+to my domains, my free prairies, my woods. How am I the gainer, you
+may say? Could I not long since have had you at any hour? Were you
+not invaded, possessed, filled with my flame? I changed your blood
+and renewed it: not a vein in your body where I do not flow. You know
+not yourself how utterly you are mine. But our wedding has yet to be
+celebrated with all the forms. I have some manners, and feel rather
+scrupulous. Let us be one for everlasting."
+
+"Oh! sir, in my present state, what should I say? For a long, long
+while back have I felt, too truly felt, that you were all my fate.
+With evil intent you caressed me, loaded me with favours, and made me
+rich, in order at length to cast me down. Yesterday, when the black
+greyhound bit my poor naked flesh, its teeth scorched me, and I said,
+''Tis he!' At night when that daughter of Herodias with her foul
+language scared the company, somebody put them up to the promising her
+my blood; and that was you!"
+
+"True; but 'twas I who saved you and brought you hither. I did
+everything, as you have guessed. I ruined you, and why? That I might
+have you all to myself. To speak frankly, I was tired of your husband.
+You took to haggling and pettifogging: far otherwise do I go to work;
+I want all or none. This is why I have moulded and drilled you,
+polished and ripened you, for my own behoof. Such, you see, is my
+delicacy of taste. I don't take, as people imagine, those foolish
+souls who would give themselves up at once. I prefer the choicer
+spirits, who have reached a certain dainty stage of fury and despair.
+Stop: I must let you know how pleasant you look at this moment. You
+are a great beauty, a most desirable soul. I have loved you ever so
+long, but now I am hungering for you.
+
+"I will do things on a large scale, not being one of those husbands
+who reckon with their betrothed. If you wanted only riches, you should
+have them in a trice. If you wanted to be queen in the stead of Joan
+of Navarre, that too, though difficult, should be done, and the King
+would not lose much thereby in the matter of pride and haughtiness. My
+wife is greater than a queen. But, come, tell me what you wish."
+
+"Sir, I ask only for the power of doing evil."
+
+"A delightful answer, very delightful! Have I not cause to love you?
+In reality those words contain all the law and all the prophets. Since
+you have made so good a choice, all the rest shall be thrown in, over
+and above. You shall learn all my secrets. You shall see into the
+depths of the earth. The whole world shall come and pour out gold at
+thy feet. See here, my bride, I give you the true diamond,
+_Vengeance_. I know you, rogue; I know your most hidden desires. Ay,
+our hearts on that point understand each other well! Therein at least
+shall I have full possession of you. You shall behold your enemy on
+her knees at your feet, begging and praying for mercy, and only too
+happy to earn her release by doing whatever she has made you do. She
+will burst into tears; and you will graciously say, _No_: whereon she
+will cry, 'Death and damnation!' ... Come, I will make this my special
+business."
+
+"Sir, I am at your service. I was thankless indeed, for you have
+always heaped favours on me. I am yours, my master, my god! None other
+do I desire. Sweet are your endearments, and very mild your service."
+
+And so she worships him, tumbling on all-fours. At first she pays him,
+after the forms of the Temple, such homage as betokens the utter
+abandonment of the will. Her master, the Prince of this World, the
+Prince of the Winds, breathes upon her in his turn, like an eager
+spirit. She receives at once the three sacraments, in reverse
+order--baptism, priesthood, and marriage. In this new Church, the
+exact opposite of the other, everything must be done the wrong way.
+Meekly, patiently, she endures the cruel initiation,[35] borne up by
+that one word, "Vengeance!"
+
+    [35] This will be explained further on. We must guard against
+    the pedantic additions of the sixteenth century writers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Far from being crushed or weakened by the infernal thunderbolt, she
+arose with an awful vigour and flashing eyes. The moon, which for a
+moment had chastely covered herself, took flight on seeing her again.
+Blown out to an amazing degree by the hellish vapour, filled with
+fire, with fury, and with some new ineffable desire, she grew for a
+while enormous with excess of fulness, and displayed a terrible
+beauty. She looked around her, and all nature was changed. The trees
+had gotten a tongue, and told of things gone by. The herbs became
+simples. The plants which yesterday she trod upon as so much hay, were
+now as people discoursing on the art of medicine.
+
+She awoke on the morrow far, very far, from her enemies, in a state of
+thorough security. She had been sought after, but they had only found
+some scattered shreds of her unlucky green gown. Had she in her
+despair flung herself headlong into the torrent? Or had she been
+carried off alive by the Devil? No one could tell. Either way she was
+certainly damned, which greatly consoled the lady for having failed to
+find her.
+
+Had they seen her they would hardly have known her again, she was so
+changed. Only the eyes remained, not brilliant, but armed with a very
+strange and a rather deterring glimmer. She herself was afraid of
+frightening: she never lowered them, but looked sideways, so that the
+full force of their beams might be lost by slanting them. From the
+sudden browning of her hue people would have said that she had passed
+through the flame. But the more watchful felt that the flame was
+rather in herself, that she bore about her an impure and scorching
+heat. The fiery dart with which Satan had pierced her was still
+there, and, as through a baleful lamp, shot forth a wild, but
+fearfully witching sheen. Shrinking from her, you would yet stand
+still, with a strange trouble filling your every sense.
+
+She saw herself at the mouth of one of those troglodyte caves, such as
+you find without number in the hills of the Centre and the West of
+France. It was in the borderland, then wild, between the country of
+Merlin and the country of Melusina. Some moors stretching out of sight
+still bear witness to the ancient wars, the unceasing havoc, the many
+horrors, which prevented the country being peopled again. There the
+Devil was in his home. Of the few inhabitants most were his zealous
+worshippers. Whatever attractions he might have found in the rough
+brakes of Lorraine, the black pine-forests of the Jura, or the briny
+deserts of Burgos, his preferences lay, perhaps, in our western
+marches. There might be found not only the visionary shepherd, that
+Satanic union of the goat and the goatherd, but also a closer
+conspiracy with nature, a deeper insight into remedies and poisons, a
+mysterious connection, whose links we know not, with Toledo the
+learned, the University of the Devil.
+
+The winter was setting in: its breath having first stripped the trees,
+had heaped together the leaves and small boughs of dead wood. All this
+she found prepared for her at the mouth of her gloomy den. By a wood
+and moor, half a mile across, you came down within reach of some
+villages, which had grown up beside a watercourse. "Behold your
+kingdom!" said the voice within her. "To-day a beggar, to-morrow you
+shall be queen of the whole land."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE KING OF THE DEAD.
+
+
+At first she was not much affected by promises like these. A lonely
+hermitage without God, amidst the great monotonous breezes of the
+West, amidst memories all the more ruthless for that mighty solitude,
+of such heavy losses, such sharp affronts; a widowhood so hard and
+sudden, away from the husband who had left her to her shame--all this
+was enough to bow her down. Plaything of fate, she seemed like the
+wretched weed upon the moor, having no root, but tossed to and fro,
+lashed and cruelly cut by the north-east winds; or rather, perhaps,
+like the grey, many-cornered coral, which only sticks fast to get more
+easily broken. The children trampled on her; the people said, with a
+laugh, "She is the bride of the winds."
+
+Wildly she laughed at herself when she thought on the comparison. But,
+from the depth of her dark cave, she heard,--
+
+"Ignorant and witless, you know not what you say. The plant thus
+tossing to and fro may well look down upon the rank and vulgar herbs.
+If it tosses, it is, at least, all self-contained--itself both flower
+and seed. Do thou be like it; be thine own root, and even in the
+whirlwind thou wilt still bear thy blossom: our own flowers for
+ourselves, as they come forth from the dust of tombs and the ashes of
+volcanoes.
+
+"To thee, first flower of Satan, do I this day grant the knowledge of
+my former name, my olden power. I was, I am, the _King of the Dead_.
+Ay, have I not been sadly slandered? 'Tis I who alone can make them
+reappear; a boon untold, for which I surely deserved an altar."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To pierce the future and to call up the past, to forestal and to live
+again the swift-flying moments, to enlarge the present with that which
+has been and that which will be--these are the two things forbidden to
+the Middle Ages; but forbidden in vain. Nature is invincible; nothing
+can be gained in such a quarter. He who thus errs is _a man_. It is
+not for him to be rooted to his furrow, with eyes cast down, looking
+nowhere beyond the steps he takes behind his oxen. No: we will go
+forward with head upraised, looking further and looking deeper! This
+earth that we measure out with so much care, we kick our feet upon
+withal, and keep ever saying to it, "What dost thou hold in thy
+bowels? What secrets lie therein? Thou givest us back the grain we
+entrust to thee; but not that human seed, those beloved dead, we have
+lent into thy charge. Our friends, our loves, that lie there, will
+they never bud again? Oh, that we might see them, if only for one
+hour, if only for one moment!
+
+"Some day we ourselves shall reach the unknown land, whither they have
+already gone. But shall we see them again there? Shall we dwell with
+them? Where are they, and what are they doing? They must be kept very
+close prisoners, these dear dead of mine, to give me not one token!
+And how can I make them hear me? My father, too, whose only hope I
+was, who loved me with so mighty a love, why comes he never to me? Ah,
+me! on either side is bondage, imprisonment, mutual ignorance; a
+dismal night, where we look in vain for one glimmer!"[36]
+
+    [36] The glimmer shines forth in Dumesnil's _Immortalite_,
+    and _La Foi Nouvelle_, in the _Ciel et Terre_ of Reynaud,
+    Henry Martin, &c.
+
+These everlasting thoughts of Nature, from having in olden times been
+simply mournful, became in the Middle Ages painful, bitter, weakening,
+and the heart thereby grew smaller. It seems as if they had reckoned
+on flattening the soul, on pressing and squeezing it down to the
+compass of a bier. The burial of the serf between four deal boards was
+well suited to such an end: it haunted one with the notion of being
+smothered. A person thus enclosed, if ever he returned in one's
+dreams, would no longer appear as a thin luminous shadow encircled by
+a halo of Elysium, but only as the wretched sport of some hellish
+griffin-cat. What a hateful and impious idea, that my good, kind
+father, my mother so revered by all, should become the plaything of
+such a beast! You may laugh now, but for a thousand years it was no
+laughing matter: they wept bitterly. And even now the heart swells
+with wrath, the very pen grates angrily upon the paper, as one writes
+down these blasphemous doings.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Moreover, it was surely a cruel device to transfer the Festival of the
+Dead from the Spring, where antiquity had placed it, to November. In
+May, where it fell at first, they were buried among the flowers. In
+March, wherein it was afterwards placed, it became the signal for
+labour and the lark. The dead and the seed of corn entered the earth
+together with the same hope. But in November, when all the work is
+done, the weather close and gloomy for many days to come; when the
+folk return to their homes; when a man, re-seating himself by the
+hearth, looks across on that place for evermore empty--ah, me! at such
+a time how great the sorrow grows! Clearly, in choosing a moment
+already in itself so funereal, for the obsequies of Nature, they
+feared that a man would not find cause enough of sorrow in himself!
+
+The coolest, the busiest of men, however taken up they be with life's
+distracting cares, have, at least, their sadder moments. In the dark
+wintry morning, in the night that comes on so swift to swallow us up
+in its shadow, ten years, nay, twenty years hence, strange feeble
+voices will rise up in your heart: "Good morning, dear friend, 'tis
+we! You are alive, are working as hard as ever. So much the better!
+You do not feel our loss so heavily, and you have learned to do
+without us; but we cannot, we never can, do without you. The ranks are
+closed, the gap is all but filled. The house that was ours is full,
+and we have blessed it. All is well, is better than when your father
+carried you about; better than when your little girl said, in her
+turn, to you, 'Papa, carry me.' But, lo! you are in tears. Enough,
+till we meet again!"
+
+Alas, and are they gone? That wail was sweet and piercing: but was it
+just? No. Let me forget myself a thousand times rather than I should
+forget them! And yet, cost what it will to say so, say it we must,
+that certain traces are fading off, are already less clear to see;
+that certain features are not indeed effaced, but grown paler and more
+dim. A hard, a bitter, a humbling thought it is, to find oneself so
+weak and fleeting, wavering as unremembered water; to feel that in
+time one loses that treasure of grief which one had hoped to preserve
+for ever. Give it me back, I pray: I am too much bounden to so rich a
+fountain of tears. Trace me again, I implore you, those features I
+love so well. Could you not help me at least to dream of them by
+night?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+More than one such prayer is spoken in the month of November. And
+amidst the striking of the bells and the dropping of the leaves, they
+clear out of church, saying one to another in low tones: "I say,
+neighbour; up there lives a woman of whom folk speak well and ill.
+For myself, I dare say nothing; but she has power over the world
+below. She calls up the dead, and they come. Oh, if she might--without
+sin, you know, without angering God--make my friends come to me! I am
+alone, as you must know, and have lost everything in this world. But
+who knows what this woman is, whether of hell or heaven? I won't go
+(he is dying of curiosity all the while); I won't. I have no wish to
+endanger my soul: besides, the wood yonder is haunted. Many's the time
+that things unfit to see have been found on the moor. Haven't you
+heard about Jacqueline, who was there one evening looking for one of
+her sheep? Well, when she returned, she was crazy. I won't go."
+
+Thus unknown to each other, many of the men at least went thither. For
+as yet the women hardly dared so great a risk. They remark the dangers
+of the road, ask many questions of those who return therefrom. The new
+Pythoness is not like her of Endor, who raised up Samuel at the prayer
+of Saul. Instead of showing you the ghosts, she gives you cabalistic
+words and powerful potions to bring them back in your dreams. Ah, how
+many a sorrow has recourse to these! The grandmother herself,
+tottering with her eighty years, would behold her grandson again. By
+an unwonted effort, yet not without a pang of shame at sinning on the
+edge of the grave, she drags herself to the spot. She is troubled by
+the savage look of a place all rough with yews and thorns, by the
+rude, dark beauty of that relentless Proserpine. Prostrate,
+trembling, grovelling on the ground, the poor old woman weeps and
+prays. Answer there is none. But when she dares to lift herself up a
+little, she sees that Hell itself has been a-weeping.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is simply Nature recovering herself. Proserpine blushes
+self-indignantly thereat. "Degenerate soul!" she calls herself, "why
+this weakness? You came hither with the firm desire of doing nought
+but evil. Is this your master's lesson? How he will laugh at you for
+this!"
+
+"Nay! Am I not the great shepherd of the shades, making them come and
+go, opening unto them the gate of dreams? Your Dante, when he drew my
+likeness, forgot my attributes. When he gave me that useless tail, he
+did not see that I held the shepherd's staff of Osiris; that from
+Mercury I had inherited his caduceus. In vain have they thought to
+build up an insurmountable wall between the two worlds; I have wings
+to my heels, I have flown over. By a kindly rebellion of that
+slandered Spirit, of that ruthless monster, succour has been given to
+those who mourned; mothers, lovers, have found comfort. He has taken
+pity on them in defiance of their new god."
+
+The scribes of the Middle Ages, being all of the priestly class, never
+cared to acknowledge the deep but silent changes of the popular mind.
+It is clear that from thenceforth compassion goes over to Satan's
+side. The Virgin herself, ideal as she is of grace, makes no answer
+to such a want of the heart. Neither does the Church, who expressly
+forbids the calling up of the dead. While all books delight in keeping
+up either the swinish demon of earlier times, or the griffin butcher
+of the second period, Satan has changed his shape for those who cannot
+write. He retains somewhat of the ancient Pluto; but his pale nor
+wholly ruthless majesty, that permitted the dead to come back, the
+living once more to see the dead, passes ever more and more into the
+nature of his father, or his grandfather, Osiris, the shepherd of
+souls.
+
+Through this one change come many others. Men with their mouths
+acknowledge the hell official and the boiling caldrons; but in their
+hearts do they truly believe therein? Would it be so easy to win these
+infernal favours for hearts beset with hateful traditions of a hell of
+torments? The one idea neutralizes without wholly effacing the other,
+and between them grows up a vague mixed image, resembling more and
+more nearly the hell of Virgil. A mighty solace was here offered to
+the human heart. Blessed above all was the relief thus given to the
+poor women, whom that dreadful dogma about the punishment of their
+loved dead had kept drowned in tears and inconsolable. The whole of
+their lifetime had been but one long sigh.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Sibyl was musing over her master's words, when a very light step
+became audible. The day has scarcely dawned: it is after Christmas,
+about the first day of the new year. Over the crisp and rimy grass
+approaches a small, fair woman, all a-trembling, who has no sooner
+reached the spot, than she swoons and loses her breath. Her black gown
+tells plainly of her widowhood. To the piercing gaze of Medea, without
+moving or speaking, she reveals all: there is no mystery about her
+shrinking figure. The other says to her with a loud voice: "You need
+not tell me, little dumb creature, for you would never get to the end
+of it. I will speak for you. Well, you are dying of love!" Recovering
+a little, she clasps her hands together, and sinking almost on her
+knees, tells everything, making a full confession. She had suffered,
+wept, prayed, and would have silently suffered on. But these winter
+feasts, these family re-unions, the ill-concealed happiness of other
+women who, without pity for her, showed off their lawful loves, had
+driven the burning arrow again into her heart. Alas, what could she
+do? If he might but return and comfort her for one moment! "Be it even
+at the cost of my life; let me die, but only let me see him once
+more!"
+
+"Go back to your house: shut the door carefully: put up the shutter
+even against any curious neighbour. Throw off your mourning, and put
+on your wedding-clothes; place a cover for him on the table; but yet
+he will not come. You will sing the song he made for you, and sang to
+you so often, but yet he will not come. Then you shall draw out of
+your box the last dress he wore, and, kissing it, say, 'So much the
+worse for thee if thou wilt not come!' And presently when you have
+drunk this wine, bitter, but very sleepful, you will lie down as a
+wedded bride. Then assuredly he will come to you."
+
+The little creature would have been no woman, if next morning she had
+not shown her joy and tenderness by owning the miracle in whispers to
+her best friend. "Say nought of it, I beg. But he himself told me,
+that if I wore this gown and slept a deep sleep every Sunday, he would
+return."
+
+A happiness not without some danger. Where would the rash woman be, if
+the Church learned that she was no longer a widow; that re-awakened by
+her love, the spirit came to console her?
+
+But strange to tell, the secret is kept. There is an understanding
+among them all, to hide so sweet a mystery. For who has no concern
+therein? Who has not lost and mourned? Who would not gladly see this
+bridge created between two worlds? "O thou beneficent Witch! Blessed
+be thou, spirit of the nether world!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE PRINCE OF NATURE.
+
+
+Hard is the long sad winter of the North-west. Even after its
+departure it renews its visits, like a drowsy sorrow which ever and
+again comes back and rages afresh. One morning everything wakes up
+decked with bright needles. In this cruel mocking splendour that makes
+one shiver through and through, the whole vegetable world seems turned
+mineral, loses its sweet diversity, and freezes into a mass of rough
+crystals.
+
+The poor Sibyl, as she sits benumbed by her hearth of leaves, scourged
+by the flaying north-east winds, feels at her heart a cruel pang, for
+she feels herself all alone. But that very thought again brings her
+relief. With returning pride returns a vigour that warms her heart and
+lights up her soul. Intent, quick, and sharp, her sight becomes as
+piercing as those needles; and the world, the cruel world that caused
+her suffering, is to her transparent as glass. Anon she rejoices over
+it, as over a conquest of her making.
+
+For is she not a queen, a queen with courtiers of her own? The crows
+have clearly some connection with her. In grave, dignified body they
+come like ancient augurs, to talk to her of passing things. The
+wolves passing by salute her timidly with sidelong glances. The bear,
+then oftener seen than now, would sometimes, in his heavily
+good-natured way, seat himself awkwardly at the threshold of her den,
+like a hermit calling on a fellow-hermit, just as we often see him in
+the Lives of the Desert Fathers.
+
+All those birds and beasts with whom men only made acquaintance in
+hunting or slaying them, were outlawed as much as she. With all these
+she comes to an understanding; for Satan as the chief outlaw, imparts
+to his own the pleasures of natural freedom, the wild delight of
+living in a world sufficient unto itself.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rough freedom of loneliness, all hail! The whole earth seems still
+clothed in a white shroud, held in bondage by a load of ice, of
+pitiless crystals, so uniform, sharp, and agonizing. After the year
+1200 especially, the world is shut in like a transparent tomb, wherein
+all things look terribly motionless, hard, and stiff.
+
+The Gothic Church has been called a "crystallization;" and so it truly
+is. About 1300, architecture gave up all its old variety of form and
+living fancies, to repeat itself for evermore, to vie with the
+monotonous prisms of Spitzbergen, to become the true and awful
+likeness of that hard crystal city, in which a dreadful dogma thought
+to bury all life away.
+
+But for all the props, buttresses, flying-buttresses, that keep the
+monument up, one thing there is that makes it totter. There is no loud
+battering from without, but a certain softness in the very
+foundations, which attacks the crystal with an imperceptible thaw.
+What thing do I mean? The humble stream of warm tears shed by a whole
+world, until they have become a very sea of wailings. What do I call
+it? A breath of the future, a stirring of the natural life, which
+shall presently rise again in irresistible might. The fantastic
+building of which more than one side is already sinking, says, not
+without terror, to itself, "It is the breath of Satan."
+
+Beneath this Hecla-glacier lies a volcano which has no need of
+bursting out; a mild, slow, gentle heat, which caresses it from below,
+and, calling it nearer, says in a whisper, "Come down."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Witch has something to laugh at, if from the gloom she can see how
+utterly Dante and St. Thomas,[37] in the bright light yonder, ignore
+the true position of things. They fancy that the Devil wins his way by
+cunning or by terror. They make him grotesque and coarse, as in his
+childhood, when Jesus could still send him into the herd of swine. Or
+else they make him subtle as a logician of the schools, or a
+fault-finding lawyer. If he had been no better than this compound of
+beast and disputant,--if he had only lived in the mire or on
+fine-drawn quibbles about nothing, he would very soon have died of
+hunger.
+
+    [37] St. Thomas Aquinas, the "Angelic Doctor," who died in
+    1274.--TRANS.
+
+People were too ready to crow over him, when he was shewn by
+Bartolus[38] pleading against the woman--that is, the Virgin--who gets
+him nonsuited and condemned with costs. At that time, indeed, the very
+contrary was happening on earth. By a master-stroke of his he had won
+over the plaintiff herself, his fair antagonist, the Woman; had
+seduced her, not indeed by verbal pleadings, but by arguments not less
+real than they were charming and irresistible. He put into her hands
+the fruits of science and of nature.
+
+    [38] Bartolus or Bartoli, a lawyer and law-writer of the
+    fourteenth century.--TRANS.
+
+No need for controversies, for pleas of any kind: he simply shows
+himself. In the East, the new-found Paradise, he begins to work. From
+that Asian world, which men had thought to destroy, there springs
+forth a peerless day-dawn, whose beams travel afar until they pierce
+the deep winter of the West. There dawns on us a world of nature and
+of art, accursed of the ignorant indeed, but now at length come
+forward to vanquish its late victors in a pleasant war of love and
+motherly endearments. All are conquered, all rave about it; they will
+have nothing but Asia herself. With her hands full she comes to meet
+us. Her tissues, shawls, her carpets so agreeably soft, so wondrously
+harmonized, her bright and well-wrought blades, her richly damascened
+arms, make us aware of our own barbarism. Moreover, little as that may
+seem, these accursed lands of the "miscreant," ruled by Satan, are
+visibly blessed with the fairest fruits of nature, that elixir of the
+powers of God; with _the first of vegetables_, coffee; with _the first
+of beasts_, the Arab horse. What am I saying?--with a whole world of
+treasures, silk, sugar, and a host of herbs all-powerful to relieve
+the heart, to soothe and lighten our sufferings.
+
+All this breaks upon our view about the year 1300. Spain herself,
+whose brain is wholly fashioned out of Moors and Jews, for all that
+she is again subdued by the barbarous children of the Goth, bears
+witness in behalf of those _miscreants_. Wherever the Mussulman
+children of the Devil are at work, all is prosperous, the springs well
+forth, the ground is covered with flowers. A right worthy and harmless
+travail decks it with those wondrous vineyards, through which men
+recruit themselves, drowning all care, and seeming to drink in
+draughts of very goodness and heavenly compassion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To whom does Satan bring the foaming cup of life? In this fasting
+world, which has so long been fasting from reason, what man was there
+strong enough to take all this in without growing giddy, without
+getting drunken and risking the loss of his wits?
+
+Is there yet a brain so far from being petrified or crystallized by
+the teaching of St. Thomas, as to remain open to the living world, to
+its vegetative forces? Three magicians, Albert the Great, Roger Bacon,
+Arnaud of Villeneuve,[39] by strong efforts make their way to Nature's
+secrets; but those lusty intellects lack flexibility and popular
+power. Satan falls back on his own Eve. The woman is still the most
+natural thing in the world; still keeps her hold on those traits of
+roguish innocence one sees in a kitten or a child of very high spirit.
+Besides, she figures much better in that world-comedy, that mighty
+game wherewith the universal Proteus disports himself.
+
+    [39] Three eminent schoolmen of the thirteenth century, whose
+    scientific researches pointed the way to future
+    discoveries.--TRANS.
+
+But being light and changeful, she is all the less liable to be carked
+and hardened by pain! This woman, whom we have seen outlawed from the
+world, and rooted on her wild moor, affords a case in point. Have we
+yet to learn whether, bruised and soured as she is, with her heart
+full of hate, she will re-enter the natural world and the pleasant
+paths of life? Assuredly her return thither will not find her in good
+tune, will happen mainly through a round of ill. In the coming and
+going of the storm she is all the more scared and violent for being so
+very weak.
+
+When in the mild warmth of spring, from the air, the depths of the
+earth, from the flowers and their languages, a new revelation rises
+round her on every side, she is taken dizzy at the first. Her
+swelling bosom overflows. The Sibyl of science has her tortures, like
+her of Cumae or of Delphi. The schoolmen find their fun in saying, "It
+is the wind and nought else that blows her out. Her lover, the Prince
+of the Air, fills her with dreams and delusions, with wind, with
+smoke, with emptiness." Foolish irony! So far from this being the true
+cause of her drunkenness, it is nothing empty, it is a real, a
+substantial thing, which has loaded her bosom all too quickly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Have you ever seen the agave, that hard wild African shrub, so sharp,
+bitter, and tearing, with huge bristles instead of leaves? Ten years
+through it loves and dies. At length one day the amorous shoot, which
+has so long been gathering in the rough thing, goes off with a noise
+like gunfire, and darts skyward. And this shoot becomes a whole tree,
+not less than thirty feet high, and bristling with sad flowers.
+
+Some such analogy does the gloomy Sibyl feel, when one morning of a
+spring-time, late in coming, and therefore impetuous at the last,
+there takes place all around her a vast explosion of life.
+
+And all things look at her, and all things bloom for her. For every
+thing that has life says softly, "Whoso understands me, I am his."
+
+What a contrast! Here is the wife of the desert and of despair, bred
+up in hate and vengeance, and lo! all these innocent things agree to
+smile upon her! The trees, soothed by the south wind, pay her gentle
+homage. Each herb of the field, with its own special virtue of scent,
+or remedy, or poison--very often the three things are one--offers
+itself to her, saying, "Gather me."
+
+All things are clearly in love. "Are they not mocking me? I had been
+readier for hell than for this strange festival. O spirit, art thou
+indeed that spirit of dread whom once I knew, the traces of whose
+cruelty I bear about me--what am I saying, and where are my
+senses?--the wound of whose dealing scorches me still?
+
+"Ah, no! 'Tis not the spirit whom I hoped for in my rage; '_he who
+always says, No!_' This other one utters a yes of love, of drunken
+dizziness. What ails him? Is he the mad, the dazed soul of life?
+
+"They spoke of the great Pan as dead. But here he is in the guise of
+Bacchus, of Priapus, eager with long-delayed desire, threatening,
+scorching, teeming. No, no! Be this cup far from me! Trouble only
+should I drink from it,--who knows? A despair yet sharper than my past
+despairs."
+
+Meanwhile wherever the woman appears, she becomes the one great object
+of love. She is followed by all, and for her sake all despise their
+own proper kind. What they say about the black he-goat, her pretended
+favourite, may be applied to all. The horse neighs for her, breaking
+everything and putting her in danger. The awful king of the prairie,
+the black bull, bellows with grief, should she pass him by at a
+distance. And, behold, yon bird despondingly turns away from his hen,
+and with whirring wings hastes to convince the woman of his love!
+
+Such is the new tyranny of her master, who, by the funniest hap of
+all, foregoes the part accredited to him as king of the dead, to burst
+forth a very king of life.
+
+"No!" she says; "leave me to my hatred: I ask for nothing more. Let me
+be feared and fearful! The beauty I would have, is only that which
+dwells in these black serpents of my hair, in this countenance
+furrowed with grief, and the scars of thy thunderbolt." But the Lord
+of Evil replies with cunning softness: "Oh, but you are only the more
+beautiful, the more impressible, for this fiery rage of yours! Ay,
+call out and curse on, beneath one and the same goad! 'Tis but one
+storm calling another. Swift and smooth is the passage from wrath to
+pleasure."
+
+Neither her fury nor her pride would have saved her from such
+allurements. But she is saved by the boundlessness of her desire.
+There is nought will satisfy her. Each kind of life for her is all too
+bounded, wanting in power. Away from her, steed and bull and loving
+bird! Away, ye creatures all! for one who desires the Infinite, how
+weak ye are!
+
+She has a woman's longing; but for what? Even for the whole, the great
+all-containing whole. Satan did not foresee that no one creature would
+content her.
+
+That which he could not do, is done for her in some ineffable way.
+Overcome by a desire so wide and deep, a longing boundless as the sea,
+she falls asleep. At such a moment, all else forgot, no touch of hate,
+no thought of vengeance left in her, she slumbers on the plain,
+innocent in her own despite, stretched out in easy luxuriance like a
+sheep or a dove.
+
+She sleeps, she dreams; a delightful dream! It seemed as if the
+wondrous might of universal life had been swallowed up within her; as
+if life and death and all things thenceforth lay fast in her bowels;
+as if in return for all her suffering, she was teeming at last with
+Nature herself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE DEVIL A PHYSICIAN.
+
+
+That still and dismal scene of the Bride of Corinth, is repeated
+literally from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. While it was
+yet night, just before the daybreak, the two lovers, Man and Nature,
+meet again, embrace with rapture, and, at that same moment--horrible
+to tell!--behold themselves attacked by fearful plagues. We seem still
+to hear the loved one saying to her lover, "It is all over: thy hair
+will be white to-morrow. I am dead, and thou too wilt die."
+
+Three dreadful blows happen in these three centuries. In the first we
+have a loathsome changing of the outer man, diseases of the skin,
+above all, leprosy. In the second, the evil turns inwards, becomes a
+grotesque excitement of the nerves, a fit of epileptic dancing. Then
+all grows calm, but the blood is changed, and ulcers prepare the way
+for syphilis, the scourge of the fifteenth century.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Among the chief diseases of the Middle Ages, so far as one can look
+therein, to speak generally, had been hunger, weakness, poverty of
+blood, that kind of consumption which is visible in the sculptures of
+that time. The blood was like clear water, and scrofulous ailments
+were rife everywhere. Barring the well-paid doctors, Jew or Arab, of
+the kings, the art of medicine was practised only with, holy water at
+the church door. Thither on Sundays, after the service, would come a
+crowd of sick, to whom words like these were spoken: "You have sinned
+and God has afflicted you. Be thankful: so much the less will you
+suffer in the next world. Resign yourselves to suffer and to die. The
+Church has prayers for the dead." Weak, languishing, hopeless, with no
+desire to live, they followed this counsel faithfully, and let life go
+its way.
+
+A fatal discouragement, a wretched state of things, that would have
+prolonged without end these ages of lead, and debarred them from all
+progress! Worst of all things is it to resign oneself so readily, to
+welcome death with so much docility, to have strength for nothing, to
+desire nothing. Of more worth was that new era, that close of the
+Middle Ages, which at the cost of cruel sufferings first enabled us to
+regain our former energy; namely, _the resurrection of desire_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Some Arab writers have asserted that the widespread eruption of
+skin-diseases which marks the thirteenth century, was caused by the
+taking of certain stimulants to re-awaken and renew the defaults of
+passion. Undoubtedly the burning spices brought over from the East,
+tended somewhat to such an issue. The invention of distilling and of
+divers fermented drinks may also have worked in the same direction.
+
+But a greater and far more general fermentation was going on. During
+the sharp inward struggle between two worlds and two spirits, a third
+surviving silenced both. As the fading faith and the newborn reason
+were disputing together, somebody stepping between them caught hold of
+man. You ask who? A spirit unclean and raging, the spirit of sour
+desires, bubbling painfully within.
+
+Debarred from all outlet, whether of bodily enjoyment, or the free
+flow of soul, the sap of life thus closely rammed together, was sure
+to corrupt itself. Bereft of light, of sound, of speech, it spoke
+through pains and ominous excrescences. Then happened a new and
+dreadful thing. The desire put off without being diminished, finds
+itself stopped short by a cruel enchantment, a shocking
+metamorphosis.[40] Love was advancing blindly with open arms. It
+recoils groaning; but in vain would it flee: the fire of the blood
+keeps raging; the flesh eats itself away in sharp titillations, and
+sharper within rages the coal of fire, made fiercer by despair.
+
+    [40] Leprosy has been traced to Asia and the Crusades; but
+    Europe had it in herself. The war declared by the Middle Ages
+    against the flesh and all cleanliness bore its fruits. More
+    than one saint boasted of having never washed even his hands.
+    And how much did the rest wash? To have stripped for a moment
+    would have been sinful. The worldlings carefully follow the
+    teaching of the monks. This subtle and refined society, which
+    sacrificed marriage and seemed inspired only with the poetry
+    of adultery, preserved a strange scruple on a point so
+    harmless. It dreaded all cleansing, as so much defilement.
+    There was no bathing for a thousand years!
+
+What remedy does Christian Europe find for this twofold ill? Death and
+captivity; nothing more. When the bitter celibacy, the hopeless love,
+the passion irritable and ever-goading, bring you into a morbid state;
+when your blood is decomposing, then you shall go down into an _In
+pace_, or build your hut in the desert. You must live with the
+handbell in your hand, that all may flee before you. "No human being
+must see you: no consolation may be yours. If you come near, 'tis
+death."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Leprosy is the last stage, the _apogee_ of this scourge; but a
+thousand other ills, less hideous but still cruel, raged everywhere.
+The purest and the most fair were stricken with sad eruptions, which
+men regarded as sin made visible, or the chastisement of God. Then
+people did what the love of life had never made them do: they forsook
+the old sacred medicine, the bootless holy water, and went off to the
+Witch. From habit and fear as well, they still repaired to church; but
+thenceforth their true church was with her, on the moor, in the
+forest, in the desert. To her they carried their vows.
+
+Prayers for healing, prayers for pleasure. On the first effervescing
+of their heated blood, folk went to the Sibyl, in great secrecy, at
+uncertain hours. "What shall I do? and what is this I feel within me?
+I burn: give me some lenitive. I burn: grant me that which causes my
+intolerable desire."
+
+A bold, a blamable journey, for which they reproach themselves at
+night. Let this new fatality be never so urgent, this fire be never so
+torturing, the Saints themselves never so powerless; still, have not
+the indictment of the Templars and the proceedings of Pope Boniface
+unveiled the Sodom lying hid beneath the altar? But a wizard Pope, a
+friend of the Devil, who also carried him away, effects a change in
+all their ideas. Was it not with the Demon's help that John XXII., the
+son of a shoemaker, a Pope no more of Rome, succeeded in amassing in
+his town of Avignon more gold than the Emperor and all the kings? As
+the Pope is, so is the bishop. Did not Guichard, Bishop of Troyes,
+procure from the Devil the death of the King's daughters? No death we
+ask for--we; but pleasant things--for life, for health, for beauty,
+and for pleasure: the things of God which God refuses. What shall we
+do? Might we but win them through the grace of the _Prince of this
+World_!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the great and mighty doctor of the Renaissance, Paracelsus, cast
+all the wise books of ancient medicine into the fire, Latin, and
+Jewish, and Arabic, all at once, he declared that he had learned none
+but the popular medicine, that of the _good women_,[41] the
+_shepherds_, and the _headsmen_, the latter of whom made often good
+horse-doctors and clever surgeons, resetting bones broken or put out
+of joint.
+
+    [41] The name given in fear and politeness to the witches.
+
+I make no doubt but that his admirable and masterly work on _The
+Diseases of Women_--the first then written on a theme so large, so
+deep, so tender--came forth from his special experience of those women
+to whom others went for aid; of the witches, namely, who always acted
+as the midwives: for never in those days was a male physician admitted
+to the woman's side, to win her trust in him, to listen to her
+secrets. The witches alone attended her, and became, especially for
+women, the chief and only physician.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What we know for surest with regard to their medicinal practice is,
+that for ends the most different, alike to stimulate and to soothe,
+they made use of one large family of doubtful and very dangerous
+plants, called, by reason of the services they rendered, _The
+Comforters_, or Solaneae.[42]
+
+    [42] Man's ingratitude is painful to see. A thousand other
+    plants have come into use: a hundred exotic vegetables have
+    become the fashion. But the good once done by these poor
+    _Comforters_ is clean forgotten!--Nay, who now remembers or
+    even acknowledges the old debt of humanity to harmless
+    nature? The _Asclepias acida_, _Sarcostemma_, or flesh-plant,
+    which for five thousand years was the _Holy Wafer_ of the
+    East, its very palpable God, eaten gladly by five hundred
+    millions of men,--this plant, in the Middle Ages called the
+    Poison-queller (_vince-venenum_), meets with not one word of
+    historical comment in our books of Botany. Perhaps two
+    thousand years hence they will forget the wheat. See Langlois
+    on the _Soma_ of India and the _Hom_ of Persia. _Mem. de
+    l'Academie des Inscriptions_, xix. 326.
+
+A vast and popular family, many kinds of which abound to excess under
+our feet, in the hedges, everywhere--a family so numerous that of one
+kind alone we have eight hundred varieties.[43] There is nothing
+easier, nothing more common, to find. But these plants are mostly
+dangerous in the using. It needs some boldness to measure out a dose,
+the boldness, perhaps, of genius.
+
+    [43] M. d'Orbigny's _Dictionary of Natural History_, article
+    _Morelles_.
+
+Let us, step by step, mount the ladder of their powers.[44] The first
+are simply pot-herbs, good for food, such as the mad-apples and the
+tomatoes, miscalled "love-apples." Other, of the harmless kinds, are
+sweetness and tranquillity itself, as the white mullens, or lady's
+fox-gloves, so good for fomentations.
+
+    [44] I have found this ladder nowhere else. It is the more
+    important, because the witches who made these essays at the
+    risk of passing for poisoners, certainly began with the
+    weakest, and rose gradually to the strongest. Each step of
+    power thus gives its relative date, and helps us in this dark
+    subject to set up a kind of chronology. I shall complete it
+    in the following chapters, when I come to speak of the
+    Mandragora and the Datura. I have chiefly followed Pouchet's
+    _Solanees_ and _Botanique Generale_.
+
+Going higher up, you come on a plant already suspicious, which many
+think a poison, a plant which at first seems like honey and afterwards
+tastes bitter, reminding one of Jonathan's saying, "I have eaten a
+little honey, and therefore shall I die." But this death is
+serviceable, a dying away of pain. The "bittersweet" should have been
+the first experiment of that bold homoeopathy which rose, little by
+little, up to the most dangerous poisons. The slight irritation and
+the tingling which it causes might point it out as a remedy for the
+prevalent diseases of that time, those, namely, of the skin.
+
+The pretty maiden who found herself woefully adorned with uncouth red
+patches, with pimples, or with ringworm, would come crying for such
+relief. In the case of an elder woman the hurt would be yet more
+painful. The bosom, most delicate thing in nature, with its innermost
+vessels forming a matchless flower, becomes, through its injective and
+congestive tendencies, the most perfect instrument for causing pain.
+Sharp, ruthless, restless are the pains she suffers. Gladly would she
+accept all kinds of poison. Instead of bargaining with the Witch, she
+only puts her poor hard breast between her hands.
+
+From the bittersweet, too weak for such, we rise to the dark
+nightshades, which have rather more effect. For a few days the woman
+is soothed. Anon she comes back weeping. "Very well, to-night you may
+come again. I will fetch you something, as you wish me; but it will be
+a strong poison."
+
+It was a heavy risk for the Witch. At that time they never thought
+that poisons could act as remedies, if applied outwardly or taken in
+very weak doses. The plants they compounded together under the name of
+_witches' herbs_, seemed to be but ministers of death. Such as were
+found in her hands would have proved her, in their opinion, a poisoner
+or a dealer in accursed charms. A blind crowd, all the more cruel for
+its growing fears, might fell her with a shower of stones, or make her
+undergo the trial by water--the _noyade_. Or even--most dreadful doom
+of all!--they might drag her with a rope round her neck to the
+churchyard, where a pious festival was held and the people edified by
+seeing her thrown to the flames.
+
+However, she runs the risk, and fetches home the dreadful plant. The
+other woman comes back to her abode by night or morning, whenever she
+is least afraid of being met. But a young shepherd, who saw her there,
+told the village, "If you had seen her as I did, gliding among the
+rubbish of the ruined hut, looking about her on all sides, muttering I
+know not what! Oh, but she has frightened me very much! If she had
+seen me, I was a lost man. She would have changed me into a lizard, a
+toad, or a bat. She took a paltry herb--the paltriest I ever saw--of a
+pale sickly yellow, with red and black marks, like the flames, as they
+say, of hell. The horror of the thing is, that the whole stalk was
+hairy like a man, with long, black, sticky hairs. She plucked it
+roughly, with a grunt, and suddenly I saw her no more. She could not
+have run away so quick; she must have flown. What a dreadful thing
+that woman is! How dangerous to the whole country!"
+
+Certainly the plant inspires dread. It is the henbane, a cruel and
+dangerous poison, but a powerful emollient, a soft sedative poultice,
+which melts, unbends, lulls to sleep the pain, often taking it quite
+away.
+
+Another of these poisons--the Belladonna, so called, undoubtedly, in
+thankful acknowledgment, had great power in laying the convulsions
+that sometimes supervened in childbirth, and added a new danger, a new
+fear, to the danger and the fear of that most trying moment. A
+motherly hand instilled the gentle poison, casting the mother herself
+into a sleep, and smoothing the infant's passage, after the manner of
+the modern chloroform, into the world.[45]
+
+    [45] Madame La Chapelle and M. Chaussier have renewed to good
+    purpose these practices of the older medicine. Pouchet,
+    _Solanees_.
+
+Belladonna cures the dancing-fits while making you dance. A daring
+homoeopathy this, which at first must frighten: it is _medicine
+reversed_, contrary in most things to that which alone the Christians
+studied, which alone they valued, after the example of the Jews and
+Arabs.
+
+How did men come to this result? Undoubtedly by the simple effect of
+the great Satanic principle, that _everything must be done the wrong
+way_, the very opposite way to that followed by the holy people. These
+latter have a dread of poisons. Satan uses them and turns them into
+remedies. The Church thinks by spiritual means, by sacraments and
+prayers, to act even on the body. Satan, on the other hand, uses
+material means to act even upon the soul, making you drink of
+forgetfulness, love, reverie, and every passion. To the blessing of
+the priest he opposes the magnetic passes made by the soft hands of
+women, who cheat you of your pains.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By a change of system, and yet more of dress, as in the substitution
+of linen for wool, the skin-diseases lost their intensity. Leprosy
+abated, but seemed to go inwards and beget deeper ills. The fourteenth
+century wavered between three scourges--the epileptic dancings, the
+plague, and the sores which, according to Paracelsus, led the way to
+syphilis.
+
+The first danger was not the least. About 1350 it broke out in a
+frightful manner with the dance of St. Guy, and was singular
+especially in this, that it did not act upon each person separately.
+As if carried on by one same galvanic current, the sick caught each
+other by the hand, formed immense chains, and spun and spun round till
+they died. The spectators, who laughed at first, presently catching
+the contagion, let themselves go, fell into the mighty current,
+increased the terrible choir.
+
+What would have happened if the evil had held on as long as leprosy
+did even in its decline?
+
+It was the first step, as it were, towards epilepsy. If that
+generation of sufferers had not been cured, it would have begotten
+another decidedly epileptic. What a frightful prospect! Think of
+Europe covered with fools, with idiots, with raging madmen! We are not
+told how the evil was treated and checked. The remedy prescribed by
+most, the falling upon these jumpers with kicks and cuffings, was
+entirely fitted to increase the frenzy and turn it into downright
+epilepsy.[46] Doubtless there was some other remedy, of which people
+were loth to speak. At the time when witchcraft took its first great
+flight, the widespread use of the _Solaneae_, above all, of belladonna,
+vulgarized the medicine which really checked those affections. At the
+great popular gatherings of the Sabbath, of which we shall presently
+speak, the _witches' herb_, mixed with mead, beer, cider,[47] or perry
+(the strong drinks of the West), set the multitude dancing a dance
+luxurious indeed, but far from epileptic.
+
+    [46] We should think that few physicians would quite agree
+    with M. Michelet.--TRANS.
+
+    [47] Cider was first made in the twelfth century.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But the greatest revolution caused by the witches, the greatest step
+_the wrong way_ against the spirit of the Middle Ages, was what may be
+called the reenfeoffment of the stomach and the digestive organs. They
+had the boldness to say, "There is nothing foul or unclean."
+Thenceforth the study of matter was free and boundless. Medicine
+became a possibility.
+
+That this principle was greatly abused, we do not deny; but the
+principle is none the less clear. There is nothing foul but moral
+evil. In the natural world all things are pure: nothing may be
+withheld from our studious regard, nothing be forbidden by an idle
+spiritualism, still less by a silly disgust.
+
+It was here especially that the Middle Ages showed themselves in their
+true light, as _anti-natural_, out of Nature's oneness drawing
+distinctions of castes, of priestly orders. Not only do they count the
+spirit _noble_, and the body _ignoble_; but even parts of the body are
+called noble, while others are not, being evidently plebeian. In like
+manner heaven is noble, and hell is not; but why?--"Because heaven is
+high up." But in truth it is neither high nor low, being above and
+beneath alike. And what is hell? Nothing at all. Equally foolish are
+they about the world at large and the smaller world of men.
+
+This world is all one piece: each thing in it is attached to all the
+rest. If the stomach is servant of the brain and feeds it, the brain
+also works none the less for the stomach, perpetually helping to
+prepare for it the digestive _sugar_.[48]
+
+    [48] This great discovery was made by Claude Bernard.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was no lack of injurious treatment. The witches were called
+filthy, indecent, shameless, immoral. Nevertheless, their first steps
+on that road may be accounted as a happy revolution in things most
+moral, in charity and kindness. With a monstrous perversion of ideas
+the Middle Ages viewed the flesh in its representative,
+woman,--accursed since the days of Eve--as a thing impure. The Virgin,
+exalted as _Virgin_ more than as _Our Lady_, far from lifting up the
+real woman, had caused her abasement, by setting men on the track of a
+mere scholastic puritanism, where they kept rising higher and higher
+in subtlety and falsehood.
+
+Woman herself ended by sharing in the hateful prejudice and deeming
+herself unclean. She hid herself at the hour of childbed. She blushed
+at loving and bestowing happiness on others. Sober as she mostly was
+in comparison with man, living as she mostly did on herbs and fruits,
+sharing through her diet of milk and vegetables the purity of the most
+innocent breeds, she almost besought forgiveness for being born, for
+living, for carrying out the conditions of her life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The medical art of the Middle Ages busied itself peculiarly about the
+man, a being noble and pure, who alone could become a priest, alone
+could make God at the altar. It also paid some attention to the
+beasts, beginning indeed with them; but of children it thought seldom:
+of women not at all.
+
+The romances, too, with their subtleties pourtray the converse of the
+world. Outside the courts and highborn adulterers, which form the
+chief topic of these romances, the woman is always a poor Griselda,
+born to drain the cup of suffering, to be often beaten, and never
+cared for.
+
+In order to mind the woman, to trample these usages under foot, and to
+care for her in spite of herself, nothing less would serve than the
+Devil, woman's old ally, her trusty friend in Paradise, and the Witch,
+that monster who deals with everything the wrong way, exactly
+contrariwise to that of the holier people. The poor creature set such
+little store by herself. She would shrink back, blushing, and loth to
+say a word. The Witch being clever and evil-hearted, read her to the
+inmost depths. Ere long she won her to speak out, drew from her her
+little secret, overcame her refusals, her modest, humble hesitations.
+Rather than undergo the remedy, she was willing almost to die. But the
+cruel sorceress made her live.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+CHARMS AND PHILTRES.
+
+
+Let no one hastily conclude from the foregoing chapter that I attempt
+to whiten, to acquit entirely, the dismal bride of the Devil. If she
+often did good, she could also do no small amount of ill. There is no
+great power which is not abused. And this one had three centuries of
+actual reigning, in the interlude between two worlds, the older dying
+and the new struggling painfully to begin. The Church, which in the
+quarrels of the sixteenth century will regain some of her strength, at
+least for fighting, in the fourteenth is down in the mire. Look at the
+truthful picture drawn by Clemangis. The nobles, so proudly arrayed in
+their new armour, fall all the more heavily at Crecy, Poitiers,
+Agincourt. All who survive end by being prisoners in England. What a
+theme for ridicule! The citizens, the very peasants make merry and
+shrug their shoulders. This general absence of the lords gave, I
+fancy, no small encouragement to the Sabbath gatherings which had
+always taken place, but at this time might first have grown into vast
+popular festivals.
+
+How mighty the power thus wielded by Satan's sweetheart, who cures,
+foretels, divines, calls up the souls of the dead; who can throw a
+spell upon you, turn you into a hare or wolf, enable you to find a
+treasure, and, best of all, ensure your being beloved! It is an awful
+power which combines all others. How could a stormy soul, a soul most
+commonly gangrened, and sometimes grown utterly wayward, have helped
+employing it to wreak her hate and revenge; sometimes even out of a
+mere delight in malice and uncleanness?
+
+All that once was told the confessor, is now imparted to her: not only
+the sins already done, but those also which folk purpose doing. She
+holds each by her shameful secret, by the avowal of her uncleanest
+desires. To her they entrust both their bodily and mental ills; the
+lustful heats of a blood inflamed and soured; the ceaseless prickings
+of some sharp, urgent, furious desire.
+
+To her they all come: with her there is no shame. In plain blunt words
+they beseech her for life, for death, for remedies, for poisons.
+Thither comes a young woman, to ask through her tears for the means of
+saving her from the fruits of her sin. Thither comes the
+step-mother--a common theme in the Middle Ages--to say that the child
+of a former marriage eats well and lives long. Thither comes the
+sorrowing wife whose children year by year are born only to die. And
+now, on the other hand, comes a youth to buy at any cost the burning
+draught that shall trouble the heart of some haughty dame, until,
+forgetful of the distance between them, she has stooped to look upon
+her little page.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In these days there are but two types, two forms of marriage, both of
+them extreme and outrageous.
+
+The scornful heiress of a fief, who brings her husband a crown or a
+broad estate, an Eleanor of Guyenne for instance, will, under her
+husband's very eyes, hold her court of lovers, keeping herself under
+very slight control. Let us leave romances and poems, to look at the
+reality in its dread march onward to the unbridled rage of the
+daughters of Philip the Fair, of the cruel Isabella, who by the hands
+of her lovers impaled Edward II. The insolence of the feudal women
+breaks out diabolically in the triumphant two-horned bonnet and other
+brazen-faced fashions.
+
+But in this century, when classes are beginning to mingle slightly,
+the woman of a lower rank, when she marries a lord, has to fear the
+hardest trials. So says the truthful history of the humble, the meek,
+the patient Griselda. In a more popular form it becomes the tale of
+_Blue-Beard_, a tale which seems to me quite earnest and historical.
+The wife so often killed and replaced by him could only have been his
+vassal. He would have reckoned wholly otherwise with the daughter or
+sister of a baron, who might avenge her. If I am not misled by a
+specious conjecture, we must believe that this tale is of the
+fourteenth century, and not of those preceding, in which the lord
+would never have deigned to take a wife below himself.
+
+Specially remarkable in the moving tale of _Griselda_ is the fact,
+that throughout her heavy trials, she never seeks support in being
+devout or in loving another. She is evidently faithful, chaste, and
+pure. It never comes into her mind to love elsewhere.
+
+Of the two feudal women, the Heiress and Griselda, it is peculiarly
+the first who has her household of gentlemen, her courts of love, who
+shows favour to the humblest lovers, encouraging them, delivering, as
+Eleanor did, the famous sentence, soon to become quite classical:
+"There can be no love between married folk."
+
+Thereupon a secret hope, but hot and violent withal, arises in more
+than one young heart. If he must give himself to the Devil, he will
+rush full tilt on this adventurous intrigue. Let the castle be never
+so surely closed, one fine opening is still left for Satan. In a game
+so perilous, what chance of success reveals itself? Wisdom answers,
+None. But what if Satan said, Yes?
+
+We must remember how great a distance feudal pride set between the
+nobles themselves. Words are misleading: one _cavalier_ might be far
+below another.
+
+The knight banneret, who brought a whole army of vassals to his king's
+side, would look with utter scorn from one end of his long table on
+the poor _lackland_ knights seated at the other. How much greater his
+scorn for the simple varlets, grooms, pages, &c., fed upon his
+leavings! Seated at the lowermost end of the tables close to the door,
+they scraped the dishes sent down to them, often empty, from the
+personages seated above beside the hearth. It never would cross the
+great lord's mind, that those below would dare to lift eyes of fancy
+towards their lovely mistress, the haughty heiress of a fief, sitting
+near her mother, "crowned by a chaplet of white roses." Whilst he bore
+with wondrous patience the love of some stranger knight, appointed by
+his lady to bear her colours, he would have savagely punished the
+boldness of any servant who looked so high. Of this kind was the
+raging jealousy shown by the Lord of Fayel, who was stirred to deadly
+wrath, not because his wife had a lover, but because that lover was
+one of his household, the castellan or simple constable of his castle
+of Coucy.
+
+The deeper and less passable seemed the gulf between the great
+heiress, lady of the manor, and the groom or page who, barring his
+shirt, had nothing, not even his coat, but what belonged to his
+master, the stronger became love's temptation to overleap that gulf.
+
+The youth was buoyed up by the very impossibility. At length, one day
+that he managed to get out of the tower, he ran off to the Witch and
+asked her advice. Would a philtre serve as a spell to win her? Or,
+failing that, must he make an express covenant? He never shrank at all
+from the dreadful idea of yielding himself to Satan. "We will take
+care for that, young man: but hie thee up again; you will find some
+change already."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The change, however, is in himself. He is stirred by some ineffable
+hope, that escapes in spite of him from a deep downcast eye, scored by
+an ever-darting flame. Somebody, we may guess who, having eyes for him
+alone, is moved to throw him, as she passes, a word of pity. Oh,
+rapture! Kind Satan! Charming, adorable Witch!
+
+He cannot eat nor drink until he has been to see the latter again.
+Respectfully kissing her hand, he almost falls at her feet. Whatever
+she may ask him, whatever she may bid him do, he will obey her. That
+moment, if she wishes it, he will give her his golden chain, will give
+her the ring upon his finger, though he had it from a dying mother.
+But the Witch, in her native malice, in her hatred of the Baron, feels
+an especial comfort in dealing him a secret blow.
+
+Already a vague anxiety disturbs the castle. A dumb tempest, without
+lightning or thunder, broods over it, like an electric vapour on a
+marsh. All is silence, deep silence; but the lady is troubled. She
+suspects that some supernatural power has been at work. For why indeed
+be thus drawn to this youth, more than to some one else, handsomer,
+nobler, renowned already for deeds of arms? There is something toward,
+down yonder! Has that woman cast a spell upon her, or worked some
+hidden charm? The more she asks herself these questions, the more her
+heart is troubled.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Witch has something to wreak her malice upon at last. In the
+village she was a queen; but now the castle comes to her, yields
+itself up to her on that side where its pride ran the greatest risk.
+For us this passion has a peculiar interest, as the rush of one soul
+towards its ideal against every social harrier, against the unjust
+decree of fate. To the Witch, on her side, it holds out the deep, keen
+delight of humbling the lady's pride, and revenging perhaps her own
+wrongs; the delight of serving the lord as he served his vassals, of
+levying upon him, through the boldness of a mere child, the
+firstfruits of his outrageous wedding-rights. Undoubtedly, in these
+intrigues where the Witch had to play her part, she often acted from a
+depth of levelling hatred natural to a peasant.
+
+Already it was something gained to have made the lady stoop to love a
+menial. We should not be misled by such examples as John of Saintre
+and Cherubin. The serving-boy filled the lowest offices in the
+household. The footman proper did not then exist, while on the other
+hand, few, if any maidservants lived in military strongholds. Young
+hands did everything, and were not disgraced thereby. The service,
+specially the body-service of the lord and lady, honoured and raised
+them up. Nevertheless, it often placed the highborn page in situations
+sorrowful enough, prosaic, not to say ridiculous. The lord never
+distresses himself about that. And the lady must indeed be charmed by
+the Devil, not to see what every day she saw, her well-beloved
+employed in servile and unsuitable tasks.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the Middle Ages the very high and the very low are continually
+brought together. That which is hidden by the poems, we can catch a
+glimpse of otherwhere. With those ethereal passions, many gross things
+were clearly blended.
+
+All we know of the charms and philtres used by the witches is very
+fantastic, not seldom marked by malice, and recklessly mixed up with
+things that seem to us the least likely to have awakened love. By
+these methods they went a long way without the husband's perceiving in
+his blindness the game they made of him.
+
+These philtres were of various kinds. Some were for exciting and
+troubling the senses, like the stimulants so much abused in the East.
+Others were dangerous, and often treacherous draughts to whose
+illusions the body would yield itself without the will. Others again
+were employed as tests when the passion was defied, when one wished to
+see how far the greediness of desire might derange the senses, making
+them receive as the highest and holiest of favours, the most
+disagreeable services done by the object of their love.
+
+The rude way in which a castle was constructed, with nothing in it but
+large halls, led to an utter sacrifice of the inner life. It was long
+enough before they took to building in one of the turrets a closet or
+recess for meditation and the saying of prayers. The lady was easily
+watched. On certain days set or waited for, the bold youth would
+attempt the stroke, recommended him by the Witch, of mingling a
+philtre with her drink.
+
+This, however, was a dangerous matter, not often tried. Less difficult
+was it to purloin from the lady things which escaped her notice, which
+she herself despised. He would treasure up the very smallest paring of
+a nail; he would gather up respectfully one or two beautiful hairs
+that might fall from her comb. These he would carry to the Witch, who
+often asked, as our modern sleep-wakers do, for something very
+personal and strongly redolent of the person, but obtained without her
+leave; as, for instance, some threads torn out of a garment long worn
+and soiled with the traces of perspiration. With much kissing, of
+course, and worshipping, the lover was fain reluctantly to throw these
+treasures into the fire, with a view to gathering up the ashes
+afterwards. By and by, when she came to look at her garment, the fine
+lady would remark the rent, but guessing at the cause, would only sigh
+and hold her tongue. The charm had already begun to work.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Even if she hesitated from regard for her marriage-vow, certain it is
+that life in a space so narrow, where they were always in each
+other's sight, so near and yet so far, became a downright torment. And
+even when she had once shown her weakness, still before her husband
+and others equally jealous the moments of happiness would assuredly be
+rare. Hence sprang many a foolish outbreak of unsatisfied desire. The
+less they came together, the more deeply they longed to do so. A
+disordered fancy sought to attain that end by means grotesque,
+unnatural, utterly senseless. So by way of establishing a means of
+secret correspondence between the two, the Witch had the letters of
+the alphabet pricked on both their arms. If one of them wanted to send
+a thought to the other, he brightened and brought out by sucking the
+blood-red letters of the wished-for word. Immediately, so it is said,
+the corresponding letters bled on the other's arm.
+
+Sometimes in these mad fits they would drink each of the other's
+blood, so as to mingle their souls, it was said, in close communion.
+The devouring of Coucy's heart, which the lady "found so good that she
+never ate again," is the most tragical instance of these monstrous
+vows of loving cannibalism. But when the absent one did not die, but
+only the love within him, then the lady would seek counsel of the
+Witch, begging of her the means of holding him, of bringing him back.
+
+The incantations used by the sorceress of Theocritus and Virgil,
+though employed also in the Middle Ages, were seldom of much avail. An
+attempt was made to win back the lover by a spell seemingly copied
+from antiquity, by means of a cake, of a _confarreatio_[49] like that
+which, both in Asia and Europe, had always been the holiest pledge of
+love. But in this case it is not the soul only, it is the flesh also
+they seek to bind; there must be so true an identity established
+between the two, that, dead to all other women, he shall live only for
+her. It was a cruel ceremony on the woman's side. "No haggling,
+madam," says the Witch. Suddenly the proud dame grows obedient, even
+to letting herself be stripped bare: for thus indeed it must be.
+
+    [49] One form of wedding among the Romans, in which the
+    bride-cake was broken between the pair, in token of their
+    union.--TRANS.
+
+What a triumph for the Witch! And if this lady were the same as she
+who had once made her "run the gauntlet," how meet the vengeance, how
+dread the requital now! But it is not enough to have stripped her thus
+naked. About her loins is fastened a little shelf, on which a small
+oven is set for the cooking of the cake. "Oh, my dear, I cannot bear
+it longer! Make haste, and relieve me."
+
+"You must bear it, madam; you must feel the heat. When the cake is
+done, he will be warmed by you, by your flame."
+
+It is over; and now we have the cake of antiquity, of the Indian and
+the Roman marriage, but spiced and warmed up by the lecherous spirit
+of the Devil. She does not say with Virgil's wizard,[50]
+
+    "Ducite ab urbe domum, mea carmina, ducite Daphnin!"
+
+    [50] "Hither, ye spells of mine, bring Daphnis home from the
+    city!"--_Virgil_, Eclogue viii.
+
+But she takes him the cake, steeped, as it were, in the other's
+suffering, and kept warm by her love. He has hardly bitten it when he
+is overtaken by an odd emotion, by a feeling of dizziness. Then as the
+blood rushes up to his heart he turns red and hot. Passion fastens
+anew on him, and inextinguishable desire.[51]
+
+    [51] I am wrong in saying inextinguishable. Fresh philtres
+    were often needed; and the blame of this must lie with the
+    lady, from whom the Witch in her mocking, malignant rage
+    exacted the most humiliating observances.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+THE REBELS' COMMUNION--SABBATHS--THE BLACK MASS.
+
+
+We must now speak of the _Sabbaths_; a word which at different times
+clearly meant quite different things. Unhappily, we have no detailed
+accounts of these gatherings earlier than the reign of Henry IV.[52]
+By that time they were nothing more than a great lewd farce carried on
+under the cloak of witchcraft. But these very descriptions of a thing
+so greatly corrupted are marked by certain antique touches that tell
+of the successive periods and the different forms through which it had
+passed.
+
+    [52] The least bad of these is by Lancre, a man of some wit,
+    whose evident connection with some young witches gave him
+    something to say. The accounts of the Jesuit Del Rio and the
+    Dominican Michaelis are the absurd productions of two
+    credulous and silly pedants.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We may set out with this firm idea that, for many centuries, the serf
+led the life of a wolf or a fox; that he was _an animal of the night_,
+moving about, I may say, as little as possible in the daytime, and
+truly living in the night alone.
+
+Still, up to the year 1000, so long as the people made their own
+saints and legends, their daily life was not to them uninteresting.
+Their nightly Sabbaths were only a slight relic of paganism. They
+held in fear and honour the Moon, so powerful over the good things of
+earth. Her chief worshippers, the old women, burn small candles to
+_Dianom_--the Diana of yore, whose other names were Luna and Hecate.
+The Lupercal (or wolf-man) is always following the women and children,
+disguised indeed under the dark face of ghost Hallequin (Harlequin).
+The Vigil of Venus was kept as a holiday precisely on the first of
+May. On Midsummer Day they kept the Sabaza by sacrificing the he-goat
+of Bacchus Sabasius. In all this there was no mockery; nothing but a
+harmless carnival of serfs.
+
+But about the year 1000 the church is well-nigh shut against the
+peasant through the difference between his language and hers. By 1100
+her services became quite unintelligible. Of the mysteries played at
+the church-doors, he has retained chiefly the comic side, the ox and
+the ass, &c. On these he makes Christmas carols, which grow ever more
+and more burlesque, forming a true Sabbatic literature.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Are we to suppose that the great and fearful risings of the twelfth
+century had no influence on these mysteries, on this night-life of the
+_wolf_, the _game bird_, the _wild quarry_. The great sacraments of
+rebellion among the serfs, when they drank of each other's blood, or
+ate of the ground by way of solemn pledge,[53] may have been
+celebrated at the Sabbaths. The "Marseillaise" of that time, sung by
+night rather than day, was perhaps a Sabbatic chant:--
+
+    "Nous sommes hommes commes ils sont!
+    Tout aussi grand coeur nous avons!
+    Tout autant souffrir nous pouvons!"[54]
+
+    [53] At the battle of Courtray. See also Grimm and my
+    _Origines_.
+
+    [54]
+
+    "We are fashioned of one clay:
+    Big as theirs our hearts are aye:
+    We can bear as much as they."--TRANS.
+
+But the tombstone falls again in 1200. Seated thereon the Pope and the
+King, with their enormous weight, have sealed up man. Has he now his
+old life by night? More than ever. The old pagan dances must by this
+time have waxed furious. Our negroes of the Antilles, after a dreadful
+day of heat and hard work, would go and dance away some four leagues
+off. So it was with the serf too. But with his dances there must have
+mingled a merriment born of revenge, satiric farces, burlesques and
+caricatures of the baron and the priest: a whole literature of the
+night indeed, that knew not one word of the literature of the day,
+that knew little even of the burgher Fabliaux.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of such a nature were the Sabbaths before 1300. Before they could take
+the startling form of open warfare against the God of those days, much
+more was needed still, and especially these two things: not only a
+descending into the very depths of despair, but also _an utter losing
+of respect for anything_.
+
+To this pass they do not come until the fourteenth century, under the
+Avignon popes, and during the Great Schism; when the Church with two
+heads seems no longer a church; when the king and all his nobles,
+being in shameful captivity to the English, are extorting the means of
+ransom from their oppressed and outraged people. Then do the Sabbaths
+take the grand and horrible form of the _Black Mass_, of a ritual
+upside down, in which Jesus is defied and bidden to thunder on the
+people if He can. In the thirteenth century this devilish drama was
+still impossible, through the horror it would have caused. And later
+again, in the fifteenth, when everything, even suffering itself, had
+become exhausted, so fierce an outburst could not have issued forth;
+so monstrous an invention no one would have essayed. It could only
+have belonged to the age of Dante.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It took place, I fancy, at one gush; an explosion as it were of genius
+raving, bringing impiety up to the height of a great popular
+passion-fit. To understand the nature of these bursts of rage, we must
+remember that, far from imagining the fixedness of God's laws, a
+people brought up by their own clergy to believe and depend on
+miracles, had for ages past been hoping and waiting for nothing else
+than a miracle which never came. In vain they demanded one in the
+desperate hour of their last worst strait. Heaven thenceforth appeared
+to them as the ally of their savage tormentors, nay, as itself a
+tormentor too.
+
+Thereon began the _Black Mass_ and the _Jacquerie_.[55]
+
+    [55] The Peasants' war which raged in France in 1364.
+
+In the elastic shell of the Black Mass, a thousand variations of
+detail may afterwards have been inserted; but the shell itself was
+strongly made and, in my opinion, all of one piece.
+
+This drama I succeeded in reproducing in my "History of France," in
+the year 1857. There was small difficulty in casting it anew in its
+four acts. Only at that time I left in it too many of the grotesque
+adornments which clothed the Sabbath of a later period; nor did I
+clearly enough define what belonged to the older shell, so dark and
+dreadful.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Its date is strongly marked by certain savage tokens of an age
+accursed, and yet more by the ruling place therein assigned to woman,
+a fact most characteristic of the fourteenth century.
+
+It is strange to mark how, at that period, the woman who enjoys so
+little freedom still holds her royal sway in a hundred violent
+fashions. At this time she inherits fiefs, brings her kingdoms to the
+king. On the lower levels she has still her throne, and yet more in
+the skies. Mary has supplanted Jesus. St. Francis and St. Dominic have
+seen the three worlds in her bosom. By the immensity of her grace she
+washes away sin; ay, and sometimes helps the sinner,--as in the story
+of a nun whose place the Virgin took in the choir, while she herself
+was gone to meet her lover.
+
+Up high, and down very low, we see the woman. Beatrice reigns in
+heaven among the stars, while John of Meung in the _Romaunt of the
+Rose_ is preaching the community of women. Pure or sullied, the woman
+is everywhere. We might say of her what Raymond Lulle said of God:
+"What part has He in the world? The whole."
+
+But alike in heaven and in poetry the true heroine is not the fruitful
+mother decked out with children; but the Virgin, or some barren
+Beatrice, who dies young.
+
+A fair English damsel passed over into France, it is said, about the
+year 1300, to preach the redemption of women. She looked on herself as
+their Messiah.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In its earliest phase the Black Mass seemed to betoken this redemption
+of Eve, so long accursed of Christianity. The woman fills every office
+in the Sabbath. She is priestess, altar, pledge of holy communion, by
+turns. Nay, at bottom, is she not herself as God?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Many popular traits may be found herein, and yet it comes not wholly
+from the people. The peasant who honoured strength alone, made small
+account of the woman; as we see but too clearly in our old laws and
+customs. From him the woman would not have received the high place she
+holds here. It is by her own self the place is won.
+
+I would gladly believe that the Sabbath in its then shape was woman's
+work, the work of such a desperate woman as the Witch was then. In the
+fourteenth century she saw open before her a horrible career of
+torments lighted up for three or four hundred years by the stake.
+After 1300 her medical knowledge is condemned as baleful, her remedies
+are proscribed as if they were poisons. The harmless drawing of lots,
+by which lepers then thought to better their luck, brought on a
+massacre of those poor wretches. Pope John XXII. ordered the burning
+of a bishop suspected of Witchcraft. Under a system of such blind
+repression there was just the same risk in daring little as in daring
+much. Danger itself made people bolder; and the Witch was able to dare
+anything.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Human brotherhood, defiance of the Christian heaven, a distorted
+worship of nature herself as God--such was the purport of the Black
+Mass.
+
+They decked an altar to the arch-rebel of serfs, _to Him who had been
+so wronged_, the old outlaw, unfairly hunted out of heaven, "the
+Spirit by whom earth was made, the Master who ordained the budding of
+the plants." Such were the names of honour given him by his
+worshippers, the _Luciferians_, and also, according to a very likely
+opinion, by the Knights of the Temple.
+
+The greatest miracle of those unhappy times is, the greater abundance
+found at the nightly communion of the brotherhood, than was to be
+found elsewhere by day. By incurring some little danger the Witch
+levied her contributions from those who were best off, and gathered
+their offerings into a common fund. Charity in a Satanic garb grew
+very powerful, as being a crime, a conspiracy, a form of rebellion.
+People would rob themselves of their food by day for the sake of the
+common meal at night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Figure to yourself, on a broad moor, and often near an old Celtic
+cromlech, at the edge of a wood, this twofold scene: on one side a
+well-lit moor and a great feast of the people; on the other, towards
+yon wood, the choir of that church whose dome is heaven. What I call
+the choir is a hill commanding somewhat the surrounding country.
+Between these are the yellow flames of torch-fires, and some red
+brasiers emitting a fantastic smoke. At the back of all is the Witch,
+dressing up her Satan, a great wooden devil, black and shaggy. By his
+horns, and the goatskin near him, he might be Bacchus; but his manly
+attributes make him a Pan or a Priapus. It is a darksome figure, seen
+differently by different eyes; to some suggesting only terror, while
+others are touched by the proud melancholy wherein the Eternally
+Banished seems absorbed.[56]
+
+    [56] This is taken from Del Rio, but is not, I think,
+    peculiar to Spain. It is an ancient trait, and marked by the
+    primitive inspiration.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Act First. The magnificent _In troit_ taken by Christendom from
+antiquity, that is, from those ceremonies where the people in long
+train streamed under the colonnades on their way to the sanctuary, is
+now taken back for himself by the elder god upon his return to power.
+The _Lavabo_, likewise borrowed from the heathen lustrations,
+reappears now. All this he claims back by right of age.
+
+His priestess is always called, by way of honour, the Elder; but she
+would sometimes have been young. Lancre tells of a witch of seventeen,
+pretty, and horribly savage.
+
+The Devil's bride was not to be a child: she must be at least thirty
+years old, with the form of a Medea, with the beauty that comes of
+pain; an eye deep, tragic, lit up by a feverish fire, with great
+serpent tresses waving at their will: I refer to the torrent of her
+black untamable hair. On her head, perhaps, you may see the crown of
+vervein, the ivy of the tomb, the violets of death.
+
+When she has had the children taken off to their meal, the service
+begins: "I will come before thine altar; but save me, O Lord, from the
+faithless and violent man (from the priest and the baron)."
+
+Then come the denial of Jesus, the paying of homage to the new master,
+the feudal kiss, like the greetings of the Temple, when all was
+yielded without reserve, without shame, or dignity, or even purpose;
+the denial of an olden god being grossly aggravated by a seeming
+preference for Satan's back.
+
+It is now his turn to consecrate his priestess. The wooden deity
+receives her in the manner of an olden Pan or Priapus. Following the
+old pagan form she sits a moment upon him in token of surrender, like
+the Delphian seeress on Apollo's tripod. After receiving the breath of
+his spirit, the sacrament of his love, she purifies herself with like
+formal solemnity. Thenceforth she is a living altar.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Introit over, the service is interrupted for the feast. Contrary
+to the festive fashion of the nobles, who all sit with their swords
+beside them, here, in this feast of brethren, are no arms, not even a
+knife.
+
+As a keeper of the peace, each has a woman with him. Without a woman
+no one is admitted. Be she a kinswoman or none, a wife or none; be she
+old or young, a woman he must bring with him.
+
+What were the drinks passed round among them? Mead, or beer, or wine;
+strong cider or perry? The last two date from the twelfth century.
+
+The illusive drinks, with their dangerous admixture of belladonna, did
+they already appear at that board? Certainly not. There were children
+there. Besides, an excess of commotion would have prevented the
+dancing.
+
+This whirling dance, the famous _Sabbath-round_, was quite enough to
+complete the first stage of drunkenness. They turned back to back,
+their arms behind them, not seeing each other, but often touching each
+other's back. Gradually no one knew himself, nor whom he had by his
+side. The old wife then was old no more. Satan had wrought a miracle.
+She was still a woman, desirable, after a confused fashion beloved.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Act Second. Just as the crowd, grown dizzy together, was led, both by
+the attraction of the women and by a certain vague feeling of
+brotherhood, to imagine itself one body, the service was resumed at
+the _Gloria_. The altar, the host, became visible. These were
+represented by the woman herself. Prostrate, in a posture of extreme
+abasement, her long black silky tresses lost in the dust; she, this
+haughty Proserpine, offered up herself. On her back a demon
+officiated, saying the _Credo_, and making the offering.[57]
+
+    [57] This important fact of the woman being her own altar, is
+    known to us by the trial of La Voisin, which M. Ravaisson,
+    Sen., is about to publish with the other _Papers of the
+    Bastille_.
+
+At a later period this scene came to be immodest. But at this time,
+amidst the calamities of the fourteenth century, in the terrible days
+of the Black Plague, and of so many a famine, in the days of the
+Jacquerie and those hateful brigands, the Free Lances,--on a people
+thus surrounded by danger, the effect was more than serious. The whole
+assembly had much cause to fear a surprise. The risk run by the Witch
+in this bold proceeding was very great, even tantamount to the
+forfeiting of her life. Nay, more; she braved a hell of suffering, of
+torments such as may hardly be described. Torn by pincers, and broken
+alive; her breasts torn out; her skin slowly singed, as in the case
+of the wizard bishop of Cahors; her body burned limb by limb on a
+small fire of red-hot coal, she was like to endure an eternity of
+agony.
+
+Certainly all were moved when the prayer was spoken, the
+harvest-offering made, upon this devoted creature who gave herself up
+so humbly. Some wheat was offered to the _Spirit of the Earth_, who
+made wheat to grow. A flight of birds, most likely from the woman's
+bosom, bore to the _God of Freedom_ the sighs and prayers of the
+serfs. What did they ask? Only that we, their distant descendants,
+might become free.[58]
+
+    [58] This grateful offering of wheat and birds is peculiar to
+    France. In Lorraine, and no doubt in Germany, black beasts
+    were offered, as the black cat, the black goat, or the black
+    bull.
+
+What was the sacrament she divided among them? Not the ridiculous
+pledge we find later in the reign of Henry IV., but most likely that
+_confarreatio_ which we saw in the case of the philtres, the hallowed
+pledge of love, a cake baked on her own body, on the victim who,
+perhaps, to-morrow would herself be passing through the fire. It was
+her life, her death, they ate there. One sniffs already the scorching
+flesh.
+
+Last of all they set upon her two offerings, seemingly of flesh; two
+images, one of _the latest dead_, the other of the newest-born in the
+district. These shared in the special virtue assigned to her who acted
+as altar and Host in one, and on these the assembly made a show of
+receiving the communion. Their Host would thus be threefold, and
+always human. Under a shadowy likeness of the Devil the people
+worshipped none other than its own self.
+
+The true sacrifice was now over and done. The woman's work was ended,
+when she gave herself up to be eaten by the multitude. Rising from her
+former posture, she would not withdraw from the spot until she had
+proudly stated, and, as it were, confirmed the lawfulness of her
+proceedings by an appeal to the thunderbolt, by an insolent defiance
+of the discrowned God.
+
+In mockery of the _Agnus Dei_, and the breaking of the Christian Host,
+she brought a toad dressed up, and pulled it to pieces. Then rolling
+her eyes about in a frightful way she raised them to heaven, and
+beheading the toad, uttered these strange words: "Ah, _Philip_,[59] if
+I had you here, you should be served in the same manner!"
+
+    [59] Lancre, 136. Why "Philip," I cannot say. By Satan Jesus
+    is always called John or _Janicot_ (Jack). Was she speaking
+    of Philip of Valois, who brought on the wasting hundred
+    years' war with England?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No answer being outwardly given to her challenge, no thunderbolt
+hurled upon her head, they imagine that she has triumphed over the
+Christ. The nimble band of demons seized their moment to astonish the
+people with various small wonders which amazed and overawed the more
+credulous. The toads, quite harmless in fact, but then accounted
+poisonous, were bitten and torn between their dainty teeth. They
+jumped over large fires and pans of live coal, to amuse the crowd and
+make them laugh at the fires of Hell.
+
+Did the people really laugh after a scene so tragical, so very bold? I
+know not. Assuredly there was no laughing on the part of her who first
+dared all this. To her these fires must have seemed like those of the
+nearest stake. Her business rather lay in forecasting the future of
+that devilish monarchy, in creating the Witch to be.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE SEQUEL--LOVE AND DEATH--SATAN DISAPPEARS.
+
+
+And now the multitude is made free, is of good cheer. For some hours
+the serf reigns in short-lived freedom. His time indeed is scant
+enough. Already the sky is changing, the stars are going down. Another
+moment, and the cruel dawn remits him to his slavery, brings him back
+again under hostile eyes, under the shadow of the castle, beneath the
+shadow of the church; back again to his monotonous toiling, to the old
+unending weariness of heart, governed as it were by two bells, whereof
+one keeps saying "Always," the other "Never." Anon they will be seen
+coming each out of his own house, heavily, humbly, with an air of calm
+composure.
+
+Let them at least enjoy the one short moment! Let each of these
+disinherited, for once fulfil his fancy, for once indulge his musings.
+What soul is there so all unhappy, so lost to all feeling, as never to
+have one good dream, one fond desire; never to say, "If this would
+only happen!"
+
+The only detailed accounts we have, as I said before, are modern,
+belonging to a time of peace and well-doing, when France was blooming
+afresh, in the latter years of Henry VI., years of thriving luxury,
+entirely different from that dark age when the Sabbath was first set
+going.
+
+No thanks to Mr. Lancre and others, if we refrain from pourtraying the
+Third Act as like the Church-Fair of Rubens, a very miscellaneous
+orgie, a great burlesque ball, which allowed of every kind of union,
+especially between near kindred. According to those authors, who would
+make us groan with horror, the main end of the Sabbath, the explicit
+doctrine taught by Satan, was incest; and in those great gatherings,
+sometimes of two thousand souls, the most startling deeds were done
+before the whole world.
+
+This is hard to believe; and the same writers tell of other things
+which seem quite opposed to a view so cynical. They say that people
+went to those meetings only in pairs, that they sat down to the feast
+by twos, that even if one person came alone, she was assigned a young
+demon, who took charge of her, and did the honours of the feast. They
+say, too, that jealous lovers were not afraid to go thither in company
+with the curious fair.
+
+We also find that the most of them came by families, children and all.
+The latter were sent off only during the first act, not during the
+feast, nor the services, nor yet while this third act was going on; a
+fact which proves that some decency was observed. Moreover, the scene
+was twofold. The household groups stayed on the moor in a blaze of
+light. It was only beyond the fantastic curtain of torch-smoke that
+the darker spaces, where people could roam in all directions, began.
+
+The judges, the inquisitors, for all their enmity, are fain to allow
+the existence here of a general spirit of peace and mildness. Of the
+three things that startle us in the feasts of nobles, there is not one
+here; no swords, no duels, no tables reeking blood. No faithless
+gallantries here bring dishonour on some intimate friend. Unknown,
+unneeded here, for all they say, is the unclean brotherhood of the
+Temple; in the Sabbath, woman is everything.
+
+The question of incest needs explaining. All alliances between
+kinsfolk, even those most allowable in the present day, were then
+regarded as a crime. The modern law, which is charity itself,
+understands the heart of man and the well-being of families.[60] It
+allows the widower to marry his wife's sister, the best mother his
+children could have. Above all, it allows a man to wed his cousin,
+whom he knows and may trust fully, whom he has loved perhaps from
+childhood, his playfellow of old, regarded by his mother with special
+favour as already the adopted of her own heart. In the Middle Ages all
+this was incestuous.
+
+    [60] Of course the allusion here, as shown in the next
+    following sentence, is to French law in particular. As for
+    the marriage of cousins, there is much to say on both sides
+    of the question.--TRANS.
+
+The peasant being fondest of his own family was driven to despair. It
+was a monstrous thing for him to marry a cousin, even in the sixth
+degree. It was impossible for him to get married in his own village
+where the question of kinship stood so much in his way. He had to look
+for a wife elsewhere, afar off. But in those days there was not much
+intercourse or acquaintance between different places, and each hated
+its own neighbours. On feast days one village would fight another
+without knowing the reason why, as may sometimes still be seen in
+countries never so thinly peopled. No one durst go seek a wife in the
+very spot where men had been fighting together, where he himself would
+have been in great danger.
+
+There was another difficulty. The lord of the young serf forbade his
+marrying in the next lordship. Becoming the serf of his wife's lord he
+would have been wholly lost to his own. Thus he was debarred by the
+priest from his cousin, by the lord from a stranger; and so it
+happened that many did not marry at all.
+
+The result was just what they pretended to avoid. In the Sabbath the
+natural sympathies sprang forth again. There the youth found again her
+whom he had known and loved at first, her whose "little husband" he
+had been called at ten years old. Preferring her as he certainly did,
+he paid but little heed to canonical hindrances.
+
+When we come to know the Mediaeval Family better, we give up believing
+the declamatory assumptions of a general mingling together of the
+people forming so great a crowd. On the contrary, we feel that each
+small group is so closely joined together, as to be utterly barred to
+the entrance of a stranger.
+
+The serf was not jealous towards his own kin, but his poverty and
+wretchedness made him exceedingly afraid of worsening his lot by
+multiplying children whom he could not support. The priest and the
+lord on their part wished to increase the number of their
+serfs--wanted the woman to be always bearing; and the strangest
+sermons were often delivered on this head,[61] varied sometimes with
+threats and cruel reproaches. All the more resolute was the prudence
+of the man. The woman, poor creature, unable to bear children fit to
+live on such conditions, bearing them only to her sorrow, had a horror
+of being made big. She never would have ventured to one of these night
+festivals without being first assured, again and again, that no woman
+ever came away pregnant.[62]
+
+    [61] The ingenious M. Genin has very recently collected the
+    most curious information on this point.
+
+    [62] Boguet, Lancre, and other authors, are agreed on this
+    question.
+
+They were drawn thither by the banquet, the dancing, the lights, the
+amusements; in nowise by carnal pleasure. The last thing they cared
+for was to heighten their poverty, to bring one more wretch into the
+world, to give another serf to their lord.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Cruel indeed was the social system of those days. Authority bade men
+marry, but rendered marriage nearly impossible, at once by the
+excessive misery of most, and the senseless cruelty of the canonical
+prohibitions.
+
+The result was quite opposed to the purity thus preached. Under a show
+of Christianity existed the patriarchate of Asia alone.
+
+Only the firstborn married. The younger brothers and sisters worked
+under him and for him. In the lonely farms of the mountains of the
+South, far from all neighbours and every woman, brothers and sisters
+lived together, the latter serving and in all ways belonging to the
+former; a way of life analogous to that in Genesis, to the marriages
+of the Parsees, to the customs still obtaining in certain shepherd
+tribes of the Himalayas.
+
+The mother's fate was still more revolting. She could not marry her
+son to a kinswoman, and thus secure to herself a kindly-affected
+daughter-in-law. Her son married, if he could, a girl from a distant
+village, an enemy often, whose entrance proved baneful either to the
+children of a former marriage, or to the poor mother, who was often
+driven away by the stranger wife. You may not think it, but the fact
+is certainly so. At the very least she was ill-used; banished from the
+fireside, from the very table.
+
+There is a Swiss law forbidding the removal of the mother from her
+place by the chimney-corner.
+
+She was exceedingly afraid of her son's marrying. But her lot was
+little happier if he did not marry. None the less servant was she of
+the young master of the house, who succeeded to all his father's
+rights, even to that of beating her. This impious custom I have seen
+still followed in the South: a son of five-and-twenty chastising his
+mother when she got drunk.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+How much greater her suffering in those days of savagery! Then it was
+rather he who came back from the feast half-drunken, hardly knowing
+what he was about. But one room, but one bed, was all they had between
+them. She was by no means free from fear. He had seen his friends
+married, and felt soured thereat. Thenceforth her way is marked by
+tears, by utter weakness, by a woful self-surrender. Threatened by her
+only God, her son, heart-broken at finding herself in a plight so
+unnatural, she falls desperate. She tries to drown all her memories in
+sleep. At length comes an issue for which neither of them can fairly
+account, an issue such as nowadays will often happen in the poorer
+quarters of large towns, where some poor woman is forced, frightened,
+perhaps beaten, into bearing every outrage. Thus conquered, and, spite
+of her scruples, far too resigned, she endured thenceforth a pitiable
+bondage; a life of shame and sorrow, and abundant anguish, growing
+with the yearly widening difference between their several ages. The
+woman of six-and-thirty might keep watch over a son of twenty years:
+but at fifty, alas! or still later, where would he be? From the great
+Sabbath where thronged the people of far villages, he would be
+bringing home a strange woman for his youthful mistress, a woman hard,
+heartless, devoid of ruth, who would rob her of her son, her seat by
+the fire, her bed, of the very house which she herself had made.
+
+To believe Lancre and others, Satan accounted the son for
+praiseworthy, if he kept faithful to his mother, thus making a virtue
+of a crime. If this be true, we must assume that the woman was
+protected by a woman, that the Witch sided with the mother, to defend
+her hearth against a daughter-in-law who, stick in hand, would have
+sent her forth to beg.
+
+Lancre further maintains that "never was good Witch, but she sprang
+from the love of a mother for her son." In this way, indeed, was born
+the Persian soothsayer, the natural fruit, they say, of so hateful a
+mystery; and thus the secrets of the magical art were kept confined to
+one family which constantly renewed itself.
+
+An impious error led them to imitate the harmless mystery of the
+husbandman, the unceasing vegetable round whereby the corn resown in
+the furrow, brings forth its corn.
+
+The less monstrous unions of brother with sister, so common in the
+East, and in Greece, were cold and rarely fruitful. They were wisely
+abandoned; nor would people ever have returned to them, but for that
+rebellious spirit which, being aroused by absurd restrictions, flung
+itself foolishly into the opposite extreme. Thus from unnatural laws,
+hatred begot unnatural customs.
+
+A cruel, an accursed time, a time big with despair!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We have been long discoursing; but the dawn is well-nigh come. In a
+moment the hour will strike for the spirits to take themselves away.
+The Witch feels her dismal flowers already withering on her brow.
+Farewell, her royalty, perhaps her life! Where would they be, if the
+day still found her there?
+
+Of Satan, what shall she make? A flame, a cinder? He asks for nothing
+better; knowing well, in his craftiness, that the only way to live and
+to be born again, is first to die.
+
+And will he die, he who as the mighty summoner of the dead, granted to
+them that mourn their only joy on earth, the love they had lost, the
+dream they had cherished? Ah, no! he is very sure to live.
+
+Will he die, he that mighty spirit who, finding Creation accurst, and
+Nature lying cold upon the ground, flung thither like a dirty
+foster-child from off the Church's garment, gathered her up and placed
+her on his bosom? In truth it cannot be.
+
+Will he die, he the one great physician of the Middle Ages, of a
+world that, falling sick, was saved by his poisons and bidden, poor
+fool, to live?
+
+As the gay rogue is sure of living, he dies wholly at his ease. He
+shuffles out of himself, cleverly burns up his fine goatskin, and
+disappears in a blaze of dawn.
+
+But _she_ who made Satan, who made all things, good or ill, whose
+countenance was given to so many forms of love, of devotion, and of
+crime,--to what end will she come? Behold her all lonely on her waste
+moorland.
+
+She is not, as they say, the dread of all. Many will bless her. More
+than one have found her beautiful, would sell their share in Paradise
+to dare be near her. But all around her is a wide gulf. They who
+admire, are none the less afraid of this all-powerful Medea, with her
+fair deep eyes, and the thrilling adders of her dark overflowing hair.
+
+To her thus lonely for ever, for evermore without love, what is there
+left? Nothing but the Demon who had suddenly disappeared.
+
+"'Tis well, good Devil, let us go. I am utterly loath to stay here any
+more. Hell itself is far preferable. Farewell to the world!"
+
+She must live but a very little longer, to play out the dreadful drama
+she had herself begun. Near her, ready saddled by the obedient Satan,
+stood a huge black horse, the fire darting from his eyes and nostrils.
+She sprang upon him with one bound.
+
+They follow her with their eyes. The good folk say with alarm, "What
+is to become of her?" With a frightful burst of laughter, she goes
+off, vanishing swift as an arrow. They would like much to know what
+becomes of the poor woman, but that they never will.[63]
+
+    [63] See the end of the Witch of Berkeley, as told by William
+    of Malmesbury.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE WITCH IN HER DECLINE--SATAN MULTIPLIED AND MADE COMMON.
+
+
+The Devil's delicate fondling, the lesser Witch, begotten of the Black
+Mass after the greater one's disappearance, came and bloomed in all
+her malignant cat-like grace. This woman is quite the reverse of the
+other: refined and sidelong in manner, sly and purring demurely, quick
+also at setting up her back. There is nothing of the Titan about her,
+to be sure. Far from that, she is naturally base; lewd from her cradle
+and full of evil daintinesses. Her whole life is the expression of
+those unclean thoughts which sometimes in a dream by night may assail
+him who would shrink with horror from any such by day.
+
+She who is born with such a secret in her blood, with such instinctive
+mastery of evil, she who has looked so far and so low down, will have
+no religion, no respect for anything or person in the world; none even
+for Satan, since he is a spirit still, while she has a particular
+relish for all things material.
+
+In her childhood she spoiled everything. Tall and pretty she startled
+all by her slovenly habits. With her Witchcraft becomes a mysterious
+cooking up of some mysterious chemistry. From an early date she
+delights to handle repulsive things, to-day a drug, to-morrow an
+intrigue. Among diseases and love-affairs she is in her element. She
+will make a clever go-between, a bold and skilful empiric. War will be
+made against her as a fancied murderer, as a woman who deals in
+poisons. And yet she has small taste for such things, is far from
+murderous in her desires. Devoid of goodness, she yet loves life,
+loves to work cures, to prolong others' lives. She is dangerous in two
+ways: on the one hand by selling receipts for barrenness, and even for
+abortion; while on the other, her headlong libertine fancy leads her
+to compass a woman's fall with her cursed potions, to triumph in the
+wicked deeds of love.
+
+Different, indeed, is this one from the other! She is a manufacturer:
+the other was the ungodly one, the demon, the great rebellion, the
+wife, we might almost say, the mother of Satan; for out of her and her
+inward strength he grew up. But this one is the Devil's daughter
+notwithstanding. Two things she derives from him, her uncleanness, her
+love of handling life. These are her allotted walk, in these she is
+quite an artist; an artist already trading in her lore, and we are
+admitted into the business.
+
+It was said that she would perpetuate herself by the incest from which
+she sprang. But she has no need of that: numberless little ones will
+she beget without help from another. In less than fifty years, at the
+opening of the fifteenth century, under Charles VI., a mighty
+contagion was spread abroad. Whoever thought he had any secrets or any
+receipts, whoever fancied himself a seer, whoever dreamed and
+travelled in his dreams, would call himself a pet of Satan. Every
+moonstruck woman adopted the awful name of Witch!
+
+A perilous, profitable name, cast at her in their hatred by people who
+alternately insult and implore the unknown power. It is none the less
+accepted, nay, is often claimed. To the children who follow her, to
+the woman who, with threatening fists, hurl the name at her like a
+stone, she turns round, saying proudly, "'Tis true, you have said
+well!"
+
+The business improves, and men are mingled in it. Hence another fall
+for the art. Still the least of the witches retains somewhat of the
+Sibyl. Those other frowsy charlatans, those clownish jugglers,
+mole-catchers, ratkillers, who throw spells over beasts, who sell
+secrets which they have not, defiled these times with the stench of a
+dismal black smoke, of fear and foolery. Satan grows enormous, gets
+multiplied without end. 'Tis a poor triumph, however, for him. He
+grows dull and sick at heart. Still the people keep flowing towards
+him, bent on having no other God than he. Himself only is to himself
+untrue.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In spite of two or three great discoveries, the fifteenth century is,
+to my thinking, none the less a century tired out, a century of few
+ideas.
+
+It opened right worthily with the Sabbath Royal of St. Denis, the wild
+and woful ball given by Charles VI. in the abbey so named, to
+commemorate the burial of Du Guesclin, which had taken place so many
+years before. For three days and nights was Sodom wallowing among the
+graves. The foolish king, not yet grown quite an idiot, compelled his
+royal forefathers to share in the ball, by making their dry bones
+dance in their biers. Death, becoming a go-between whether he would or
+no, lent a sharp spur to the voluptuous revel. Then broke out those
+unclean fashions of an age when ladies made themselves taller by
+wearing the Devil's horned-bonnet, and gloried in dressing as if they
+were all with child.[64] To this fashion they clung for the next forty
+years. The younger folk on their side, not to be behind in
+shamelessness, eclipsed them in the display of naked charms. The woman
+wore Satan on her forehead in the shape of a horned head-dress: on the
+feet of the bachelor and the page he was visible in the tapering
+scorpion-like tips of their shoes. Under the mask of animals they
+represented the lowest side of brute nature. The famous child stealer,
+Retz, here took his first flight in villany. The great feudal ladies,
+unbridled Jezebels, with less sense of shame in them than the men,
+scorned all disguise whatever; displayed themselves with face
+uncovered. In their sensual rages, in their mad parade of debauchery,
+the king, the whole company might see the bottomless pit itself
+yawning for the life, the feeling, the body, and the soul of each.
+
+    [64] Even in a very mystic theme, in a work of such genius as
+    the _Lamb_ of Van Eyck (says John of Bruges), all the Virgins
+    seem big. It was only the quaint fashion of the fifteenth
+    century.
+
+Out of such doings come forth the conquered of Agincourt, a poor
+generation of effete nobles, in whose miniatures you shiver to see the
+falling away of their sorry limbs, as shown through the treacherous
+tightness of their clothes.[65]
+
+    [65] This wasting away of a used-up, enervated race, mars the
+    effect of all those splendid miniatures of the Court of
+    Burgundy, the Duke of Berry, &c. No amount of clever handling
+    could make good works of art out of subjects so very
+    pitiable.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Much to be pitied is the Witch who, when the great lady came home from
+that royal feast, became her bosom-counsellor and agent charged with
+the doing of impossible things.
+
+In her own castle, indeed, the lady is almost, if not all alone,
+amidst a crowd of single men. To judge from romances you would think
+she delighted in girding herself with an array of fair girls. Far
+otherwise are we taught by history and common sense. Eleanor is not
+so silly as to match herself against Rosamond. With all their own
+rakishness, those queens and great ladies could be frightfully
+jealous; witness she who is said by Henry Martin to have caused the
+death of a girl admired by her husband, under the outrageous handling
+of his soldiery. The power wielded by the lady's love depends, we
+repeat, on her being alone. Whatever her age and figure, she becomes
+the dream of all. The Witch takes mischievous delight in making her
+abuse her goddesship, in tempting her to make game of the men she
+humbles and befools. She goes to all lengths of boldness, even
+treating them like very beasts. Look at them being transformed! Down
+on all fours they tumble, like fawning monkeys, absurd bears, lewd
+dogs, or swine eager to follow their contemptuous Circe.
+
+Her pity rises thereat? Nay, but she grows sick of it all, and kicks
+those crawling beasts with her foot. The thing is impure, but not
+heinous enough. An absurd remedy is found for her complaint. These
+others being so nought, she is to have something yet more
+nought--namely, a little sweetheart. The advice is worthy of the
+Witch. Love's spark shall be lighted before its time in some young
+innocent, sleeping the pure sleep of childhood! Here you have the ugly
+tale of little John of Saintre, pink of cherubim, and other paltry
+puppets of the Age of Decay.
+
+Through all those pedantic embellishments and sentimental
+moralizings, one clearly marks the vile cruelty that lies below. The
+fruit was killed in the flower. Here, in a manner, is the very "eating
+of children," which was laid so often to the Witch's charge. Anyhow,
+she drained their lives. The fair lady who caresses one in so tender
+and motherly a way, what is she but a vampire, draining the blood of
+the weak? The upshot of such atrocities we may gather from the tale
+itself. Saintre becomes a perfect knight, but so utterly frail and
+weak as to be dared and defied by the lout of a peasant priest, in
+whom the lady, become better advised, has seen something that will
+suit her best.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Such idle whimsies heighten the surfeit, the mad rage of an empty
+mind. Circe among her beasts grows so weary and heartsick that she
+would be a beast herself. She fancies herself wild, and locks herself
+up. From her tower she casts an evil eye towards the gloomy forest.
+She fancies herself a prisoner, and rages like a wolf chained fast.
+"Let the old woman come this moment: I want her. Run!" Two minutes
+later again: "What! is she not come yet?"
+
+At last she is come. "Hark you: I have a sore longing--invincible, as
+you know--to choke you, to drown you, or to give you up to the bishop,
+who already claims you. You have but one way of escape, that is, to
+satisfy another longing of mine by changing me into a wolf. I feel
+wretchedly bored, weary of keeping still. I want, by night at least,
+to run free about the forest. Away with stupid servants, with dogs
+that stun me with their noise, with clumsy horses that kick out and
+shy at a thicket."
+
+"But if you were caught, my lady----"
+
+"Insolent woman! You would rather die, then?"
+
+"At least you have heard the story of the woman-wolf, whose paw was
+cut off.[66] But, oh! how sorry I should be."
+
+    [66] Among the great ladies imprisoned in their castles, this
+    dreadful fancy was not rare. They hungered and thirsted for
+    freedom, for savage freedom. Boguet mentions how, among the
+    hills of Auvergne, a hunter one night drew his sword upon a
+    she-wolf, but missing her, cut off her paw. She fled away
+    limping. He came to a neighbouring castle to seek the
+    hospitality of him who dwelt there. The gentleman, on seeing
+    him, asked if he had had good sport. By way of answer he
+    thought to draw out of his pouch the she-wolf's paw; but what
+    was his amazement to find instead of the paw a hand, and on
+    one of the fingers a ring, which the gentleman recognized as
+    belonging to his wife! Going at once in search of her, he
+    found her hurt and hiding her fore-arm. To the arm which had
+    lost its hand he fitted that which the hunter had brought
+    him, and the lady was fain to own that she it was, who in the
+    likeness of a wolf had attacked the hunter, and afterwards
+    saved herself by leaving a paw on the battle-field. The
+    husband had the cruelty to give her up to justice, and she
+    was burnt.
+
+"That is my concern. I will hear nothing more, I am in a hurry--have
+been barking already. What happiness, to hunt all by myself in the
+clear moonlight; by myself to fasten on the hind, or man likewise if
+he comes near me; to attack the tender children, and, above all, to
+set my teeth in the women; ay, the women, for I hate them all--not one
+like yourself. Don't start, I won't bite you--you are not to my taste,
+and besides, you have no blood in you! 'Tis blood I crave--blood!"
+
+She can no longer refuse. "Nothing easier, my lady. To-night, at nine
+o'clock, you will drink this. Lock yourself up, and then turning into
+a wolf, while they think you are still here, you can scour the
+forest."
+
+It is done; and next morning the lady finds herself worn out and
+depressed. In one night she must have travelled some thirty leagues.
+She has been hunting and slaying until she is covered with blood. But
+the blood, perhaps, comes from her having torn herself among the
+brambles.
+
+A great triumph and danger also for her who has wrought this miracle.
+From the lady, however, whose command provoked it, she receives but a
+gloomy welcome. "Witch, 'tis a fearful power you have; I should never
+have guessed it. But now I fear and dread you. Good cause, indeed,
+they have to hate you. A happy day will it be when you are burnt. I
+can ruin you when I please. One word of mine about last night, and my
+peasants would this evening whet their scythes upon you. Out, you
+black-looking, hateful old hag!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The great folk, her patrons, launch her into strange adventures. For
+what can she refuse to her terrible protectors, when nothing but the
+castle saves her from the priest, from the faggot? If the baron, on
+his return from a crusade, being bent on copying the manners of the
+Turks, sends for her, and orders her to steal him a few children, what
+can she do? Raids such as those grand ones in which two thousand pages
+were sometimes carried off from Greek ground to enter the seraglio,
+were by no means unknown to the Christians; were known from the tenth
+century to the barons of England, at a later date to the knights of
+Rhodes and Malta. The famous Giles of Retz, the only one brought to
+trial, was punished, not for having stolen his small serfs, a crime
+not then uncommon, but for having sacrificed them to Satan. She who
+actually stole them, and was ignorant, doubtless, of their future lot,
+found herself between two perils: on the one hand the peasant's fork
+and scythe; on the other, those torments which awaited her, when
+recusant, within the tower. Retz's terrible Italian would have made
+nothing of pounding her in a mortar.[67]
+
+    [67] See my _History of France_, and still more the learned
+    and careful account by the lamented Armand Gueraud: _Notice
+    sur Gilles de Rais_, Nantes, 1855. We there find that the
+    purveyors of that horrible child's charnel-house were mostly
+    men.
+
+On all sides the perils and the profits went together. A position more
+frightfully corrupting could not have been found. The Witches
+themselves did not deny the absurd powers imputed to them by the
+people. They averred that by means of a doll stuck over with needles
+they could weave their spells around whomever they pleased, making him
+waste away until he died. They averred that mandragora, torn from
+beneath the gallows by the teeth of a dog, who invariably died
+therefrom, enabled them to pervert the understanding; to turn men into
+beasts, to give women over to idiotcy and madness. Still more dreadful
+was the furious frenzy caused by the Thorn-apple, or Datura, which
+made men dance themselves to death, and go through a thousand shameful
+antics, without their own knowledge or remembrance.[68]
+
+    [68] Pouchet, on the _Solaneae and General Botany_. Nysten,
+    _Dictionary of Medicine_, article _Datura_. The robbers
+    employed these potions but too often. A butcher of Aix and
+    his wife, whom they wanted to rob of their money, were made
+    to drink of some such, and became so maddened thereby, that
+    they danced all one night naked in a cemetery.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hence there grew up against them a feeling of boundless hatred,
+mingled with as extreme a fear. Sprenger, who wrote the _Hammer for
+Witches_, relates with horror how, in a season of snow, when all the
+roads were broken up, he saw a wretched multitude, wild with terror,
+and spell-bound by evils all too real, fill up all the approaches to a
+little German town. "Never," says he, "did you behold so mighty a
+pilgrimage to our Lady of Grace, or her of the wilderness. All these
+people, who hobbled, crawled, and stumbled among the quagmires, were
+on their way to the Witch, to beseech the grace of the Devil upon
+themselves. How proud and excited must the old woman have felt at
+seeing so large a concourse prostrate before her feet!"[69]
+
+    [69] The Witch delighted in causing the noble and the great
+    to undergo the most outrageous trials of their love. We know
+    that queens and ladies of rank (in Italy even to the last
+    century) held their court at times the most forbidding, and
+    exacted the most unpleasant services from their favourites.
+    There was nothing too mean, too repulsive, for the domestic
+    brute--the _cicisbeo_, the priest, the half-witted page--to
+    undergo, in the stupid belief that the power of a philtre
+    increased with its nastiness. This was sad enough when the
+    ladies were neither young, nor beautiful, nor witty. But what
+    of that other astounding fact, that a Witch, who was neither
+    a great lady, nor young, nor fair, but poor, and perhaps a
+    serf, clad only in dirty rags, could still by her malice, by
+    the strange power of her raging lewdness, by some
+    bewitchingly treacherous spell, stupefy the gravest
+    personages, and abase them to so low a depth? Some monks of a
+    monastery on the Rhine, wherein, as in many other German
+    convents, none but a noble of four hundred years' standing
+    could gain admission, sorrowfully owned to Sprenger that they
+    had seen three of their brethren bewitched in turn, and a
+    fourth killed by a woman, who boldly said, "I did it, and
+    will do so again: they cannot escape me, for they have
+    eaten," &c. (Sprenger, _Malleus maleficarum_, _quaestio_, vii.
+    p. 84.) "The worst of it is," says Sprenger, "that we have no
+    means of punishing or examining her: _so she lives still_."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE HAMMER FOR WITCHES.
+
+
+The witches took small care to hide their game. Rather they boasted of
+it; and it was, indeed, from their own lips that Sprenger picked up
+the bulk of the tales that grace his handbook. It is a pedantic work,
+marked out into the absurd divisions and subdivisions employed by the
+followers of St. Thomas Aquinas; but a work sincere withal, and
+frank-spoken, written by a man so thoroughly frightened by this
+dreadful duel between God and the Devil, wherein God _generally_
+allows the Devil to win, that the only remedy he can discern is to
+pursue the latter fire in hand, and burn with all speed those bodies
+which he had chosen for his dwelling-place.
+
+Sprenger's sole merit is the fact of his having written a complete
+book, which crowns a mighty system, a whole literature. To the old
+_Penitentiaries_, handbooks of confessors for the inquisition of sin,
+succeeded the _Directories_ for the inquisition of heresy, the
+greatest sin of all. But for Witchcraft, the greatest of all heresies,
+special handbooks or directories were appointed. Hammers for Witches,
+to wit. These handbooks, continually enriched by the zeal of the
+Dominicans, attained perfection in the _Malleus_ of Sprenger, the
+book by which he himself was guided during his great mission to
+Germany, and which for a century after served as a guide and light for
+the courts of the Inquisition.
+
+How was Sprenger led to the study of these things? He tells us that
+being in Rome, at a refectory where the monks were entertaining some
+pilgrims, he saw two from Bohemia; one a young priest, the other his
+father. The father sighing prayed for a successful journey. Touched
+with a kindly feeling Sprenger asked him why he sorrowed. Because his
+son was _possessed_: at great cost and with much trouble he had
+brought him to the tomb of the saints, at Rome.
+
+"Where is this son of yours?" said the monk.
+
+"By your side."
+
+"At this answer I shrank back alarmed. I scanned the young priest's
+figure, and was amazed to see him eat with so modest an air, and
+answer with so much gentleness. He informed me that, on speaking
+somewhat sharply to an old woman, she had laid him under a spell, and
+that spell was under a tree. What tree? The Witch steadily refused to
+say."
+
+Sprenger's charity led him to take the possessed from church to
+church, from relic to relic. At every halting-place there was an
+exorcism, followed by furious cries, contortions, jabbering in every
+language, and gambols without number: all this before the people, who
+followed the pair with shuddering admiration. The devils, so abundant
+in Germany, were scarcer among the Italians. For some days Rome talked
+of nothing else. The noise made by this affair doubtless brought the
+Dominican into public notice. He studied, collected all the _Mallei_,
+and other manuscript handbooks, and became a first-rate authority in
+the processes against demons. His _Malleus_ was most likely composed
+during the twenty years between this adventure and the important
+mission entrusted to Sprenger by Pope Innocent VIII., in 1484.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For that mission to Germany a clever man was specially needed; a man
+of wit and ability, who might overcome the dislike of honest German
+folk for the dark system it would be his care to introduce. In the Low
+Countries Rome had suffered a rude check, which brought the
+Inquisition into vogue there, and consequently closed France against
+it: Toulouse alone, as being the old Albigensian country, having
+endured the Inquisition. About the year 1460 a Penitentiary[70] of
+Rome, being made Dean of Arras, thought to strike an awe-inspiring
+blow at the _Chambers of Rhetoric_, literary clubs which had begun to
+handle religious questions. He had one of these Rhetoricians burnt for
+a wizard, and along with him some wealthy burgesses, and even a few
+knights. The nobles were angry at this near approach to themselves:
+the public voice was raised in violent outcry. The Inquisition was
+cursed and spat upon, especially in France. The Parliament of Paris
+roughly closed its doors upon it; and thus by her awkwardness did Rome
+lose her opportunity of establishing that Reign of Terror throughout
+the North.
+
+    [70] Officer charged with the absolution of
+    penitents.--TRANS.
+
+About 1484 the time seemed better chosen. The Inquisition had grown to
+so dreadful a height in Spain, setting itself even above the king,
+that it seemed already confirmed as a conquering institution, able to
+move forward alone, to make its way everywhere, and seize upon
+everything. In Germany, indeed, it was hindered by the jealous
+antagonism of the spiritual princes, who, having courts of their own,
+and holding inquisitions by themselves, would never agree to accept
+that of Rome. But the position of these princes towards the popular
+movements by which they were then so greatly disquieted, soon rendered
+them more manageable. All along the Rhine, and throughout Swabia, even
+on the eastern side towards Salzburg, the country seemed to be
+undermined. At every moment burst forth some fresh revolt of the
+peasantry. A vast underground volcano, an invisible lake of fire,
+showed itself, as it were, from place to place, in continual spouts of
+flame. More dreaded than that of Germany, the foreign Inquisition
+appeared at a most seasonable hour for spreading terror through the
+country, and crushing the rebellious spirits, by roasting, as the
+wizards of to-day, those who might else have been the insurgents of
+to-morrow. It was a beautiful _derivative_, an excellent popular
+weapon for putting down the people. This time the storm got turned
+upon the Wizards, as in 1349, and on many other occasions it had been
+launched against the Jews.
+
+Only the right man was needed. He who should be the first to set up
+his judgment-seat in sight of the jealous courts of Mentz and Cologne,
+in presence of the mocking mobs of Strazburg or Frankfort, must indeed
+be a man of ready wit. He would need great personal cleverness to
+atone for, to cause a partial forgetfulness of his hateful mission.
+Rome, too, has always plumed herself on choosing the best men for her
+work. Caring little for questions, and much for persons, she thought
+rightly enough that the successful issue of her affairs depended on
+the special character of her several agents abroad. Was Sprenger the
+right man? He was a German to begin with, a Dominican enjoying
+beforehand the support of that dreaded order through all its convents,
+through all its schools. Need was there of a worthy son of the
+schools, a good disputant, of a man well skilled in the _Sum_,[71]
+grounded firm in his St. Thomas, able at any moment to quote texts.
+All this Sprenger certainly was: and best of all, he was a fool.
+
+    [71] A mediaeval text-book on theology.--TRANS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It has been often said that _diabolus_ comes from _dia_, 'two,' and
+_bolus_, 'a pill or ball,' because devouring alike soul and body, he
+makes but one pill, one mouthful of the two. But"--he goes on to say
+with the gravity of _Sganarelle_--"in Greek etymology _diabolus_ means
+'shut up in a house of bondage,' or rather 'flowing down' (Teufel?),
+that is to say, falling, because he fell from heaven."
+
+Whence comes the word sorcery (_malefice_)? From _maleficiendo_, which
+means _male de fide sentiendo_.[72] A curious etymology, but one that
+will hold a great deal. Once trace a resemblance between witchcraft
+and evil opinions, and every wizard becomes a heretic, every doubter a
+wizard. All who think wrongly can be burnt for wizards. This was done
+at Arras; and they long to establish the same rule, little by little,
+everywhere else.
+
+    [72] "Thinking ill of the faith."--TRANS.
+
+Herein lies the once sure merit of Sprenger. A fool, but a fearless
+one, he boldly lays down the most unwelcome theses. Others would have
+striven to shirk, to explain away, to diminish, the objections that
+might be made. Not he, however. From the first page he puts plainly
+forward, one by one, the natural manifest reasons for not believing in
+the Satanic miracles. To these he coldly adds: "_They are but so many
+heretical mistakes_." And without stopping to refute those reasons, he
+copies you out the adverse passages found in the Bible, St. Thomas, in
+books of legends, in the canonists, and the scholiasts. Having first
+shown you the right interpretation, he grinds it to powder by dint of
+authority.
+
+He sits down satisfied, calm as a conqueror; seeming to say, "Well,
+what say you now? Will you dare use your reason again? Go and doubt
+away then; doubt, for instance, that the Devil delights in setting
+himself between wife and husband, although the Church and all the
+canonists repeatedly admit this reason for a divorce!"
+
+Of a truth this is unanswerable: nobody will breathe so much as a
+whisper in reply. Since Sprenger heads his handbook for judges by
+declaring the slightest doubt _heretical_, the judge stands bound
+accordingly; he feels that he cannot stumble, that if unhappily he
+should ever be tempted by an impulse of doubt or humanity, he must
+begin by condemning himself and delivering his own body to the flames.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The same method prevails everywhere: first the sensible meaning, which
+is then confronted openly, without reserve, by the negation of all
+good sense. Some one, for instance, might be tempted to say that as
+love is in the soul, there is no need to account for it by the
+mysterious working of the Devil. That is surely specious, is it not?
+
+"By no means," says Sprenger.
+
+"I mark a difference. He who cuts wood does not cause it to burn: he
+only does so indirectly. The woodcutter is Love; see Denis the
+Areopagite, Origen, John of Damascus. Therefore, love is but the
+indirect cause of love."
+
+What a thing, you see, to have studied! No weak school could have
+turned out such a man. Only Paris, Louvain, or Cologne, had machinery
+fit to mould the human brain. The school of Paris was mighty: for
+dog-Latin who can be matched with the _Janotus_ of Gargantua?[73] But
+mightier yet was Cologne, glorious queen of darkness, whence Hutten
+drew the type of his _Obscuri viri_, that thriving and fruitful race
+of obscurantists and ignoramuses.[74]
+
+    [73] A character in Rabelais. "Date nobis clochas nostras,
+    &c."--_Gargantua_, ch. 19.--TRANS.
+
+    [74] Ulrich von Hutten, friend of Luther, and author of the
+    witty _Epistolae obscurorum virorum_.--TRANS.
+
+This massive logician, so full of words, so devoid of meaning, sworn
+foe of nature as well as reason, takes his seat with a proud reliance
+on his books and gown, on his dirt and dust. On one side of his
+judgement-table lies the _Sum_, on the other the _Directory_. Beyond
+these he never goes: at all else he only smiles. On such a man as he
+there is no imposing: he is not the man to utter anent astrology or
+alchemy nonsense not so foolish but that others might be led thereby
+to observe truly. And yet Sprenger is a freethinker: he is sceptical
+about old receipts! Albert the Great may aver, that some sage in a
+spring of water will suffice to raise a storm, but Sprenger only
+shakes his head. Sage indeed! Tell that to others, I beg. For all my
+little experience, I see herein the craft of One who would put us on
+the wrong scent, that cunning Prince of the Air; but he will fare
+ill, for he has to deal with a doctor more subtle than the Subtle One
+himself.
+
+I should have liked to see face to face this wonderful specimen of a
+judge, and the people who were brought before him. The creatures that
+God might bring together from two different worlds would not be more
+unlike, more strange to each other, more utterly wanting in a common
+language. The old hag, a skeleton in tatters, with an eye flashing
+forth evil things, a being thrice cooked in hell-fire; and the
+ill-looking hermit shepherd of the Black Forest or the upper Alpine
+wastes--such are the savages offered to the leaden gaze of a
+scholarling, to the judgement of a schoolman.
+
+Not long will they let him toil in his judgment-seat. They will tell
+all without being tortured. Come the torture will indeed, but
+afterwards, by way of complement and crown to the law-procedure. They
+explain and relate to order whatever they have done. The Devil is the
+Witch's bedfellow, the shepherd's intimate friend. She, for her part,
+smiles triumphantly, feels a manifest joy in the horror of those
+around.
+
+Truly, the old woman is very mad, and equally so the shepherd. Are
+they foolish? Not at all, but far otherwise. They are refined, subtle,
+skilled in growing herbs, and seeing through walls. Still more clearly
+do they see those monumental ass's ears that overshadow the doctor's
+cap. Clearest of all is the fear he has of them, for in vain does he
+try to bear him boldly; he does nought but tremble. He himself owns
+that, if the priest who adjures the demon does not take care, the
+Devil will change his lodging only to pass into the priest himself,
+feeling all the more proud of dwelling in a body dedicated to God. Who
+knows but these simple Devils of Witches and shepherds might even
+aspire to inhabit an inquisitor? He is far from easy in mind when in
+his loudest voice he says to the old woman, "If your master is so
+mighty, why do I not feel his blows?"
+
+"And, indeed I felt them but too strongly," says the poor man in his
+book. "When I was in Ratisbon, how often he would come knocking at my
+windowpanes! How often he stuck pins in my cap! A hundred visions too
+did I have of dogs, monkeys," &c.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The dearest delight of that great logician, the Devil, is, by the
+mouth of the seeming old woman, to push the doctor with awkward
+arguments, with crafty questions, from which he can only escape by
+acting like the fish who saves himself by troubling the water and
+turning it black as ink. For instance, "The Devil does no more than
+God allows him: why, then, punish his tools?" Or again, "We are not
+free. As in the case of Job, the Devil is allowed by God to tempt and
+beset us, to urge us on by blows. Should we, then, punish him who is
+not free?" Sprenger gets out of that by saying, "We are free beings."
+Here come plenty of texts. "You are made serfs only by covenant with
+the Evil One." The answer to this would be but too ready: "If God
+allows the Evil One to tempt us into making covenants, he renders
+covenants possible," &c.
+
+"I am very good," says he, "to listen to yonder folk. He is a fool who
+argues with the Devil." So say all the rest likewise. They all cheer
+the progress of the trial: all are strongly moved, and show in murmurs
+their eagerness for the execution. They have seen enough of men
+hanged. As for the Wizard and the Witch, 'twill be a curious treat to
+see those two faggots crackling merrily in the flames.
+
+The judge has the people on his side, so he is not embarrassed.
+According to his _Directory_ three witnesses would be enough. Are not
+three witnesses readily found, especially to witness a falsehood? In
+every slanderous town, in every envious village teeming with the
+mutual hate of neighbours, witnesses abound. Besides, the _Directory_
+is a superannuated book, a century old. In that century of light, the
+fifteenth, all is brought to perfection. If witnesses are wanting, we
+are content with the _public voice_, the general clamour.[75]
+
+    [75] Faustin Helie, in his learned and luminous _Traite de
+    l'Instruction Criminelle_ (vol. i. p. 398), has clearly
+    explained the manner in which Pope Innocent III., about 1200,
+    suppressed the safeguards theretofore required in any
+    prosecution, especially the risk incurred by prosecutors of
+    being punished for slander. Instead of these were established
+    the dismal processes of _Denunciation and Inquisition_. The
+    frightful levity of these latter methods is shown by Soldan.
+    Blood was shed like water.
+
+A genuine outcry, born of fear; the piteous cry of victims, of the
+poor bewitched. Sprenger is greatly moved thereat. Do not fancy him
+one of those unfeeling schoolmen, the lovers of a dry abstraction. He
+has a heart: for which very reason he is so ready to kill. He is
+compassionate, full of lovingkindness. He feels pity for yon weeping
+woman, but lately pregnant, whose babe the witch had smothered by a
+look. He feels pity for the poor man whose land she wasted with hail.
+He pities the husband, who though himself no wizard, clearly sees his
+wife to be a witch, and drags her with a rope round her neck before
+Sprenger, who has her burnt.
+
+From a cruel judge escape was sometimes possible; but from our worthy
+Sprenger it was hopeless. His humanity is too strong: it needs great
+management, a very large amount of ready wit, to avoid a burning at
+his hands. One day there was brought before him the plaint of three
+good ladies of Strasburg who, at one same hour of the same day, had
+been struck by an arm unseen. Ah, indeed! They are fain to accuse a
+man of evil aspect, of having laid them under a spell. On being
+brought before the inquisitor, the man vows and swears by all the
+saints that he knows nothing about these ladies, has never so much as
+seen them. The judge is hard of believing: nor tears nor oaths avail
+aught with him. His great compassion for the ladies made him
+inexorable, indignant at the man's denials. Already he was rising from
+his seat. The man would have been tortured into confessing his guilt,
+as the most innocent often did. He got leave to speak, and said: "I
+remember, indeed, having struck some one yesterday at the hour named;
+but whom? No Christian beings, but only three cats which came
+furiously biting at my legs." The judge, like a shrewd fellow, saw the
+whole truth of the matter; the poor man was innocent; the ladies were
+doubtless turned on certain days into cats, and the Evil One amused
+himself by sending them at the legs of Christian folk, in order to
+bring about the ruin of these latter by making them pass for wizards.
+
+A judge of less ability would never have hit upon this. But such a man
+was not always to be had. It was needful to have always handy on the
+table of the Inquisition a good fool's guide, to reveal to simple and
+inexperienced judges the tricks of the Old Enemy, the best way of
+baffling him, the clever and deep-laid tactics employed with such
+happy effect by the great Sprenger in his campaigns on the Rhine. To
+that end the _Malleus_, which a man was required to carry in his
+pocket, was commonly printed in small 18mo, a form at that time
+scarce. It would not have been seemly for a judge in difficulties to
+open a folio on the table before his audience. But his handbook of
+folly he might easily squint at from the corner of his eye, or turn
+over its leaves as he held it under the table.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This _Malleus_ (or Mallet), like all books of the same class, contains
+a singular avowal, namely, that the Devil is gaining ground; in other
+words, that God is losing it; that mankind, after being saved by
+Christ, is becoming the Devil's prey. Too clearly indeed does he step
+forward from legend to legend. What a way he has made between the time
+of the Gospels, when he was only too glad to get into the swine, and
+the days of Dante, when, as lawyer and divine, he argues with the
+saints, pleads his cause, and by way of closing a successful
+syllogism, bears away the soul he was fighting for, saying, with a
+triumphant laugh, "You didn't know that I was a logician!"
+
+In the earlier days of the Middle Ages he waits till the last pangs to
+seize the soul and bear it off. Saint Hildegarde, about 1100, thinks
+that "_he cannot enter the body of a living man_, for else his limbs
+would fly off in all directions: it is but the shadow and the smoke of
+the Devil which pass therein." That last gleam of good sense vanishes
+in the twelfth century. In the thirteenth we find a suppliant so
+afraid of being caught alive that he has himself watched day and night
+by two hundred armed men.
+
+Then begins a period of increasing terror, in which men trust
+themselves less and ever less to God's protection. The Demon is no
+longer a stealthy sprite, no longer a thief by night, gliding through
+the gloom. He becomes the fearless adversary, the daring ape of
+Heaven, who in broad daylight mimics God's creation under God's own
+sun. Is it the legends tell us this? Nay, it is the greatest of the
+doctors. "The Devil," says Albert the Great, "transforms all living
+things." St. Thomas goes yet further. "All changes that may occur
+naturally by means of seeds, can be copied by the Devil." What an
+astounding concession, which coming from the mouth of so grave a
+personage, means nothing short of setting up one Creator face to face
+with another! "But in things done without the germinal process," he
+adds, "such as the changing of men into beasts or the resurrection of
+the dead, there the Devil can do nothing." Thus to God is left the
+smaller part of His work! He may only perform miracles, a kind of
+action alike singular and infrequent. But the daily miracle of life is
+not for Him alone: His copyist, the Devil, shares with Him the world
+of nature!
+
+For man himself, whose weak eyes see no difference between nature as
+sprung from God and nature as made by the Devil, here is a world split
+in twain! A dreadful uncertainty hangs over everything. Nature's
+innocence is gone. The clear spring, the pale flower, the little bird,
+are these indeed of God, or only treacherous counterfeits, snares laid
+out for man? Back! all things look doubtful! The better of the two
+creations, being suspiciously like the other, becomes eclipsed and
+conquered. The shadow of the Devil covers up the day, spreads over all
+life. To judge by appearances and the fears of men, he has ceased to
+share the world; he has taken it all to himself.
+
+So matters stand in the days of Sprenger. His book teems with saddest
+avowals of God's weakness. "These things," he says, "are done with
+God's leave." To permit an illusion so entire, to let people believe
+that God is nought and the Devil everything, is more than mere
+_permission_; is tantamount to decreeing the damnation of countless
+souls whom nothing can save from such an error. No prayers, no
+penances, no pilgrimages, are of any avail; nor even, so it is said,
+the sacrament of the altar. Strange and mortifying avowal! The very
+nuns who have just confessed themselves, declare _while the host is
+yet in their mouths_, that even then they feel the infernal lover
+troubling them without fear or shame, troubling and refusing to leave
+his hold. And being pressed with further questions, they add, through
+their tears, that he has a body _because he has a soul_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Manichees of old, and the more modern Albigenses, were charged
+with believing in the Power of Evil struggling side by side with Good,
+with making the Devil equal to God. Here, however, he is more than
+equal; for if God through His holy sacrament has still no power for
+good, the Devil certainly seems superior.
+
+I am not surprised at the wondrous sight then offered by the world.
+Spain with a darksome fury, Germany with the frightened pedantic rage
+certified in the _Malleus_, assail the insolent conqueror through the
+wretches in whom he chooses to dwell. They burn, they destroy the
+dwellings in which he has taken up his abode. Finding him too strong
+for men's souls, they try to hunt him out of their bodies. But what is
+the good of it all? You burn one old woman and he settles himself in
+her neighbour. Nay, more; if Sprenger may be trusted, he fastens
+sometimes on the exorcising priest, and triumphs over his very judge.
+
+Among other expedients, the Dominicans advised recourse to the
+intercession of the Virgin, by a continual repeating of the _Ave
+Maria_. Sprenger, for his part, always averred that such a remedy was
+but a momentary one. You might be caught between two prayers. Hence
+came the invention of the rosary, the chaplet of beads, by means of
+which any number of aves might be mumbled through, whilst the mind was
+busied elsewhere. Whole populations adopted this first essay of an art
+thereafter to be used by Loyola in his attempt to govern the world, an
+art of which his _Exercises_ furnish the ingenious groundwork.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All this seems opposed to what was said in the foregoing chapter as to
+the decline of Witchcraft. The Devil is now popular and everywhere
+present. He seems to have come off conqueror: but has he gained by
+his victory? What substantial profit has he reaped therefrom?
+
+Much, as beheld in his new phase of a scientific rebellion which is
+about to bring forth the bright Renaissance. None, if beheld under his
+old aspect, as the gloomy Spirit of Witchcraft. The stories told of
+him in the sixteenth century, if more numerous, more widespread than
+ever, readily swing towards the grotesque. People tremble, but they
+laugh withal.[76]
+
+    [76] See my _Memoirs of Luther_, concerning the Kilcrops, &c.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+CENTURY OF TOLERATION IN FRANCE: REACTION.
+
+
+The Church forfeited the wizard's property to the judge and the
+prosecutor. Wherever the Canon Law was enforced the trials for
+witchcraft waxed numerous, and brought much wealth to the clergy.
+Wherever the lay tribunals claimed the management of these trials they
+grew scarce and disappeared, at least for a hundred years in France,
+from 1450 to 1550.
+
+The first gleam of light shot forth from France in the middle of the
+fifteenth century. The inquiry made by Parliament into the trial of
+Joan of Arc, and her after reinstalment, set people thinking on the
+intercourse of spirits, good and bad; on the errors, also, of the
+spiritual courts. She whom the English, whom the greatest doctors of
+the Council of Basil pronounced a Witch, appeared to Frenchmen a saint
+and sibyl. Her reinstalment proclaimed to France the beginning of an
+age of toleration. The Parliament of Paris likewise reinstalled the
+alleged Waldenses of Arras. In 1498 it discharged as mad one who was
+brought before it as a wizard. None such were condemned in the reigns
+of Charles VIII., Louis XII., and Francis I.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the contrary, Spain, under the pious Isabella (1506) and the
+Cardinal Ximenes, began burning witches. In 1515, Geneva, being then
+under a Bishop, burned five hundred in three months. The Emperor
+Charles V., in his German Constitutions, vainly sought to rule, that
+"Witchcraft, as causing damage to goods and persons, is a question for
+_civil_, not ecclesiastic law." In vain did he do away the right of
+confiscation, except in cases of treason. The small prince-bishops,
+whose revenues were largely swelled by trials for witchcraft, kept on
+burning at a furious rate. In one moment, as it were, six hundred
+persons were burnt in the infinitesimal bishopric of Bamberg, and nine
+hundred in that of Wurtzburg. The way of going to work was very
+simple. Begin by using torture against the witnesses; create witnesses
+for the prosecution by means of pain and terror; then, by dint of
+excessive kindliness, draw from the accused a certain avowal, and
+believe that avowal in the teeth of proven facts. A witch, for
+instance, owns to having taken from the graveyard the body of an
+infant lately dead, that she might use it in her magical compounds.
+Her husband bids them go the graveyard, for the child is there still.
+On being disinterred, the child is found all right in his coffin. But
+against the witness of his own eyes the judge pronounces it _an
+appearance_, a cheat of the Devil. He prefers the wife's confession to
+the fact itself; and she is burnt forthwith.[77]
+
+    [77] For this and other facts regarding Germany, see Soldan.
+
+So far did matters go among these worthy prince-bishops, that after a
+while, Ferdinand II., the most bigoted of all emperors, the emperor of
+the Thirty Years' War, was fain to interfere, to set up at Bamberg an
+imperial commissary, who should maintain the law of the empire, and
+see that the episcopal judge did not begin the trial with tortures
+which settled it beforehand, which led straight to the stake.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Witches were easily caught by their confessions, sometimes without the
+torture. Many of them were half mad. They would own to turning
+themselves into beasts. The Italian women often became cats, and
+gliding under the doors, sucked, they said, the blood of children. In
+the land of mighty forests, in Lorraine and on the Jura, the women, of
+their own accord, became wolves, and, if you could believe them,
+devoured the passers by, even when nobody had passed by. They were
+burnt. Some girls, who swore they had given themselves to the Devil,
+were found to be maidens still. They, too, were burnt. Several seemed
+in a great hurry, as if they wanted to be burnt. Sometimes it happened
+from raging madness, sometimes from despair. An Englishwoman being led
+to the stake, said to the people, "Do not blame my judges. I wanted to
+put an end to my own self. My parents kept aloof from me in their
+dread. My husband had disowned me. I could not have lived on without
+disgrace. I longed for death, and so I told a lie."
+
+The first words of open toleration against silly Sprenger, his
+frightful Handbook, and his Inquisitors, were spoken by Molitor, a
+lawyer of Constance. He made this sensible remark, that the
+confessions of witches should not be taken seriously, because it was
+the very Father of Lies who spoke by their mouths. He laughed at the
+miracles of Satan, affirming them to be all illusory. In an indirect
+way, such jesters as Hutten and Erasmus dealt violent blows at the
+Inquisition, through their satires on the Dominican idiots. Cardan[78]
+said, straightforwardly, "In order to obtain forfeit property, the
+same persons acted as accusers and judges, and invented a thousand
+stories in proof."
+
+    [78] A famous Italian physician, who lived through the
+    greater part of the sixteenth century.--TRANS.
+
+That apostle of toleration, Chatillon, who maintained against
+Catholics and Protestants both, that heretics should not be burnt,
+though he said nothing about wizards, put men of sense in a better
+way. Agrippa,[79] Lavatier, above all, Wyer[80]] the illustrious
+physician of Cleves, rightly said that if those wretched witches were
+the Devil's plaything, we must lay the blame on the Devil, not on
+them; must cure, instead of burning them. Some physicians of Paris
+soon pushed incredulity so far as to maintain that the possessed and
+the witches were simply knaves. This was going too far. Most of them
+were sufferers under the sway of an illusion.
+
+    [79] Cornelius Agrippa, of Cologne, born in 1486, sometime
+    Secretary of the Emperor Maximilian, and author of two works
+    famous in their day, _Vanity of the Sciences_, and _Occult
+    Philosophy_.--TRANS.
+
+    [80] A friend of Sir Philip Sydney, who sent for him when
+    dying.--TRANS.
+
+The dark reign of Henry II. and Diana of Poitiers ends the season of
+toleration. Under Diana, they burn heretics and wizards again. On the
+other hand, Catherine of Medici, surrounded as she was by astrologers
+and magicians, would have protected the latter. Their numbers
+increased amain. The wizard Trois-Echelles, who was tried in the reign
+of Charles IX., reckons them at a hundred thousand, declaring all
+France to be one Witch.
+
+Agrippa and others affirm, that all science is contained in magic. In
+white magic undoubtedly. But the fears of fools and their fanatic
+rage, put little difference between them. In spite of Wyer, in spite
+of those true philosophers, Light and Toleration, a strong reaction
+towards darkness set in from a quarter whence it was least expected.
+Our magistrates, who for nearly a century, had shown themselves
+enlightened and fair-dealing, now threw themselves into the Spanish
+Catholicon[81] and the fury of the Leaguists,[82] until they waxed
+more priest-like than the priests themselves. While scouting the
+Inquisition from France, they matched, and well-nigh eclipsed it by
+their own deeds: the Parliament of Toulouse alone sending four hundred
+human bodies at one time to the stake. Think of the horror, the black
+smoke of all that flesh, of the frightful melting and bubbling of the
+fat amidst those piercing shrieks and yells! So accursed, so sickening
+a sight had not been seen, since the Albigenses were broiled and
+roasted.
+
+    [81] Catholicon, or purgative panacea: _i. e._ the
+    Inquisition.--TRANS.
+
+    [82] The wars of the Catholic League against Henry of Navarre
+    began in 1576.--TRANS.
+
+But this is all too little for Bodin, lawyer of Angers, and a violent
+adversary to Wyer. He begins by saying that the wizards in Europe are
+numerous enough to match Xerxes' army of eighteen hundred thousand
+men. Then, like Caligula, he utters a prayer, that these two millions
+might be gathered together, so as he, Bodin, could sentence and burn
+them all at one stroke.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The new rivalry makes matters worse. The gentry of the Law begin to
+say that the priest, being too often connected with the wizard, is no
+longer a safe judge. In fact, for a moment, the lawyers seem to be yet
+more trustworthy. In Spain, the Jesuit pleader, Del Rio; in Lorraine,
+Remy (1596); Boguet (1602) on the Jura; Leloyer (1605) in Anjou; are
+all matchless persecutors, who would have made Torquemada[83] himself
+die of envy.
+
+    [83] The infamous Spanish Inquisitor, who died at the close
+    of the fifteenth century, after sixteen years of untold
+    atrocities against the heretics of Spain.--TRANS.
+
+In Lorraine there seemed to be quite a dreadful plague of wizards and
+visionaries. Driven to despair by the constant passing of troops and
+brigands, the multitude prayed to the Devil only. They were drawn on
+by the wizards. A number of villagers, frightened by a twofold dread
+of wizards on the one hand, and judges on the other, longed to leave
+their homes and flee elsewhither, if Remy, Judge of Nancy, may be
+believed. In the work he dedicated (1596) to the Cardinal of Lorraine,
+he owns to having burnt eight hundred witches, in sixteen years. "So
+well do I deal out judgements," he says, "that last year sixteen slew
+themselves to avoid passing through my hands."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The priests felt humbled. Could they have done better than the laity?
+Nay, even the monkish lords of Saint Claude asked for a layman, honest
+Boguet, to sit in judgment on their own people, who were much given to
+witchcraft. In that sorry Jura, a poor land of firs and scanty
+pasturage, the serf in his despair yielded himself to the Devil. They
+all worshipped the Black Cat.
+
+Boguet's book had immense weight. This Golden Book, by the petty judge
+of Saint Claude, was studied as a handbook by the worshipful members
+of Parliament. In truth, Boguet is a thorough lawyer, is even
+scrupulous in his own way. He finds fault with the treachery shown in
+these prosecutions; will not hear of barristers betraying their
+clients, of judges promising pardon only to ensure the death of the
+accused. He finds fault with the very doubtful tests to which the
+witches were still exposed. "Torture," he says, "is needless: it never
+makes them yield." Moreover, he is humane enough to have them
+strangled before throwing them to the flames, always except the
+werewolves, "whom you must take care to burn alive." He cannot believe
+that Satan would make a compact with children: "Satan is too sharp;
+knows too well that, under fourteen years, any bargain made with a
+minor, is annulled by default of years and due discretion." Then the
+children are saved? Not at all; for he contradicts himself, and holds,
+moreover, that such a leprosy cannot be purged away without burning
+everything, even to the cradles. Had he lived, he would have come to
+that. He made the country a desert: never was there a judge who
+destroyed people with so fine a conscience.
+
+But it is to the Parliament of Bourdeaux that the grand hurrah for lay
+jurisdiction is sent up in Lancre's book on _The Fickleness of
+Demons_. The author, a man of some sense, a counsellor in this same
+Parliament, tells with a triumphant air of his fight with the Devil in
+the Basque country, where, in less than three months, he got rid of I
+know not how many witches, and, better still, of three priests. He
+looks compassionately on the Spanish Inquisition, which at Logrono,
+not far off, on the borders of Navarre and Castille, dragged on a
+trial for two years, ending in the poorest way by a small
+_auto-da-fe_, and the release of a whole crowd of women.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE WITCHES OF THE BASQUE COUNTRY: 1609.[84]
+
+    [84] The Basques of the Lower Pyrenees, the Aquitani of
+    Caesar, belonged to the old Iberian race which peopled Western
+    Europe before the Celtic era.--TRANS.
+
+
+That strong-handed execution of the priests shows M. Lancre to have
+been a man of independent spirit. In politics he is the same. In his
+book on _The Prince_ (1617), he openly declares "the law to be above
+the King."
+
+Never was the Basque character better drawn than in his book on _The
+Fickleness of Demons_. In France, as in Spain, the Basque people had
+privileges which almost made them a republic. On our side they owed
+the King no service but that of arms: at the first beat of drum they
+were bound to gather two thousand armed men commanded by Basque
+captains. They were not oppressed by their clergy, who seldom
+prosecuted wizards, being wizards themselves. The priests danced, wore
+swords, and took their mistresses to the Witches' Sabbath. These
+mistresses acted as their sextonesses or _benedictes_, to keep the
+churches in order. The parson quarrelled with nobody, offered the
+White Mass to God by day, the Black by night to the Devil, and
+sometimes, according to Lancre, in the same church.
+
+The Basques of Bayonne and St. Jean de Luz, a race of men quaint,
+venturesome, and fabulously bold, left many widows, from their habit
+of sailing out into the roughest seas to harpoon whales. Leaving their
+wives to God or the Devil, they threw themselves in crowds into the
+Canadian settlements of Henry IV. As for the children, these honest
+worthy sailors would have thought about them more, if they had been
+clear as to their parentage. But on their return home they would
+reckon up the months of their absence, and they never found the
+reckoning right.
+
+The women, bold, beautiful, imaginative, spent their day seated on
+tombs in the grave-yards, talking of the Sabbath, whither they
+expected to go in the evening. This was their passion, their craze.
+
+They are born witches, daughters of the sea and of enchantment. They
+sport among the billows, swimming like fish. Their natural master is
+the Prince of the Air, King of Winds and Dreams, the same who inspired
+the Sibyl and breathed to her the future.
+
+The judge who burns them is charmed with them, nevertheless. "When you
+see them pass," says he, "their hair flowing in the breeze about their
+shoulders, they walk so trim, so bravely armed in that fair
+head-dress, that the sun playing through it as through a cloud, causes
+a mighty blaze which shoots forth hot lightning-flashes. Hence the
+fascination of their eyes, as dangerous in love as in witchcraft."
+
+This amiable Bordeaux magistrate, the earliest sample of those worldly
+judges who enlivened the gown in the seventeenth century, plays the
+lute between whiles, and even makes the witches dance before sending
+them to the stake. And he writes well, far more clearly than anyone
+else. But for all that, one discovers in his work a new source of
+obscurity, inherent to those times. The witches being too numerous for
+the judge to burn them all, the most of them have a shrewd idea that
+he will show some indulgence to those who enter deepest into his
+thoughts and passions! What passions? you ask. First, his love of the
+frightfully marvellous, a passion common enough; the delight of
+feeling afraid; and also, if it must be said, the enjoyment of
+unseemly pleasures. Add to these a touch of vanity: the more dreadful
+and enraged those clever women show the Devil to be, the greater the
+pride taken by the judge in subduing so mighty an adversary. He arrays
+himself as it were in his victory, enthrones himself in his
+foolishness, triumphs in his senseless twaddling.
+
+The prettiest thing of this kind is the report of the procedure in the
+Spanish _auto-da-fe_ of Logrono, as furnished to us by Llorente.
+Lancre, while quoting him jealously and longing to disparage him, owns
+to the surpassing charm of the festival, the splendour of the sight,
+the moving power of the music. On one platform were the few condemned
+to the flames, on another a crowd of reprieved criminals. The
+confession of a repentant heroine who had dared all things, is read
+aloud. Nothing could be wilder. At the Sabbaths they ate children made
+into hash, and by way of second course, the bodies of wizards
+disentombed. Toads dance, and talk and complain lovingly of their
+mistresses, getting them scolded by the Devil. The latter politely
+escorts the witches home, lighting them with the arm of a child who
+died unchristened, &c.
+
+Among our Basques witchcraft put on a less fantastic guise. It seems
+that at this time the Sabbath was only a grand feast to which all, the
+nobles included, went for purposes of amusement. In the foremost line
+would be seen persons in veils and masks, by some supposed to be
+princes. "Once on a time," says Lancre, "none but idiots of the Landes
+appeared there: now people of quality are seen to go." To entertain
+these local grandees, Satan sometimes created a _Bishop of the
+Sabbath_. Such was the title he gave the young lord Lancinena, with
+whom the Devil in person was good enough to open the ball.
+
+So well supported, the witches held their sway, wielding over the land
+an amazing terrorism of the fancy. Numbers regarded themselves as
+victims, and became in fact seriously ill. Many were stricken with
+epilepsy, and barked like dogs. In one small town of Acqs were counted
+as many as forty of these barkers. The Witch had so fearful a hold
+upon them, that one lady being called as witness, began barking with
+uncontrollable fury as the Witch, unawares to herself, drew near.
+
+Those to whom was ascribed so terrible a power lorded it everywhere.
+No one would dare shut his door against them. One magistrate, the
+criminal assessor of Bayonne, allowed the Sabbath to be held in his
+own house. Urtubi, Lord of Saint Pe, was forced to hold the festival
+in his castle. But his head was shaken to that degree, that he
+imagined a witch was sucking his blood. Emboldened, however, by his
+fear, he, with another gentleman, repaired to Bordeaux, and persuaded
+the Parliament to obtain from the King the commissioning of two of its
+members, Espagnet and Lancre, to try the wizards in the Basque
+country. This commission, absolute and without appeal, worked with
+unheard-of vigour; in four months, from May to August, 1609, condemned
+sixty or eighty witches, and examined five hundred more, who, though
+equally marked with the sign of the Devil, figured in the proceedings
+as witnesses only.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was no safe matter for two men and a few soldiers to carry on these
+trials amongst a violent, hot-headed people, a multitude of wild and
+daring sailors' wives. Another source of danger was in the priests,
+many of whom were wizards, needing to be tried by the lay
+commissioners, despite the lively opposition of the clergy.
+
+When the judges appeared, many persons saved themselves in the hills.
+Others boldly remained, saying, it was the judges who would be burnt.
+So little fear had the witches themselves, that before the audience
+they would sink into the Sabbatic slumber, and affirm on awaking that,
+even in court, they had enjoyed the blessedness of Satan. Many said,
+they only suffered from not being able to prove to him how much they
+burned to suffer for his sake.
+
+Those who were questioned said they could not speak. Satan rising into
+their throats blocked up their gullets. Lancre, who wrote this
+narrative, though the younger of the commissioners, was a man of the
+world. The witches guessed that, with a man of his sort, there were
+means of saving themselves. The league between them was broken. A
+beggar-girl of seventeen, La Murgui, or Margaret, who had found
+witchcraft gainful, and, while herself almost a child, had brought
+away children as offerings to the Devil, now betook herself, with
+another girl, Lisalda, of the same age, to denouncing all the rest. By
+word of mouth or in writing she revealed all; with the liveliness, the
+noise, the emphatic gestures of a Spaniard, entering truly or falsely
+into a hundred impure details. She frightened, amused, wheedled her
+judges, drawing them after her like fools. To this corrupt, wanton,
+crazy girl, they entrusted the right of searching about the bodies of
+girls and boys, for the spot whereon Satan had set his mark. This spot
+discovered itself by a certain numbness, by the fact that you might
+stick needles into it without causing pain. While a surgeon thus
+tormented the elder ones, she took in hand the young, who, though
+called as witnesses, might themselves be accused, if she pronounced
+them to bear the mark. It was a hateful thing to see this brazen-faced
+girl made sole mistress of the fate of those wretched beings,
+commissioned to prod them all over with needles, and able at will to
+assign those bleeding bodies to death!
+
+She had gotten so mighty a sway over Lancre, as to persuade him that,
+while he was sleeping in Saint Pe, in his own house, guarded by his
+servants and his escort, the Devil came by night into his room, to say
+the Black Mass; while the witches getting inside his very curtains,
+would have poisoned him, had he not been well protected by God
+Himself. The Black Mass was offered by the Lady of Lancinena, to whom
+Satan made love in the very bedroom of the judge. We can guess the
+likely aim of this wretched tale: the beggar bore a grudge against the
+lady, who was good-looking, and, but for this slander, might have come
+to bear sway over the honest commissioner.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lancre and his colleague taking fright, went forward; never dared to
+draw back. They had their royal gallows set up on the very spots where
+Satan had held a Sabbath. People were alarmed thereat, deeming them
+strongly backed by the arm of royalty. Impeachments hailed about them.
+The women all came in one long string to accuse each other. Children
+were brought forward to impeach their mothers. Lancre gravely ruled
+that a child of eight was a good, sufficient, reputable witness!
+
+M. d'Espagnet could give but a few moments to this matter, having
+speedily to show himself in the Estates of Bearn. Lancre being pushed
+unwittingly forward by the violence of the younger informers, who
+would have fallen into great danger, if they had failed to get the old
+ones burnt, threw the reins on the neck of the business, and hurried
+it on at full gallop. A due amount of witches were condemned to the
+stake. These, too, on finding themselves lost, ended by impeaching
+others. When the first batch were brought to the stake, a frightful
+scene took place. Executioner, constables, and sergeants, all thought
+their last hour was come. The crowd fell savagely upon the carts,
+seeking to force the wretches to withdraw their accusations. The men
+put daggers to their throats: their furious companions were like to
+finish them with their nails.
+
+Justice, however, got out of the scrape with some credit; and then the
+commissioners went on to the harder work of sentencing eight priests
+whom they had taken up. The girls' confessions had brought these men
+to light. Lancre speaks of their morals like one who knew all about
+them of himself. He rebukes them, not only for their gay proceedings
+on Sabbath nights, but, most of all, for their sextonesses and female
+churchwardens. He even repeats certain tales about the priests having
+sent off the husbands to Newfoundland, and brought back Devils from
+Japan who gave up the wives into their hands.
+
+The clergy were deeply stirred: the Bishop of Bayonne would have made
+resistance. His courage failing him, he appointed his vicar-general to
+act as judge-assistant in his own absence. Luckily the Devil gave the
+accused more help than their Bishop. He opened all the doors, so that
+one morning five of the eight were found missing. The commissioners
+lost no time in burning the three still left to them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This happened about August, 1609. The Spanish inquisitors at Logrono
+did not crown their proceedings with an _auto-da-fe_ before the 8th
+November, 1610. They had met with far more trouble than our own
+countrymen, owing to the frightful number of persons accused. How burn
+a whole people? They sought advice of the Pope, of the greatest
+doctors in Spain. The word was given to draw back. Only the wilful who
+persisted in denying their guilt, were to be burnt; while they who
+pleaded guilty should be let go. The same method had already been used
+to rescue priests in trials for loose living. According to Llorente,
+it was deemed sufficient, if they owned their crime, and went through
+a slight penance.
+
+The Inquisition, so deadly to heretics, so cruel to Moors and Jews,
+was much less so to wizards. These, being mostly shepherds, had no
+quarrel with the Church. The rejoicings of goatherds were too low, if
+not too brutish, to disturb the enemies of free thought.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lancre wrote his book mainly to show how much the justice of French
+Parliaments and laymen excelled the justice of the priests. It is
+written lightly, merrily, with flowing pen. It seems to express the
+joy felt by one who has come creditably out of a great risk. It is a
+gasconading, an over-boastful joy. He tells with pride how, the
+Sabbath following the first execution of the witches, their children
+went and wailed to Satan, who replied that their mothers had not been
+burnt, but were alive and happy. From the midst of the crowd the
+children thought they heard their mothers' voices saying how
+thoroughly blest they were. Satan was frightened nevertheless. He
+absented himself for four Sabbaths, sending a small commonplace devil
+in his stead. He did not show himself again till the 22nd July. When
+the wizards asked him the reason of his absence, he said, "I have been
+away, pleading your cause against _Little John_," the name by which he
+called Jesus. "I have won the suit, and they who are still in prison
+will not be burnt."
+
+The lie was given to the great liar. And the conquering magistrate
+avers that, while the last witch was burning, they saw a swarm of
+toads come out of her head. The people fell on them with stones, so
+that she was rather stoned than burnt. But for all their attacks, they
+could not put an end to one black toad which escaped from flames,
+sticks, and stones, to hide, like the Devil's imp it was, in some spot
+where it could never be found.[85]
+
+    [85] For a more detailed account of these Basque Witches, the
+    English reader may turn to Wright's _Narratives of Sorcery
+    and Magic_. Bentley, 1851.--TRANS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+SATAN TURNS PRIEST.
+
+
+Whatever semblance of Satanic fanaticism was still preserved by the
+witches, it transpires from the narratives of Lancre and other writers
+of the seventeenth century, that the Sabbath then was mainly an affair
+of money. They raised contributions almost by force, charged something
+for right of entrance, and extracted fines from those who stayed away.
+At Brussels and in Picardy, they had a fixed scale of payment for
+rewarding those who brought new members into the brotherhood.
+
+In the Basque country no mystery was kept up. The gatherings there
+would amount to twelve thousand persons, of all classes, rich or poor,
+priests and gentlemen. Satan, himself a gentleman, wore a hat upon his
+three horns, like a man of quality. Finding his old seat, the druidic
+stone, too hard for him, he treats himself to an easy well-gilt
+arm-chair. Shall we say he is growing old? More nimble now than when
+he was young, he frolics about, cuts capers, and leaps from the bottom
+of a large pitcher. He goes through the service head downwards, his
+feet in the air.
+
+He likes everything to go off quite respectably, and spares no cost
+in his scenic arrangements. Besides the customary flames, red, yellow,
+and blue, which entertain the eye, as they show forth or hide the
+flickering shadows, he charms the ear with strange music, mainly of
+little bells that tickle the nerves with something like the searching
+vibrations of musical-glasses. To crown this splendour Satan bids them
+bring out his silver plate. Even his toads give themselves airs,
+become fashionable, and, like so many lordlings, go about in green
+velvet.
+
+The general effect is that of a large fair, of a great masked ball
+with very transparent disguises. Satan, who understands his epoch,
+opens the ball with the Bishop of the Sabbath; or the King and Queen:
+offices devised in compliment to the great personages, wealthy or
+well-born, who honour the meeting by their presence.
+
+Here may be seen no longer the gloomy feast of rebels, the baleful
+orgie of serfs and boors, sharing by night the sacrament of love, by
+day the sacrament of death. The violent Sabbath-round is no more the
+one only dance of the evening. Thereto are now added the Moorish
+dances, lively or languishing, but always amorous and obscene, in
+which girls dressed up for the purpose, like _La Murgui_ or _La
+Lisalda_, feigned and showed off the most provoking characters. Among
+the Basques these dances formed, we are told, the invincible charm
+which sent the whole world of women, wives, daughters, widows--the
+last in great numbers--headlong into the Sabbath.
+
+Without such amusements and the accompanying banquet, one could hardly
+understand this general rage for these Sabbaths. It is a kind of love
+without love; a feast of barrenness undisguised. Boguet has settled
+that point to a nicety. Differing in one passage, where he dismisses
+the women as afraid of coming to harm, Lancre is generally at one with
+Boguet, besides being more sincere. The cruel and foul researches he
+pursues on the very bodies of witches, show clearly that he deemed
+them barren, and that a barren passive love underlay the Sabbath
+itself.
+
+The feast ought therefore to have been a dismal one, if the men had
+owned the smallest heart.
+
+The silly girls who went to dance and eat were victims in every way.
+But they were resigned to everything save the prospect of bearing
+children. They bore indeed a far heavier load of wretchedness than the
+men. Sprenger tells of the strange cry, which even in his day burst
+forth in the hour of love, "May the Devil have the fruits!" In his
+day, moreover, people could live for two _sous_ a day, while in the
+reign of Henry IV., about 1600, they could barely live for twenty.
+Through all that century the desire, the need for barrenness grew more
+and more.
+
+Under this growing dread of love's allurements the Sabbath would have
+become quite dull and wearisome, had not the conductresses cleverly
+made the most of its comic side, enlivening it with farcical
+interludes. Thus, the opening scene in which Satan, like the Priapus
+of olden times, bestowed his coarse endearments on the Witch, was
+followed by another game, a kind of chilly purification, which the
+sorceress underwent with much grimacing, and a great show of
+unpleasant shuddering. Then came another swinish farce, described by
+Lancre and Boguet, in which some young and pretty wife would take the
+Witch's place as Queen of the Sabbath, and submit her body to the
+vilest handling. A farce not less repulsive was the "Black Sacrament,"
+performed with a black radish, which Satan would cut into little
+pieces and gravely swallow.
+
+The last act of all, according to Lancre, or at least according to the
+two bold hussies who made him their fool, was an astounding event to
+happen in such crowded meetings. Since witchcraft had become
+hereditary in whole families, there was no further need of openly
+divulging the old incestuous ways of producing witches, by the
+intercourse of a mother with her son. Some sort of comedy perhaps was
+made out of the old materials, in the shape of a grotesque Semiramis
+or an imbecile Ninus. But the more serious game, which doubtless
+really took place, attests the existence of great profligacy in the
+upper walks of society: it took the form of a most hateful and
+barbarous hoax.
+
+Some rash husband would be tempted to the spot, so fuddled with a
+baleful draught of datura or belladonna, that, like one entranced, he
+came to lose all power of speech and motion, retaining only his
+sight. His wife, on the other hand, being so bewitched with erotic
+drinks as to lose all sense of what she was doing, would appear in a
+woeful state of nature, letting herself be caressed under the
+indignant eyes of one who could no longer help himself in the least.
+His manifest despair, his bootless efforts to unshackle his tongue,
+and set free his powerless limbs, his dumb rage and wildly rolling
+eyes, inspired beholders with a cruel joy, like that produced by some
+of Moliere's comedies. The poor woman, stung with a real delight,
+yielded herself up to the most shameful usage, of which on the morrow
+neither herself nor her husband would have the least remembrance. But
+those who had seen or shared in the cruel farce, would they, too, fail
+to remember?
+
+In such heinous outrages an aristocratic element seems traceable. In
+no way do they remind us of the old brotherhood of serfs, of the
+original Sabbath, which, though ungodly, and foul enough, was still a
+free straightforward matter, in which all was done readily and without
+constraint.
+
+Clearly, Satan, depraved as he was from all time, goes on spoiling
+more and more. A polite, a crafty Satan is he now become, sweetly
+insipid, but all the more faithless and unclean. It is a new, a
+strange thing to see at the Sabbaths, his fellowship with priests. Who
+is yon parson coming along with his _Benedicte_, his sextoness, he who
+jobs the things of the Church, saying the White Mass of mornings, the
+Black at night? "Satan," says Lancre, "persuades him to make love to
+his daughters in the spirit, to debauch his fair penitents." Innocent
+magistrate! He pretends to be unaware that for a century back the
+Devil had been working away at the Church livings, like one who knew
+his business! He had made himself father-confessor; or, if you would
+rather have it so, the father-confessor had turned Devil.
+
+The worthy M. de Lancre should have remembered the trials that began
+in 1491, and helped perchance to bring the Parliament of Paris into a
+tolerant frame of mind. It gave up burning Satan, for it saw nothing
+of him but a mask.
+
+A good many nuns were conquered by his new device of borrowing the
+form of some favourite confessor. Among them was Jane Pothierre, a
+holy woman of Quesnoy, of the ripe age of forty-five, but still, alas!
+all too impressible. She owns her passion to her ghostly counsellor,
+who loth to listen to her, flies to Falempin, some leagues off. The
+Devil, who never sleeps, saw his advantage, and perceiving her, says
+the annalist, "goaded by the thorns of Venus, he slily took the shape
+of the aforesaid 'Father,' and returning every night to the convent,
+was so successful in befooling her, that she owned to having received
+him 434 times."[86] Great pity was felt for her on her repenting; and
+she was speedily saved from all need of blushing, being put into a
+fine walled-tomb built for her in the Castle of Selles, where a few
+days after she died the death of a good Catholic. Is it not a deeply
+moving tale? But this is nothing to that fine business of Gauffridi,
+which happened at Marseilles while Lancre was drawing up deeds at
+Bayonne.
+
+    [86] Massee, _Chronique du Monde_, 1540; and the Chroniclers
+    of Hainault, &c.
+
+The Parliament of Provence had no need to envy the success attained by
+that of Bordeaux. The lay authorities caught at the first occasion of
+a trial for witchcraft to institute a reform in the morals of the
+clergy. They sent forth a stern glance towards the close-shut
+convent-world. A rare opportunity was offered by the strange
+concurrence of many causes, by the fierce jealousies, the revengeful
+longings which severed priest from priest. But for those mad passions
+which ere long began to burst forth at every moment, we should have
+gained no insight into the real lot of that great world of women who
+died in those gloomy dwellings; not one word should we have heard of
+the things that passed behind those parlour gratings, within those
+mighty walls which only the confessor could overleap.
+
+The example of the Basque priest, whom Lancre presents to us as
+worldly, trifling, going with his sword upon him, and his deaconess by
+his side, to dance all night at the Sabbath, was not one to inspire
+fear. It was not such as he whom the Inquisition took such pains to
+screen, or towards whom a body so stern for others, proved itself, for
+once, indulgent. It is easy to see through all Lancre's reticences
+the existence of _something else_. And the States-General of 1614,
+affirming that priests should not be tried by priests, are also
+thinking of _something else_. This very mystery it is which gets torn
+in twain by the Parliament of Provence. The director of nuns gaining
+the mastery over them and disposing of them, body and soul, by means
+of witchcraft,--such is the fact which comes forth from the trial of
+Gauffridi; at a later date from the dreadful occurrences at Loudun and
+Louviers; and also in the scenes described by Llorente, Ricci, and
+several more.
+
+One common method was employed alike for reducing the scandal, for
+misleading the public, for hiding away the inner fact while it was
+busied with the outer aspects of it. On the trial of a priestly
+wizard, all was done to juggle away the priest by bringing out the
+wizard; to impute everything to the art of the magician, and put out
+of sight the natural fascination wielded by the master of a troop of
+women all abandoned to his charge.
+
+But there was no way of hushing up the first affair. It had been
+noised abroad in all Provence, in a land of light, where the sun
+pierces without any disguise. The chief scene of it lay not only in
+Aix and Marseilles, but also in Sainte-Baume, the famous centre of
+pilgrimage for a crowd of curious people, who thronged from all parts
+of France to be present at a deadly duel between two bewitched nuns
+and their demons. The Dominicans, who attacked the affair as
+inquisitors, committed themselves by the noise they made about it
+through their partiality for one of these nuns. For all the care
+Parliament presently took to hurry the conclusion, these monks were
+exceedingly anxious to excuse her and justify themselves. Hence the
+important work of the monk Michaelis, a mixture of truth and fable;
+wherein he raises Gauffridi, the priest he had sent to the flames,
+into the Prince of Magicians, not only in France, but even in Spain,
+Germany, England, Turkey, nay, in the whole inhabited earth.
+
+Gauffridi seems to have been a talented, agreeable man. Born in the
+mountains of Provence, he had travelled much in the Low Countries and
+the East. He bore the highest character in Marseilles, where he served
+as priest in the Church of Acoules. His bishop made much of him: the
+most devout of the ladies preferred him for their confessor. He had a
+wondrous gift, they say, of endearing himself to all. Nevertheless, he
+might have preserved his fair reputation had not a noble lady of
+Provence, whom he had already debauched, carried her blind, doting
+fondness to the extent of entrusting him, perhaps for her religious
+training, with the care of a charming child of twelve, Madeline de la
+Palud, a girl of fair complexion and gentle nature. Thereon, Gauffridi
+lost his wits, and respected neither the youth nor the holy ignorance,
+the utter unreserve of his pupil.
+
+As she grew older, however, the young highborn girl discovered her
+misfortune, in loving thus beneath her, without hope of marriage. To
+keep his hold on her, Gauffridi vowed he would wed her before the
+Devil, if he might not wed her before God. He soothed her pride by
+declaring that he was the Prince of Magicians, and would make her his
+queen. He put on her finger a silver ring, engraved with magic
+characters. Did he take her to the Sabbath, or only make her believe
+she had been there, by confusing her with strange drinks and magnetic
+witcheries? Certain it is, at least, that torn by two different
+beliefs, full of uneasiness and fear, the girl thenceforth became mad
+at certain times, and fell into fits of epilepsy. She was afraid of
+being carried off alive by the Devil. She durst no longer stay in her
+father's house, and took shelter in the Ursuline Convent at
+Marseilles.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+GAUFFRIDI: 1610.
+
+
+The order of Ursuline nuns seemed to be the calmest, the least
+irrational of them all. They were not wholly idle, but found some
+little employment in the bringing up of young girls. The Catholic
+reaction which, aiming at a higher flight of ecstasy than was possible
+at that time even in Spain, had foolishly built a number of convents,
+Carmelite, Bernardine, and Capuchin, soon found itself at the end of
+its motive-powers. The girls of whom people got rid by shutting them
+up so strictly therein, died off immediately, and their swift decease
+led to frightful statements of the cruelty shown by their families.
+They perished, indeed, not by their excessive penances, but rather of
+heart-sickness and despair. After the first heats of zeal were over,
+the dreadful disease of the cloister, described by Cassieu as dating
+from the fifteenth century, that crushing, sickening sadness which
+came on of an afternoon--that tender listlessness which plunged them
+into a state of unutterable exhaustion, speedily wore them away. A few
+among them would turn as if raging mad, choking, as it were, with the
+exceeding strength of their blood.
+
+A nun who hoped to die decently, without bequeathing too large a share
+of remorse to her kindred, was bound to live on about ten years, the
+mean term of life in the cloister. She needed to be let gently down;
+and men of sense and experience felt that her days could only be
+prolonged by giving her something to do, by leaving her not quite
+alone. St. Francis of Sales[87] founded the Visitandine order, whose
+duty it was to visit the sick in pairs. Caesar of Bus and Romillion,
+who had established the Teaching Priests in connection with the
+Oratorians[88], afterwards ordained what might be called the Teaching
+Sisters, the Ursulines, who taught under the direction of the said
+priests. The whole thing was under the supervision of the bishops, and
+had very little of the monastic about it: the nuns were not shut up
+again in cloisters. The Visitandines went out; the Ursulines received,
+at any rate, their pupils' kinsfolk. Both of them had connection with
+the world under guardians of good repute. The result was a certain
+mediocrity. Though the Oratorians and the Doctrinaries numbered among
+them persons of high merit, the general character of the order was
+uniformly moderate, commonplace; it took care never to soar too high.
+Romillion, founder of the Ursulines, was an oldish man, a convert
+from Protestantism, who had roamed everywhere, and come back again to
+his starting point. He deemed his young Provencials wise enough
+already, and counted on keeping his little flock on the slender
+pasturage of an Oratorian faith, at once monotonous and rational. And
+being such, it came in time to be utterly wearisome. One fine morning
+all had disappeared.
+
+    [87] St. Francis of Sales, famous for his successful missions
+    among the Protestants, and Bishop of Geneva in his later
+    years, died in 1622.--TRANS.
+
+    [88] The Brethren of the Oratory, founded at Rome in
+    1564.--TRANS.
+
+Gauffridi, the mountaineer of Provence, the travelled mystic, the man
+of strong feelings and restless mind, had quite another effect upon
+them, when he came thither as Madeline's ghostly guide. They felt a
+certain power, and by those who had already passed out of their wild,
+amorous youth, were doubtless assured that it was nothing less than a
+power begotten of the Devil. All were seized with fear, and more than
+one with love also. Their imaginations soared high; their heads began
+to turn. Already six or seven may be seen weeping, shrieking, yelling,
+fancying themselves caught by the Devil. Had the Ursulines lived in
+cloisters, within high walls, Gauffridi, being their only director,
+might one way or another have made them all agree. As in the cloisters
+of Quesnoy, in 1491, so here also it might have happened that the
+Devil, who gladly takes the form of one beloved, had under that of
+Gauffridi made himself lover-general to the nuns. Or rather, as in
+those Spanish cloisters named by Llorente, he would have persuaded
+them that the priestly office hallowed those to whom the priest made
+love, that to sin with him, was only to be sanctified. A notion,
+indeed, ripe through France, and even in Paris, where the mistresses
+of priests were called "the hallowed ones."[89]
+
+    [89] Lestoile, edit. Michaud, p. 561.
+
+Did Gauffridi, thus master of all, keep to Madeline only? Did not the
+lover change into the libertine? We know not. The sentence points to a
+nun who never showed herself during the trial, but reappeared at the
+end, as having given herself up to the Devil and to him.
+
+The Ursuline convent was open to all visitors. The nuns were under the
+charge of their Doctrinaries, men of fair character, and jealous
+withal. The founder himself was there, indignant, desperate. How
+woeful a mishap for the rising order, just as it was thriving amain
+and spreading all over France! After all its pretensions to wisdom,
+calmness, good sense, thus suddenly to go mad! Romillion would have
+hushed up the matter if he could. He caused one of his priests to
+exorcise the maidens. But the demons laughed the exorciser to scorn.
+He who dwelt in the fair damsel, even the noble demon Beelzebub,
+Spirit of Pride, never deigned to unclose his teeth.
+
+Among the possessed was one sister from twenty to twenty-five years
+old, who had been specially adopted by Romillion; a girl of good
+culture, bred up in controversy; a Protestant by birth, but left an
+orphan, to fall into the hands of the Father, a convert like herself
+from Protestantism. Her name, Louisa Capeau, sounds plebeian. She
+showed herself but too clearly a girl of exceeding wit, and of a
+raging passion. Her strength, moreover, was fearful to see. For three
+months, in addition to the hellish storm within, she carried on a
+desperate struggle, which would have killed the strongest man in a
+week.
+
+She said she had three devils: Verrine, a good Catholic devil, a
+volatile spirit of the air; Leviathan, a wicked devil, an arguer and a
+Protestant; lastly, another, acknowledged by her to be the spirit of
+uncleanness. One other she forgot to name, the demon of jealousy.
+
+She bore a savage hate to the little fair-faced damsel, the favoured
+rival, the proud young woman of rank. This latter, in one of her fits,
+had said that she went to the Sabbath, where she was made queen, and
+received homage, and gave herself up, but only to the prince--"What
+prince?" To Louis Gauffridi, prince of magicians.
+
+Pierced by this revelation as by a dagger, Louisa was too wild to
+doubt its truth. Mad herself, she believed the mad woman's story in
+order to ruin her. Her own devil was backed by all the jealous demons.
+The women all exclaimed that Gauffridi was the very king of wizards.
+The report spread everywhere, that a great prize had been taken, a
+priest-king of magicians, even the prince of universal magic. Such was
+the dreadful diadem of steel and flame which these feminine demons
+drove into his brow.
+
+Everyone lost his head, even to old Romillion himself. Whether from
+hatred of Gauffridi, or fear of the Inquisition, he took the matter
+out of the bishop's hands, and brought his two bewitched ones, Louisa
+and Madeline, to the Convent of Sainte-Baume, whose prior was the
+Dominican Michaelis, papal inquisitor in the Pope's domain of Avignon,
+and, as he himself pretended, over all Provence. The great point was
+to get them exorcised. But as the two women were obliged to accuse
+Gauffridi, the business ended in making him fall into the hands of the
+Inquisition.
+
+Michaelis had to preach on Advent Sunday at Aix, before the
+Parliament. He felt how much so striking a drama would exalt him. He
+grasped at it with all the eagerness of a barrister in a Criminal
+Court, when a very dramatic murder, or a curious case of adultery
+comes before him.
+
+The right thing in matters of this sort was, to spin out the play
+through Advent, Christmas, Lent, and burn no one before the Holy Week,
+the vigil, as it were, of the great day of Easter. Michaelis kept
+himself for the last act, entrusting the bulk of the business to a
+Flemish Dominican in his service, Doctor Dompt, from Louvain, who had
+already exorcised, was well-skilled in fooleries of that nature.
+
+The best thing the Fleming could do, was to do nothing. In Louisa, he
+found a terrible helpmate, with thrice as much zeal in her as the
+Inquisition itself, unquenchable in her rage, of a burning eloquence,
+whimsical, and sometimes very odd, but always raising a shudder; a
+very torch of Hell.
+
+The matter was reduced to a public duel between the two devils, Louisa
+and Madeline.
+
+Some simple folk who came thither on a pilgrimage to Sainte-Baume, a
+worthy goldsmith, for instance, and a draper, both from Troyes, in
+Champagne, were charmed to see Louisa's devil deal such cruel blows at
+the other demons, and give so sound a thrashing to the magicians. They
+wept for joy, and went away thanking God.
+
+It is a terrible sight, however, even in the dull wording of the
+Fleming's official statement, to look upon this unequal strife; to
+watch the elder woman, the strong and sturdy Provencial, come of a
+race hard as the flints of its native Crau, as day after day she
+stones, knocks down, and crushes her young and almost childish victim,
+who, wasted with love and shame, has already been fearfully punished
+by her own distemper, her attacks of epilepsy.
+
+The Fleming's volume, which, with the additions made by Michaelis,
+reaches to four hundred pages in all, is one condensed epitome of the
+invectives, threats, and insults spewed forth by this young woman in
+five months; interspersed with sermons also, for she used to preach on
+every subject, on the sacraments, on the next coming of Antichrist, on
+the frailty of women, and so forth. Thence, on the mention of her
+devils, she fell into the old rage, and renewed twice a-day, the
+execution of the poor little girl; never taking breath, never for one
+minute staying the frightful torrent, until at least the other in her
+wild distraction, "with one foot in hell"--to use her own
+words--should have fallen into a convulsive fit, and begun beating the
+flags with her knees, her body, her swooning head.
+
+It must be acknowledged that Louisa herself is a trifle mad: no amount
+of mere knavishness would have enabled her to maintain so long a
+wager. But her jealousy points with frightful clearness to every
+opening by which she may prick or rend the sufferer's heart.
+
+Everything gets turned upside down. This Louisa, possessed of the
+Devil, takes the sacrament whenever she pleases. She scolds people of
+the highest authority. The venerable Catherine of France, the oldest
+of the Ursulines, came to see the wonder, asked her questions, and at
+the very outset caught her telling a flagrant and stupid falsehood.
+The impudent woman got out of the mess by saying in the name of her
+evil spirit, "The Devil is the Father of Lies."
+
+A sensible Minorite who was present, took up the word and said, "Now,
+thou liest." Turning to the exorcisers, he added, "Cannot ye make her
+hold her tongue?" Then he quoted to them the story of one Martha, a
+sham demoniac of Paris. By way of answer, she was made to take the
+communion before him. The Devil communicate, the Devil receive the
+body of God! The poor man was bewildered; humbled himself before the
+Inquisition. They were too many for him, so he said not another word.
+
+One of Louisa's tricks was to frighten the bystanders, by saying she
+could see wizards among them; which made every one tremble for
+himself.
+
+Triumphant over Sainte-Baume, she hits out even at Marseilles. Her
+Flemish exorciser, being reduced to the strange part of secretary and
+bosom-counsellor to the Devil, writes, under her dictation, five
+letters: first, to the Capuchins of Marseilles, that they may call
+upon Gauffridi to recant; second, to the same Capuchins, that they may
+arrest Gauffridi, bind him fast with a stole, and keep him prisoner in
+a house of her describing; thirdly, several letters to the moderate
+party, to Catherine of France, to the Doctrinal Priests, who had
+declared against her; and then this lewd, outrageous termagant ends
+with insulting her own prioress: "When I left, you bade me be humble
+and obedient. Now take back your own advice."
+
+Her devil Verrine, spirit of air and wind, whispered to her some
+trivial nonsense, words of senseless pride which harmed friends and
+foes, and the Inquisition itself. One day she took to laughing at
+Michaelis, who was shivering at Aix, preaching in a desert while all
+the world was gone to hear strange things at Sainte-Baume. "Michaelis,
+you preach away, indeed, but you get no further forward; while Louisa
+has reached, has caught hold of the quintessence of all perfection."
+
+This savage joy was mainly caused by her having quite conquered
+Madeline at last. One word had done more for her than a hundred
+sermons: "Thou shalt be burnt." Thenceforth in her distraction the
+young girl said whatever the other pleased, and upheld her statements
+in the meanest way. Humbling herself before them all, she besought
+forgiveness of her mother, of her superior Romillion, of the
+bystanders, of Louisa. According to the latter, the frightened girl
+took her aside, and begged her to be merciful, not to chasten her too
+much.
+
+The other woman, tender as a rock and merciful as a hidden reef, felt
+that Madeline was now hers, to do whatever she might choose. She
+caught her, folded her round, and bedazed her out of what little
+spirit she had left. It was a second enchantment; but all unlike that
+by Gauffridi, a _possession_ by means of terror. The poor downtrodden
+wretch, moving under rod and scourge, was pushed onward in a path of
+exquisite suffering which led her to accuse and murder the man she
+loved still.
+
+Had Madeline stood out, Gauffridi would have escaped, for every one
+was against Louisa. Michaelis himself at Aix, eclipsed by her as a
+preacher, treated by her with so much coolness, would have stopped the
+whole business rather than leave the honour of it in her hands.
+
+Marseilles supported Gauffridi, being fearful of seeing the
+Inquisition of Avignon pushed into her neighbourhood, and one of her
+own children carried off from her threshold. The Bishop and Chapter
+were specially eager to defend their priest, maintaining that the
+whole affair sprang from nothing but a rivalry between confessors,
+nothing but the hatred commonly shown by monks towards secular
+priests.
+
+The Doctrinaries would have quashed the matter. They were sore
+troubled by the noise it made. Some of them in their annoyance were
+ready to give up everything and forsake their house.
+
+The ladies were very wroth, especially Madame Libertat, the lady of
+the Royalist leader who had given Marseilles up to the King.
+
+The Capuchins whom Louisa had so haughtily commanded to seize on
+Gauffridi, were, like all other of the Franciscan orders, enemies of
+the Dominicans. They were jealous of the prominence gained for these
+latter by their demoniac friend. Their wandering life, moreover, by
+throwing them into continual contact with the women, brought them a
+good deal of moral business. They had no wish to see too close a
+scrutiny made into the lives of clergymen; and so they also took the
+side of Gauffridi. Demoniacs were not so scarce, but that one was
+easily found and brought forward at the first summons. Her devil,
+obedient to the rope-girdle of St. Francis, gainsaid everything said
+by the Dominicans' devil: it averred--and the words were straightway
+written down--that "Gauffridi was no magician at all, and could not
+therefore be arrested."
+
+They were not prepared for this at Sainte-Baume. Louisa seemed
+confounded. She could only manage to say that apparently the Capuchins
+had not made their devil swear to tell the truth: a sorry reply,
+backed up, however, by the trembling Madeline, who, like a beaten
+hound that fears yet another beating, was ready for anything, ready
+even to bite and tear. Through her it was that Louisa at such a crisis
+inflicted an awful bite.
+
+She herself merely said that the Bishop was offending God unawares.
+She clamoured against "the wizards of Marseilles" without naming any
+one. But the cruel, the deadly word was spoken at her command by
+Madeline. A woman who had lost her child two years before, was pointed
+out by her as having throttled it. Afraid of being tortured, she fled
+or hid herself. Her husband, her father, went weeping to Sainte-Baume,
+hoping of course to soften the inquisitors. But Madeline durst not
+unsay her words; so she renewed the charge.
+
+No one now could feel safe. As soon as the Devil came to be accounted
+God's avenger, from the moment that people under his dictation began
+writing the names of those who should pass through the fire, every one
+had before him, day and night, the hideous nightmare of the stake.
+
+To withstand these bold attempts of the Papal Inquisition, Marseilles
+ought to have been backed up by the Parliament of Aix. Unluckily she
+knew herself to be little liked at Aix. That small official town of
+magistrates and nobles was always jealous of the wealth and splendour
+of Marseilles, the Queen of the South. On the other hand, the great
+opponent of Marseilles, the Papal Inquisitor, forestalled Gauffridi's
+appeal to the Parliament by carrying his own suit thither first. This
+was a body of utter fanatics, headed by some heavy nobles, whose
+wealth had been greatly increased in a former century by the massacre
+of the Vaudois. As lay judges, too, they were charmed to see a Papal
+Inquisitor set the precedent of acknowledging that, in a matter
+touching a priest, in a case of witchcraft, the Inquisition could not
+go beyond the preliminary inquiry. It was just as though the
+inquisitors had formally laid aside their old pretensions. The people
+of Aix, like those of Bordeaux before them, were also bitten by the
+flattering thought, that these lay-folk had been set up by the Church
+herself as censors and reformers of the priestly morals.
+
+In a business where all would needs be strange and miraculous, not
+least among those marvels was it to see so raging a demon grow all at
+once so fair-spoken towards the Parliament, so politic and
+fine-mannered. Louisa charmed the Royalists by her praises of the late
+King. Henry IV.--who would have thought it?--was canonized by the
+Devil. One morning, without any invitation, he broke forth into
+praises of "that pious and saintly King who had just gone up to
+heaven."
+
+Such an agreement between two old enemies, the Parliament and the
+Inquisition, which latter was thenceforth sure of the secular arm, its
+soldiers, and executioner; this and the sending of a commission to
+Sainte-Baume to examine the possessed, take down their statements,
+hear their charges, and impannel a jury, made up a frightful business
+indeed. Louisa openly pointed out the Capuchins, Gauffridi's
+champions, and proclaimed "their coming punishment _temporally_" in
+their bodies, and in their flesh.
+
+The poor Fathers were sorely bruised. Their devil would not whisper
+one word. They went to find the Bishop, and told him that indeed they
+might not refuse to bring Gauffridi forward at Sainte-Baume, in
+obedience to the secular power; but afterwards the Bishop and Chapter
+could claim him back, and replace him under the shelter of episcopal
+justice.
+
+Doubtless they had also reckoned on the agitation that would be shown
+by the two young women at the sight of one they loved; on the extent
+to which even the terrible Louisa might be shaken by the reproaches of
+her own heart.
+
+That heart indeed woke up at the guilty one's approach: for one moment
+the furious woman seemed to grow tender. I know nothing more fiery
+than her prayer for God to save the man she has driven to death:
+"Great God, I offer thee all the sacrifices that have been offered
+since the world began, that will be offered until it ends. All, all,
+for Lewis. I offer thee all the tears of every saint, all the
+transports of every angel. All, all, for Lewis. Oh, that there were
+yet more souls to reckon up, that so the oblation might be all the
+greater! It should be all for Lewis. O God, the Father of Heaven, have
+pity on Lewis! O God the Son, Redeemer of the world, have pity on
+Lewis!" &c.
+
+Bootless pity! baneful as well as bootless! Her real desire was that
+the accused _should not harden his heart_, should plead guilty. In
+that case by our laws he would most assuredly be burnt.
+
+She herself, in short, was worn out, unable to do anything more. The
+inquisitor Michaelis was so humbled by a victory he could not have
+gained without her, so wroth with the Flemish exorciser who had become
+her obedient follower, and let her see into all the hidden springs of
+the tragedy, that he came simply to crush Louisa, and save Madeline by
+substituting the one for the other, if he could, in this popular
+drama. This move of his implies some skill, and a knowing eye for
+scenery. The winter and the Advent season had been wholly taken up
+with the acting of that awful sibyl, that raging bacchante. In the
+milder days of a Provencial spring, in the season of Lent, he would
+bring upon the scene a more moving personage, a demon all womanly,
+dwelling in a sick child, in a fair-haired frightened girl. The nobles
+and the Parliament of Provence would feel an interest in a little lady
+who belonged to an eminent house.
+
+Far from listening to his Flemish agent, Louisa's follower, Michaelis
+shut the door upon him when he sought to enter the select council of
+Parliament-men. A Capuchin who also came, on the first words spoken by
+Louisa, cried out, "Silence, accursed devil!"
+
+Meanwhile Gauffridi had arrived at Sainte-Baume, where he cut a sorry
+figure. A man of sense, but weak and blameworthy, he foreboded but too
+truly how that kind of popular tragedy would end; and in coming to a
+strait so dreadful, he saw himself forsaken and betrayed by the child
+he loved. He now entirely forsook himself. When he was confronted with
+Louisa, she seemed to him like a judge, like one of those cruel and
+subtle schoolmen who judged the causes of the Church. To all her
+questions concerning doctrine, he only answered _yes_, assenting even
+to points most open to dispute; as, for instance, to the assumption
+"that the Devil in a court of justice might be believed on his word
+and his oath."
+
+This lasted only a week, from the 1st to the 8th January. The clergy
+of Marseilles demanded Gauffridi back. His friends, the Capuchins,
+declared that they had found no signs of magic in his room. Four
+canons of Marseilles came with authority to take him, and carried him
+away home.
+
+If Gauffridi had fallen very low, his adversaries had not risen much.
+Even the two inquisitors, Michaelis and the Fleming, were in shameful
+variance with each other. The partiality of the former for Madeline,
+of the latter for Louisa, went beyond mere words, leading them into
+opposite lines of action. That chaos of accusations, sermons,
+revelations, which the Devil had dictated by the mouth of Louisa, the
+Fleming who wrote it down maintained to be the very word of God, and
+expressed his fear that somebody might tamper with the same. He owned
+to a great mistrust of his chief, Michaelis, who, he was sore afraid,
+would so amend the papers in behalf of Madeline, as to ensure the ruin
+of Louisa. To guard them to the best of his power, he shut himself up
+in his room and underwent a regular siege. Michaelis, with the
+Parliament-men on his side, could only get at the manuscript by using
+the King's name and breaking the door open.
+
+Louisa, afraid of nothing, sought to array the Pope against the King.
+The Fleming carried an appeal to the legate at Avignon, against his
+chief, Michaelis. But the Papal Court had a prudent fear of causing
+scandal by letting one inquisitor accuse another. Lacking its support,
+the Fleming had no resource but to submit. To keep him quiet Michaelis
+gave him back his papers.
+
+Those of Michaelis, forming a second report, dull and nowise
+comparable with the former, are full of nought but Madeline. They
+played music to try and soothe her: care was taken to note down when
+she ate, and when she did not eat. Too much time indeed was taken up
+about her, often in a way but little edifying. Strange questions are
+put to her touching the Magician, and what parts of his body might
+bear the mark of the Devil. She herself was examined. This would have
+to be done at Aix by surgeons and doctors; but meanwhile, in the
+height of his zeal, Michaelis examined her at Sainte-Baume, and put
+down the issue of his researches. No matron was called to see her. The
+judges, lay and monkish, agreeing in this one matter, and having no
+fear of each other's overlooking, seem to have quietly passed over
+this contempt of outward forms.
+
+In Louisa, however, they found a judge. The bold woman branded the
+indecency as with hot iron. "They who were swallowed up by the Flood
+never behaved so ill!... Even of thee, O Sodom, the like was never
+said!"
+
+She also averred that Madeline was given over to uncleanness. This was
+the saddest thing of all. In her blind joy at being alive, at escaping
+the flames, or else from some cloudy notion that it was her turn now
+to act upon her judges, the poor simpleton would sing and dance at
+times with a shameful freedom, in a coarse, indecent way. The old
+Doctrinal father, Romillion, blushed for his Ursuline. Shocked to
+remark the admiration of the men for her long hair, he said that such
+a vanity must be taken from her, be cut away.
+
+In her better moments she was gentle and obedient.
+
+They would have liked to make her a second Louisa; but her devils were
+vain and amorous; not, like the other's, eloquent and raging. When
+they wanted her to preach, she could only utter sorry things.
+Michaelis was fain to play out the piece by himself. As chief
+inquisitor, and bound greatly to outdo his Flemish underling, he
+avowed that he had already drawn out of this small body a host of six
+thousand, six hundred, and sixty devils: only a hundred still
+remained. By way of convincing the public, he made her throw up the
+charm or spell which by his account she had swallowed, and he drew it
+from her mouth in some slimy matter. Who could hold out any longer?
+Assurance itself stood stupefied and convinced.
+
+Madeline was in a fair way to escape: the only hindrance was herself.
+Every moment she would be saying something rash, something to arouse
+the misgivings of her judges, and urge them beyond all patience. She
+declared that everything to her recalled Gauffridi, that everywhere
+she saw him present. Nor would she hide from them her dreams of love.
+"To-night," she said, "I was at the Sabbath. To my statue all covered
+with gilding the magicians offered their homage. Each of them, in
+honour thereof, made oblation of some blood drawn from his hands with
+a lancet. _He_ was also there, on his knees, a rope round his neck,
+beseeching me to go back and betray him not. I held out. Then said he,
+'Is there anyone here who would die for her?' 'I,' said a young man,
+and he was sacrificed by the magician."
+
+At another time she saw him, and he asked her only for one of her fine
+fair locks. "And when I refused, he said, 'Only the half of one
+hair.'"
+
+She swore, however, that she never yielded. But one day, the door
+happening to be open, behold our convert running off at the top of her
+speed to rejoin Gauffridi!
+
+They took her again, at least her body. But her soul? Michaelis knew
+not how to catch that again. Luckily he caught sight of her magic
+ring, which was taken off, cut up, destroyed, and thrown into the
+fire. Fancying, moreover, that this perverseness on the part of one so
+gentle was due to unseen wizards who found their way into her room, he
+set there a very substantial man at arms, with a sword to slash about
+him everywhere, and cut the invisible imps into pieces.
+
+But the best physic for the conversion of Madeline was the death of
+Gauffridi. On the 5th February, the inquisitor went to Aix for his
+Lent preachings, saw the judges, and stirred them up. The Parliament,
+swiftly yielding to such a pressure, sent off to Marseilles an order
+to seize the rash man, who, finding himself so well backed by Bishop,
+Chapter, Capuchins, and all the world, had fancied they would never
+dare so far.
+
+Madeline from one quarter, Gauffridi from another, arrived at Aix. She
+was so disturbed that they were forced to bind her. Her disorder was
+frightful, and all were in great perplexity what to do. They bethought
+them at least of one bold way of dealing with this sick child; one of
+those fearful tricks that throw a woman into fits, and sometimes kill
+her outright. A vicar-general of the archbishopric said that the
+palace contained a dark narrow charnel-house, such as you may see in
+the Escurial, and called in Spain a "rotting vat."
+
+There, in olden days, old bones of unknown dead were left to waste
+away. Into this tomb-like cave the trembling girl was led. They
+exorcised her by putting those chilly bones to her face. She did not
+die of fright, but thenceforth gave herself up to their will and
+pleasure; and so they got what they wanted, the death of the
+conscience, the destruction of all that remained to her of moral
+insight and free will.
+
+She became their pliant tool, ready to obey their least desire, to
+flatter them, to try and guess beforehand what would give them most
+pleasure. Huguenots were brought before her: she called them names.
+Confronted with Gauffridi, she told forth by heart her grievances
+against him, better than the King's own officers could have done. This
+did not prevent her from squalling violently, when she was brought to
+the church to excite the people against Gauffridi, by making her devil
+blaspheme in the magician's name. Beelzebub speaking through her said,
+"In the name of Gauffridi I abjure God;" and again, at the lifting up
+of the Host, "Let the blood of the just be upon me, in the name of
+Gauffridi!"
+
+An awful fellowship indeed! This twofold devil condemns one out of the
+other's mouth; whatever Madeline says, is ascribed to Gauffridi. And
+the scared crowd were impatient to behold the burning of the dumb
+blasphemer, whose ungodliness so loudly declared itself by the voice
+of the girl.
+
+The exorcisers then put to her this cruel question, to which they
+themselves could have given the best answer:--"Why, Beelzebub, do you
+speak so ill of your great friend?" Her answer was frightful: "If
+there be traitors among men, why not among demons also? When I am with
+Gauffridi, I am his to do all his will. But when you constrain me, I
+betray him and turn him to scorn."
+
+However, she could not keep up this hateful mockery. Though the demon
+of fear and fawning seemed to have gotten fast hold of her, there was
+room still for despair. She could no longer take the slightest food;
+and they who for five months had been killing her with exorcisms and
+pretending to relieve her of six or seven thousand devils, were fain
+to admit that she longed only to die, and greedily sought after any
+means of self-destruction. Courage alone was wanting to her. Once she
+pricked herself with a lancet, but lacked the spirit to persevere.
+Once she caught up a knife, and when that was taken from her, tried to
+strangle herself. She dug needles into her body, and then made one
+last foolish effort to drive a long pin through her ear into her head.
+
+What became of Gauffridi? The inquisitor, who dwells so long on the
+two women, says almost nothing about him. He walks as it were over
+the fire. The little he does say is very strange. He relates that
+having bound Gauffridi's eyes, they pricked him with needles all over
+the body, to find out the callous places where the Devil had made his
+mark. On the removal of the bandage, he learned, to his horror and
+amazement, that the needle had thrice been stuck into him without his
+feeling it; so he was marked in three places with the sign of Hell.
+And the inquisitor added, "If we were in Avignon, this man should be
+burnt to-morrow."
+
+He felt himself a lost man; and defended himself no more. His only
+thought now was to see if he could save his life through any of the
+Dominicans' foes. He wished, he said, to confess himself to the
+Oratorians. But this new order, which might have been called the right
+mean of Catholicism, was too cold and wary to take up a matter already
+so hopeless and so far advanced.
+
+Thereon he went back again to the Begging Friars, confessing himself
+to the Capuchins, and acknowledging all and more than all the truth,
+that he might purchase life with dishonour. In Spain he would
+assuredly have been enlarged, barring a term of penance in some
+convent. But our Parliaments were sterner: they felt bound to prove
+the greater purity of the lay jurisdiction. The Capuchins, themselves
+a little shaky in the matter of morals, were not the people to draw
+the lightning down on their own body. They surrounded Gauffridi,
+sheltered him, gave him comfort day and night; but only in order that
+he might own himself a magician, and so, because magic formed the main
+head of his indictment, the seduction wrought by a confessor to the
+great discredit of the clergy might be left entirely in the
+background.
+
+So his friends the Capuchins, by dint of tender caresses and urgent
+counsel, drew from him the fatal confession which, by their showing,
+was to save his soul, but which was very certain to hand his body over
+to the stake.
+
+The man thus lost and done for, they made an end with the girls whom
+it was not their part to burn. A farcical scene took place. In a large
+gathering of the clergy and the Parliament, Madeline was made to
+appear, and, in words addressed to herself, her devil Beelzebub was
+summoned to quit the place or else offer some opposition. Not caring
+to do the latter, he went off in disgrace.
+
+Then Louisa, with her demon Verrine, was made to appear. But before
+they drove away a spirit so friendly to the Church, the monks regaled
+the Parliamentaries, who were new to such things, with the clever
+management of this devil, making him perform a curious pantomime. "How
+do the Seraphim, the Cherubim, the Thrones, behave before God?" "A
+hard matter this:" says Louisa, "they have no bodies." But on their
+repeating the command, she made an effort to obey, imitating the
+flight of the one class, the fiery longing of the others; and ending
+with the adoration, when she bowed herself before the judges, falling
+prostrate with her head downwards. Then was the far-famed Louisa, so
+proud and so untamable, seen to abase herself, kissing the pavement,
+and with outstretched arms laying all her length thereon.
+
+It was a strange, frivolous, unseemly exhibition, by which she was
+made to atone for her terrible success among the people. Once more she
+won the assembly by dealing a cruel dagger-stroke at Gauffridi, who
+stood there strongly bound. "Where," said they, "is Beelzebub now, the
+devil who went out of Madeline?" "I see him plainly at Gauffridi's
+ear."
+
+Have you had shame and horror enough? We should like further to know
+what the poor wretch said, when put to the torture. Both the ordinary
+and the extraordinary forms were used upon him. His revelations must
+undoubtedly have thrown light on the curious history of the nunneries.
+Those tales the Parliament stored up with greediness, as weapons that
+might prove serviceable to itself; but it retained them "under the
+seal of the Court."
+
+The inquisitor Michaelis, who was fiercely assailed in public for an
+excess of animosity so closely resembling jealousy, was summoned by
+his order to a meeting at Paris, and never saw the execution of
+Gauffridi, who was burnt alive four days afterwards, 30th April, 1611,
+at Aix.
+
+The name of the Dominicans, damaged by this trial, was not much
+exalted by another case of _possession_ got up at Beauvais in such a
+way as to ensure them all the honours of a war, the account of which
+they got printed in Paris. Louisa's devil having been reproached for
+not speaking Latin, the new demoniac, Denise Lacaille, mingled a few
+words of it in her gibberish. They made a plenty of noise about her,
+often displayed her in the midst of a procession, and even carried her
+from Beauvais to Our Lady of Liesse. But the matter kept quite cool.
+This Picard pilgrimage lacked the horror, the dramatic force of the
+affair at Sainte-Baume. This Lacaille, for all her Latin, had neither
+the burning eloquence, nor the mettle, nor the fierce rage, that
+marked the woman of Provence. The only end of all her proceedings was
+to amuse the Huguenots.
+
+What became of the two rivals, Madeline and Louisa? The former, or at
+least her shadow, was kept on Papal ground, for fear of her being led
+to speak about so mournful a business. She was never shown in public,
+save in the character of a penitent. She was taken out among the poor
+women to cut wood, which was afterwards sold for alms; the parents,
+whom she had brought to shame, having forsworn and forsaken her.
+
+Louisa, for her part, had said during the trial: "I shall make no
+boast about it. The trial over, I shall soon be dead." But this was
+not to be. Instead of dying, she went on killing others. The
+murdering devil within her waxed stormier than ever. She set about
+revealing to the inquisitors the names, both Christian and surnames,
+of all whom she fancied to have any dealings with magic; among others
+a poor girl named Honoria, "blind of both eyes," who was burnt alive.
+
+"God grant," says Father Michaelis, in conclusion, "that all this may
+redound to His own glory and to that of His Church!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE DEMONIACS OF LOUDUN--URBAN GRANDIER: 1632-1634.
+
+
+In the _State Memoirs_, written by the famous Father Joseph, and known
+to us by extracts only--the work itself having, no doubt, been wisely
+suppressed as too instructive--the good Father explained how, in 1633,
+he had the luck to discover a heresy, a huge heresy, in which ever so
+many confessors and directors were concerned. That excellent army of
+Church-constables, those dogs of the Holy Troop, the Capuchins, had,
+not only in the wildernesses, but even in the populous parts of
+France--at Chartres, in Picardy, everywhere--got scent of some
+dreadful game; the _Alumbrados_ namely, or Illuminate, of Spain, who
+being sorely persecuted there, had fled for shelter into France,
+where, in the world of women, especially among the convents, they
+dropped the gentle poison which was afterwards called by the name of
+Molinos.[90]
+
+    [90] Molinos, born at Saragossa in 1627, died a prisoner to
+    the Inquisition in 1696. His followers were called
+    Quietists.--TRANS.
+
+The wonder was, that the matter had not been sooner known. Having
+spread so far, it could not have been wholly hidden. The Capuchins
+swore that in Picardy alone, where the girls are weak and
+warmer-blooded than in the South, this amorously mystic folly owned
+some sixty thousand professors. Did all the clergy share in it--all
+the confessors and directors? We must remember, that attached to the
+official directors were a good many laymen, who glowed with the same
+zeal for the souls of women. One of them, who afterwards made some
+noise by his talent and boldness, is the author of _Spiritual
+Delights_, Desmarets of Saint Sorlin.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Without remembering the new state of things, we should fail to
+understand the all-powerful attitude of the director towards the nuns,
+of whom he was now a hundred-fold more the master than he had been in
+days of yore.
+
+The reforming movement of the Council of Trent, for the better
+enclosing of monasteries, was not much followed up in the reign of
+Henry IV., when the nuns received company, gave balls, danced, and so
+forth. In the reign, however, of Louis XIII., it began afresh with
+greater earnestness. The Cardinal Rochefoucauld, or rather the Jesuits
+who drew him on, insisted on a great deal of outward decency. Shall we
+say, then, that all entrance into the convents was forbidden? One man
+only went in every day, not only into the house, but also, if he
+chose, into each of the cells; a fact made evident from several known
+cases, especially that of David at Louviers. By this reform, this
+closing system, the door was shut upon the world at large, on all
+inconvenient rivals, while the director enjoyed the sole command of
+his nuns, the special right of private interviews with them.
+
+What would come of this? The speculative might treat it as a problem;
+not so practical men or physicians. The physician Wyer tells some
+plain stories to show what did come of it from the sixteenth century
+onwards. In his Fourth Book he quotes a number of nuns who went mad
+for love. And in Book III. he talks of an estimable Spanish priest
+who, going by chance into a nunnery, came out mad, declaring that the
+brides of Jesus were his also, brides of the priest, who was a vicar
+of Jesus. He had masses said in return for the favour which God had
+granted him in this speedy marriage with a whole convent.
+
+If this was the result of one passing visit, we may understand the
+plight of a director of nuns when he was left alone with them, and
+could take advantage of the new restrictions to spend the day among
+them, listening hour by hour to the perilous secret of their
+languishings and their weaknesses.
+
+In the plight of these girls the mere senses are not all in all.
+Allowance must be made for their listlessness of mind; for the
+absolute need of some change in their way of life; of some dream or
+diversion to relieve their lifelong monotony. Strange things are
+happening constantly at this period. Travels, events in the Indies,
+the discovery of a world, the invention of printing: what romance
+there is everywhere! While all this goes on without, putting men's
+minds into a flutter, how, think you, can those within bear up against
+the oppressive sameness of monastic life--the irksomeness of its
+lengthy services, seasoned by nothing better than a sermon preached
+through the nose?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The laity themselves, living amidst so many distractions, desire, nay
+insist, that their confessors shall absolve them for their acts of
+inconstancy. The priests, on their side, are drawn or forced on, step
+by step. There grows up a vast literature, at once various and
+learned, of casuistry, of the art of allowing all things; a
+progressive literature, in which the indulgence of to-night seems to
+become the severity of the morrow.
+
+This casuistry was meant for the world; that mysticism for the
+convent. The annihilation of the person and the death of the will form
+the great mystic principle. The true moral bearings of that principle
+are well shown by Desmarets. "The devout," he says, "having offered up
+and annihilated their own selves, exist no longer but in God.
+_Thenceforth they can do no wrong._ The better part of them is so
+divine that it no longer knows what the other is doing."[91]
+
+    [91] An old doctrine which often turns up again in the Middle
+    Ages. In the seventeenth century it prevails among the
+    convents of France and Spain. A Norman angel, in the Louviers
+    business, teaches a nun to despise the body and disregard the
+    flesh, after the example of Jesus, who bared himself for a
+    scourging before all the people. He enforces an utter
+    surrendering of the soul and the will by the example of the
+    Virgin, "who obeyed the angel Gabriel and conceived, without
+    risk of evil, for impurity could not come of a spirit." At
+    Louviers, David, an old director of some authority, taught
+    "that sin could be killed by sin, as the better way of
+    becoming innocent again."
+
+It might have been thought that the zealous Joseph who had raised so
+loud a cry of alarm against these corrupt teachers, would have gone
+yet further; that a grand searching inquiry would have taken place;
+that the countless host whose number, in one province only, were
+reckoned at sixty thousand, would be found out and closely examined.
+But not so: they disappear, and nothing more is known about them. A
+few, it is said, were imprisoned; but trial there was none: only a
+deep silence. To all appearance Richelieu cared but little about
+fathoming the business. In his tenderness for the Capuchins he was not
+so blind as to follow their lead in a matter which would have thrown
+the supervision of all confessors into their hands.
+
+As a rule, the monks had a jealous dislike of the secular clergy.
+Entire masters of the Spanish women, they were too dirty to be
+relished by those of France; who preferred going to their own priests
+or to some Jesuit confessor, an amphious creature, half monk, half
+worldling. If Richelieu had once let loose the pack of Capuchins,
+Recollects, Carmelites, Dominicans, &c., who among the clergy would
+have been safe? What director, what priest, however upright, but had
+used, and used amiss, the gentle language of the Quietists towards
+their penitents?
+
+Richelieu took care not to trouble the clergy, while he was already
+bringing about the General Assembly from which he was soon to ask a
+contribution towards the war. One trial alone was granted the monks,
+the trial of a vicar, but a vicar who dealt in magic; a trial wherein
+matters were allowed, as in the case of Gauffridi, to get so
+entangled, that no confessor, no director, saw his own likeness there,
+but everyone in full security could say, "This is not I."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thanks to these strict precautions the Grandier affair is involved in
+some obscurity.[92] Its historian, the Capuchin Tranquille, proves
+convincingly that Grandier was a wizard, and, still more, a devil; and
+on the trial he is called, as Ashtaroth might have been called,
+_Grandier of the Dominations_. On the other hand, Menage is ready to
+rank him with great men accused of magic, with the martyrs of free
+thought.
+
+    [92] The _History of the Loudun Devils_, by the Protestant
+    Aubin, is an earnest, solid book, confirmed by the _Reports_
+    of Laubardemont himself. That of the Capuchin Tranquille is a
+    piece of grotesquerie. The _Proceedings_ are in the Great
+    Library of Paris. M. Figuier has given a long and excellent
+    account of the whole affair, in his _History of the
+    Marvellous_.
+
+In order to see a little more clearly, we must not set Grandier by
+himself; we must keep his place in the devilish trilogy of those
+times, in which he figured only as a second act; we must explain him
+by the first act, already shown to us in the dreadful business of
+Sainte-Baume, and the death of Gauffridi; we must explain him by the
+third act, by the affair at Louviers, which copied Loudun, as Loudun
+had copied Sainte-Baume, and which in its turn owned a Gauffridi and
+an Urban Grandier.
+
+The three cases are one and selfsame. In each case there is a
+libertine priest, in each a jealous monk, and a frantic nun by whose
+mouth the Devil is made to speak; and in all three the priest gets
+burnt at last.
+
+And here you may notice one source of light which makes these matters
+clearer to our eyes than if we saw them through the miry shades of a
+monastery in Spain or Italy. In those lands of Southern laziness, the
+nuns were astoundingly passive, enduring the life of the seraglio and
+even worse.[93] Our French women, on the contrary, gifted with a
+personality at once strong, lively, and hard to please, were equally
+dreadful in their jealousy and in their hate; and being devils indeed
+without metaphor, were accordingly rash, blusterous, and prompt to
+accuse. Their revelations were very plain, so plain indeed at the
+last, that everyone felt ashamed; and after thirty years and three
+special cases, the whole thing, begun as it was through terror, got
+fairly extinguished in its own dulness beneath hisses of general
+disgust.
+
+    [93] See Del Rio, Llorente Ricci, &c.
+
+It was not in Loudun, amidst crowds of Poitevins, in the presence of
+so many scoffing Huguenots, in the very town where they held their
+great national synods, that one would have looked for an event so
+discreditable to the Catholics. But these latter, living, as it were,
+in a conquered country,[94] in the old Protestant towns, with the
+greatest freedom, and thinking, not without cause, of the people they
+had often massacred and but lately overcome, were not the persons to
+say a word about it. Catholic Loudun, composed of magistrates,
+priests, monks, a few nobles, and some workmen, dwelled aloof from the
+rest, like a true conquering settlement. This settlement, as one might
+easily guess, was rent in twain by the rivalry of the priests and the
+monks.
+
+    [94] The capture of Rochelle, the last of the Huguenot
+    strongholds took place in 1628.--TRANS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The monks, being numerous and proud, as men specially sent forth to
+make converts, kept the pick of the pavement against the Protestants,
+and were confessing the Catholic ladies, when there arrived from
+Bordeaux a young vicar, brought up by the Jesuits, a man of letters,
+of pleasing manners, who wrote well and spoke better. He made a noise
+in the pulpit, and ere long in the world. By birth a townsman of
+Mantes, of a wrangling turn, he was Southern by education, with all
+the readiness of a Bordelais, boastful and frivolous as a Gascon. He
+soon managed to set the whole town by the ears, drawing the women to
+his side, while the men were mostly against him. He became lofty,
+insolent, unbearable, devoid of respect for everything. The Carmelites
+he overwhelmed with jibes; he would rail away from his pulpit against
+monks in general. They choked with rage at his sermons. Proud and
+stately, he went along the streets of Loudun like a Father of the
+Church; but by night he would steal, with less of bluster, down the
+byeways and through back-doors.
+
+They all surrendered themselves to his pleasure. The wife of the Crown
+Counsel was aware of his charms; still more so the daughter of the
+Public Prosecutor, who had a child by him. This did not satisfy him.
+Master of the ladies, this conqueror pushed his advantage until he had
+gained the nuns.
+
+By that time the Ursulines abounded everywhere, sisters devoted to
+education, feminine missionaries in a Protestant land, who courted and
+pleased the mothers, while they won over the little girls. The nuns of
+Loudun formed a small convent of young ladies, poor and well-born. The
+convent in itself was poor, the nuns for whom it was founded, having
+been granted nothing but their house, an old Huguenot college. The
+prioress, a lady of good birth and high connections, burned to exalt
+her nunnery, to enlarge it, make it wealthier and wider known. Perhaps
+she would have chosen Grandier, as being then the fashion, had she not
+already gotten for her director a priest with very different rootage
+in the country, a near kinsman of the two chief magistrates. The
+Canon Mignon, as he was called, held the prioress fast. These two were
+enraged at learning through the confessional--the "Ladies Superior"
+might confess their nuns--that the young nuns dreamed of nothing but
+this Grandier, of whom there was so much talk.
+
+Thereupon three parties, the threatened director, the cheated husband,
+the outraged father, joined together by a common jealousy, swore
+together the destruction of Grandier. To ensure success, they only
+needed to let him go on. He was ruining himself quite fast enough. An
+incident that came to light made noise enough almost to bring down the
+town.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The nuns placed in that old Huguenot mansion, were far from easy in
+their minds. Their boarders, children of the town, and perhaps also
+some of the younger nuns, had amused themselves with frightening the
+rest by playing at ghosts and apparitions. Little enough of order was
+there among this throng of rich spoilt girls. They would run about the
+passages at night, until they frightened themselves. Some of them were
+sick, or else sick at heart. But these fears and fancies mingled with
+the gossip of the town, of which they heard but too much during the
+day, until the ghost by night took the form of Grandier himself.
+Several said they saw him, felt him near them in the night, and
+yielded unawares to his bold advances. Was all this fancy, or the fun
+of novices? Had Grandier bribed the porteress or ventured to climb
+the walls? This part of the business was never cleared up.
+
+From that time the three felt sure of catching him. And first, among
+the small folk under their protection, they stirred up two good souls
+to declare that they could no longer keep as vicar a profligate, a
+wizard, a devil, a freethinker, who bent one knee in church instead of
+two, who scoffed at rules and granted dispensations contrary to the
+rights of the Bishop. A shrewd accusation, which turned against him
+his natural defender, the Bishop of Poitiers, and delivered him over
+to the fury of the monks.
+
+To say truth, all this was planned with much skill. Besides raising up
+two poor people as accusers, they thought it advisable to have him
+cudgelled by a noble. In those days of duelling a man who let himself
+be cudgelled with impunity lost ground with the public, and sank in
+the esteem of the women. Grandier deeply felt the blow. Fond of making
+a noise in all cases, he went to the King, threw himself on his knees,
+and besought vengeance for the insult to his gown. From so devout a
+king he might have gained it; but here there chanced to be some
+persons who told the King that it was all an affair of love, the fury
+of a betrayed husband wreaking itself on his foe.
+
+At the spiritual court of Poitiers, Grandier was condemned to do
+penance, to be banished from Loudun, and disgraced as a priest. But
+the civil court took up the matter and found him innocent. He had
+still to await the orders of him by whom Poitiers was spiritually
+overruled, Sourdis, Archbishop of Bordeaux. That warlike prelate, an
+admiral and brave sailor more than a priest, shrugged his shoulders on
+hearing of such peccadilloes. He acquitted the vicar, but at the same
+time wisely recommended him to go and live anywhere out of Loudun.
+
+This the proud man did not care to do. He wanted to enjoy his triumph
+on the very field of battle, to show off before the ladies. He came
+back to Loudun in broad day, with mighty noise; the women all looking
+out of window, as he went by with a laurel-branch in his hand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Not satisfied with that piece of folly, he began to threaten, to
+demand reparation. Thus pushed and imperilled in their turn, his
+enemies called to remembrance the affair of Gauffridi, where the
+Devil, the Father of Lies, was restored to his honours and accepted in
+a court of justice as a right truthful witness, worthy of belief on
+the side of the Church, worthy of belief on the side of His Majesty's
+servants. In despair they invoked a devil and found one at their
+command. He showed himself among the Ursulines.
+
+A dangerous thing; but then, how many were nearly concerned in its
+success! The prioress saw her poor humble convent suddenly attracting
+the gaze of the Court, of the provinces, of all the world. The monks
+saw themselves victorious over their rivals the priests. They pictured
+anew those popular battles waged with the Devil in a former century,
+and often, as at Soissons, before the church doors; the terror of the
+people, and their joy at the triumph of the Good Spirit; the
+confession drawn from the Devil touching God's presence in the
+Sacrament; and the humiliation of the Huguenots at being refuted by
+the Demon himself.
+
+In these tragi-comedies the exorciser represented God, or at any rate
+the Archangel, overthrowing the dragon. He came down from the platform
+in utter exhaustion, streaming with sweat, but victorious, to be borne
+away in the arms of the crowd, amidst the blessings of good women who
+shed tears of joy the while.
+
+Therefore it was that in these trials a dash of witchcraft was always
+needful. The Devil alone roused the interest of the vulgar. They could
+not always see him coming out of a body in the shape of a black toad,
+as at Bordeaux in 1610. But it was easy to make it up to them by a
+grand display of splendid stage scenery. The affair of Provence owed
+much of its success to Madeline's desolate wildness and the terror of
+Sainte-Baume. Loudun was regaled with the uproar and the bacchanal
+frenzy of a host of exorcisers distributed among several churches.
+Lastly, Louviers, as we shall presently see, put a little new life
+into this fading fashion by inventing midnight scenes, in which the
+demons who possessed the nuns began digging by the glimmer of torches,
+until they drew forth certain charms from the holes wherein they had
+been concealed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Loudun business began with the prioress and a lay sister of hers.
+They had convulsive fits, and talked infernal gibberish. Other of the
+nuns began copying them, one bold girl especially taking up Louisa's
+part at Marseilles, with the same devil Leviathan, the leading demon
+of trickery and evil speaking.
+
+The little town was all in a tremble. Monks of every hue provided
+themselves with nuns, shared them all round, and exorcised them by
+threes and fours. The churches were parcelled out among them; the
+Capuchins alone taking two for themselves. The crowd go after them,
+swollen by all the women in the place, and in this frightened
+audience, throbbing with anxiety, more than one cries out that she,
+too, is feeling the devils.[95] Six girls of the town are possessed.
+And the bare recital of these alarming events begets two new cases of
+possession at Chinon.
+
+    [95] The same hysteric contagion marks the "Revivals" of a
+    later period, down to the last mad outbreak in Ireland. The
+    translator hopes some day to work out the physical question
+    here stated.--TRANS.
+
+Everywhere the thing was talked of, at Paris, at the Court. Our
+Spanish queen,[96] who is imaginative and devout, sends off her
+almoner; nay more, sends her faithful follower, the old papist, Lord
+Montague, who sees, who believes everything, and reports it all to the
+Pope. It is a miracle proven. He had seen the wounds on a certain nun,
+and the marks made by the Devil on the Lady Superior's hands.
+
+    [96] Anne of Austria, wife of Louis XIII.--TRANS.
+
+What said the King of France to this? All his devotion was turned on
+the Devil, on hell, on thoughts of fear. It is said that Richelieu was
+glad to keep him thus. I doubt it; the demons were essentially
+Spanish, taking the Spanish side: if ever they talked politics, they
+must have spoken against Richelieu. Perhaps he was afraid of them. At
+any rate, he did them homage, and sent his niece to prove the interest
+he took in the matter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Court believed, but Loudun itself did not. Its devils, but sorry
+imitators of the Marseilles demons, rehearsed in the morning what they
+had learnt the night before from the well-known handbook of Father
+Michaelis. They would never have known what to say but for the secret
+exorcisms, the careful rehearsal of the day's farce, by which night
+after night they were trained to figure before the people.
+
+One sturdy magistrate, bailiff of the town, made a stir: going himself
+to detect the knaves, he threatened and denounced them. Such, too, was
+the tacit opinion of the Archbishop of Bordeaux, to whom Grandier
+appealed. He despatched a set of rules for the guidance at least of
+the exorcisers, for putting a stop to their arbitrary doings; and,
+better still, he sent his surgeon, who examined the girls, and found
+them to be neither bewitched, nor mad, nor even sick. What were they
+then? Knaves, to be sure.[97]
+
+    [97] Not of necessity knaves, Mr. Michelet; at least not
+    wilfully so; but silly hysteric patients, of the
+    spirit-rapping, revivalist order, victims of nervous
+    derangement, or undue nervous sensibility.--TRANS.
+
+So through the century keeps on this noble duel between the Physician
+and the Devil, this battle of light and knowledge with the dark shades
+of falsehood. We saw its beginning in Agrippa and Wyer. Doctor Duncan
+carried it bravely on at Loudun, and fearlessly impressed on others
+the belief that this affair was nothing but a farce.
+
+For all his alleged resistance, the Demon was frightened, held his
+tongue, quite lost his voice. But people's passions had been too
+fiercely roused for the matter to end there. The tide flowed again so
+strongly in favour of Grandier, that the assailed became in their turn
+assailants. An apothecary of kin to the accusers was sued by a rich
+young lady of the town for speaking of her as the vicar's mistress. He
+was condemned to apologise for his slander.
+
+The prioress was a lost woman. It would have been easy to prove, what
+one witness afterwards saw, that the marks upon her were made with
+paint renewed daily. But she was kinswoman to one of the King's
+judges, Laubardemont, and he saved her. He was simply charged to
+overthrow the strong places of Loudun. He got himself commissioned to
+try Grandier. The Cardinal was given to understand that the accused
+was vicar and friend of the _Loudun shoemaker_,[98] was one of the
+numerous agents of Mary of Medici, had made himself his parishioner's
+secretary, and written a disgraceful pamphlet in her name.
+
+    [98] A woman named Hammon, of low birth, who entered the
+    service, and rose high in the good graces of Mary of Medici.
+    See Dumas' _Celebrated Crimes_.--TRANS.
+
+Richelieu, for his part, would have liked to show a high-minded scorn
+of the whole business, if he could have done so with safety to
+himself. The Capuchins and Father Joseph had an eye to that also.
+Richelieu would have given them a fine handle against him with the
+King, had he displayed a want of zeal. One Quillet, after much grave
+reflection, went to see the Minister and give him warning. But the
+other, afraid to listen, regarded him with so stern a gaze that the
+giver of advice deemed it prudent to seek shelter in Italy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Laubardemont arrived at Loudun on the 6th December, 1633, bringing
+along with him great fear, and unbounded powers; even those of the
+King himself. The whole strength of the kingdom became, as it were, a
+dreadful bludgeon to crush one little fly.
+
+The magistrates were wroth; the civic lieutenant warned Grandier that
+he would have to arrest him on the morrow. The latter paid no heed to
+him, and was arrested accordingly. In a moment he was carried off,
+without form of trial, to the dungeons of Angers. Presently he was
+taken back and thrown, where think you? Into the house, the room of
+one of his enemies, who had the windows walled up so as well-nigh to
+choke him. The loathsome scrutiny of the wizard's body, in order to
+find out the Devil's marks by sticking needles all over it, was
+carried on by the hands of the accusers themselves, who took their
+revenge upon him beforehand in the foretaste thus given him of his
+future punishment.
+
+They led him to the churches, confronted him with the girls, who had
+got their cue from Laubardemont. These Bacchanals, for such they
+became under the fuddling effect of some drugs administered by the
+condemned apothecary above-named, flung out in such frantic rages,
+that Grandier was nearly perishing one day beneath their nails.
+
+Unable to imitate the eloquence of the Marseilles demoniac, they tried
+obscenity in its stead. It was a hideous thing to see these girls give
+full vent in public to their sensual fury, on the plea of scolding
+their pretended devils. Thus indeed it was that they managed to swell
+their audiences. People flocked to hear from the lips of these women
+what no woman would else have dared to utter.
+
+As the matter grew more hateful, so it also grew more laughable. They
+were sure to repeat all awry what little Latin was ever whispered to
+them. The public found that the devils had never gone through _their
+lower classes_. The Capuchins, however, coolly said that if these
+demons were weak in Latin, they were marvellous speakers of Iroquois
+and Tupinambi.[99]
+
+    [99] Indians of the coast of Brazil.--TRANS.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A farce so shameful, seen from a distance of sixty leagues, from St.
+Germain or the Louvre, appeared miraculous, awful, terrifying. The
+Court admired and trembled. Richelieu to please them did a cowardly
+thing. He ordered money to be paid to the exorcisers, to the nuns.
+
+The height of favour to which they had risen, drove the plotters
+altogether mad. Senseless words were followed by shameful deeds.
+Pleading that the nuns were tired, the exorcisers got them outside the
+town, took them about by themselves. One of them, at least to all
+appearance, returned pregnant. In the fifth or sixth month all outward
+trace of it disappeared, and the devil within her acknowledged how
+wickedly he had slandered the poor nun by making her look so large.
+This tale concerning Loudun we learn from the historian of
+Louviers.[100]
+
+    [100] Esprit de Bosroger, p. 135.
+
+It is stated that Father Joseph, after a secret journey to the spot,
+saw to what end the matter was coming, and noiselessly backed out of
+it. The Jesuits also went, tried their exorcisms, did next to nothing,
+got scent of the general feeling, and stole off in like manner.
+
+But the monks, the Capuchins, were gone so far, that they could only
+save themselves by frightening others. They laid some treacherous
+snares for the daring bailiff and his wife, seeking to destroy them,
+and thereby quench the coming reaction of justice. Lastly, they urged
+on the commissioners to despatch Grandier. Things could be carried no
+further: the nuns themselves were slipping out of their hands. After
+that dreadful orgie of sensual rage and immodest shouting in order to
+obtain the shedding of human blood, two or three of them swooned away,
+were seized with disgust and horror; vomited up their very selves.
+Despite the hideous doom that awaited them if they spoke the truth,
+despite the certainty of ending their days in a dungeon, they owned in
+church that they were damned, that they had been playing with the
+Devil, and Grandier was innocent.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They ruined themselves, but could not stay the issue. A general
+protest by the town to the King failed to stay it also. On the 18th
+August, 1634, Grandier was condemned to the stake. So violent were his
+enemies that, for the second time before burning him, they insisted on
+having him stuck with needles in order to find out the Devil's marks.
+One of his judges would have had even his nails torn out of him, had
+not the surgeon withheld his leave.
+
+They were afraid of the last words their victim might say on the
+scaffold. Among his papers there had been found a manuscript
+condemning the celibacy of priests, and those who called him a wizard
+themselves believed him to be a freethinker. They remembered the brave
+words which the martyrs of free thought had thrown out against their
+judges; they called to mind the last speech of Giordano Bruno, the
+bold defiance of Vanini.[101] So they agreed with Grandier, that if he
+were prudent, he should be saved from burning, perhaps be strangled.
+The weak priest, being a man of flesh, yielded to this demand of the
+flesh, and promised to say nothing. He spoke not a word on the road,
+nor yet upon the scaffold. When he was fairly fastened to the post,
+with everything ready, and the fire so arranged as to enfold him
+swiftly in smoke and flames, his own confessor, a monk, set the
+faggots ablaze without waiting for the executioner. The victim,
+pledged to silence, had only time to say, "So, you have deceived me!"
+when the flames whirled fiercely upwards, and the furnace of pain
+began, and nothing was audible save the wretch's screams.
+
+    [101] Both Neapolitans, burnt alive, the former at Venice in
+    1600, the latter at Toulouse in 1619.--TRANS.
+
+Richelieu in his Memoirs says little, and that with evident shame,
+concerning this affair. He gives one to believe that he only followed
+the reports that reached him, the voice of general opinion.
+Nevertheless, by rewarding the exorcisers, by throwing the reins to
+the Capuchins, and letting them triumph over France, he gave no slight
+encouragement to that piece of knavery. Gauffridi, thus renewed in
+Grandier, is about to reappear in yet fouler plight in the Louviers
+affair.
+
+In this very year, 1634, the demons hunted from Poitou pass over into
+Normandy, copying again and again the fooleries of Sainte-Baume,
+without any trace of invention, of talent, or of imagination. The
+frantic Leviathan of Provence, when counterfeited at Loudun, loses his
+Southern sting, and only gets out of a scrape by talking fluently to
+virgins in the language of Sodom. Presently, alas! at Louviers he
+loses even his old daring, imbibes the sluggish temper of the North,
+and sinks into a sorry sprite.[102]
+
+    [102] Wright and Dumas both differ from M. Michelet in their
+    view of Urban Grandier's character. The latter especially,
+    regards him as an innocent victim to his own fearlessness and
+    the hate of his foes, among whom not the least deadly was
+    Richelieu himself, who bore him a deep personal
+    grudge.--TRANS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE DEMONIACS OF LOUVIERS--MADELINE BAVENT: 1633-1647.
+
+
+Had Richelieu allowed the inquiry demanded by Father Joseph into the
+doings of the Illuminate Confessors, some strange light would have
+been thrown into the depth of the cloisters, on the daily life of the
+nuns. Failing that, we may still learn from the Louviers story, which
+is far more instructive than those of Aix and Loudun, that,
+notwithstanding the new means of corruption furnished by Illuminism,
+the director still resorted to the old trickeries of witchcraft, of
+apparitions, heavenly or infernal, and so forth.[103]
+
+    [103] It was very easy to cheat those who wished to be
+    cheated. By this time celibacy was harder to practise than in
+    the Middle Ages, the number of fasts and bloodlettings being
+    greatly reduced. Many died from the nervous plethora of a
+    life so cruelly sluggish. They made no secret of their
+    torments, owning them to their sisters, to their confessor,
+    to the Virgin herself. A pitiful thing, a thing to sorrow
+    for, not to ridicule. In Italy, a nun besought the Virgin for
+    pity's sake to grant her a lover.
+
+Of the three directors successively appointed to the Convent of
+Louviers in the space of thirty years, David, the first, was an
+Illuminate, who forestalled Molinos; the second, Picart, was a wizard
+dealing with the Devil; and Boulle, the third, was a wizard working
+in the guise of an angel.
+
+There is an excellent book about this business; it is called _The
+History of Magdalen Bavent_, a nun of Louviers; with her Examination,
+&c., 1652: Rouen.[104] The date of this book accounts for the thorough
+freedom with which it was written. During the wars of the Fronde, a
+bold Oratorian priest, who discovered the nun in one of the Rouen
+prisons, took courage from her dictation to write down the story of
+her life.
+
+    [104] I know of no book more important, more dreadful, or
+    worthier of being reprinted. It is the most powerful
+    narrative of its class. _Piety Afflicted_, by the Capuchin
+    Esprit de Bosroger, is a work immortal in the annals of
+    tomfoolery. The two excellent pamphlets by the doughty
+    surgeon, Yvelin, the _Inquiry_ and the _Apology_, are in the
+    Library of Ste. Genevieve.
+
+Born at Rouen in 1607, Madeline was left an orphan at nine years old.
+At twelve she was apprenticed to a milliner. The confessor, a
+Franciscan, held absolute sway in the house of this milliner, who as
+maker of clothes for the nuns, was dependent on the Church. The monk
+caused the apprentices, whom he doubtless made drunk with belladonna
+and other magical drinks, to believe that they had been taken to the
+Sabbath and there married to the devil Dagon. Three were already
+possessed by him, and Madeline at fourteen became the fourth.
+
+She was a devout worshipper, especially of St. Francis. A Franciscan
+monastery had just been founded at Louviers, by a lady of Rouen, widow
+of lawyer Hennequin, who was hanged for cheating. She hoped by this
+good deed of hers to help in saving her husband's soul. To that end
+she sought counsel of a holy man, the old priest David, who became
+director to the new foundation. Standing at the entrance of the town,
+with a wood surrounding it, this convent, born of so tragical a
+source, seemed quite gloomy and poor enough for a place of stern
+devotion. David was known as author of a _Scourge for Rakes_, an odd
+and violent book against the abuses that defiled the Cloister.[105]
+All of a sudden this austere person took up some very strange ideas
+concerning purity. He became an Adamite, preached up the nakedness of
+Adam in his days of innocence. The docile nuns of Louviers sought to
+subdue and abase the novices, to break them into obedience, by
+insisting--of course in summer-time--that these young Eves should
+return to the plight of their common mother. In this state they were
+sent out for exercise in some secluded gardens, and were taken into
+the chapel itself. Madeline, who at sixteen had come to be received as
+a novice, was too proud, perhaps in those days too pure also, to
+submit to so strange a way of life. She got an angry scolding for
+having tried at communion to hide her bosom with the altar-cloth.
+
+    [105] See Floquet; _Parliament of Normandy_, vol. v. p. 636.
+
+Not less unwilling was she to uncover her soul, to confess to the Lady
+Superior, after the usual monastic custom of which the abbesses were
+particularly fond. She would rather trust herself with old David, who
+kept her apart from the rest. He himself confided his own ailments
+into her ear. Nor did he hide from her his inner teaching, the
+Illuminism, which governed the convent: "You must kill sin by being
+made humble and lost to all sense of pride through sin." Madeline was
+frightened at the depths of depravity reached by the nuns, who quietly
+carried out the teaching with which they had been imbued. She avoided
+their company, kept to herself, and succeeded in getting made one of
+the doorkeepers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+David died when she was eighteen. Old age prevented his going far with
+the girl. But the vicar Picart, who succeeded him, was furious in his
+pursuit of her; at the confessional spoke to her only of his love. He
+made her his sextoness, that he might meet her alone in chapel. She
+liked him not; but the nuns forbade her to have another confessor,
+lest she might divulge their little secrets. And thus she was given
+over to Picart. He beset her when she was sick almost to death;
+seeking to frighten her by insisting that from David he had received
+some infernal prescriptions. He sought to win her compassion by
+feigning illness and begging her to come and see him. Thenceforth he
+became her master, upset her mind with magic potions, and worked her
+into believing that she had gone with him to the Sabbath, there to
+officiate as altar and victim. At length, exceeding even the Sabbath
+usages and daring the scandal that would follow, he made her to be
+with child.
+
+The nuns were afraid of one who knew the state of their morals; and
+their interest also bound them to him. The convent was enriched by his
+energy, his good repute, the alms and gifts he attracted towards it
+from every quarter. He was building them a large church. We saw in the
+Loudun business by what rivalries and ambitions these houses were led
+away, how jealously they strove each to outdo the others. Through the
+trust reposed in him by the wealthy, Picart saw himself raised into
+the lofty part of benefactor and second founder of the convent.
+"Sweetheart," he said to Madeline, "that noble church is all my
+building! After my death you will see wonders wrought there. Do you
+not agree to that?"
+
+This fine gentleman did not put himself out at all regarding Madeline.
+He paid a dowry for her, and made a nun of her who was already a
+lay-sister. Thus, being no longer a doorkeeper, she could live in one
+of the inner rooms, and there be brought to bed at her convenience. By
+means of certain drugs, and practices of their own, the convents could
+do without the help of doctors. Madeline said that she was delivered
+several times. She never said what became of the newly-born.
+
+Picart being now an old man, feared lest Madeline might in her
+fickleness fly off some day, and utter words of remorse to another
+confessor. So he took a detestable way of binding her to himself
+beyond recall, by forcing her to make a will in which she promised "to
+die when he died, and to be wherever he was." This was a dreadful
+thought for the poor soul. Must she be drawn along with him into the
+bottomless pit? Must she go down with him, even into hell? She deemed
+herself for ever lost. Become his property, his mere tool, she was
+used and misused by him for all kinds of purposes. He made her do the
+most shameful things. He employed her as a magical charm to gain over
+the rest of the nuns. A holy wafer steeped in Madeline's blood, and
+buried in the garden, would be sure to disturb their senses and their
+minds.
+
+This was the very year in which Urban Grandier was burnt. Throughout
+France, men spoke of nothing but the devils of Loudun. The
+Penitentiary of Evreux, who had been one of the actors on that stage,
+carried the dreadful tale back with him to Normandy. Madeline fancied
+herself bewitched and knocked about by devils; followed about by a
+lewd cat with eyes of fire. By degrees, other nuns caught the
+disorder, which showed itself in odd supernatural jerks and writhings.
+Madeline had besought aid of a Capuchin, afterwards of the Bishop of
+Evreux. The prioress was not sorry for a step of which she must have
+been aware, for she saw what wealth and fame a like business had
+brought to the Convent of Loudun. But for six years the bishop turned
+a deaf ear to the prayer, doubtless through fear of Richelieu, who was
+then at work on a reform of the cloisters.
+
+Richelieu wanted to bring these scandals to an end. It was not till
+his own death, and that of Louis XIII., during the break-up which
+followed on the rule of the Queen and Mazarin, that the priests again
+betook themselves to working wonders, and waging war with the Devil.
+Picart being dead, they were less shy of a matter in which so
+dangerous a man might have accused others in his turn. They met the
+visions of Madeline, by looking out a visionary for themselves. They
+got admission into the convent for a certain Sister Anne of the
+Nativity, a girl of sanguine, hysteric temperament, frantic at need
+and half-mad, so far at least as to believe in her own lies. A kind of
+dogfight was got up between the two. They besmeared each other with
+false charges. Anne saw the Devil quite naked, by Madeline's side.
+Madeline swore to seeing Anne at the Sabbath, along with the Lady
+Superior, the Mother-Assistant, and the Mother of the Novices. Besides
+this, there was nothing new; merely a hashing up of the two great
+trials at Aix and Loudun. They read and followed the printed
+narratives only. No wit, no invention, was shown by either.
+
+Anne, the accuser, and her devil Leviathan, were backed by the
+Penitentiary of Evreux, one of the chief actors in the Loudun affair.
+By his advice, the Bishop of Evreux gave orders to disinter the body
+of Picart, so that the devils might leave the convent when Picart
+himself was taken away from the neighbourhood. Madeline was condemned,
+without a hearing, to be disgraced, to have her body examined for the
+marks of the Devil. They tore off her veil and gown, and made her the
+wretched sport of a vile curiosity, that would have pierced her till
+she bled again, in order to win the right of sending her to the stake.
+Leaving to no one else the care of a scrutiny which was in itself a
+torture, these virgins acting as matrons, ascertained if she was with
+child or no, shaved all her body, and dug their needles into her
+quivering flesh, to find out the insensible spots that betrayed the
+mark of the Devil. At every dig they discovered signs of pain: if they
+had not the luck to prove her a Witch, at any rate, they could revel
+in her tears and cries.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But Sister Anne was not satisfied, until, on the mere word of her own
+devil, Madeline, though acquitted by the results of this examination,
+was condemned for the rest of her life to an _In pace_. It was said
+that the convent would be quieted by her departure; but such was not
+the case. The Devil was more violent than ever; some twenty nuns began
+to cry out, to prophesy, to beat themselves.
+
+Such a sight drew thither a curious crowd from Rouen, and even from
+Paris. Yvelin, a young Parisian surgeon, who had already seen the
+farce at Loudun, came to see that of Louviers. He brought with him a
+very clear-headed magistrate, the Commissioner of Taxes at Rouen. They
+devoted unwearying attention to the matter, settled themselves at
+Louviers, and carried on their researches for seventeen days.
+
+From the first day they saw into the plot. A conversation they had had
+with the Penitentiary of Evreux on their entrance into the town, was
+repeated back to them by Sister Anne's demon, as if it had been a
+revelation. The scenic arrangements were very bewitching. The shades
+of night, the torches, the flickering and smoking lights, produced
+effects which had not been seen at Loudun. The rest of the process was
+simple enough. One of the bewitched said that in a certain part of the
+garden they would find a charm. They dug for it, and it was found.
+Unluckily, Yvelin's friend, the sceptical magistrate, never budged
+from the side of the leading actress, Sister Anne. At the very edge of
+a hole they had just opened he grasped her hand, and on opening it,
+found the charm, a bit of black thread, which she was about to throw
+into the ground.
+
+The exorcisers, the penitentiary, priests, and Capuchins, about the
+spot, were overwhelmed with confusion. The dauntless Yvelin, on his
+own authority, began a scrutiny, and saw to the uttermost depth of the
+affair.
+
+Among the fifty-two nuns, said he, there were six _possessed_, but
+deserving of chastisement. Seventeen more were victims under a spell,
+a pack of girls upset by the disease of the cloisters. He describes
+it with great precision: the girls are regular but hysterical, blown
+out with certain inward storms, lunatics mainly, and disordered in
+mind. A nervous contagion has ruined them; and the first thing to do
+is to keep them apart.
+
+He then, with the liveliness of Voltaire, examines the tokens by which
+the priests were wont to recognize the supernatural character of the
+bewitched. They foretel, he allows, but only what never happens. They
+translate, indeed, but without understanding; as when, for instance,
+they render "_ex parte virginis_," by "the departure of the Virgin."
+They know Greek before the people of Louviers, but cannot speak it
+before the doctors of Paris. They cut capers, take leaps of the
+easiest kind, climb up the trunk of a tree which a child three years
+old might climb. In short, the only thing they do that is really
+dreadful and unnatural, is to use dirtier language than men would ever
+do.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In tearing off the mask from these people, the surgeon rendered a
+great service to humanity. For the matter was being pushed further;
+other victims were about to be made. Besides the charms were found
+some papers, ascribed to David or Picart, in which this and that
+person were called witches, and marked out for death. Each one
+shuddered lest his name should be found there. Little by little the
+fear of the priesthood made its way among the people.
+
+The rotten age of Mazarin, the first days of the weak Anne of Austria,
+were already come. Order and government were no more. "But one phrase
+was left in the language: _The Queen is so good._" Her goodness gave
+the clergy a chance of getting the upper hand. The power of the laity
+entombed with Richelieu, bishops, priests, and monks, were about to
+reign. The bold impiety of the magistrate and his friend Yvelin
+imperilled so sweet a hope. Groans and wailings went forth to the Good
+Queen, not from the victims, but from the knaves thus caught in the
+midst of their offences. Up to the Court they went, weeping for the
+outrage to their religion.
+
+Yvelin was not prepared for this stroke: he deemed himself firm at
+Court, having for ten years borne the title of Surgeon to the Queen.
+Before he returned from Louviers to Paris, the weakness of Anne of
+Austria had been tempted into granting another commission named by his
+opponents, consisting of an old fool in his dotage, one Diafoirus of
+Rouen, and his nephew, both attached to the priesthood. These did not
+fail to discover that the Louviers affair was supernatural,
+transcending all art of man.
+
+Any other than Yvelin would have been discouraged. The Rouen
+physicians treated with utter scorn this surgeon, this barber fellow,
+this mere sawbones. The Court gave him no encouragement. Still, he
+held on his way in a treatise which will live yet. He accepts this
+battle of science against priestcraft, declaring, as Wyer did in the
+sixteenth century, that "in all such matters the right judge is not
+the priest but the man of science." With great difficulty he found
+some one bold enough to print, but no one willing to sell his little
+work. So in broad daylight the heroic young man set about distributing
+it with his own hands. Placing himself on the Pont Neuf, the most
+frequented spot in Paris, at the foot of Henry the Fourth's statue, he
+gave out copies of his memoir to the passers by. At the end of it they
+found a formal statement of the shameful fraud, how in the hand of the
+female demons the magistrate had caught the unanswerable evidence of
+their dishonour.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Return we to the wretched Madeline. Her enemy, the Penitentiary of
+Evreux, by whose influence she had been searched with needles, carried
+her off as his prey to the heart of the episcopal dungeons in that
+town. Below an underground passage dipped a cave, below the cave a
+cell, where the poor human creature lay buried in damps and darkness.
+Reckoning upon her speedy death, her dread companions had not even the
+kindness to give her a piece of linen for the dressing of her ulcer.
+There, as she lay in her own filth, she suffered alike from pain and
+want of cleanliness. The whole night long she was disturbed by the
+running to and fro of ravenous rats, those terrors of every prison,
+who were wont to nibble men's ears and noses.
+
+But all these horrors fell short of those which her tyrant, the
+Penitentiary, dealt out to her himself. Day after day he would come
+into the upper vault and speak to her through the mouth of her pit,
+threatening her, commanding her, and making her, whether she would or
+no, confess to this or that crime as having been wrought by others. At
+length she ceased to eat. Fearing that she might die at once, he drew
+her for a while out of her _In Pace_, and laid her in the upper vault.
+Then, in his rage against Yvelin's memoir, he cast her back into her
+sewer below.
+
+That glimpse of light, that short renewal and sudden death of hope,
+gave the crowning impulse to her despair. Her wound was closing, so
+that her strength was greater. She was seized with a deep and violent
+thirst for death. She swallowed spiders, but instead of dying, only
+brought them up again. Pounded glass she swallowed, but in vain.
+Finding an old bit of sharp iron, she tried to cut her throat, but
+could not. Then, as an easier way, she dug the iron into her belly.
+For four hours she worked and bled, but without success. Even this
+wound shortly began to close. To crown all, the life she hated so
+returned to her stronger than before. Her heart's death was of no
+avail.
+
+She became once more a woman; still, alas! an object of desire, of
+temptation for her jailers, those brutish varlets of the bishopric,
+who, notwithstanding the horror of the place, and the unhappy
+creature's own sad and filthy plight, would come to make sport of
+her, believing that they might do all their pleasure against a Witch.
+But an angel succoured her, so she said. From men and rats alike she
+defended herself. But against herself, herself she could not protect.
+Her prison corrupted her mind. She dreamed of the Devil, besought him
+to come and see her, to restore to her the shameful pleasures in which
+she had wallowed at Louviers. He never deigned to come back. Once more
+amidst this corruption of her senses, she fell back on her old desire
+for death. One of the jailers had given her a drug to kill the rats.
+She was just going to swallow it herself, when an angel--an angel, was
+it, or a devil?--stayed her hand, reserving her for other crimes.
+
+Thenceforward--sunk into the lowest depths of vileness, become an
+unspeakable cipher of cowardice and servility--she signed endless
+lists of crimes which she had never committed. Was she worth the
+trouble of burning? Many had given up that idea, but the ruthless
+Penitentiary clung to it still. He offered money to a Wizard of
+Evreux, then in prison, if he would bear such witness as might bring
+about the death of Madeline.
+
+For the future, however, they could use her for other purposes--to
+bear false witness, to become a tool for any slander. Whenever they
+sought the ruin of any man, they had only to drag down to Louviers or
+to Evreux this accursed ghost of a dead woman, living only to make
+others die. In this way she was brought out to kill with her words a
+poor man named Duval. What the Penitentiary dictated to her, she
+repeated readily: when he told her by what marks she should know
+Duval, whom she had never seen, she pointed him out and said she had
+seen him at the Sabbath. Through her it fell out that he was burnt!
+
+She owned her dreadful crime, and shuddered to think what answer she
+could make before God. She was fallen into such contempt that no one
+now deigned to look after her. The doors stood wide open: sometimes
+she had the keys herself. But where now should she go, object as she
+was of so much dread? Thenceforth the world repelled her--cast her
+out: the only world she had left was her dungeon.
+
+During the anarchy of Mazarin and his Good Lady the chief authority
+remained with the Parliaments. That of Rouen, hitherto the friendliest
+to the clergy, grew wroth at last at their arrogant way of examining,
+ordering, and burning people. A mere decree of the Bishop had caused
+Picart's body to be disinterred and thrown into the common sewer. And
+now they were passing on to the trial of Boulle, the curate, and
+supposed abettor of Picart. Listening to the plaint of Picart's
+family, the Parliament sentenced the Bishop of Evreux to replace him
+at his own expense in his tomb at Louviers. They called up Boulle,
+undertook his trial themselves, and at the same time sent for the
+wretched Madeline from Evreux to Rouen.
+
+People were afraid that Yvelin and the magistrate who had caught the
+nuns in the very act of cheating, would be made to appear. Hieing away
+to Paris, they found the knave Mazarin ready to protect their knavish
+selves. The whole matter was appealed to the King's Council--an
+indulgent court, without eyes or ears--whose care it was to bury, hush
+up, bedarken everything connected with justice.
+
+Meanwhile, some honey-tongued priests had comforted Madeline in her
+Rouen dungeon; they heard her confessions, and enjoined her, by way of
+penance, to ask forgiveness of her persecutors, the nuns of Louviers.
+Thenceforth, happen what might, Madeline could never more be brought
+in evidence against those who had thus bound her fast. It was a
+triumph indeed for the clergy, and the victory was sung by a knave of
+an exorciser, the Capuchin Esprit de Bosroger, in his _Piety
+Afflicted_, a farcical monument of stupidity, in which he accuses,
+unawares, the very people he fancies himself defending.
+
+The Fronde, as I said before, was a revolution for honest ends. Fools
+saw only its outer form--its laughable aspects; but at bottom it was a
+serious business, a moral reaction. In August, 1647, with the first
+breath of freedom, Parliament stepped forward and cut the knot. It
+ordered, in the first place, the destruction of the Louviers Sodom;
+the girls were to be dispersed and sent back to their kinsfolk. In the
+next, it decreed that thenceforth the bishops of the province should,
+four times a-year, send special confessors to the nunneries, to
+ascertain that such foul abuses were not renewed.
+
+One comfort, however, the clergy were to receive. They were allowed to
+burn the bones of Picart and the living body of Boulle, who, after
+making public confession in the cathedral, was drawn on a hurdle to
+the Fish Market, and there, on the 21st August, 1647, devoured by the
+flames. Madeline, or rather her corpse, remained in the prisons of
+Rouen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE DEVIL TRIUMPHS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
+
+
+The Fronde was a kind of Voltaire. The spirit of Voltaire, old as
+France herself, but long restrained, burst forth in the political, and
+anon in the religious, world. In vain did the Great King seek to
+establish a solemn gravity. Beneath it laughter went on.
+
+Was there nought else, then, but laughter and jesting? Nay, it was the
+Advent of Reason. By means of Kepler, of Galileo, Descartes, Newton,
+there was now triumphantly enthroned the reasonable dogma of faith in
+the unchangeable laws of nature. Miracle dared no longer show itself,
+or, when it did dare, was hissed down. In other and better words, the
+fantastic miracles of mere whim had vanished, and in their stead was
+seen the mighty miracle of the universe--more regular, and therefore
+more divine.
+
+The great rebellion decidedly won the day. You may see it working in
+the bold forms of those earlier outbursts; in the irony of Galileo; in
+the absolute doubt wherewith Descartes leads off his system. The
+Middle Ages would have said, "'Tis the spirit of the Evil One."
+
+The victory, however, is not a negative one, but very affirmative and
+surely based. The spirit of nature and the natural sciences, those
+outlaws of an elder day, return in might irresistible. All idle
+shadows are hunted out by the real, the substantial.
+
+They had said in their folly, "Great Pan is dead." Anon, observing
+that he was yet alive, they had made him a god of evil: amid such a
+chaos they might well be deceived. But, lo! he lives, and lives
+harmonious, in the grand stability of laws that govern alike the star
+and the deep-hidden mystery of life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of this period two things, by no means contradictory, may be averred:
+the spirit of Satan conquers, while the reign of witchcraft is at an
+end.
+
+All marvel-mongering, hellish or holy, is fallen very sick at last.
+Wizards and theologians are powerless alike. They are become, as it
+were, empirics, who pray in vain for some supernatural change, some
+whim of Providence, to work the wonders which science asks of nature
+and reason only.
+
+For all their zeal, the Jansenists of this century succeed only in
+bringing forth a miracle very small and very ridiculous. Still less
+lucky are the rich and powerful Jesuits, who cannot get a miracle done
+at any price; who have to be satisfied with the visions of a hysteric
+girl, Sister Mary Alacoque, of an exceedingly sanguine habit, with
+eyes for nothing but blood. In view of so much impotence, magic and
+witchcraft may find some solace for themselves.
+
+While the old faith in the supernatural was thus declining, priests
+and witches shared a common fate. In the fears, the fancies of the
+Middle Ages, these two were bound up together. Together they were
+still to face the general laughter and disdain. When Moliere made fun
+of the Devil and his "seething cauldrons," the clergy were deeply
+stirred, deeming that the belief in Paradise had fallen equally low.
+
+A government of laymen only, that of the great Colbert, who was long
+the virtual King of France, could not conceal its scorn for such old
+questions. It emptied the prisons of the wizards whom the Rouen
+Parliament still crowded into them, and, in 1672, forbade the law
+courts from entertaining any prosecutions for witchcraft. The
+Parliament protested, and gave people to understand that by this
+denial of sorcery many other things were put in peril. Any doubting of
+these lower mysteries would cause many minds to waver from their
+belief in mysteries of a higher sort.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Sabbath disappears, but why? Because it exists everywhere. It
+enters into the people's habits, becomes the practice of their daily
+life. The Devil, the Witches, had long been reproached with loving
+death more than life, with hating and hindering the generative powers
+of nature. And now in the pious seventeenth century, when the Witch is
+fast dying out, a love of barrenness, and a fear of being fruitful,
+are found to be, in very truth, the one prevalent disease.
+
+If Satan ever read, he would have good cause for laughter as he read
+the casuists who took him up where he left off. For there was one
+difference at least between them. In times of terror Satan made
+provision for the famished, took pity on the poor. But these fellows
+have compassion only for the rich. With his vices, his luxury, his
+court life, the rich man is still a needy miserable beggar. He comes
+to confession with a humbly threatening air, in order to wrest from
+his doctor permission to sin with a good conscience. Some day will be
+told, by him who may have the courage to tell it, an astounding tale
+of the cowardly things done, and the shameful tricks so basely
+ventured by the casuist who wished to keep his penitent. From Navarro
+to Escobar the strangest bargains were continually made at the wife's
+expense, and some little wrangling went on after that. But all this
+would not do. The casuist was conquered, was altogether a coward. From
+Zoccoli to Liguori--1670 to 1770--he gave up banning Nature.
+
+The Devil, so it was said, showed two countenances at the Sabbath: the
+one in front seemed threatening, the other behind was farcical. Now
+that he has nothing to do with it, he has generously given the latter
+to the casuist.
+
+It must have amused him to see his trusty friends settled among honest
+folk, in the serious households swayed by the Church. The worldling
+who bettered himself by that great resource of the day, lucrative
+adultery, laughed at prudence, and boldly followed his natural bent.
+Pious families, on the other hand, followed nothing but their Jesuits.
+In order to preserve, to concentrate their property, to leave each one
+wealthy heir, they entered on the crooked ways of the new
+spiritualism. Buried in a mysterious gloom, losing at the faldstool
+all heed and knowledge of themselves, the proudest of them followed
+the lesson taught by Molinos: "In this world we live to suffer. But in
+time that suffering is soothed and lulled to sleep by a habit of pious
+indifference. We thus attain to a negation. Death do you say? Not
+altogether. Without mingling in the world, or heeding its voices, we
+get thereof an echo dim and soft. It is like a windfall of Divine
+Grace, so mild and searching; never more so than in moments of
+self-abasement, when the will is wholly obscured."
+
+Exquisite depths of feeling! Alas, poor Satan! how art thou left
+behind! Bend low, acknowledge, and admire thy children!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The physicians who, having sprung from the popular empiricism which
+men called witchcraft, were far more truly his lawful children, were
+too forgetful of him who had left them his highest patrimony, as being
+his favoured heirs. They were ungrateful to the Witch, who laid the
+way for themselves. Nay, they went further than that. On this fallen
+king, their father and creator, they dealt some hard strokes with the
+whip. "_Thou, too, my son?_" They gave the jesters cruel weapons
+against him.
+
+Even in the sixteenth century there were some to scoff at the spirit
+who through all time, from the days of the Sibyl to those of the
+Witch, had filled and troubled the woman. They maintained that he was
+neither God nor Devil, but only "the Prince of the Air," as the Middle
+Ages called him. Satan was nothing but a disease!
+
+_Possession_ to them was only a result of the prison-like, sedentary,
+dry, unyielding life of the cloister. As for the 6500 devils in
+Gauffridi's little Madeline, and the hosts that fought in the bodies
+of maddened nuns at Loudun and Louviers, these doctors called them
+physical storms. "If AEolus can shake the earth," said Yvelin, "why not
+also the body of a girl?" La Cadiere's surgeon, of whom more anon, had
+the coolness to say, "it was nothing more than a choking of the womb."
+
+Wonderful descent! Routed by the simplest remedies, by exorcisms after
+Moliere, the terror of the Middle Ages would flee away and vanish
+utterly!
+
+This is too sweeping a reduction of the question. Satan was more than
+that. The doctors saw neither the height nor the depth of him; neither
+his grand revolt in the form of science, nor that strange mixture of
+impurity and pious intrigue, that union of Tartuffe and Priapus, which
+he brought to pass about the year 1700.
+
+People fancy they know something about the eighteenth century, and
+yet have never seen one of its most essential features. The greater
+its outward civilization, the clearer and fuller the light that bathed
+its uppermost layers, so much the more hermetically sealed lay all
+those widespread lower realms, of priests and monks, and women
+credulous, sickly, prone to believe whatever they heard or saw. In the
+years before Cagliostro, Mesmer, and the magnetisers, who appeared
+towards the close of the century, a good many priests still worked
+away at the old dead witchcraft. They talked of nothing but
+enchantments, spread the fear of them abroad, and undertook to hunt
+out the devils with their shameful exorcisms. Many set up for wizards,
+well knowing how little risk they ran, now that people were no longer
+burnt. They knew they were sheltered by the milder spirit of their
+age, by the tolerant teachings of their foes the philosophers, by the
+levity of the great jesters, who thought that anything could be
+extinguished with a laugh. Now it was just because people laughed,
+that these gloomy plot-spinners went their way without much fear. The
+new spirit, that of the Regent namely, was sceptical and easy-natured.
+It shone forth in the _Persian Letters_, it shone forth everywhere in
+the all-powerful journalist who filled that century, Voltaire. At any
+shedding of human blood his whole heart rises indignant. All other
+matters only make him laugh. Little by little, the maxim of the
+worldly public seems to be, "Punish nothing, and laugh at all."
+
+This tolerant spirit suffered Cardinal Tencin to appear in public as
+his sister's husband. This, too, it was that ensured to the masters of
+convents the peaceful possession of their nuns, who were even allowed
+to make declarations of pregnancy, to register the births of their
+children.[106] This tolerant temper made excuses for Father
+Apollinaire, when he was caught in a shameful piece of exorcism. That
+worthy Jesuit, Cauvrigny, idol of the provincial convents, paid for
+his adventures only by a recall to Paris, in other words--by fresh
+preferment.
+
+    [106] The noble Chapter of Canons of Pignan were sixteen in
+    number. In one year the provost received from the nuns
+    sixteen declarations of pregnancy. (See MS. History of Besse,
+    by M. Renoux.) One good fruit of this publicity was the
+    decrease of infanticide among the religious orders. At the
+    price of a little shame, the nuns let their children live,
+    and doubtless became good mothers. Those of Pignan put their
+    babes out to nurse with the neighbouring peasants, who
+    brought them up as their own.
+
+Such also was the punishment awarded the famous Jesuit, Girard, who
+was loaded with honours when he should have got the rope. He died in
+the sweetest savour of holiness. His was the most curious affair of
+that century. It enables us to probe the peculiar methods of that day,
+to realize the coarse jumble of jarring machinery which was then at
+work. As a thing of course, it was preluded by the dangerous suavities
+of the Song of Songs. It was carried on by Mary Alacoque, with a
+marriage of Bleeding Hearts spiced with the morbid blandishments of
+Molinos. To these Girard added the whisperings of Satan and the
+terrors of enchantment. He was at once the Devil and the Devil's
+exorciser. At last, horrible to say, instead of getting justice done
+to her, the unhappy girl whom he sacrificed with so much cruelty, was
+persecuted to death. She disappeared, shut up perhaps by a _lettre de
+cachet_, and buried alive in her tomb.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+FATHER GIRARD AND LA CADIERE: 1730.
+
+
+The Jesuits were unlucky. Powerful at Versailles, where they ruled the
+Court, they had not the slightest credit with Heaven. Not one tiny
+miracle could they do. The Jansenists overflowed, at any rate, with
+touching stories of miracles done. Untold numbers of sick, infirm,
+halt, and paralytic obtained a momentary cure at the tomb of the
+Deacon Paris. Crushed by a terrible succession of plagues, from the
+time of the Great King to the Regency, when so many were reduced to
+beggary, these unfortunate people went to entreat a poor, good fellow,
+a virtuous imbecile, a saint in spite of his absurdities, to make them
+whole. And what need, after all, of laughter? His life is far more
+touching than ridiculous. We are not to be surprised if these good
+folk, in the emotion of seeing their benefactor's tomb, suddenly
+forgot their own sufferings. The cure did not last, but what matter? A
+miracle indeed had taken place, a miracle of devotion, of
+lovingkindness, of gratitude. Latterly, with all this some knavery
+began to mingle, but at that time, in 1728, these wonderful popular
+scenes were very pure.
+
+The Jesuits would have given anything for the least of the miracles
+they denied. For well-nigh fifty years they worked away, embellishing
+with fables and anecdotes their Legend of the Sacred Heart, the story
+of Mary Alacoque. For twenty-five or thirty years they had been trying
+to convince the world that their helpmate, James II. of England, not
+content with healing the king's evil (in his character of King of
+France), amused himself after his death in making the dumb to speak,
+the lame to walk straight, and the squint-eyed to see properly. They
+who were cured squinted worse than ever. As for the dumb, it so
+chanced that she who played this part was a manifest rogue, caught in
+the very act of stealing. She roamed the provinces: at every chapel of
+any renowned saint she was healed by a miracle and received alms, and
+then began her work again elsewhere.
+
+For getting wonders wrought the South was a better country. There
+might be found a plenty of nervous women, easy to excite, the very
+ones to make into somnambulists, subjects of miracle, bearers of
+mystic marks, and so forth.
+
+At Marseilles the Jesuits had on their side a bishop, Belzunce, a
+bold, hearty sort of man, renowned in the memorable plague,[107] but
+credulous and narrow-minded withal; under whose countenance many a
+bold venture might be made. Beside him they had placed a Jesuit of
+Franche-Comte, not wanting in mind, whose austere outside did not
+prevent his preaching pleasantly, in an ornate and rather worldly
+style, such as the ladies loved. A true Jesuit, he made his way by two
+different methods, now by feminine intrigue, anon by his holy
+utterances. Girard had on his side neither years nor figure; he was a
+man of forty-seven, tall, withered, weak-looking, of dirty aspect, and
+given to spitting without end.[108] He had long been a tutor, even
+till he was thirty-seven; and he preserved some of his college tastes.
+For the last ten years, namely, ever since the great plague, he had
+been confessor to the nuns. With them he had fared well, winning over
+them a high degree of power by enforcing a method seemingly quite at
+variance with the Provencial temperament, by teaching the doctrine and
+the discipline of a mystic death, of absolute passiveness, of entire
+forgetfulness of self. The dreadful crisis through which they had just
+passed had deadened their spirits, and weakened hearts already
+unmanned by a kind of morbid languor. Under Girard's leading, the
+Carmelites of Marseilles carried their mysticism to great lengths; and
+first among them was Sister Remusat, who passed for a saint.
+
+    [107] The great plague of 1720, which carried off 60,000
+    people about Marseilles. Belzunce is the "Marseilles' good
+    bishop" of Pope's line--TRANS.
+
+    [108] See "The Proceedings in the Affair of Father Girard and
+    La Cadiere," Aix, 1733.
+
+In spite, or perhaps by reason, of this success, the Jesuits took
+Girard away from Marseilles: they wanted to employ him in raising
+anew their house at Toulon. Colbert's splendid institution, the
+Seminary for Naval Chaplains, had been entrusted to the Jesuits, with
+the view of cleansing the young chaplains from the influence of the
+Lazarists, who ruled them almost everywhere. But the two Jesuits
+placed in charge were men of small capacity. One was a fool; the
+other, Sabatier, remarkable, in spite of his age, for heat of temper.
+With all the insolence of our old navy he never kept himself under the
+least control. In Toulon he was reproached, not for having a mistress,
+nor yet a married woman, but for intriguing in a way so insolent and
+outrageous as to drive the husband wild. He sought to keep the husband
+specially alive to his own shame, to make him wince with every kind of
+pang. Matters were pushed so far that at last the husband died
+outright.
+
+Still greater was the scandal caused by the Jesuits' rivals, the
+Observantines, who, having spiritual charge of a sisterhood at
+Ollioules, made mistresses openly of the nuns, and, not content with
+this, dared even to seduce the little boarders. One Aubany, the Father
+Guardian, violated a girl of thirteen; when her parents pursued him,
+he found shelter at Marseilles.
+
+As Director of the Seminary for Chaplains, Girard began, through his
+seeming sternness and his real dexterity, to win for the Jesuits an
+ascendant over monks thus compromised, and over parish-priests of very
+vulgar manners and scanty learning.
+
+In those Southern regions, where the men are abrupt, not seldom
+uncouth of speech and appearance, the women have a lively relish for
+the gentle gravity of the men of the North: they feel thankful to them
+for speaking a language at once aristocratic, official, and French.
+
+When Girard reached Toulon, he must already have gained full knowledge
+of the ground before him. Already had he won over a certain Guiol, who
+sometimes came to Marseilles, where she had a daughter, a Carmelite
+nun. This Guiol, wife of a small carpenter, threw herself entirely
+into his hands, even more so than he wanted. She was of ripe age,
+extremely vehement for a woman of forty-seven, depraved and ready for
+anything, ready to do him service of whatever kind, no matter what he
+might do or be, whether he were a sinner or a saint.
+
+This Guiol, besides her Carmelite daughter at Marseilles, had another,
+a lay-sister to the Ursulines of Toulon. The Ursulines, an order of
+teaching nuns, formed everywhere a kind of centre; their parlour, the
+resort of mothers, being a half-way stage between the cloister and the
+world. At their house, and doubtless through their means, Girard saw
+the ladies of the town, among them one of forty years, a spinster,
+Mdlle. Gravier, daughter of an old contractor for the royal works at
+the Arsenal. This lady had a shadow who never left her, her cousin La
+Reboul, daughter of a skipper and sole heiress to herself; a woman,
+too, who really meant to succeed her, though very nearly her own age,
+being five-and-thirty. Around these gradually grew a small roomful of
+Girard's admirers, who became his regular penitents. Among them were
+sometimes introduced a few young girls, such as La Cadiere, a
+tradesman's daughter and herself a sempstress, La Laugier, and La
+Batarelle, the daughter of a waterman. They had godly readings
+together, and now and then small suppers. But they were specially
+interested in certain letters which recounted the miracles and
+ecstacies of Sister Remusat, who was still alive; her death occurring
+in February, 1730. What a glorious thing for Father Girard, who had
+led her to a pitch so lofty! They read, they wept, they shouted with
+admiration. If they were not ecstatic yet, they were not far from
+being so. Already, to please her kinswoman, would La Reboul throw
+herself at times into a strange plight by holding her breath and
+pinching her nose.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Among these girls and women the least frivolous certainly was
+Catherine Cadiere, a delicate, sickly girl of seventeen, taken up
+wholly with devotion and charity, of a mournful countenance, which
+seemed to say that, young as she was, she had felt more keenly than
+anyone else the great misfortunes of the time, those, namely, of
+Provence and Toulon. This is easily explained. She was born during the
+frightful famine of 1709; and just as the child was growing into a
+maiden, she witnessed the fearful scenes of the great plague. Those
+two events seemed to have left their mark upon her, to have taken her
+out of the present into a life beyond.
+
+This sad flower belonged wholly to Toulon, to the Toulon of that day.
+To understand her better we must remember what that town is and what
+it was.
+
+Toulon is a thoroughfare, a landing-place, the entrance of an immense
+harbour and a huge arsenal. The sense of this carries the traveller
+away, and prevents his seeing Toulon itself. There is a town however
+there, indeed an ancient city. It contains two different sets of
+people, the stranger functionaries, and the genuine Toulonnese, who
+are far from friendly to the former, regarding them with envy, and
+often roused to rebellion by the swaggering of the naval officers. All
+these differences were concentred in the gloomy streets of a town in
+those days choked up within its narrow girdle of fortifications. The
+most peculiar feature about this small dark town is, that it lies
+exactly between two broad seas of light, between the marvellous mirror
+of its roadstead and its glorious amphitheatre of mountains,
+baldheaded, of a dazzling grey, that blinds you in the noonday sun.
+All the gloomier look the streets themselves. Such as do not lead
+straight to the harbour and draw some light therefrom, are plunged at
+all hours in deep gloom. Filthy byeways, and small tradesmen with
+shops ill-furnished, invisible to anyone coming for the day, such is
+the general aspect of the place. The interior forms a maze of passages
+in which you may find plenty of churches, and old convents now turned
+into barracks. Copious kennels, laden and foul with sewage water, run
+down in torrents. The air is almost stagnant, and in so dry a climate
+you are surprised at seeing so much moisture.
+
+In front of the new theatre a passage called La Rue de l'Hopital leads
+from the narrow Rue Royale into the narrow Rue des Cannoniers. It
+might almost be called a blind alley. The sun, however, just looks
+down upon it at noon, but, finding the place so dismal, passes on
+forthwith, and leaves the passage to its wonted darkness.
+
+Among these gloomy dwellings the smallest was that of the Sister
+Cadiere, a retail dealer, or huckster. There was no entrance but by
+the shop, and only one room on each floor. The Cadieres were honest
+pious folk, and Madame Cadiere the mirror of excellence itself. These
+good people were not altogether poor. Besides their small dwelling in
+the town, they too, like most of their fellow-townsmen, had a
+country-house of their own. This latter is, commonly, a mere hut, a
+little stony plot of ground yielding a little wine. In the days of its
+naval greatness, under Colbert and his son, the wondrous bustle in the
+harbour brought some profit to the town. French money flowed in. The
+many great lords who passed that way brought their households along
+with them, an army of wasteful domestics, who left a good many things
+behind them. All this came to a sudden end. The artificial movement
+stopped short: even the workmen at the arsenal could no longer get
+their wages; shattered vessels were left unrepaired; and at last the
+timbers themselves were sold.
+
+Toulon was keenly sensible of the rebound. At the siege of 1707 it
+seemed as if dead. What, then, was it in the dreadful year 1709, the
+71st of Louis XIV., when every plague at once, a hard winter, a
+famine, and an epidemic, seemed bent on utterly destroying France? The
+very trees of Provence were not spared. All traffic came to an end.
+The roads were covered with starving beggars. Begirt with bandits who
+stopped up every outlet, Toulon quaked for fear.
+
+To crown all, Madame Cadiere, in this year of sorrow, was with child.
+Three boys she had borne already. The eldest stayed in the shop to
+help his father. The second was with the Friar Preachers, and destined
+to become a Dominican, or a Jacobin as they were then called. The
+third was studying in the Jesuit seminary as a priest to be. The
+wedded couple wanted a daughter; Madame prayed to Heaven for a saint.
+She spent her nine months in prayer, fasting, or eating nought but rye
+bread. She had a daughter, namely Catherine. The babe was very
+delicate and, like her brothers, unhealthy. The dampness of an
+ill-aired dwelling, and the poor nourishment gained from a mother so
+thrifty and more than temperate, had something to do with this. The
+brothers had scrofulous glands, and in her earlier years the little
+thing suffered from the same cause. Without being altogether ill, she
+had all the suffering sweetness of a sickly child. She grew up without
+growing stronger. At an age when other children have all the strength
+and gladness of upswelling life in them, she was already saying, "I
+have not long to live."
+
+She took the small-pox, which left her rather marked. I know not if
+she was handsome, but it is clear that she was very winning, with all
+the charming contrasts, the twofold nature of the maidens of Provence.
+Lively and pensive, gay and sad, by turns, she was a good little
+worshipper, but given to harmless pranks withal. Between the long
+church services, if she went into the country with girls of her own
+age, she made no fuss about doing as they did, but would sing and
+dance away and flourish her tambourine. But such days were few. Most
+times her chief delight was to climb up to the top of the house, to
+bring herself nearer heaven, to obtain a glimpse of daylight, to look
+out, perhaps, on some small strip of sea, or some pointed peak in the
+vast wilderness of hills. Thenceforth to her eyes they were serious
+still, but less unkindly than before, less bald and leafless, in a
+garment thinly strewn with arbutus and larch.
+
+This dead town of Toulon numbered 26,000 inhabitants when the plague
+began. It was a huge throng cooped up in one spot. But from this
+centre let us take away a girdle of great convents with their backs
+upon the ramparts, convents of Minorites, Ursulines, Visitandines,
+Bernardines, Oratorians, Jesuits, Capuchins, Recollects; those of the
+Refuge, the Good Shepherd, and, midmost of all, the enormous convent
+of Dominicans. Add to these the parish churches, parsonages, bishop's
+palace, and it seems that the clergy filled up the place, while the
+people had no room at all, to speak of.[109]
+
+    [109] See the work by M. d'Antrechaus, and the excellent
+    treatise by M. Gustave Lambert.
+
+On a centre so closely thronged, we may guess how savagely the plague
+would fasten. Toulon's kind heart was also to prove her bane. She
+received with generous warmth some fugitives from Marseilles. These
+are just as likely to have brought the plague with them, as certain
+bales of wool to which was traced the first appearance of that
+scourge. The chief men of the place were about to fly, to scatter
+themselves over the country. But the First Consul, M. d'Antrechaus, a
+man of heroic soul, withheld them, saying, with a stern air, "And what
+will the people do, sirs, in this impoverished town, if the rich folk
+carry their purses away?" So he held them back, and compelled all
+persons to stay where they were. Now the horrors of Marseilles had
+been ascribed to the mutual intercourse of its inhabitants.
+D'Antrechaus, however, tried a system entirely the reverse, tried to
+isolate the people of Toulon, by shutting them up in their houses.
+Two huge hospitals were established, in the roadstead and in the
+hills. All who did not come to these, had to keep at home on pain of
+death. For seven long months D'Antrechaus carried out a wager, which
+would have been held impossible, the keeping, namely, and feeding in
+their own houses, of a people numbering 26,000 souls. All that time
+Toulon was one vast tomb. No one stirred save in the morning, to deal
+out bread from door to door, and then to carry off the dead. Most of
+the doctors perished, and the magistrates all but D'Antrechaus. The
+gravediggers also perished, and their places were filled by condemned
+deserters, who went to work with brutal and headlong violence. Bodies
+were thrown into the tumbril, head downwards, from the fourth storey.
+One mother, having just lost her little girl, shrunk from seeing her
+poor wee body thus hurled below, and by dint of bribing, managed to
+get it lowered the proper way. As they were bearing it off, the child
+came to; it lived still. They took her up again, and she survived, to
+become the grandmother of the learned M. Brun, who wrote an excellent
+history of the port.
+
+Poor little Cadiere was exactly the same age as this girl who died and
+lived again, being twelve years old, an age for her sex so full of
+danger. In the general closing of the churches, in the putting down of
+all holidays, and chiefly of Christmas, wont to be so merry a season
+at Toulon, the child's fancy saw the end of all things. It seems as
+though she never quite shook off that fancy. Toulon never raised her
+head again. She retained her desert-like air. Everything was in ruins,
+everyone in mourning; widowers, orphans, desperate beings were
+everywhere seen. In the midst, a mighty shadow, moved D'Antrechaus
+himself; he had seen all about him perish, his sons, his brothers, and
+his colleagues; and was now so gloriously ruined, that he was fain to
+look to his neighbours for his daily meals. The poor quarrelled among
+themselves for the honour of feeding him.
+
+The young girl told her mother that she would never more wear any of
+her smarter clothes, and she must, therefore, sell them. She would do
+nothing but wait upon the sick, and she was always dragging her to the
+hospital at the end of the street. A little neighbour-girl of
+fourteen, Laugier by name, who had lost her father, was living with
+her mother in great wretchedness. Catherine was continually going to
+them with food and clothes, and anything she could get for them. She
+begged her parents to defray the cost of apprenticing Laugier to a
+dressmaker; and such was her sway over them that they could not refuse
+to incur so heavy an outlay. Her piety, her many little charms of
+soul, rendered her all-powerful. She was impassioned in her charity,
+giving not alms only, but love as well. She longed to make Laugier
+perfect, rejoiced to have her by her side, and often gave her half her
+bed. The pair had been admitted among the _Daughters of Saint
+Theresa_, the third order established by the Carmelites. Mdlle.
+Cadiere was their model nun, and seemed at thirteen a Carmelite
+complete. Already she devoured some books of mysticism borrowed from a
+Visitandine. In marked contrast with herself seemed Laugier, now a
+girl of fifteen, who would do nothing but eat and look handsome. So
+indeed she was, and on that account had been made sextoness to the
+chapel of Saint Theresa. This led her into great familiarities with
+the priests, and so, when her conduct called for her expulsion from
+the congregation, another authority, the vicar-general, flew into such
+a rage as to declare that, if she were expelled, the chapel itself
+would be interdicted.
+
+Both these girls had the temperament of their country, suffering from
+great excitement of the nerves, and from what was called flatulence of
+the womb. But in each the result was entirely different; being very
+carnal in the case of Laugier, who was gluttonous, lazy, passionate;
+but wholly cerebral with regard to the pure and gentle Catherine, who
+owing to her ailments or to a lively imagination that took everything
+up into itself, had no ideas concerning sex. "At twenty she was like a
+child of seven." For nothing cared she but praying and giving of alms;
+she had no wish at all to marry. At the very word "marriage," she
+would fall a-weeping, as if she had been asked to abandon God.
+
+They had lent her the life of her patroness, Catherine of Genoa, and
+she had bought for herself _The Castle of the Soul_, by St. Theresa.
+Few confessors could follow her in these mystic flights. They who
+spoke clumsily of such things gave her pain. She could not keep either
+her mother's confessor, the cathedral-priest, or another, a Carmelite,
+or even the old Jesuit Sabatier. At sixteen she found a priest of
+Saint Louis, a highly spiritual person. She spent days in church, to
+such a degree that her mother, by this time a widow and often in want
+of her, had to punish her, for all her own piety, on her return home.
+It was not the girl's fault, however: during her ecstasies she quite
+forgot herself. So great a saint was she accounted by the girls of her
+own age, that sometimes at mass they seemed to see the Host drawn on
+by the moving power of her love, until it flew up and placed itself of
+its own accord in her mouth.
+
+Her two young brothers differed from each other in their feelings
+towards Girard. The elder, who lived with the Friar Preachers, shared
+the natural dislike of all Dominicans for the Jesuit. The other, who
+was studying with the Jesuits in order to become a priest, regarded
+Girard as a great man, a very saint, a man to honour as a hero. Of
+this younger brother, sickly like herself, Catherine was very fond.
+His ceaseless talking about Girard was sure to do its work upon her.
+One day she met the father in the street. He looked so grave, but so
+good and mild withal, that a voice within her said, "Behold the man to
+whose guidance thou art given!" The next Saturday, when she came to
+confess to him, he said that he had been expecting her. In her amazed
+emotion she never dreamed that her brother might have given him
+warning, but fancied that the mysterious voice had spoken to him also,
+and that they two were sharing the heavenly communion of warnings from
+the world above.
+
+Six months of summer passed away, and yet Girard, who confessed her
+every Saturday, had taken no step towards her. The scandal about old
+Sabatier had set him on his guard. His own prudence would have held
+him to an attachment of a darker kind for such a one as the Guiol, who
+was certainly very mature, but also ardent and a devil incarnate.
+
+It was Cadiere who made the first advances towards him, innocent as
+they were. Her brother, the giddy Jacobin, had taken it into his head
+to lend a lady and circulate through the town a satire called _The
+Morality of the Jesuits_. The latter were soon apprised of this.
+Sabatier swore that he would write to the Court for a sealed order
+(lettre-de-cachet) to shut up the Jacobin. In her trouble and alarm,
+his sister, with tears in her eyes, went to beseech Father Girard for
+pity's sake to interfere. On her coming again to him a little later,
+he said, "Make yourself easy; your brother has nothing to fear; I have
+settled the matter for him." She was quite overcome. Girard saw his
+advantage. A man of his influence, a friend of the King, a friend of
+Heaven as well, after such proof of goodness as he had just been
+giving, would surely have the very strongest sway over so young a
+heart! He made the venture, and in her own uncertain language said to
+her, "Put yourself in my hands; yield yourself up to me altogether."
+Without a blush she answered, in the fulness of her angelic purity,
+"Yes;" meaning nought else than to have him for her sole director.
+
+What were his plans concerning her? Would he make her a mistress or
+the tool of his charlatanry? Girard doubtless swayed to and fro, but
+he leant, I think, most towards the latter idea. He had to make his
+choice, might manage to seek out pleasures free from risk. But Mdlle.
+Cadiere was under a pious mother. She lived with her family, a married
+brother and the two churchmen, in a very confined house, whose only
+entrance lay through the shop of the elder brother. She went no
+whither except to church. With all her simplicity she knew
+instinctively what things were impure, what houses dangerous. The
+Jesuit penitents were fond of meeting together at the top of a house,
+to eat, and play the fool, and cry out, in their Provencial tongue,
+"Vivent les _Jesuitons_!" A neighbour, disturbed by their noise, went
+and found them lying on their faces, singing and eating fritters, all
+paid for, it was said, out of the alms-money. Cadiere was also
+invited, but taking a disgust to the thing she never went a second
+time.
+
+She was assailable only through her soul. And it was only her soul
+that Girard seemed to desire. That she should accept those lessons of
+passive faith which he had taught at Marseilles, this apparently was
+all his aim. Hoping that example would do more for him than precept,
+he charged his tool Guiol to escort the young saint to Marseilles,
+where lived the friend of Cadiere's childhood, a Carmelite nun, a
+daughter of Guiol's. The artful woman sought to win her trust by
+pretending that she, too, was sometimes ecstatic. She crammed her with
+absurd stories. She told her, for instance, that on finding a cask of
+wine spoilt in her cellar, she began to pray, and immediately the wine
+became good. Another time she felt herself pierced by a crown of
+thorns, but the angels had comforted her by serving up a good dinner,
+of which she partook with Father Girard.
+
+Cadiere gained her mother's leave to go with this worthy Guiol to
+Marseilles, and Madame Cadiere paid her expenses. It was now the most
+scorching month--that of August, 1729--in a scorching climate, when
+the country was all dried up, and the eye could see nothing but a
+rugged mirror of rocks and flintstone. The weak, parched brain of a
+sick girl suffering from the fatigues of travel, was all the more
+easily impressed by the dismal air of a nunnery of the dead. The true
+type of this class was the Sister Remusat, already a corpse to outward
+seeming, and soon to be really dead. Cadiere was moved to admire so
+lofty a piece of perfection. Her treacherous companion allured her
+with the proud conceit of being such another and filling her place
+anon.
+
+During this short trip of hers, Girard, who remained amid the stifling
+heats of Toulon, had met with a dismal fall. He would often go to the
+girl Laugier, who believed herself to be ecstatic, and "comfort" her
+to such good purpose that he got her presently with child. When Mdlle.
+Cadiere came back in the highest ecstasy, as if like to soar away, he
+for his part was become so carnal, so given up to pleasure, that he
+"let fall on her ears a whisper of love." Thereat she took fire, but
+all, as anyone may see, in her own pure, saintly, generous way; as
+eager to keep him from falling, as devoting herself even to die for
+his sake.
+
+One of her saintly gifts was her power of seeing into the depths of
+men's hearts. She had sometimes chanced to learn the secret life and
+morals of her confessors, to tell them of their faults; and this, in
+their fear and amazement, many of them had borne with great humility.
+One day this summer, on seeing Guiol come into her room, she suddenly
+said, "Wicked woman! what have you been doing?"
+
+"And she was right," said Guiol herself, at a later period; "for I had
+just been doing an evil deed." Perhaps she had just been rendering
+Laugier the same midwife's service which next year she wished to
+render Batarelle.
+
+Very likely, indeed, Laugier had entrusted to Catherine, at whose
+house she often slept, the secret of her good fortune, the love, the
+fatherly caresses of her saint. It was a hard and stormy trial for
+Catherine's spirits. On the one side, she had learnt by heart
+Girard's maxim, that whatever a saint may do is holy. But on the other
+hand, her native honesty and the whole course of her education
+compelled her to believe that over-fondness for the creature was ever
+a mortal sin. This woeful tossing between two different doctrines
+quite finished the poor girl, brought on within her dreadful storms,
+until at last she fancied herself possessed with a devil.
+
+And here her goodness of heart was made manifest. Without humbling
+Girard, she told him she had a vision of a soul tormented with impure
+thoughts and deadly sin; that she felt the need of rescuing that soul,
+by offering the Devil victim for victim, by agreeing to yield herself
+into his keeping in Girard's stead. He never forbade her, but gave her
+leave to be possessed for one year only.
+
+Like the rest of the town, she had heard of the scandalous loves of
+Father Sabatier--an insolent passionate man, with none of Girard's
+prudence. The scorn which the Jesuits--to her mind, such pillars of
+the Church--were sure to incur, had not escaped her notice. She said
+one day to Girard, "I had a vision of a gloomy sea, with a vessel full
+of souls tossed by a storm of unclean thoughts. On this vessel were
+two Jesuits. Said I to the Redeemer, whom I saw in heaven, 'Lord, save
+them, and let me drown! The whole of their shipwreck do I take upon
+myself,' And God, in His mercy, granted my prayer."
+
+All through the trial, and when Girard, become her foe, was aiming at
+her death, she never once recurred to this subject. These two
+parables, so clear in meaning, she never explained. She was too
+high-minded to say a word about them. She had doomed herself to very
+damnation. Some will say that in her pride she deemed herself so
+deadened and impassive as to defy the impurity with which the Demon
+troubled a man of God. But it is quite clear that she had no accurate
+knowledge of sensual things, foreseeing nought in such a mystery save
+pains and torments of the Devil. Girard was very cold, and quite
+unworthy of all this sacrifice. Instead of being moved to compassion,
+he sported with her credulity through a vile deceit. Into her casket
+he slipped a paper, in which God declared that, for her sake, He would
+indeed save the vessel. But he took care not to leave so absurd a
+document there: she would have read it again and again until she came
+to perceive how spurious it was. The angel who brought the paper
+carried it off the next day.
+
+With the same coarseness of feeling Girard lightly allowed her, all
+unsettled and incapable of praying as she plainly was, to communicate
+as much as she pleased in different churches every day. This only made
+her worse. Filled already with the Demon, she harboured the two foes
+in one place. With equal power they fought within her against each
+other. She thought she would burst asunder. She would fall into a
+dead faint, and so remain for several hours. By December she could
+not move even from her bed.
+
+Girard had now but too good a plea for seeing her. He was prudent
+enough to let himself be led by the younger brother at least as far as
+her door. The sick girl's room was at the top of the house. Her mother
+stayed discreetly in the shop. He was left alone as long as he
+pleased, and if he chose could turn the key. At this time she was very
+ill. He handled her as a child, drawing her forward a little to the
+front of the bed, holding her head, and kissing her in a fatherly way.
+
+She was very pure, but very sensitive. A slight touch, that no one
+else would have remarked, deprived her of her senses: this Girard
+found out for himself, and the knowledge of it possessed him with evil
+thoughts. He threw her at will into this trance,[110] and she, in her
+thorough trust in him, never thought of trying to prevent it, feeling
+only somewhat troubled and ashamed at causing such a man to waste upon
+her so much of his precious time. His visits were very long. It was
+easy to foresee what would happen at last. Ill as she was, the poor
+girl inspired Girard with a passion none the less wild and
+uncontrollable. One freedom led to another, and her plaintive
+remonstrances were met with scornful replies. "I am your master--your
+god. You must bear all for obedience sake." At length, about
+Christmas-time, the last barrier of reserve was broken down; and the
+poor girl awoke from her trance to utter a wail which moved even him
+to pity.
+
+    [110] A case of mesmerism applied to a very susceptible
+    patient.--TRANS.
+
+An issue which she but dimly realized, Girard, as better enlightened,
+viewed with growing alarm. Signs of what was coming began to show
+themselves in her bodily health. To crown the entanglement, Laugier
+also found herself with child. Those religious meetings, those suppers
+watered with the light wine of the country, led to a natural raising
+of the spirits of a race so excitable, and the trance that followed
+spread from one to another. With the more artful all this was mere
+sham; but with the sanguine, vehement Laugier the trance was genuine
+enough. In her own little room she had real fits of raving and
+swooning, especially when Girard came in. A little later than Cadiere
+she, too became fruitful.
+
+The danger was great. The girls were neither in a desert nor in the
+heart of a convent, but rather, as one might say, in the open street:
+Laugier in the midst of prying neighbours, Cadiere in her own family.
+The latter's brother, the Jacobin, began to take Girard's long visits
+amiss. One day when Girard came, he ventured to stay beside her as
+though to watch over her safety. Girard boldly turned him out of the
+room, and the mother angrily drove her son from the house.
+
+This was very like to bring on an explosion. Of course, the young
+man, swelling with rage at this hard usage, at this expulsion from his
+home, would cry aloud to the Preaching Friars, who in their turn would
+seize so fair an opening, to go about repeating the story and stirring
+up the whole town against the Jesuit. The latter, however, resolved to
+meet them with a strangely daring move, to save himself by a crime.
+The libertine became a scoundrel.
+
+He knew his victim, had seen the scrofulous traces of her childhood,
+traces healed up but still looking different from common scars. Some
+of these were on her feet, others a little below her bosom. He formed
+a devilish plan of renewing the wounds and passing them off as
+"_stigmata_," like those procured from heaven by St. Francis and other
+saints, who sought after the closest conformity with their pattern,
+the crucified Redeemer, even to bearing on themselves the marks of the
+nails and the spear-wound in the side. The Jesuits were distressed at
+having nought to show against the miracles of the Jansenists. Girard
+felt sure of pleasing them by an unlooked-for miracle. He could not
+but receive the support of his own order, of their house at Toulon.
+One of them, old Sabatier, was ready to believe anything: he had of
+yore been Cadiere's confessor, and this affair would bring him into
+credit. Another of these was Father Grignet, a pious old dotard, who
+would see whatever they pleased. If the Carmelites or any others were
+minded to have their doubts, they might be taught, by warnings from a
+high quarter, to consult their safety by keeping silence. Even the
+Jacobin Cadiere, hitherto a stern and jealous foe, might find his
+account in turning round and believing in a tale which made his family
+illustrious and himself the brother of a saint.
+
+"But," some will say, "did not the thing come naturally? We have
+instances numberless, and well-attested, of persons really marked with
+the sacred wounds."
+
+The reverse is more likely. When she was aware of the new wounds, she
+felt ashamed and distressed with the fear of displeasing Girard by
+this return of her childish ailments; for such she deemed the sores
+which he had opened afresh while she lay unconscious in the trance. So
+she sped away to a neighbour, one Madame Truc, who dabbled in physic,
+and of her she bought, as if for her youngest brother, an ointment to
+burn away the sores.
+
+She would have thought herself guilty of a great sin, if she had not
+told everything to Girard. So, however fearful she might be of
+displeasing and disgusting him, she spoke of this matter also. Looking
+at the wounds, he began playing his comedy, rebuked her attempt to
+heal them, and thus set herself against God. They were the marks, he
+said, of Heaven. Falling on his knees, he kissed the wounds on her
+feet. She crossed herself in self-abasement, struggled long-time
+against such a belief. Girard presses and scolds, makes her show him
+her side, and looks admiringly at the wound. "I, too," he said, "have
+a wound; but mine is within."
+
+And now she is fain to believe in herself as a living miracle. Her
+acceptance of a thing so startling was greatly quickened by the fact,
+that Sister Remusat was just then dead. She had seen her in glory, her
+heart borne upward by the angels. Who was to take her place on earth?
+Who should inherit her high gifts, the heavenly favours wherewith she
+had been crowned? Girard offered her the succession, corrupting her
+through her pride.
+
+From that time she was changed. In her vanity she set down every
+natural movement within her as holy. The loathings, the sudden starts
+of a woman great with child, of all which she knew nothing, were
+accounted for as inward struggles of the Spirit. As she sat at table
+with her family on the first day of Lent, she suddenly beheld the
+Saviour, who said, "I will lead thee into the desert, where thou shalt
+share with Me all the love and all the suffering of the holy Forty
+Days." She shuddered for dread of the suffering she must undergo. But
+still she would offer up her single self for a whole world of sinners.
+Her visions were all of blood; she had nothing but blood before her
+eyes. She beheld Jesus like a sieve running blood. She herself began
+to spit blood, and lose it in other ways. At the same time her nature
+seemed quite changed. The more she suffered, the more amorous she
+grew. On the twentieth day of Lent she saw her name coupled with that
+of Girard. Her pride, raised and quickened by these new sensations,
+enabled her to comprehend the _special sway_ enjoyed by Mary, the
+Woman, with respect to God. She felt _how much lower angels are_ than
+the least of saints, male or female. She saw the Palace of Glory, and
+mistook herself for the Lamb. To crown these illusions she felt
+herself lifted off the ground, several feet into the air. She could
+hardly believe it, until Mdlle. Gravier, a respectable person, assured
+her of the fact. Everyone came, admired, worshipped. Girard brought
+his colleague Grignet, who knelt before her and wept with joy.
+
+Not daring to go to her every day, Girard often made her come to the
+Jesuits' Church. There, before the altar, before the cross, he
+surrendered himself to a passion all the fiercer for such a sacrilege.
+Had she no scruples? did she still deceive herself? It seems as if, in
+the midst of an elation still unfeigned and earnest, her conscience
+was already dazed and darkened. Under cover of her bleeding wounds,
+those cruel favours of her heavenly Spouse, she began to feel some
+curious compensations....
+
+In her reveries there are two points especially touching. One is the
+pure ideal she had formed of a faithful union, when she fancied that
+she saw her name and that of Girard joined together for ever in the
+Book of Life. The other is her kindliness of heart, the charmingly
+childlike nature which shines out through all her extravagances. On
+Palm Sunday, looking at the joyous party around their family table,
+she wept three hours together, for thinking that "on that very day no
+one had asked Jesus to dinner."
+
+Through all that Lent, she could hardly eat anything: the little she
+took was thrown up again. The last fifteen days she fasted altogether,
+until she reached the last stage of weakness. Who would have believed
+that against this dying girl, to whom nothing remained but the mere
+breath, Girard could practise new barbarities? He had kept her sores
+from closing. A new one was now formed on her right side. And at last,
+on Good Friday, he gave the finishing touch to his cruel comedy, by
+making her wear a crown of iron-wire, which pierced her forehead,
+until drops of blood rolled down her face. All this was done without
+much secresy. He began by cutting off her long hair and carrying it
+away. He ordered the crown of one Bitard, a cagemaker in the town. She
+did not show herself to her visitors with the crown on: they saw the
+result only, the drops of blood and the bleeding visage. Impressions
+of the latter, like so many _Veronicas_,[111] were taken off on
+napkins, and doubtless given away by Girard to people of great piety.
+
+    [111] After the saint of that name, whose handkerchief
+    received the impress of Christ's countenance.--TRANS.
+
+The mother, in her own despite, became an abettor in all this
+juggling. In truth, she was afraid of Girard; she began to find him
+capable of anything, and somebody, perhaps the Guiol, had told her, in
+the deepest confidence, that, if she said a word against him, her
+daughter would not be alive twenty-four hours.
+
+Cadiere, for her part, never lied about the matter. In the narrative
+taken down from her own lips of what happened this Lent, she expressly
+tells of a crown, with sharp points, which stuck in her head, and made
+it bleed. Nor did she then make any secret of the source whence came
+the little crosses she gave her visitors. From a model supplied by
+Girard, they were made to her order by one of her kinsfolk, a
+carpenter in the Arsenal.
+
+On Good Friday, she remained twenty-four hours in a swoon, which they
+called a trance; remained in special charge of Girard, whose
+attentions weakened her, and did her deadly harm. She was now three
+months gone with child. The saintly martyr, the transfigured marvel,
+was already beginning to fill out. Desiring, yet dreading the more
+violent issues of a miscarriage, he plied her daily with reddish
+powders and dangerous drinks.
+
+Much rather would he have had her die, and so have rid himself of the
+whole business. At any rate, he would have liked to get her away from
+her mother, to bury her safe in a convent. Well acquainted with houses
+of that sort, he knew, as Picard had done in the Louviers affair, how
+cleverly and discreetly such cases as Cadiere's could be hidden away.
+He talked of it this very Good Friday. But she seemed too weak to be
+taken safely from her bed. At last, however, four days after Easter, a
+miscarriage took place.
+
+The girl Laugier had also been having strange convulsive fits, and
+absurd beginnings of _stigmata_: one of them being an old wound,
+caused by her scissors when she was working as a seamstress, the other
+an eruptive sore in her side. Her transports suddenly turned to
+impious despair. She spat upon the crucifix: she cried out against
+Girard, "that devil of a priest, who had brought a poor girl of
+two-and-twenty into such a plight, only to forsake her afterwards!"
+Girard dared not go and face her passionate outbreaks. But the women
+about her, being all in his interest, found some way of bringing this
+matter to a quiet issue.
+
+Was Girard a wizard, as people afterwards maintained? They might well
+think so, who saw how easily, being neither young nor handsome, he had
+charmed so many women. Stranger still it was, that after getting thus
+compromised, he swayed opinion to such a degree. For a while, he
+seemed to have enchanted the whole town.
+
+The truth was, that everyone knew the strength of the Jesuits. Nobody
+cared to quarrel with them. It was hardly reckoned safe to speak ill
+of them, even in a whisper. The bulk of the priesthood consisted of
+monklings of the Mendicant orders, who had no powerful friends or high
+connections. The Carmelites themselves, jealous and hurt as they were
+at losing Cadiere, kept silence. Her brother, the young Jacobin, was
+lectured by his trembling mother into resuming his old circumspect
+ways. Becoming reconciled to Girard, he came at length to serve him as
+devotedly as did his younger brother, even lending himself to a
+curious trick by which people were led to believe that Girard had the
+gift of prophecy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Such weak opposition as he might have to fear, would come only from
+the very person whom he seemed to have most thoroughly mastered.
+Submissive hitherto, Cadiere now gave some slight tokens of a coming
+independence which could not help showing itself. On the 30th of
+April, at a country party got up by the polite Girard, and to which he
+sent his troop of young devotees in company with Guiol, Cadiere fell
+into deep thought. The fair spring-time, in that climate so very
+charming, lifted her heart up to God. She exclaimed with a feeling of
+true piety, "Thee, Thee only, do I seek, O Lord! Thine angels are not
+enough for me." Then one of the party, a blithesome girl, having, in
+the Provencial fashion, hung a tambourine round her neck, Cadiere
+skipped and danced about like the rest; with a rug thrown across her
+shoulders, she danced the Bohemian measure, and made herself giddy
+with a hundred mad capers.
+
+She was very unsettled. In May she got leave from her mother to make a
+trip to Sainte-Baume, to the Church of St. Mary Magdalen, the chief
+saint of girls on penance. Girard would only let her go under charge
+of two faithful overlookers, Guiol and Reboul. But though she had
+still some trances on the way, she showed herself weary of being a
+passive tool to the violent spirit, whether divine or devilish, that
+annoyed her. The end of her year's _possession_ was not far off. Had
+she not won her freedom? Once issued forth from the gloom and
+witcheries of Toulon, into the open air, in the midst of nature,
+beneath the full sunshine, the prisoner regained her soul, withstood
+the stranger spirit, dared to be herself, to use her own will.
+Girard's two spies were far from edified thereat. On their return from
+this short journey, from the 17th to the 22nd May, they warned him of
+the change. He was convinced of it from his own experience. She fought
+against the trance, seeming no longer wishful to obey aught save
+reason.
+
+He had thought to hold her both by his power of charming and through
+the holiness of his high office, and, lastly, by right of possession
+and carnal usage. But he had no hold upon her at all. The youthful
+soul, which, after all, had not been so much conquered as
+treacherously surprised, resumed its own nature. This hurt him.
+Besides his business of pedant, his tyranny over the children he
+chastised at will, over nuns not less at his disposal, there remained
+within a hard bottom of domineering jealousy. He determined to snatch
+Cadiere back by punishing this first little revolt, if such a name
+could be given to the timid fluttering of a soul rising again from its
+long compression. On the 22nd May she confessed to him after her wont;
+but he refused to absolve her, declaring her to be so guilty that on
+the morrow he would have to lay upon her a very great penance indeed.
+
+What would that be? A fast? But she was weakened and wasted already.
+Long prayers, again, were not in fashion with Quietist directors,--were
+in fact forbidden. There remained the _discipline_, or bodily
+chastisement. This punishment, then everywhere habitual, was enforced
+as prodigally in convents as in colleges. It was a simple and summary
+means of swift execution, sometimes, in a rude and simple age, carried
+out in the churches themselves. The _Fabliaux_ show us an artless
+picture of manners, where, after confessing husband and wife, the
+priest gave them the discipline without any ceremony, just as they
+were, behind the confessional. Scholars, monks, nuns, were all
+punished in the same way.[112]
+
+    [112] The Dauphin was cruelly flogged. A boy of fifteen,
+    according to St. Simon, died from the pain of a like
+    infliction. The prioress of the Abbey-in-the-Wood, pleaded
+    before the King against the "afflictive chastisement"
+    threatened by her superior. For the credit of the convent,
+    she was spared the public shame; but the superior, to whom
+    she was consigned, doubtless punished her in a quiet way. The
+    immoral tendency of such a practice became more and more
+    manifest. Fear and shame led to woeful entreaties and
+    unworthy bargains.
+
+Girard knew that a girl like Cadiere, all unused to shame, and very
+modest--for what she had hitherto suffered took place unknown to
+herself in her sleep--would feel so cruelly tortured, so fatally
+crushed by this unseemly chastisement, as utterly to lose what little
+buoyancy she had. She was pretty sure too, if we must speak out, to be
+yet more cruelly mortified than other women, in respect of the pang
+endured by her woman's vanity. With so much suffering, and so many
+fasts, followed by her late miscarriage, her body, always delicate,
+seemed worn away to a shadow. All the more surely would she shrink
+from any exposure of a form so lean, so wasted, so full of aches. Her
+swollen legs and such-like small infirmities would serve to enhance
+her humiliation.
+
+We lack the courage to relate what followed. It may all be read in
+those three depositions, so artless, so manifestly unfeigned, in
+which, without being sworn, she made it her duty to avow what
+self-interest bade her conceal, owning even to things which were
+afterwards turned to the cruellest account against her.
+
+Her first deposition was made on the spur of the moment, before the
+spiritual judge who was sent to take her by surprise. In this we seem
+to be ever hearing the utterances of a young heart that speaks as
+though in God's own presence. The second was taken before the King--I
+should rather say before the magistrate who represented him, the
+Lieutenant Civil and Criminal of Toulon. The last was heard before
+the great assembly of the Parliament of Aix.
+
+Observe that all three, agreeing as they do wonderfully together, were
+printed at Aix under the eye of her enemies, in a volume where, as I
+shall presently prove, an attempt was made to extenuate the guilt of
+Girard, and fasten the reader's gaze on every point likely to tell
+against Cadiere. And yet the editor could not help inserting
+depositions like these, which bear with crushing weight on the man he
+sought to uphold.
+
+It was a monstrous piece of inconsistency on Girard's part. He first
+frightened the poor girl, and then suddenly took a base, a cruel
+advantage of her fears.
+
+In this case no plea of love can be offered in extenuation. The truth
+is far otherwise: he loved her no more. And this forms the most
+dreadful part of the story. We have seen how cruelly he drugged her;
+we have now to see her utterly forsaken. He owed her a grudge for
+being of greater worth than those other degraded women. He owed her a
+grudge for having unwittingly tempted him and brought him into danger.
+Above all, he could not forgive her for keeping her soul in safety. He
+sought only to tame her down, but caught hopefully at her oft-renewed
+assurance, "I feel that I shall not live." Villanous profligate that
+he was, bestowing his shameful kisses on that poor shattered body
+whose death he longed to see!
+
+How did he account to her for this shocking antagonism of cruelty and
+caresses? Was it meant to try her patience and obedience, or did he
+boldly pass on to the true depths of Molinos' teaching, that "only by
+dint of sinning can sin be quelled"? Did she take it all in full
+earnest, never perceiving that all this show of justice, penitence,
+expiation, was downright profligacy and nothing else?
+
+She did not care to understand him in the strange moral crash that
+befell her after that 23rd May, under the influence of a mild warm
+June. She submitted to her master, of whom she was rather afraid, and
+with a singularly servile passion carried on the farce of undergoing
+small penances day by day. So little regard did Girard show for her
+feelings that he never hid from her his relations with other women.
+All he wanted was to get her into a convent. Meanwhile she was his
+plaything: she saw him, let him have his way. Weak, and yet further
+weakened by the shame that unnerved her, growing sadder and more sad
+at heart, she had now but little hold on life, and would keep on
+saying, in words that brought no sorrow to Girard's soul, "I feel that
+I shall soon be dead."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+CADIERE IN THE CONVENT: 1730.
+
+
+The Abbess of the Ollioules Convent was young for an abbess, being
+only thirty-eight years old. She was not wanting in mind. She was
+lively, swift alike in love and in hatred, hurried away by her heart
+and her senses also, endowed with very little of the tact and the
+moderation needed for the governing of such a body.
+
+This nunnery drew its livelihood from two sources. On the one side,
+there came to it from Toulon two or three nuns of consular families,
+who brought good dowers with them, and therefore did what they
+pleased. They lived with the Observantine monks who had the ghostly
+direction of the convent. On the other hand, these monks, whose order
+had spread to Marseilles and many other places, picked up some little
+boarders and novices who paid for their keep: a contact full of danger
+and unpleasantness for the children, as one may see by the Aubany
+affair.
+
+There was no real confinement, nor much internal order. In the
+scorching summer nights of that African climate, peculiarly oppressive
+and wearying in the airless passes of Ollioules, nuns and novices
+went to and fro with the greatest freedom. The very same things were
+going on at Ollioules in 1730 which we saw in 1630 at Loudun. The bulk
+of nuns, well-nigh a dozen out of the fifteen who made up the house,
+being rather forsaken by the monks, who preferred ladies of loftier
+position, were poor creatures, sick at heart, and disinherited, with
+nothing to console them but tattling, child's play, and other
+school-girls' tricks.
+
+The abbess was afraid that Cadiere would soon see through all this.
+She made some demur about taking her in. Anon, with some abruptness,
+she entirely changed her cue. In a charming letter, all the more
+flattering as sent so unexpectedly from such a lady to so young a
+girl, she expressed a hope of her leaving the ghostly guidance of
+Father Girard. The girl was not, of course, to be transferred to her
+Observantines, who were far from capable of the charge. The abbess had
+formed the bold, enlivening idea of taking her into her own hands and
+becoming her sole director.
+
+She was very vain. Deeming herself more agreeable than an old Jesuit
+confessor, she reckoned on making this prodigy her own, on conquering
+her without trouble. She would have worked the young saint for the
+benefit of her house.
+
+She paid her the marked compliment of receiving her on the threshold,
+at the street-door. She kissed her, caught her up, led her into the
+abbess's own fine room, and bade her share it with herself. She was
+charmed with her modesty, with her invalid grace, with a certain
+strangeness at once mysterious and melting. In that short journey the
+girl had suffered a great deal. The abbess wanted to lay her down in
+her own bed, saying she loved her so that she would have them sleep
+together like sisters in one bed.
+
+For her purpose this was probably more than was needful. It would have
+been quite enough to have the saint under her own roof. She would now
+have too much the look of a little favourite. The lady, however, was
+surprised at the young girl's hesitation, which doubtless sprang from
+her modesty or her humility; in part, perhaps, from a comparison of
+her own ill-health with the young health and blooming beauty of the
+other. But the abbess tenderly urged her request.
+
+Under the influence of a fondling so close and so continual, she
+deemed that Girard would be forgotten. With all abbesses it had become
+the ruling fancy, the pet ambition, to confess their own nuns,
+according to the practice allowed by St. Theresa. By this pleasant
+scheme of hers the same result would come out of itself, the young
+woman telling her confessors only of small things, but keeping the
+depths of her heart for one particular person. Caressed continually by
+one curious woman, at eventide, in the night, when her head was on the
+pillow, she would have let out many a secret, whether her own or
+another's.
+
+From this living entanglement she could not free herself at the
+first. She slept with the abbess. The latter thought she held her fast
+by a twofold tie, by the opposite means employed on the saint and on
+the woman; that is, on the nervous, sensitive, and, through her
+weakness, perhaps sensual girl. Her story, her sayings, whatever fell
+from her lips, were all written down. From other sources she picked up
+the meanest details of her physical life, and forwarded the report
+thereof to Toulon. She would have made her an idol, a pretty little
+pet doll. On a slope so slippery the work of allurement doubtless
+moved apace. But the girl had scruples and a kind of fear. She made
+one great effort, of which her weak health would have made her seem
+incapable. She humbly asked leave to quit that dove's-nest, that couch
+too soft and delicate, to go and live in common with the novices or
+the boarders.
+
+Great was the abbess's surprise; great her mortification. She fancied
+herself scorned. She took a spite against the thankless girl, and
+never forgave her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From the others Cadiere met with a very pleasant welcome. The mistress
+of the novices, Madame de Lescot, a nun from Paris, refined and good,
+was a worthier woman than the abbess. She seemed to understand the
+other--to see in her a poor prey of fate, a young heart full of God,
+but cruelly branded by some eccentric spell which seemed like to hurry
+her onward to disgrace, to some unhappy end. She busied herself
+entirely with looking after the girl, saving her from her own
+rashness, interpreting her to others, excusing those things which
+might in her be least excusable.
+
+Saving the two or three noble ladies who lived with the monks and had
+small relish for the higher mysticism, they were all fond of her, and
+took her for an angel from heaven. Their tender feelings having little
+else to engage them, became concentred in her and her alone. They
+found her not only pious and wonderfully devout, but a good child
+withal, kind-hearted, winning, and entertaining. They were no longer
+listless and sick at heart. She engaged and edified them with her
+dreams, with stories true, or rather, perhaps, unfeigned, mingled ever
+with touches of purest tenderness. She would say, "At night I go
+everywhere, even to America. Everywhere I leave letters bidding people
+repent. To-night I shall go and seek you out, even when you have
+locked yourselves in. We will all go together into the Sacred Heart."
+
+The miracle was wrought. Each of them at midnight, so she said,
+received the delightful visit. They all fancied they felt Cadiere
+embracing them, and making them enter the heart of Jesus. They were
+very frightened and very happy. Tenderest, most credulous of all, was
+Sister Raimbaud, a woman of Marseilles, who tasted this happiness
+fifteen times in three months, or nearly once in every six days.
+
+It was purely the effect of imagination. The proof is, that Cadiere
+visited all of them at one same moment. The abbess meanwhile was
+hurt, being roused at the first to jealousy by the thought that she
+only had been left out, and afterwards feeling assured that, lost as
+the girl might be in her own dreams, she would get through so many
+intimate friends but too clear an inkling into the scandals of the
+house.
+
+These were scarcely hidden from her at all. But as nothing came to
+Cadiere save by the way of spiritual insight, she fancied they had
+been told her in a revelation. Here her kindliness shone out. She felt
+a large compassion for the God who was thus outraged. And once again
+she imagined herself bound to atone for the rest, to save the sinners
+from the punishment they deserved, by draining herself the worst
+cruelties which the rage of devils would have power to wreak.
+
+All this burst upon her on the 25th June, the Feast of St. John. She
+was spending the evening with the sisters in the novices' rooms. With
+a loud cry she fell backward in contortions, and lost all
+consciousness.
+
+When she came to, the novices surrounded her, waiting eager to hear
+what she was going to say. But the governess, Madame Lescot, guessed
+what she would say, felt that she was about to ruin herself. So she
+lifted her up, and led her straight to her room, where she found
+herself quite flayed, and her linen covered with blood.
+
+Why did Girard fail her amidst these struggles inward and from
+without? She could not make him out. She had much need of support, and
+yet he never came, except for one moment at rare intervals, to the
+parlour.
+
+She wrote to him on the 28th June, by her brothers; for though she
+could read, she was scarcely able to write. She called to him in the
+most stirring, the most urgent tones, and he answers by putting her
+off. He has to preach at Hyeres, he has a sore throat, and so on.
+
+Wonderful to tell, it is the abbess herself who brings him thither. No
+doubt she was uneasy at Cadiere's discovering so much of the inner
+life of the convent. Making sure that the girl would talk of it to
+Girard, she wished to forestal her. In a very flattering and tender
+note of the 3rd July, she besought the Jesuit to come and see herself
+first, for she longed, between themselves, to be his pupil, his
+disciple, as humble Nicodemus had been of Christ. "Under your
+guidance, by the blessing of that holy freedom which my post ensures
+me, I should move forward swiftly and noiselessly in the path of
+virtue. The state of our young candidate here will serve me as a fair
+and useful pretext."
+
+A startling, ill-considered step, betraying some unsoundness in the
+lady's mind. Having failed to supplant Girard with Cadiere, she now
+essayed to supplant Cadiere with Girard. Abruptly, without the least
+preface, she stepped forward. She made her decision, like a great
+lady, who was still agreeable and quite sure of being taken at her
+word, who would go so far as even to talk of the _freedom_ she
+enjoyed!
+
+In taking so false a step she started from a true belief that Girard
+had ceased to care much for Cadiere. But she might have guessed that
+he had other things to perplex him in Toulon. He was disturbed by an
+affair no longer turning upon a young girl, but on a lady of ripe age,
+easy circumstances, and good standing; on his wisest penitent, Mdlle.
+Gravier. Her forty years failed to protect her. He would have no
+self-governed sheep in his fold. One day, to her surprise and
+mortification, she found herself pregnant, and loud was her wail
+thereat.
+
+Taken up with this new adventure, Girard looked but coldly on the
+abbess's unforeseen advances. He mistrusted them as a trap laid for
+him by the Observantines. He resolved to be cautious, saw the abbess,
+who was already embarrassed by her rash step, and then saw Cadiere,
+but only in the chapel where he confessed her.
+
+The latter was hurt by his want of warmth. In truth his conduct showed
+strange inconsistencies. He unsettled her with his light, agreeable
+letters, full of little sportive threats which might have been called
+lover-like. And yet he never deigned to see her save in public.
+
+In a note written the same evening she revenged herself in a very
+delicate way. She said that when he granted her absolution, she felt
+wonderfully dissevered both from herself and from _every other
+creature_.
+
+It was just what Girard would have wanted. His plots had fallen into a
+sad tangle, and Cadiere was in the way. Her letter enchanted him: far
+from being annoyed with her, he enjoined her to keep dissevered. At
+the same time, he hinted at the need he had for caution. He had
+received a letter, he said, warning him sharply of her faults.
+However, as he would set off on the 6th July for Marseilles, he would
+see her on the road.
+
+She awaited him, but no Girard came. Her agitation was very great. It
+brought on a sharp fit of her old bodily distemper. She spoke of it to
+her dear Sister Raimbaud, who would not leave her, who slept with her,
+against the rules. This was on the night of the 6th July, when the
+heat in that close oven of Ollioules was most oppressive and
+condensed. At four or five o'clock, seeing her writhe in sharp
+suffering, the other "thought she had the colic, and went to fetch
+some fire from the kitchen." While she was gone, Cadiere tried by one
+last effort to bring Girard to her side forthwith. Whether with her
+nails she had re-opened the wounds in her head, or whether she had
+stuck upon it the sharp iron crown, she somehow made herself all
+bloody. The pain transfigured her, until her eyes sparkled again.
+
+This lasted not less than two hours. The nuns flocked to see her in
+this state, and gazed admiringly. They would even have brought their
+Observantines thither, had Cadiere not prevented them.
+
+The abbess would have taken good care to tell Girard nothing, lest he
+should see her in a plight so touching, so very pitiful. But good
+Madame Lescot comforted the girl by sending the news to the father. He
+came, but like a true juggler, instead of going up to her room at
+once, had himself an ecstatic fit in the chapel, staying there a whole
+hour on his knees, prostrate before the Holy Sacrament. Going at
+length upstairs, he found Cadiere surrounded by all the nuns. They
+tell him how for a moment she looked as if she was at mass, how she
+seemed to open her lips to receive the Host. "Who should know that
+better than myself?" said the knave. "An angel had told me. I repeated
+the mass, and gave her the sacrament from Toulon." They were so upset
+by the miracle, that one of them was two days ill. Girard then
+addressed Cadiere with unseemly gaiety: "So, so, little glutton! would
+you rob me of half my share?"
+
+They withdraw respectfully, leaving these two alone. Behold him face
+to face with his bleeding victim, so pale, so weak, but agitated all
+the more! Anyone would have been greatly moved. The avowal expressed
+by her blood, her wounds, rather than spoken words, was likely to
+reach his heart. It was a humbling sight; but who would not have
+pitied her? This innocent girl could for one moment yield to nature!
+In her short unhappy life, a stranger as she was to the charms of
+sense, the poor young saint could still show one hour of weakness! All
+he had hitherto enjoyed of her without her knowledge, became mere
+nought. With her soul, her will, he would now be master of everything.
+
+In her deposition Cadiere briefly and bashfully said that she lost all
+knowledge of what happened next. In a confession made to one of her
+friends she uttered no complaints, but let her understand the truth.
+
+And what did Girard do in return for so charmingly bold a flight of
+that impatient heart? He scolded her. He was only chilled by a warmth
+which would have set any other heart on fire. His tyrannous soul
+wanted nothing but the dead, the merest plaything of his will. And
+this girl, by the boldness of her first move, had forced him to come.
+The scholar had drawn the master along. The peevish pedant treated the
+matter as he would have treated a rebellion at school. His lewd
+severities, his coolly selfish pursuit of a cruel pleasure, blighted
+the unhappy girl, who now had nothing left her but remorse.
+
+It was no less shocking a fact, that the blood poured out for his sake
+had no other effect than to tempt him to make the most of it for his
+own purposes. In this, perhaps his last, interview he sought to make
+so far sure of the poor thing's discretion, that, however forsaken by
+him, she herself might still believe in him. He asked if he was to be
+less favoured than the nuns who had seen the miracle. She let herself
+bleed before him. The water with which he washed away the blood he
+drank himself,[113] and made her drink also, and by this hateful
+communion, he thought to bind fast her soul.
+
+    [113] This communion of blood prevailed among the Northern
+    _Reiters_. See my _Origines_.
+
+This lasted two or three hours, and it was now near noon. The abbess
+was scandalized. She resolved to go with the dinner herself, and make
+them open the door. Girard took some tea: it being Friday, he
+pretended to be fasting; though he had doubtless armed himself well at
+Toulon. Cadiere asked for coffee. The lay sister who managed the
+kitchen was surprised at this on such a day. But without that
+strengthening draught she would have fainted away. It set her up a
+little, and she kept hold of Girard still. He stayed with her, no
+longer indeed locked in, till four o'clock, seeking to efface the
+gloomy impression caused by his conduct in the morning. By dint of
+lying about friendship and fatherhood, he somewhat reassured the
+susceptible creature, and calmed her troubled spirits. She showed him
+the way out, and, walking after him, took, childlike, two or three
+skips for joy. He said, drily, "Little fool!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She paid heavily for her weakness. At nine of that same night she had
+a dreadful vision, and was heard crying out, "O God! keep off from me!
+get back!" On the morning of the 8th, at mass she did not stay for the
+communion, deeming herself, no doubt, unworthy, but made her escape
+to her own room. Thereon arose much scandal. Yet so greatly was she
+beloved, that one of the nuns ran after her, and, telling a
+compassionate falsehood, swore she had beheld Jesus giving her the
+sacrament with His own hand.
+
+Madame Lescot delicately and cleverly wrote a legend out of the mystic
+ejaculations, the holy sighs, the devout tears, and whatever else
+burst forth from this shattered heart. Strange to say, these women
+tenderly conspired to shield a woman. Nothing tells more than this in
+behalf of poor Cadiere and her delightful gifts. Already in one
+month's time she had become the child of all. They defended her in
+everything she did. Innocent though she might be, they saw in her only
+the victim of the Devil's attacks. One kind sturdy woman of the
+people, Matherone, daughter of the Ollioules locksmith, and porteress
+herself to the convent, on seeing some of Girard's indecent liberties,
+said, in spite of them, "No matter: she is a saint." And when he once
+talked of taking her from the convent, she cried out, "Take away our
+Mademoiselle Cadiere! I will have an iron door made to keep her from
+going."
+
+Alarmed at the state of things, and at the use to which it might be
+turned by the abbess and her monks, Cadiere's brethren who came to her
+every day, took courage to be beforehand; and in a formal letter
+written in her name to Girard, reminded him of the revelation given
+to her on the 25th June regarding the morals of the Observantines. It
+was time, they said, "to carry out God's purposes in this matter,"
+namely, of course, to demand an inquiry, to accuse the accusers.
+
+Their excess of boldness was very rash. Cadiere, now all but dying,
+had no such thoughts in her head. Her women-friends imagined that he
+who had caused the disturbance would, perhaps, bring back the calm.
+They besought Girard to come and confess her. A dreadful scene took
+place. At the confessional she uttered cries and wailings audible
+thirty paces off. The curious among them found some amusement
+listening to her, and were not disappointed. Girard was inflicting
+chastisement. Again and again he said, "Be calm, mademoiselle!" In
+vain did he try to absolve her. She would not be absolved. On the
+12th, she had so sharp a pang below her heart, that she felt as though
+her sides were bursting. On the 14th, she seemed fast dying, and her
+mother was sent for. She received the viaticum; and on the morrow made
+a public confession, "the most touching, the most expressive that had
+ever been heard. We were drowned in tears." On the 20th, she was in a
+state of heart-rending agony. After that she had a sudden and saving
+change for the better, marked by a very soothing vision. She beheld
+the sinful Magdalen pardoned, caught up into glory, filling in heaven
+the place which Lucifer had lost.
+
+Girard, however, could only ensure her discretion by corrupting her
+yet further, by choking her remorse. Sometimes he would come to the
+parlour and greet her with bold embraces. But oftener he sent his
+faithful followers, Guiol and others, who sought to initiate her into
+their own disgraceful secrets, while seeming to sympathise tenderly
+with the sufferings of their outspoken friend. Girard not only winked
+at this, but himself spoke freely to Cadiere of such matters as the
+pregnancy of Mdlle. Gravier. He wanted her to ask him to Ollioules, to
+calm his irritation, to persuade him that such a circumstance might be
+a delusion of the Devil's causing, which could perchance be dispelled.
+
+These impure teachings made no way with Cadiere. They were sure to
+anger her brethren, to whom they were not unknown. The letters they
+wrote in her name are very curious. Enraged at heart and sorely
+wounded, accounting Girard a villain, but obliged to make their sister
+speak of him with respectful tenderness, they still, by snatches, let
+their wrath become visible.
+
+As for Girard's letters, they are pieces of laboured writing,
+manifestly meant for the trial which might take place. Let us talk of
+the only one which he did not get into his hands to tamper with. It is
+dated the 22nd July. It is at once sour and sweet, agreeable,
+trifling, the letter of a careless man. The meaning of it is thus:--
+
+"The bishop reached Toulon this morning, and will go to see
+Cadiere.... They will settle together what to do and say. If the Grand
+Vicar and Father Sabatier wish to see her, and ask to see her wounds,
+she will tell them that she has been forbidden to do or say aught.
+
+"I am hungering to see you again, to see the whole of you. You know
+that I only demand _my right_. It is so long since I have seen more
+than half of you (he means to say, at the parlour grating). Shall I
+tire you? Well, do you not also tire me?" And so on.
+
+A strange letter in every way. He distrusts alike the bishop and the
+Jesuit, his own colleague, old Sabatier. It is at bottom the letter of
+a restless culprit. He knows that in her hands she holds his letters,
+his papers, the means, in short, of ruining him. The two young men
+write back in their sister's name a spirited answer--the only one that
+has a truthful sound. They answer him line for line, without insult,
+but with a roughness often ironical, and betraying the wrath pent-up
+within them. The sister promises to obey him, to say nothing either to
+the bishop or the Jesuit. She congratulates him on having "boldness
+enough to exhort others to suffer." She takes up and returns him his
+shocking gallantry, but in a shocking way; and here we trace a man's
+hand, the hand of those two giddy heads.
+
+Two days after, they went and told her to decide on leaving the
+convent forthwith. Girard was dismayed. He thought his papers would
+disappear with her. The greatness of his terror took away his senses.
+He had the weakness to go and weep at the Ollioules parlour, to fall
+on his knees before her, and ask her if she had the heart to leave
+him. Touched by his words, the poor girl said "No," went forward, and
+let him embrace her. And yet this Judas wanted only to deceive her, to
+gain a few days' time for securing help from a higher quarter.
+
+On the 29th there is an utter change. Cadiere stays at Ollioules, begs
+him to excuse her, vows submission. It is but too clear that he has
+set some mighty influences at work; that from the 29th threats come
+in, perhaps from Aix, and presently from Paris. The Jesuit bigwigs
+have been writing, and their courtly patrons from Versailles.
+
+In such a struggle, what were the brethren to do? No doubt they took
+counsel with their chiefs, who would certainly warn them against
+setting too hard on Girard as a _libertine confessor_; for thereby
+offence would be given to all the clergy, who deemed confession their
+dearest prize. It was needful, on the contrary; to sever him from the
+priests by proving the strangeness of his teaching, by bringing him
+forward as a _Quietist_. With that one word they might lead him a long
+way. In 1698, a vicar in the neighbourhood of Dijon had been burnt for
+Quietism. They conceived the idea of drawing up a memoir, dictated
+apparently by their sister, to whom the plan was really unknown, in
+which the high and splendid Quietism of Girard should be affirmed,
+and therefore in effect denounced. This memoir recounted the visions
+she had seen in Lent. In it the name of Girard was already in heaven.
+She saw it joined with her own in the Book of Life.
+
+They durst not take this memoir to the bishop. But they got their
+friend, little Camerle, his youthful chaplain, to steal it from them.
+The bishop read it, and circulated some copies about the town. On the
+21st August, Girard being at the palace, the bishop laughingly said to
+him, "Well, father, so your name is in the Book of Life!"
+
+He was overcome, fancied himself lost, wrote to Cadiere in terms of
+bitter reproach. Once more with tears he asked for his papers. Cadiere
+in great surprise vowed that her memoir had never gone out of her
+brother's hands. But when she found out her mistake, her despair was
+unbounded. The sharpest pangs of body and soul beset her. Once she
+thought herself on the point of death. She became like one mad. "I
+long so much to suffer. Twice I caught up the rod of penance, and
+wielded it so savagely as to draw a great deal of blood." In the midst
+of this dreadful outbreak, which proved at once the weakness of her
+head and the boundless tenderness of her conscience, Guiol finished
+her by describing Girard as nearly dead. This raised her compassion to
+the highest pitch.
+
+She was going to give up the papers. And yet it was but too clear
+that these were her only safeguard and support, the only proofs of her
+innocence, and the tricks of which she had been made the victim. To
+give them up was to risk a change of characters, to risk the
+imputation of having herself seduced a saint, the chance, in short, of
+seeing all the blame transferred to her own side.
+
+But, if she must either be ruined herself or else ruin Girard, she
+would far sooner accept the former result. A demon, Guiol of course,
+tempted her in this very way, with the wondrous sublimity of such a
+sacrifice. God, she wrote, asked of her a bloody offering. She could
+tell her of saints who, being accused, did not justify, but rather
+accused themselves, and died like lambs. This example Cadiere
+followed. When Girard was accused before her, she defended him,
+saying, "He is right, and I told a falsehood."
+
+She might have yielded up the letters of Girard only; but in so great
+an outflowing of heart she would have no haggling, and so gave him
+even copies of her own.
+
+Thus at the same time he held these drafts written by the Jacobin, and
+the copies made and sent him by the other brother. Thenceforth he had
+nothing to fear: no further check could be given him. He might make
+away with them or put them back again; might destroy, blot out, and
+falsify at pleasure. He was perfectly free to carry on his forger's
+work, and he worked away to some purpose. Out of twenty-four letters,
+sixteen remain; and these still read like elaborately forged
+afterthoughts.
+
+With everything in his own hands, Girard could laugh at his foes. It
+was now their turn to be afraid. The bishop, a man of the upper world,
+was too well acquainted with Versailles and the name won by the
+Jesuits not to treat them with proper tenderness. He even thought it
+safest to make Girard some small amends for his unkind reproach about
+The Book of Life; and so he graciously informed him that he would like
+to stand godfather to the child of one of his kinsmen.
+
+The Bishops of Toulon had always been high lords. The list of them
+shows all the first names of Provence, and some famous names from
+Italy. From 1712 to 1737, under the Regency and Fleury, the bishop was
+one of the La Tours of Pin. He was very rich, having also the Abbeys
+of Aniane and St. William of the Desert, in Languedoc. He behaved
+well, it was said, during the plague of 1721. However, he stayed but
+seldom at Toulon, lived quite as a man of the world, never said mass,
+and passed for something more than a lady's man.
+
+In July he went to Toulon, and though Girard would have turned him
+aside from Ollioules and Cadiere, he was curious to see her
+nevertheless. He saw her in one of her best moments. She took his
+fancy, seemed to him a pretty little saint; and so far did he believe
+in her enlightenment from above, as to speak to her thoughtlessly of
+all his affairs, his interests, his future doings, consulting her as
+he would have consulted a teller of fortunes.
+
+In spite, however, of the brethren's prayers he hesitated to take her
+away from Ollioules and from Girard. A means was found of resolving
+him. A report was spread about Toulon, that the girl had shown a
+desire to flee into the wilderness, as her model saint, Theresa, had
+essayed to do at twelve years old. Girard, they said, had put this
+fancy into her head, that he might one day carry her off beyond the
+diocese whose pride she was, and box-up his treasure in some far
+convent, where the Jesuits, enjoying the whole monopoly, might turn to
+the most account her visions, her miracles, her winsome ways as a
+young saint of the people. The bishop felt much hurt. He instructed
+the abbess to give Mdlle. Cadiere up to no one save her mother, who
+was certain to come very shortly and take her away from the convent to
+a country-house belonging to the family.
+
+In order not to offend Girard, they got Cadiere to write and say that,
+if such a change incommoded him, he could find a colleague and give
+her a second confessor. He saw their meaning, and preferred disarming
+jealousy by abandoning Cadiere. He gave her up on the 15th September,
+in a note most carefully worded and piteously humble, by which he
+strove to leave her friendly and tender towards himself. "If I have
+sometimes done wrong as concerning you, you will never at least forget
+how wishful I have been to help you.... I am, and ever will be, all
+yours in the Secret Heart of Jesus."
+
+The bishop, however, was not reassured. He fancied that the three
+Jesuits, Girard, Sabatier, and Grignet, wanted to beguile him, and
+some day, with some order from Paris, rob him of his little woman. On
+the 17th September, he decided once for all to send his carriage, a
+light fashionable _phaeton_, as it was called, and have her taken off
+at once to her mother's country-house.
+
+By way of soothing and shielding her, of putting her in good trim, he
+looked out for a confessor, and applied first to a Carmelite who had
+confessed her before Girard came. But he, being an old man, declined.
+Some others also probably hung back. The bishop had to take a
+stranger, but three months come from the County (Avignon), one Father
+Nicholas, prior of the Barefooted Carmelites. He was a man of forty,
+endowed with brains and boldness, very firm and even stubborn. He
+showed himself worthy of such a trust by rejecting it. It was not the
+Jesuits he feared, but the girl herself. He foreboded no good
+therefrom, thought that the angel might be an angel of darkness, and
+feared that the Evil One under the shape of a gentle girl would deal
+his blows with all the more baleful effect.
+
+But he could not see her without feeling somewhat reassured. She
+seemed so very simple, so pleased at length to have a safe, steady
+person, on whom she might lean. The continual wavering in which she
+had been kept by Girard, had caused her the greatest suffering. On the
+first day she spoke more than she had done for a month past, told him
+of her life, her sufferings, her devotions, and her visions. Night
+itself, a hot night in mid-September, did not stop her. In her room
+everything was open, the windows, and the three doors. She went on
+even to daybreak, while her brethren lay near her asleep. On the
+morrow she resumed her tale under the vine-bower. The Carmelite was
+amazed, and asked himself if the Devil could ever be so earnest in
+praise of God.
+
+Her innocence was clear. She seemed a nice obedient girl, gentle as a
+lamb, frolicsome as a puppy. She wanted to play at bowls, a common
+game in those country-places, nor did he for his part refuse to join
+her.
+
+If there was a spirit in her, it could not at any rate be called the
+spirit of lying. On looking at her closely for a long time, you could
+not doubt that her wounds now and then did really bleed. He took care
+to make no such immodest scrutiny of them as Girard had done,
+contenting himself with a look at the wound upon her foot. Of her
+trances he saw quite enough. On a sudden, a burning heat would diffuse
+itself everywhere from her heart. Losing her consciousness, she went
+into convulsions and talked wildly.
+
+The Carmelite clearly perceived that in her were two persons, the
+young woman and the Demon. The former was honest, nay, very fresh of
+heart; ignorant, for all that had been done to her; little able to
+understand the very things that had brought her into such sore
+trouble. When, before confession, she spoke of Girard's kisses, the
+Carmelite roughly said, "But those are very great sins."
+
+"O God!" she answered, weeping, "I am lost indeed, for he has done
+much more than that to me!"
+
+The bishop came to see. For him the country-house was only the length
+of a walk. She answered his questions artlessly, told him at least how
+things began. The bishop was angry, mortified, very wroth. No doubt he
+guessed the remainder. There was nought to keep him from raising a
+great outcry against Girard. Not caring for the danger of a struggle
+with the Jesuits, he entered thoroughly into the Carmelite's views,
+allowed that she was bewitched, and added that _Girard himself was the
+wizard_. He wanted to lay him that very moment under a solemn ban, to
+bring him to disgrace and ruin. Cadiere prayed for him who had done
+her so much wrong; vengeance she would not have. Falling on her knees
+before the bishop, she implored him to spare Girard, to speak no more
+of things so sorrowful. With touching humility, she said, "It is
+enough for me to be enlightened at last, to know that I was living in
+sin." Her Jacobin brother took her part, foreseeing the perils of such
+a war, and doubtful whether the bishop would stand fast.
+
+Her attacks of disorder were now fewer. The season had changed. The
+burning summer was over. Nature at length showed mercy. It was the
+pleasant month of October. The bishop had the keen delight of feeling
+that she had been saved by him. No longer under Girard's influence in
+the stifling air of Ollioules, but well cared-for by her family, by
+the brave and honest monk, protected, too, by the bishop, who never
+grudged his visits, and who shielded her with his steady countenance,
+the young girl became altogether calm.
+
+For seven weeks or so she seemed quite well-behaved. The bishop's
+happiness was so great that he wanted the Carmelite, with Cadiere's
+help, to look after Girard's other penitents, and bring them also back
+to their senses. They should go to the country-house; how unwillingly,
+and with how ill a grace we can easily guess. In truth, it was
+strangely ill-judged to bring those women before the bishop's ward, a
+girl so young still, and but just delivered from her own ecstatic
+ravings.
+
+The state of things became ridiculous and sorely embittered. Two
+parties faced each other, Girard's women and those of the bishop. On
+the side of the latter were a German lady and her daughter, dear
+friends of Cadiere's. On the other side were the rebels, headed by the
+Guiol. With her the bishop treated, in hopes of getting her to enter
+into relations with the Carmelite, and bring her friends over to him.
+He sent her his own clerk, and then a solicitor, an old lover of
+Guiol's. All this failing of any effect, the bishop came to his last
+resource, determined to summon them all to his palace. Here they
+mostly denied those trances and mystic marks of which they had made
+such boast. One of them, Guiol, of course, astonished him yet more by
+her shamelessly treacherous offer to prove to him, on the spot, that
+they had no marks whatever about their bodies. They had deemed him
+wanton enough to fall into such a snare. But he kept clear of it very
+well, declining the offer with thanks to those who, at the cost of
+their own modesty, would have had him copy Girard, and provoke the
+laughter of all the town.
+
+The bishop was not lucky. On the one hand, these bold wenches made fun
+of him. On the other, his success with Cadiere was now being undone.
+She had hardly entered her own narrow lane in gloomy Toulon, when she
+began to fall off. She was just in those dangerous and baleful centres
+where her illness began, on the very field of the battle waged by the
+two hostile parties. The Jesuits, whose rearguard everyone saw in the
+Court, had on their side the crafty, the prudent, the knowing. The
+Carmelite had none but the bishop with him, was not even backed by his
+own brethren, nor yet by the clergy. He had one weapon, however, in
+reserve. On the 8th November, he got out of Cadiere a written power to
+reveal her confession in case of need.
+
+It was a daring, dauntless step, which made Girard shudder. He was
+not very brave, and would have been undone had his cause not been that
+of the Jesuits also. He cowered down in the depths of their college.
+But his colleague Sabatier, an old, sanguine, passionate fellow, went
+straight to the bishop's palace. He entered into the prelate's
+presence, like another Popilius, bearing peace or war in his gown. He
+pushed him to the wall, made him understand that a suit with the
+Jesuits would lead to his own undoing; that he would remain for ever
+Bishop of Toulon; would never rise to an archbishopric. Yet further,
+with the freedom of an apostle strong at Versailles, he assured him
+that if this affair exposed the morals of a Jesuit, it would shed no
+less light on the morals of a bishop. In a letter, clearly planned by
+Girard, it was pretended that the Jesuits held themselves ready in the
+background, to hurl dreadful recriminations against the prelate,
+declaring his way of life not only unepiscopal, but _abominable_
+withal. The sly, faithless Girard and the hot-headed Sabatier, swollen
+with rage and spitefulness, would have pressed the calumnious charge.
+They would not have failed to say that all this matter was about a
+girl; that if Girard had taken care of her when ill, the bishop had
+gotten her when she was well. What a commotion would be caused by such
+a scandal in the well-regulated life of the great worldly lord! It
+were too laughable a piece of chivalry to make war in revenge for the
+maidenhood of a weak little fool, to embroil oneself for her sake with
+all honest people! The Cardinal of Bonzi died indeed of grief at
+Toulouse, but that was on account of a fair lady, the Marchioness of
+Ganges. The bishop, on his part, risked his ruin, risked the chance of
+being overwhelmed with shame and ridicule, for the child of a
+retail-dealer in the Rue de l'Hopital!
+
+Sabatier's threatenings made all the greater impression, because the
+bishop himself clung less firmly to Cadiere. He did not thank her for
+falling ill again; for giving the lie to his former success; for doing
+him a wrong by her relapse. He bore her a grudge for having failed to
+cure her. He said to himself that Sabatier was in the right; that he
+had better come to a compromise. The change was sudden--a kind of
+warning from above. All at once, like Paul on the way to Damascus, he
+beheld the light, and became a convert to the Jesuits.
+
+Sabatier would not let him go. He put paper before him, and made him
+write and sign a decree forbidding the Carmelite, his agent with
+Cadiere, and another forbidding her brother, the Jacobin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE TRIAL OF CADIERE: 1730-1731.
+
+
+We can guess how this alarming blow was taken by the Cadiere family.
+The sick girl's attacks became frequent and fearful. By a cruel chance
+they brought on a kind of epidemic among her intimate friends. Her
+neighbour, the German lady, who had trances also, which she had
+hitherto deemed divine, now fell into utter fright, and fancied they
+came from hell. This worthy dame of fifty years remembered that she,
+too, had often had unclean thoughts: she believed herself given over
+to the Devil; saw nothing but devils about her; and escaping from her
+own house in spite of her daughter's watchfulness, entreated shelter
+from the Cadieres. From that time the house became unbearable;
+business could not be carried on. The elder Cadiere inveighed
+furiously against Girard, crying, "He shall be served like Gauffridi:
+he, too, shall be burnt!" And the Jacobin added, "Rather would we
+waste the whole of our family estate!"
+
+On the night of the 17th November, Cadiere screamed, and was like one
+choking. They thought she was going to die. The eldest Cadiere, the
+tradesman, lost his wits, and called out to his neighbours from the
+window, "Help! the Devil is throttling my sister!" They came running
+up almost in their shirts. The doctors and surgeons wanted to apply
+the cupping-glasses to a case of what they called "suffocation of the
+womb." While some were gone to fetch these, they succeeded in
+unlocking her teeth and making her swallow a drop of brandy, which
+brought her to herself. Meanwhile there also came to the girl some
+doctors of the soul; first an old priest confessor to Cadiere's
+mother, and then some parsons of Toulon. All this noise and shouting,
+the arrival of the priests in full dress, the preparations for
+exorcising, had brought everyone out into the street. The newcomers
+kept asking what was the matter. "Cadiere has been bewitched by
+Girard," was the continual reply. We may imagine the pity and the
+wrath of the people.
+
+Greatly alarmed, but anxious to cast the fear back on others, the
+Jesuits did a very barbarous thing. They returned to the bishop,
+ordered and insisted that Cadiere should be brought to trial; that the
+attack should be made that very day; that justice should make an
+unforeseen descent on this poor girl, as she lay rattling in the
+throat after the last dreadful seizure.
+
+Sabatier never left the bishop until the latter had called his judge,
+his officer, the Vicar-general Larmedieu, and his prosecutor or
+episcopal advocate, Esprit Reybaud, and commanded them to go to work
+forthwith.
+
+By the Canon Law this was impossible, illegal. A _preliminary inquiry
+was needed_ into the facts, before the judicial business could begin.
+There was another difficulty: the spiritual judge had no right to make
+such an arrest save for _a rejection of the Sacrament_. The two
+church-lawyers must have made these objections. But Sabatier would
+hear of no excuses. If matters were allowed to drag in this cold legal
+way, he would miss his stroke of terror.
+
+Larmedieu was a compliant judge, a friend of the clergy. He was not
+one of your rude magistrates who go straight before them, like blind
+boars, on the high-road of the law, without seeing or respecting
+anyone. He had shown great regard for Aubany, the patron of Ollioules,
+during his trial; helping him to escape by the slowness of his own
+procedure. Afterwards, when he knew him to be at Marseilles, as if
+that was far from France, in the _ultima thule_ or _terra incognita_
+of ancient geographers, he would not budge any further. This, however,
+was a very different case: the judge who was so paralytic against
+Aubany, had wings, and wings of lightning, for Cadiere. It was nine in
+the morning when the dwellers in the lane saw with much curiosity a
+grand procession arrive at the Cadieres' door, with Master Larmedieu
+and the episcopal advocate at the head, honoured by an escort of two
+clergymen, doctors of theology. The house was invaded: the sick girl
+was summoned before them. They made her swear to tell the truth
+against herself; swear to defame herself by speaking out in the ears
+of justice matters that touched her conscience and the confessional
+only.
+
+She might have dispensed with an answer, for none of the usual forms
+had been observed: but she would not raise the question. She took the
+oath that was meant to disarm and betray her. For, being once bound
+thereby, she told everything, even to those shameful and ridiculous
+details which it must be very painful for any girl to acknowledge.
+
+Larmedieu's official statement and his first examination point to a
+clearly settled agreement between him and the Jesuits. Girard was to
+be brought forward as the dupe and prey of Cadiere's knavery. Fancy a
+man of sixty, a doctor, professor, director of nuns, being therewithal
+so innocent and credulous, that a young girl, a mere child, was enough
+to draw him into the snare! The cunning, shameless wanton had beguiled
+him with her visions, but failed to draw him into her own excesses.
+Enraged thereat, she endowed him with every baseness that the fancy of
+a Messalina could suggest to her!
+
+So far from giving grounds for any such idea, the examination brings
+out the victim's gentleness in a very touching way. Evidently she
+accuses others only through constraint, under the pressure of her oath
+just taken. She is gentle towards her enemies, even to the faithless
+Guiol who, in her brother's words, had betrayed her; had done her
+worst to corrupt her; had ruined her, last of all, by making her give
+up the papers which would have insured her safety.
+
+The Cadiere brothers were frightened at their sister's artlessness. In
+her regard for her oath she gave herself up without reserve to be
+vilified, alas! for ever; to have ballads sung about her; to be mocked
+by the very foes of Jesuits and silly scoffing libertines.
+
+The mischief done, they wanted at least to have it defined, to have
+the official report of the priests checked by some more serious
+measure. Seeming though she did to be the party accused, they made her
+the accuser, and prevailed on Marteli Chantard, the King's Lieutenant
+Civil and Criminal, to come and take her deposition. In this document,
+short and clear, the fact of her seduction is clearly established;
+likewise the reproaches she uttered against Girard for his lewd
+endearments, reproaches at which he only laughed; likewise the advice
+he gave her, to let herself be possessed by the Demon; likewise the
+means he used for keeping her wounds open, and so on.
+
+The King's officer, the Lieutenant, was bound to carry the matter
+before his own court. For the spiritual judge in his hurry had failed
+to go through the forms of ecclesiastic law, and so made his
+proceedings null. But the lay magistrate lacked the courage for this.
+He let himself be harnessed to the clerical inquiry, accepted
+Larmedieu for his colleague, went himself to sit and hear the evidence
+in the bishop's court. The clerk of the bishopric wrote it down, and
+not the clerk of the King's Lieutenant. Did he write it down
+faithfully? We have reason to doubt that, when we find him threatening
+the witnesses, and going every night to show their statements to the
+Jesuits.
+
+The two curates of Cadiere's parish, who were heard first, deposed
+drily, not in her favour, yet by no means against her, certainly not
+in favour of the Jesuits. These latter saw that everything was going
+amiss for them. Lost to all shame, at the risk of angering the people,
+they determined to break all down. They got from the bishop an order
+to imprison Cadiere and the chief witnesses she wanted to be heard.
+These were the German lady and Batarelle. The girl herself was placed
+in the Refuge, a convent-prison; the ladies in a bridewell, the
+_Good-Shepherd_, where mad women and foul streetwalkers needing
+punishment were thrown. On the 26th November, Cadiere was dragged from
+her bed and given over to the Ursulines, penitents of Girard's, who
+laid her duly on some rotten straw.
+
+A fear of them thus established, the witnesses might now be heard.
+They began with two, choice and respectable. One was the Guiol,
+notorious for being Girard's pander, a woman of keen and clever
+tongue, who was commissioned to hurl the first dart and open the wound
+of slander. The other was Laugier, the little seamstress, whom Cadiere
+had supported and for whose apprenticeship she had paid. While she lay
+with child by Girard, this Laugier had cried out against him; now she
+washed away her fault by sneering at Cadiere and defiling her
+benefactress, but in a very clumsy way, like the shameless wanton she
+was; ascribing to her impudent speeches quite contrary to her known
+habits. Then came Mdlle. Gravier and her cousin Reboul--all the
+_Girardites_, in short, as they were called in Toulon.
+
+But, do as they would, the light would burst forth now and then. The
+wife of a purveyor in the house where these Girardites met together,
+said, with cruel plainness, that she could not abide them, that they
+disturbed the whole house; she spoke of their noisy bursts of
+laughter, of their suppers paid for out of the money collected for the
+poor, and so forth.
+
+They were sore afraid lest the nuns should speak out for Cadiere. The
+bishop's clerk told them, as if from the bishop himself, that those
+who spoke evil should be chastised. As a yet stronger measure, they
+ordered back from Marseilles the gay Father Aubany, who had some
+ascendant over the nuns. His affair with the girl he had violated was
+got settled for him. Her parents were made to understand that justice
+could do nothing in their case. The child's good name was valued at
+eight hundred livres, which were paid on Aubany's account. So, full of
+zeal, he returned, a thorough Jesuit, to his troop at Ollioules. The
+poor troop trembled indeed, when this worthy father told them of his
+commission to warn them that, if they did not behave themselves, "they
+should be put to the torture."
+
+For all that, they could not get as much as they wanted from these
+fifteen nuns. Two or three at most were on Girard's side, but all
+stated facts, especially about the 7th July, which bore directly
+against him.
+
+In despair the Jesuits came to an heroic decision, in order to make
+sure of their witnesses. They stationed themselves in an outer hall
+which led into the court. There they stopped those going in, tampered
+with them, threatened them, and, if they were against Girard, coolly
+debarred their entrance by thrusting them out of doors.
+
+Thus the clerical judge and the King's officer were only as puppets in
+the Jesuits' hands. The whole town saw this and trembled. During
+December, January, and February, the Cadiere family drew up and
+diffused a complaint touching the way in which justice was denied them
+and witnesses suborned. The Jesuits themselves felt that the place
+would no longer hold them. They evoked help from a higher quarter.
+This seemed best available in the shape of a decree of the Great
+Council, which would have brought the matter before itself and hushed
+up everything, as Mazarin had done in the Louviers affair. But the
+Chancellor was D'Aguesseau; and the Jesuits had no wish to let the
+matter go up to Paris. They kept it still in Provence. On the 16th
+January, 1731, they got the King to determine that the Parliament of
+Provence, where they had plenty of friends, should pass sentence on
+the inquiry which two of its councillors were conducting at Toulon.
+
+M. Faucon, a layman, and M. de Charleval, a councillor of the Church,
+came in fact and straightway marched down among the Jesuits. These
+eager commissioners made so little secret of their loud and bitter
+partiality, as to toss out an order for Cadiere's remand, just as they
+might have done to an accused prisoner; whilst Girard was most
+politely called up and allowed to go free, to keep on saying mass and
+hearing confessions. And so the plaintiff was kept under lock and key,
+in her enemies' hands, exposed to all manner of cruelty from Girard's
+devotees.
+
+From these honest Ursulines she met with just such a reception as if
+they had been charged to bring about her death. The room they gave her
+was the cell of a mad nun who made everything filthy. In the nun's old
+straw, in the midst of a frightful stench, she lay. Her kinsmen on the
+morrow had much ado to get in a coverlet and mattress for her use. For
+her nurse and keeper she was allowed a poor tool of Girard's, a
+lay-sister, daughter to that very Guiol who had betrayed her; a girl
+right worthy of her mother, capable of any wickedness, a source of
+danger to her modesty, perhaps even to her life. They submitted her to
+a course of penance in her case specially painful, refusing her the
+right of confessing herself or taking the sacrament. She relapsed into
+her illness from the time she was debarred the latter privilege. Her
+fierce foe, the Jesuit Sabatier, came into her cell, and formed a new
+and startling scheme to win her by a bribe of the holy wafer. The
+bargaining began. They offered her terms: she should communicate if
+she would only acknowledge herself a slanderer, unworthy of
+communicating. In her excessive humbleness she might have done so.
+But, while ruining herself, she would also have ruined the Carmelite
+and her own brethren.
+
+Reduced to Pharisaical tricks, they took to expounding her speeches.
+Whatever she uttered in a mystic sense they feigned to accept in its
+material hardness. To free herself from such snares she displayed,
+what they had least expected, very great presence of mind.
+
+A yet more treacherous plan for robbing her of the public sympathy and
+setting the laughers against her, was to find her a lover. They
+pretended that she had proposed to a young blackguard that they should
+set off together and roam the world.
+
+The great lords of that day, being fond of having children and little
+pages to wait on them, readily took in the better-mannered of their
+peasant's sons. In this way had the bishop dealt with the boy of one
+of his tenants. He washed his face, as it were; made him tidy.
+Presently, when the favourite grew up, he gave him the tonsure,
+dressed him up like an abbe, and dubbed him his chaplain at the age of
+twenty. This person was the Abbe Camerle. Brought up with the footmen
+and made to do everything, he was, like many a half-scrubbed country
+youth, a sly, but simple lout. He saw that the prelate since his
+arrival at Toulon had been curious about Cadiere and far from friendly
+to Girard. He thought to please and amuse his master by turning
+himself, at Ollioules, into a spy on their suspected intercourse. But
+after the bishop changed through fear of the Jesuits, Camerle became
+equally zealous in helping Girard with active service against Cadiere.
+
+He came one day, like another Joseph, to say that Mdlle. Cadiere had,
+like Potiphar's wife, been tempting him, and trying to shake his
+virtue. Had this been true, it was all the more cowardly of him thus
+to punish her for a moment's weakness, to take so mean an advantage of
+some light word. But his education as page and seminarist was not such
+as to bring him either honour or the love of women.
+
+She extricated herself with spirit and success, covering him with
+shame. The two angry commissioners saw her making so triumphant an
+answer, that they cut the investigation short, and cut down the number
+of her witnesses. Out of the sixty-eight she summoned, they allowed
+but thirty-eight to appear. Regardless alike of the delays and the
+forms of justice, they hurried forward the confronting of witnesses.
+Yet nothing was gained, thereby. On the 25th and again on the 26th
+February, she renewed her crushing declarations.
+
+Such was their rage thereat, that they declared their regret at the
+want of torments and executioners in Toulon, "who might have made her
+sing out a little." These things formed their _ultima ratio_. They
+were employed, by the Parliaments through all that century. I have
+before me a warm defence of torture,[114] written in 1780, by a
+learned member of Parliament, who also became a member of the Great
+Council; it was dedicated to the King, Louis XVI., and crowned with
+the flattering approval of His Holiness Pius VI.
+
+    [114] Muyart de Vouglans, in the sequel to his _Loix
+    Criminelles_, 1780.
+
+But, in default of the torture that would have made her sing, she was
+made to speak by a still better process. On the 27th February, Guiol's
+daughter, the lay-sister who acted as her jailer, came to her at an
+early hour with a glass of wine. She was astonished: she was not at
+all thirsty: she never drank wine, especially pure wine, of a morning.
+The lay-sister, a rough, strong menial, such as they keep in convents
+to manage crazy or refractory women, and to punish children,
+overwhelmed the feeble sufferer with remonstrances that looked like
+threats. Unwilling as she was, she drank. And she was forced to drink
+it all, to the very dregs, which she found unpleasantly salt.
+
+What was this repulsive draught? We have already seen how clever these
+old confessors of nuns were at remedies of various kinds. In this case
+the wine alone would have done for so weakly a patient. It had been
+quite enough to make her drunk, to draw from her at once some
+stammering speeches, which the clerk might have moulded into a
+downright falsehood. But a drug of some kind, perhaps some wizard's
+simple, which would act for several days, was added to the wine, in
+order to prolong its effects and leave her no way of disproving
+anything laid to her charge.
+
+In her declaration of the 27th February, how sudden and entire a
+change! It is nothing but a defence of Girard! Strange to say, the
+commissioners make no remark on so abrupt a change. The strange,
+shameful sight of a young girl drunk causes no astonishment, fails to
+put them on their guard. She is made to own that all which had passed
+between herself and Girard was merely the offspring of her own
+diseased fancy; that all she had spoken of as real, at the bidding of
+her brethren and the Carmelite, was nothing more than a dream. Not
+content with whitening Girard, she must blacken her own friends, must
+crush them, and put the halter round their necks.
+
+Especially wonderful is the clearness of her deposition, the neat way
+in which it is worded. The hand of the skilful clerk peeps out
+therefrom. It is very strange, however, that now they are in so fair a
+way, they do not follow it up. From the 27th to the 6th of March there
+is no further questioning.
+
+On the 28th, the poison having doubtless done its work, and plunged
+her into a perfect stupor, or else a kind of Sabbatic frenzy, it was
+impossible to bring her forth. After that, while her head was still
+disordered, they could easily give her other potions of which she
+would know and remember nothing. What happened during those six days
+seems to have been so shocking, so sad for poor Cadiere, that neither
+she nor her brother had the heart to speak of it twice. Nor would they
+have spoken at all, had not the brethren themselves incurred a
+prosecution aiming at their own lives.
+
+Having won his cause through Cadiere's falsehood, Girard dared to come
+and see her in her prison, where she lay stupefied or in despair,
+forsaken alike of earth and heaven, and if any clear thoughts were
+left her, possessed with the dreadful consciousness of having by her
+last deposition murdered her own near kin. Her own ruin was complete
+already. But another trial, that of her brothers and the bold
+Carmelite, would now begin. She may in her remorse have been tempted
+to soften Girard, to keep him from proceeding against them, above all
+to save herself from being put to the torture. Girard, at any rate,
+took advantage of her utter weakness, and behaved like the determined
+scoundrel he really was.
+
+Alas! her wandering spirit came but slowly back to her. It was on the
+6th March that she had to face her accusers, to renew her former
+admissions, to ruin her brethren beyond repair. She could not speak;
+she was choking. The commissioners had the kindness to tell her that
+the torture was there, at her side; to describe to her the wooden
+horse, the points of iron, the wedges for jamming fast her bones. Her
+courage failed her, so weak she was now of body. She submitted to be
+set before her cruel master, who might laugh triumphant now that he
+had debased not only her body, but yet more her conscience, by making
+her the murderess of her own friends.
+
+No time was lost in profiting by her weakness. They prevailed
+forthwith on the Parliament of Aix to let the Carmelite and the two
+brothers be imprisoned, that they might undergo a separate trial for
+their lives, as soon as Cadiere should have been condemned.
+
+On the 10th March, she was dragged from the Ursulines of Toulon to
+Sainte-Claire of Ollioules. Girard, however, was not sure of her yet.
+He got leave to have her conducted, like some dreaded highway robber,
+between some soldiers of the mounted police. He demanded that she
+should be carefully locked up at Sainte-Claire. The ladies were moved
+to tears at the sight of a poor sufferer who could not drag herself
+forward, approaching between those drawn swords. Everyone pitied her.
+Two brave men, M. Aubin, a solicitor, and M. Claret, a notary, drew up
+for her the deeds in which she withdrew her late confession, fearful
+documents that record the threats of the commissioners and of the
+Ursuline prioress, and above all, the fact of the drugged wine she had
+been forced to drink.
+
+At the same time these daring men drew up for the Chancellor's court
+at Paris a plea of error, as it is called, exposing the irregular and
+blameable proceedings, the wilful breaches of the law, effected in the
+coolest way, first by the bishop's officer and the King's Lieutenant,
+secondly by the two commissioners. The Chancellor D'Aguesseau showed
+himself very slack and feeble. He let these foul proceedings stand;
+left the business in charge of the Parliament of Aix, sullied as it
+already seemed to be by the disgrace with which two of its members had
+just been covering themselves.
+
+So once more they laid hands on their victim, and had her dragged, in
+charge as before of the mounted police, from Ollioules to Aix. In
+those days people slept at a public house midway. Here the corporal
+explained that, by virtue of his orders, he would sleep in the young
+girl's room. They pretended to believe that an invalid unable to walk,
+might flee away by jumping out of window. Truly, it was a most
+villanous device, to commit such a one to the chaste keeping of the
+heroes of the _dragonnades_.[115] Happily, her mother had come to see
+her start, had followed her in spite of everything, and they did not
+dare to beat her away with their butt-ends. She stayed in the room,
+kept watch--neither of them, indeed, lying down--and shielded her
+child from all harm.
+
+    [115] Alluding to the cruelties dealt on the Huguenots by the
+    French dragoons, at the close of Louis the Fourteenth's
+    reign.--TRANS.
+
+Cadiere was forwarded to the Ursulines of Aix, who had the King's
+command to take her in charge. But the prioress pretended that the
+order had not yet come. We may see here how savage a woman who was
+once impassioned will grow, until she has lost all her woman's nature.
+She kept the other four hours at her street-door, as if she were a
+public show. There was time to fetch a mob of Jesuits' followers, of
+honest Church artizans, to hoot and hiss, while children might help by
+throwing stones. For these four hours she was in the pillory. Some,
+however, of the more dispassionate passers-by asked if the Ursulines
+had gotten orders to let them kill the girl. We may guess what tender
+jailers their sick prisoner would find in these good sisters!
+
+The ground was prepared with admirable effect. By a spirited concert
+between Jesuit magistrates and plotting ladies, a system of deterring
+had been set on foot. No pleader would ruin himself by defending a
+girl thus heavily aspersed. No one would digest the poisonous things
+stored up by her jailers, for him who should daily show his face in
+their parlour to await an interview with Cadiere. The defence in that
+case would devolve on M. Chaudon, syndic of the Aix bar. He did not
+decline so hard a duty. And yet he was so uneasy as to desire a
+settlement, which the Jesuits refused. Thereupon he showed what he
+really was, a man of unswerving honesty, of amazing courage. He
+exposed, with the learning of a lawyer, the monstrous character of the
+whole proceeding. So doing, he would for ever embroil himself with
+the Parliament no less than the Jesuits. He brought into sharp outline
+the spiritual incest of the confessor, though he modestly refrained
+from specifying how far he had carried his profligacy. He also
+withheld himself from speaking of Girard's girls, the loose-lived
+devotees, as a matter well-known, but to which no one would have liked
+to bear witness. In short, he gave Girard the best case he could by
+assailing him _as a wizard_. People laughed, made fun of the advocate.
+He undertook to prove the existence of demons by a series of sacred
+texts, beginning with the Gospels. This made them laugh the louder.
+
+The case had been cleverly disfigured by the turning of an honest
+Carmelite into Cadiere's lover, and the weaver of a whole chain of
+libels against Girard and the Jesuits. Thenceforth the crowd of
+idlers, of giddy worldlings, scoffers and philosophers alike, made
+merry with either side, being thoroughly impartial as between
+Carmelite and Jesuit, and exceedingly rejoiced to see this battle of
+monk with monk. Those who were presently to be called _Voltairites_,
+were even better inclined towards the polished Jesuits, those men of
+the world, than towards any of the old mendicant orders.
+
+So the matter became more and more tangled. Jokes kept raining down,
+but raining mostly on the victim. They called it a love-intrigue. They
+saw in it nothing but food for fun. There was not a scholar nor a
+clerk who did not turn a ditty on Girard and his pupil, who did not
+hash up anew the old provincial jokes about Madeline in the Gauffridi
+affair, her six thousand imps, their dread of a flogging, and the
+wonderful chastening-process whereby Cadiere's devils were put to
+flight.
+
+On this latter point the friends of Girard had no difficulty in
+proving him clean. He had acted by his right as director, in
+accordance with the common wont. The rod is the symbol of fatherhood.
+He had treated his penitent with a view to the healing of her soul.
+They used to thrash demoniacs, to thrash the insane and sufferers in
+other ways. This was the favourite mode of hunting out the enemy,
+whether in the shape of devil or disease. With the people it was a
+very common idea. One brave workman of Toulon, who had witnessed
+Cadiere's sad plight, declared that a bull's sinew was the poor
+sufferer's only cure.
+
+Thus strongly supported, Girard had only to act reasonably. He would
+not take the trouble. His defence is charmingly flippant. He never
+deigns even to agree with his own depositions. He gives the lie to his
+own witnesses. He seems to be jesting, and says, with the coolness of
+a great lord of the Regency, that if, as they charge him, he was ever
+shut up with her, "it could only have happened nine times."
+
+"And why did the good father do so," would his friends say, "save to
+watch, to consider, to search out the truth concerning her? 'Tis the
+confessor's duty in all such cases. Read the life of the most holy
+Catherine of Genoa. One evening her confessor hid himself in her room,
+waiting to see the wonders she would work, and to catch her in the act
+miraculous. But here, unhappily, the Devil, who never sleeps, had laid
+a snare for this lamb of God, had belched forth this devouring monster
+of a she-dragon, this mixture of maniac and demoniac, to swallow him
+up, to overwhelm him in a cataract of slander."
+
+It was an old and excellent custom to smother monsters in the cradle.
+Then why not later also? Girard's ladies charitably advised the
+instant using against her of fire and sword. "Let her perish!" cried
+the devotees. Many of the great ladies also wished to have her
+punished, deeming it rather too bad that such a creature should have
+dared to enter such a plea, to bring into court the man who had done
+her but too great an honour.
+
+Some determined Jansenists there were in the Parliament, but these
+were more inimical to the Jesuits than friendly to the girl. And they
+might well be downcast and discouraged, seeing they had against them
+at once the terrible Society of Jesus, the Court of Versailles, the
+Cardinal Minister (Fleury), and, lastly, the drawing-rooms of Aix.
+Should they be bolder than the head of the law, the Chancellor
+D'Aguesseau, who had proved so very slack? The Attorney-General did
+not waver at all: being charged with the indictment of Girard, he
+avowed himself his friend, advised him how to meet the charges
+against him.
+
+There was, indeed, but one question at issue, to ascertain by what
+kind of reparation, of solemn atonement, of exemplary chastening, the
+plaintiff thus changed into the accused might satisfy Girard and the
+Company of Jesus. The Jesuits, with all their good-nature, affirmed
+the need of an example, in the interests of religion, by way of some
+slight warning both to the Jansenist Convulsionaries and the
+scribbling philosophers who were beginning to swarm.
+
+There were two points by which Cadiere might be hooked, might receive
+the stroke of the harpoon.
+
+Firstly, she had borne false witness. But, then, by no law could
+slander be punished with death. To gain that end you must go a little
+further, and say, "The old Roman text, _De famosis libellis_,
+pronounces death on those who have uttered libels hurtful to the
+Emperor or to _the religion_ of the Empire. The Jesuits represent that
+religion. Therefore, a memorial against a Jesuit deserves the last
+penalty."
+
+A still better handle, however, was their second. At the opening of
+the trial the episcopal judge, the prudent Larmedieu, had asked her if
+she had never _divined_ the secrets of many people, and she had
+answered yes. Therefore they might charge her with the practice named
+in the list of forms employed in trials for witchcraft, as _Divination
+and imposture_. This alone in ecclesiastic law deserved the stake.
+They might, indeed, without much effort, call her a _Witch_, after
+the confession made by the Ollioules ladies, that at one same hour of
+the night she used to be in several cells together. Their infatuation,
+the surprising tenderness that suddenly came over them, had all the
+air of an enchantment.
+
+What was there to prevent her being burnt? They were still burning
+everywhere in the eighteenth century. In one reign only, that of
+Philip V., sixteen hundred people were burnt in Spain: one Witch was
+burnt as late as 1782. In Germany one was burnt in 1751; in
+Switzerland one also in 1781. Rome was always burning her victims, on
+the sly indeed, in the dark holes and cells of the Inquisition.[116]
+
+    [116] This fact comes to us from an adviser to the Holy
+    Office, still living.
+
+"But France, at least, is surely more humane?" She is very
+inconsistent. In 1718, a Wizard is burnt at Bordeaux.[117] In 1724 and
+1726, the faggots were lighted in Greve for offences which passed as
+schoolboy jokes at Versailles. The guardians of the Royal child, the
+Duke and Fleury, who are so indulgent to the Court, are terrible to
+the town. A donkey-driver and a noble, one M. des Chauffours, are
+burnt alive. The advent of the Cardinal Minister could not be
+celebrated more worthily than by a moral reformation, by making a
+severe example of those who corrupted the people. Nothing more timely
+than to pass some terrible and solemn sentence on this infernal girl,
+who made so heinous an assault on the innocent Girard!
+
+    [117] I am not speaking of executions done by the people of
+    their own accord. A hundred years ago, in a village of
+    Provence, an old woman on being refused alms by a landowner,
+    said in her fury, "You will be dead to-morrow." He was
+    smitten and died. The whole village, high and low, seized the
+    old woman, and set her on a bundle of vine-twigs. She was
+    burnt alive. The Parliament made a feint of inquiring, but
+    punished nobody.--[In 1751 an old couple of Tring, in
+    Hertfordshire, according to Wright, were tortured, kicked,
+    and beaten to death, on the plea of witchcraft, by a maddened
+    country mob.--TRANS.]
+
+Observe what was needed to wash that father clean. It was needful to
+show that, even if he had done wrong and imitated Des Chauffours, he
+had been the sport of some enchantment. The documents were but too
+plain. By the wording of the Canon Law, and after these late decrees,
+somebody ought to be burnt. Of the five magistrates on the bench, two
+only would have burnt Girard. Three were against Cadiere. They came to
+terms. The three who formed the majority would not insist on burning
+her, would forego the long, dreadful scene at the stake, would content
+themselves with a simple award of death.
+
+In the name of these five, it was settled, pending the final assent of
+Parliament, "That Cadiere, having first been put to the torture in
+both kinds, should afterwards be removed to Toulon, and suffer death
+by hanging on the Place des Precheurs."
+
+This was a dreadful blow. An immense revulsion of feeling at once took
+place. The worldlings, the jesters ceased to laugh: they shuddered.
+Their love of trifling did not lead them to slur over a result so
+horrible. That a girl should be seduced, ill-used, dishonoured,
+treated as a mere toy, that she should die of grief, or of frenzy,
+they had regarded as right and good; with all that they had no
+concern. But when it was a case of punishment, when in fancy they saw
+before them the woeful victim, with rope round her neck, by the
+gallows where she was about to hang, their hearts rose in revolt. From
+all sides went forth the cry, "Never, since the world began, was there
+seen so villanous a reversal of things; the law of rape administered
+the wrong way, the girl condemned for having been made a tool, the
+victim hanged by her seducer!"
+
+In this town of Aix, made up of judges, priests, and the world of
+fashion, a thing unforeseen occurred: a whole people suddenly rose, a
+violent popular movement was astir. A crowd of persons of every class
+marched in one close well-ordered body straight towards the Ursulines.
+Cadiere and her mother were bidden to show themselves. "Make yourself
+easy, mademoiselle," they shouted: "we stand by you: fear nothing!"
+
+The grand eighteenth century, justly called by Hegel the "reign of
+mind," was still grander as the "reign of humanity." Ladies of
+distinction, such as the granddaughter of Mde. de Sevigne, the
+charming Madame de Simiane, took possession of the young girl and
+sheltered her in their bosoms.
+
+A thing yet prettier and more touching was it, to see the Jansenist
+ladies, elsewhile so sternly pure, so hard towards each other, in
+their austerities so severe, now in this great conjuncture offer up
+Law on the altar of Mercy, by flinging their arms round the poor
+threatened child, purifying her with kisses on the forehead, baptizing
+her anew in tears.
+
+If Provence be naturally wild, she is all the more wonderful in these
+wild moments of generosity and real greatness. Something of this was
+later seen in the earliest triumphs of Mirabeau, when he had a million
+of men gathered round him at Marseilles. But here already was a great
+revolutionary scene, a vast uprising against the stupid Government of
+the day, and Fleury's pets the Jesuits: a unanimous uprising in behalf
+of humanity, of compassion, in defence of a woman, a very child, thus
+barbarously offered up. The Jesuits fancied that among their own
+rabble, among their clients and their beggars, they might array a kind
+of popular force, armed with handbells and staves to beat back the
+party of Cadiere. This latter, however, included almost everyone.
+Marseilles rose up as one man to bear in triumph the son of the
+Advocate Chaudon. Toulon went so far for the sake of her poor
+townswoman, as to think of burning the Jesuit college.
+
+The most touching of all these tokens in Cadiere's favour, reached
+her from Ollioules. A simple boarder, Mdlle. Agnes, for all her
+youthful shyness, followed the impulse of her own heart, threw herself
+into the press of pamphlets, and published a defence of Cadiere.
+
+So widespread and deep a movement had its effect on the Parliament
+itself. The foes of the Jesuits raised their heads, took courage to
+defy the threats of those above, the influence of the Jesuits, and the
+bolts that Fleury might hurl upon them from Versailles.[118]
+
+    [118] There is a laughable tale which expresses the state of
+    Parliament with singular nicety. The Recorder was reading his
+    comments on the trial, on the share the Devil might have had
+    therein, when a loud noise was heard. A black man fell down
+    the chimney. In their fright they all ran away, save the
+    Recorder only, who, being entangled in his robe, could not
+    move. The man made some excuse. It was simply a chimneysweep
+    who had mistaken his chimney.
+
+The very friends of Girard, seeing their numbers fall off, their
+phalanx grow thin, were eager for the sentence. It was pronounced on
+the 11th October, 1731.
+
+In sight of the popular feeling, no one dared to follow up the savage
+sentence of the bench, by getting Cadiere hanged. Twelve councillors
+sacrificed their honour, by declaring Girard innocent. Of the twelve
+others, some Jansenists condemned him to the flames as a wizard; and
+three or four, with better reason, condemned him to death as a
+scoundrel. Twelve being against twelve, the President Lebret had to
+give the casting vote. He found for Girard. Acquitted of the capital
+crime of witchcraft, the latter was then made over, as priest and
+confessor, to the Toulon magistrate, his intimate friend Larmedieu,
+for trial in the bishop's court.
+
+The great folk and the indifferent ones were satisfied. And so little
+heed was given to this award, that even in these days it has been said
+that "both were _acquitted_." The statement is not correct. Cadiere
+was treated as a slanderer, was condemned to see her memorials and
+other papers burnt by the hand of the executioner.
+
+There was still a dreadful something in the background. Cadiere being
+so marked, so branded for the use of calumny, the Jesuits were sure to
+keep pushing underhand their success with Cardinal Fleury, and to urge
+her being punished in some secret, arbitrary way. Such was the notion
+imbibed by the town of Aix. It felt that, instead of sending her home,
+Parliament would rather _yield her up_. This caused so fearful a rage,
+such angry menaces, against President Lebret, that he asked to have
+the regiment of Flanders sent thither.
+
+Girard was fleeing away in a close carriage, when they found him out
+and would have killed him, had he not escaped into the Jesuits'
+Church. There the rascal betook himself to saying mass. After his
+escape thence he returned to Dole, to reap honour and glory from the
+Society. Here, in 1733, he died, _in the perfume of holiness_. The
+courtier Lebret died in 1735.
+
+Cardinal Fleury did whatever the Jesuits pleased. At Aix, Toulon,
+Marseilles, many were banished, or cast into prison. Toulon was
+specially guilty, as having borne Girard's effigy to the doors of his
+_Girardites_, and carried about the thrice holy standard of the
+Jesuits.
+
+According to the terms of the award, Cadiere should have been free to
+return home, to live again with her mother. But I venture to say that
+she was never allowed to re-enter her native town, that flaming
+theatre wherein so many voices had been raised in her behalf.
+
+If only to feel an interest in her was a crime deserving imprisonment,
+we cannot doubt but that she herself was presently thrown into prison;
+that the Jesuits easily obtained a special warrant from Versailles to
+lock up the poor girl, to hush up, to bury with her an affair so
+dismal for themselves. They would wait, of course, until the public
+attention was drawn off to something else. Thereon the fatal clutch
+would have caught her anew; she would have been buried out of sight in
+some unknown convent, snuffed out in some dark _In pace_.
+
+She was but one-and-twenty at the time of the award, and she had
+always hoped to die soon. May God have granted her that mercy![119]
+
+    [119] Touching this matter, Voltaire is very flippant: he
+    scoffs at both parties, especially the Jansenists. The
+    historians of our own day, MM. Cabasse, Fabre, Mery, not
+    having read the _Trial_, believe themselves impartial, while
+    they are bearing down the victim.
+
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE.
+
+
+A woman of genius, in a burst of noble tenderness, has figured to
+herself the two spirits whose strife moulded the Middle Ages, as
+coming at last to recognise each other, to draw together, to renew
+their olden friendship. Looking closer at each other, they discern,
+though somewhat late, the marks of a common parentage. How if they
+were indeed brethren, and this long battle nought but a mistake? Their
+hearts speak, and they are softened. The haughty outlaw and the gentle
+persecutor have forgotten everything: they dart forward and throw
+themselves into each other's arms.--(_Consuelo._)
+
+A charming, womanly idea. Others, too, have dreamed the same dream.
+The sweet Montanelli turned it into a beautiful poem. Ay, who would
+not welcome the delightful hope of seeing the battle here hushed down
+and finished by an embrace so moving?
+
+What does the wise Merlin think of it? In the mirror of his lake,
+whose depths are known to himself only, what did he behold? What said
+he in the colossal epic produced by him in 1860? Why, that Satan will
+not disarm, if disarm he ever do, until the Day of Judgment. Then,
+side by side, at peace with each other, the two will fall asleep in a
+common death.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is not so hard, indeed, to bend them into a kind of compromise. The
+weakening, relaxing effects of so long a battle allow of their
+mingling in a certain way. In the last chapter we saw two shadows
+agreeing to form an alliance in deceit; the Devil appearing as the
+friend of Loyola, devotees and demoniacs marching abreast, Hell
+touched to softness in the Sacred Heart.
+
+It is a quiet time now, and people hate each other less than formerly.
+They hate few indeed but their own friends. I have seen Methodists
+admiring Jesuits. Those lawyers and physicians whom the Church in the
+Middle Ages called the children of Satan, I have seen making shrewd
+covenant with the old conquered Spirit.
+
+But get we away from these pretences. They who gravely propose that
+Satan should make peace and settle down, have they thought much about
+the matter?
+
+There is no hindrance as regards ill-will. The dead are dead. The
+millions of former victims sleep in peace, be they Albigenses,
+Vaudois, or Protestants, Moors, Jews, or American Indians. The Witch,
+universal martyr of the Middle Ages, has nought to say. Her ashes have
+been scattered to the winds.
+
+Know you, then, what it is that raises a protest, that keeps these two
+spirits steadily apart, preventing them from coming nearer? It is a
+huge reality, born five hundred years ago; a gigantic creation
+accursed by the Church, even that mighty fabric of science and modern
+institutions, which she excommunicated stone by stone, but which with
+every anathema has grown a storey higher. You cannot name one science
+which has not been itself a rebellion.
+
+There is but one way of reconciling the two spirits, of joining into
+one the two churches. Demolish the younger, that one which from its
+first beginning was pronounced guilty and doomed as such. Let us, if
+we can, destroy the natural sciences, the observatory, the museum, the
+botanical garden, the schools of medicine, and all the modern
+libraries. Let us burn our laws, our bodies of statutes, and return to
+the Canon Law.
+
+All these novelties came of Satan. Each step forward has been a crime
+of his doing.
+
+He was the wicked logician who, despising the clerical law, preserved
+and renewed that of jurists and philosophers, grounded on an impious
+faith, on the freedom of the will.
+
+He was that dangerous magician who, while men were discussing the sex
+of angels and other questions of like sublimity, threw himself
+fiercely on realities, and created chemistry, physics, mathematics--ay,
+even mathematics. He sought to revive them, and that was rebellion.
+People were burnt for saying that three made three.
+
+Medicine especially was a Satanic thing, a rebellion against disease,
+the scourge so justly dealt by God. It was clearly sinful to check the
+soul on its way towards heaven, to plunge it afresh into life!
+
+What atonement shall we make for all this? How are we to put down, to
+overthrow, this pile of insurrections, whereof at this moment all
+modern life is made up? Will Satan destroy his work, that he may tread
+once more the way of angels? That work rests on three everlasting
+rocks, Reason, Right, and Nature.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So great is the triumph of the new spirit, that he forgets his
+battles, hardly at this moment deigns to remember that he has won.
+
+It were not amiss to remind him of his wretched beginnings, how
+coarsely mean, how rude and painfully comic were the shapes he wore in
+the season of persecution, when through a woman, even the unhappy
+Witch, he made his first homely flights in science. Bolder than the
+heretic, the half-Christian reasoner, the scholar who kept one foot
+within the sacred circle, this woman eagerly escaped therefrom, and
+under the open sunlight tried to make herself an altar of rough
+moorland stones.
+
+She has perished, as she was certain to perish. By what means? Chiefly
+by the progress of those very sciences which began with her, through
+the physician, the naturalist, for whom she had once toiled.
+
+The Witch has perished for ever, but not the Fay. She will reappear in
+the form that never dies.
+
+Busied in these latter days with the affairs of men, Woman has in
+return given up her rightful part, that of the physician, the
+comforter, the healing Fairy. Herein lies her proper priesthood--a
+priesthood that does belong to her, whatever the Church may say.
+
+Her delicate organs, her fondness for the least detail, her tender
+consciousness of life, all invite her to become Life's shrewd
+interpreter in every science of observation. With her tenderly pitiful
+heart, her power of divining goodness, she goes of her own accord to
+the work of doctoring. There is but small difference between children
+and sick people. For both of them we need the Woman.
+
+She will return into the paths of science, whither, as a smile of
+nature, gentleness and humanity will enter by her side.
+
+The Anti-natural is growing dim, nor is the day far off when its
+eclipse will bring back daylight to the earth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The gods may vanish, but God is still there. Nay, but the less we see
+of them, the more manifest is He. He is like a lighthouse eclipsed at
+moments, but alway shining again more clearly than before.
+
+It is a remarkable thing to see Him discussed so fully, even in the
+journals themselves. People begin to feel that all questions of
+education, government, childhood, and womanhood, turn on that one
+ruling and underlying question. As God is, so must the world be.
+
+From this we gather that the times are ripe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So near, indeed, is that religious dayspring that I seemed momently to
+see it breaking over the desert where I brought this book to an end.
+
+How full of light, how rough and beautiful looked this desert of mine!
+I had made my nest on a rock in the mighty roadstead of Toulon, in a
+lowly villa surrounded with aloe and cypress, with the prickly pear
+and the wild rose. Before me was a spreading basin of sparkling sea;
+behind me the bare-topt amphitheatre, where, at their ease, might sit
+the Parliament of the world.
+
+This spot, so very African, bedazzles you in the daytime with
+flashings as of steel. But of a winter morning, especially in
+December, it seemed full of a divine mystery. I was wont to rise
+exactly at six o'clock, when the signal for work was boomed from the
+Arsenal gun. From six to seven I enjoyed a delicious time of it. The
+quick--may I call it piercing?--twinkle of the stars made the moon
+ashamed, and fought against the daybreak. Before its coming, and
+during the struggle between two lights, the wonderful clearness of the
+air would let things be seen and heard at incredible distances. Two
+leagues away I could make everything out. The smallest detail about
+the distant mountains, a tree, a cliff, a house, a bend in the ground,
+was thrown out with the most delicate sharpness. New senses seemed to
+be given me. I found myself another being, released from bondage, free
+to soar away on my new wings. It was an hour of utter purity, all hard
+and clear. I said to myself, "How is this? Am I still a man?"
+
+An unspeakable bluish hue, respected, left untouched by the rosy dawn,
+hung round me like a sacred ether, a spirit that made all things
+spiritual.
+
+One felt, however, a forward movement, through changes soft and slow.
+The great marvel was drawing nearer, to shine forth and eclipse all
+other things. It came on in its own calm way: you felt no wish to
+hurry it. The coming transfiguration, the expected witcheries of the
+light, took not a whit away from the deep enjoyment of being still
+under the divinity of night, still, as it were, half-hidden, and slow
+to emerge from so wonderful a spell.... Come forth, O Sun! We worship
+thee while yet unseen, but will reap all of good we yet may from these
+last moments of our dream!
+
+He is about to break forth. In hope let us await his welcome.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF LEADING AUTHORITIES.
+
+
+Graesse, _Bibliotheca Magiae_, Leipsic, 1843.
+
+_Magie Antique_--as edited by Soldan, A. Maury, &c.
+
+Calcagnini, _Miscell., Magia Amatoria Antiqua_, 1544.
+
+J. Grimm, _German Mythology_.
+
+_Acta Sanctorum._--Acta SS. Ordinis S. Benedicti.
+
+Michael Psellus, _Energie des Demons_, 1050.
+
+Caesar of Heisterbach, _Illustria Miracula_, 1220.
+
+_Registers of the Inquisition_, 1307-1326, in Limburch; and the
+extracts given by Magi, Llorente, Lamothe-Langon, &c.
+
+_Directorium._ Eymerici, 1358.
+
+Llorente, _The Spanish Inquisition_.
+
+Lamothe-Langon, _Inquisition de France_.
+
+_Handbooks of the Monk-Inquisitors of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth
+Centuries_: Nider's _Formicarius_; Sprenger's _Malleus_.
+
+C. Bernardus's _Lucerna_; Spina, Grillandus, &c.
+
+H. Corn. Agrippae _Opera_, Lyons.
+
+Paracelsi _Opera_.
+
+Wyer, _De Prestigiis Daemonum_, 1569.
+
+Bodin, _Demonomanie_, 1580.
+
+Remigius, _Demonolatria_, 1596.
+
+Del Rio, _Disquisitiones Magicae_, 1599.
+
+Boguet, _Discours des Sorciers_, Lyons, 1605.
+
+Leloyer, _Histoire des Spectres_, Paris, 1605.
+
+Lancre, _Inconstance_, 1612: _Incredulite_, 1622.
+
+Michaelis, _Histoire d'une Penitente, &c._, 1613.
+
+Tranquille, _Relation de Loudun_, 1634.
+
+_Histoire des Diables de Loudun_ (by Aubin), 1716.
+
+_Histoire de Madeleine Bavent_, de Louviers, 1652.
+
+_Examen de Louviers. Apologie de l'Examen_ (by Yvelin), 1643.
+
+_Proces du P. Girard et de la Cadiere_; Aix, 1833.
+
+_Pieces relatives a ce Proces_; 5 vols., Aix, 1833.
+
+_Factum, Chansons, relatifs, &c._ MSS. in the Toulon Library.
+
+Eugene Salverte, _Sciences Occultes_, with Introduction by Littre.
+
+A. Maury, _Les Fees_, 1843; _Magie_, 1860.
+
+Soldan, _Histoire des Proces de Sorcellerie_, 1843.
+
+Thos. Wright, _Narratives of Sorcery, &c._, 1851.
+
+L. Figuier, _Histoire du Merveilleux_, 4 vols.
+
+Ferdinand Denis, _Sciences Occultes: Monde Enchante_.
+
+_Histoire des Sciences au Moyen Age_, by Sprenger, Pouchet, Cuvier, &c.
+
+
+Printed by Woodfall and Kinder, Angel Court, Skinner Street, London.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle
+Ages, by Jules Michelet
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