\ \ 
 
 u
 
 NEW THOUGHT LIBRARY 
 ASSOCIATION 
 
 No, 
 
 LA SORCIERE 
 
 J, MICHELET.
 
 LONDON: 
 
 PRIKTBD BY WOODFALL AND HINDUS, 
 AHGBL COUBT, SKINNER 8TKIET.
 
 FD, W. P'- R ' 
 
 E Little Rock, Ark. 
 
 LA SORCIERE: 
 
 THE WITCH OF THE MIDDLE AGES, 
 
 FEOM THE FRENCH OF J. MICHELET. 
 
 BY L. J. TROTTER. 
 
 only Authorized English Translation.) 
 
 -33 <t 
 LONDON: 
 
 SIMPKIN, MAKSHALL, AND CO, 
 
 STATIONERS' HALL COURT. 

 
 NEW THOUGHT LIBRARY 
 ASSOCIATION 
 
 PIIEFACE. 
 
 IN this translation of a work rich in the raciest 
 beauties arid 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 Frenchmap, 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,
 
 VI PREFACE. 
 
 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
 
 'PREFACE. VH 
 
 kept before us by way of counterpoise^to the doctrines 
 now in vogue. We need not be intolerant ; but Home 
 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, under- 
 standing 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 souud 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
 
 Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 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 llt/i, 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 wag the Offspring of Despair ... 9 
 
 She in her Turn created Satan 12 
 
 Satan, Prince ef 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 THK MIDDLE Aass FELL INTO DESPAIR SO 
 
 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
 
 X CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER III. THE LITTLE DEVIL OP 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 
 
 CIIAPTEK 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 KINO 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 Solanese -121 
 
 The Middle Ages anti-natural . 128
 
 CONTENTS. XI 
 
 PAOI 
 
 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' COMMUMCN 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 AKD DEATH SATAH 
 
 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 SATAK MULTI- 
 PLIED AND MADE COMMON 168 
 
 Witches and Wizards employed by the Cfreat . . 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 : RE- 
 ACTION 198 
 
 Spain begins when France stops short .... 199 
 
 Reaction : French Lawyers burn as many as the Priests 203 
 
 CHAPTER IV. THE WITCHES OF THE BABQUK COUNTRY . 207 
 
 They give Instructions to their own Judges . . . 212
 
 XU CONTENTS. 
 
 PAG a 
 
 CHAPTER V. SATAN TURNS PRIEST 218 
 
 Jokes of the Modern Sabbath . . . . . 221 
 
 CHAPTER VI. GAUJ?FRIDI : 1610 228 
 
 Wizard Priests prosecuted by Monks . . . 232 
 
 Jealousies of the Nuns ...... 234 
 
 CHAPTER VII. THE DEMONIACS OP LOUDEN : URBAN GRAN- 
 
 DIER 255 
 
 The Vicar a fine Speaker, and a Wizard . . . 263 
 
 Sickly Rages of the Nuns 264 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. THE DEMONIACS OP 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 CONVKNT .... 339 
 
 CHAPTER XII TRIAL OF CAPI^RE . . . . . 367 
 
 EPH.OOOI 395 
 
 Can Satan and Jesus be reconciled ? 396 
 
 The Witch is dead, but the Fairy will live again . . 399 
 
 , f Oncoming of the Religious Revival .... 399
 
 INTKODUCTION, 
 
 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 pe- 
 culiar 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 
 
 /8
 
 2 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 flower-like herself, she looks down toward the ena 
 moured flowers, and forms with them a personal ac- 
 quaintance. 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 par- 
 celled outj we shall mark the beginning of the pro- 
 fessional man as juggler, astrologer, or prophet, necro- 
 mancer, 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 compas- 
 sionate daring, it was made to live anew. Thus, of 
 every religion woman is the mother, the gentle guar- 
 dian, 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 oracles to a
 
 INTRODUCTION. 3 
 
 world upon its knees ; she also it is whom, a thousand 
 years later, people hunt down like a wild beast ; fol- 
 lowing her into the public places, where she is dis- 
 honoured, 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 aa sister and 
 helpmate. Already she wears the features of a mo- 
 dern Prometheus. With her industry begins, espe- 
 cially 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 
 
 B 2
 
 4 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 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 na- 
 ture 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 
 be lla donna *), the very name we give to the fairies. 
 
 Soon there came upon her the lot which still befalls 
 her favourite plant, belladonna, and some other whole- 
 some 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 ques- 
 tionable hues, they shrink back, keep far aloof from 
 them. And yet among them are the comforters 
 
 * Whence our old word Beldam, the more courteous meaning 
 of which is all but lost in its ironical one. TRANS.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 (Solanese) 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 L 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 ail medicine into the fire,* he avowed that he 
 knew nothing but what he had learnt from witches. 
 
 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 wasteful- 
 ness 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 Tou- 
 louse; five hundred at Geneva in three months of 
 1513; at Wurtzburg eight hundred, almost in one 
 batch, and fifteen hundred at Bamberg; these two 
 
 * Alluding to the bonfire which Paracelsus, as professor of 
 medicine, made of the works of Galen and Avicenna. TRANS.
 
 6 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 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 ar- 
 rested 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.
 
 INTRODUCTION'. 7 
 
 (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 prin- 
 ciple 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
 
 8 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 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 per- 
 taining 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 fore- 
 gone 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 \\c 
 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, how- 
 ever, cares our fine fellow for all that ! To him soul 
 and Devil seem born for each other, insomuch that ou 
 the first temptation, for a whim, a desire, a passing
 
 INTRODUCTION. 9 
 
 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 engen- 
 dered. 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 temp- 
 tation. She was drawn towards evil by her lust." 
 Alas ! in the wretchedness, the hunger of those days, 
 nothing of that kind could have ruined her even into 
 a hellish rage. An amorous woman, jealous and for- 
 saken, a child hunted out by her stepmother, a mother
 
 ]0 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 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 re- 
 mains of the original registers of Toulouse. Head 
 them in all their flatness, in all their dryness, so dis- 
 mal, 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, * f Im- 
 mured." 
 
 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.
 
 INTRODUCTION. ] ] 
 
 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 fruit- 
 fulness of the body in the females of several species ; 
 and which is not less a truth with regard to the con- 
 ceptions of the spirit. . 
 
 By herself did she conceive and bring forth what ?
 
 12 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 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 ten- 
 derness calls him "Robin mine, 3 ' 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. * 
 
 What astounds one most is, that at one stroke the 
 
 * Here, as in some other passages, the play of words in 
 the original is necessarily lost. TRANS.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 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 exceed- 
 ingly curious ; will dig, dive, ferret, and poke his nose 
 everywhere. At the consummation 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 in- 
 stance, 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 de- 
 claring it an amusement rather let us say a necessity ; 
 for laughing is essentially a natural function. Life
 
 14 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 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.* 
 
 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. 
 
 * Abelard flourished in the twelfth, William of Ockham 
 (pupil of Duns Scotus) in the fourteenth century. TRANS.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 15 
 
 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 nos- 
 trums, 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, em- 
 boldened 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
 
 16 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 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 oc- 
 curred, 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 !
 
 INTRODUCTION. 17 
 
 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 
 
 c
 
 18 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 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 ^Egean 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 extin- 
 guished ; 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. Every- 
 
 c 2
 
 20 THE WITCH. 
 
 thing is falling, breaking up, rushing down headlong. 
 The whole is becoming as nought : " Great Pan is 
 dead!" 
 
 Tt 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, ^Eschylus 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
 
 THE DEATH OF THE GODS. 21 
 
 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 resig- 
 nation ; 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
 
 22 THE WITCH. 
 
 the threatening voice of her councils * she gives 
 them notice of their death and lo ! they are living still. 
 
 " 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, ia 
 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 Theodo- 
 sius. 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 
 
 * See Mansi, Baluze ; Council of Aries, 442 ; of Tours, 567 ; 
 of Leptines, 743 ; the Capitularies, &c., and even Gerson, 
 about 1400.
 
 THE DEATH OF THE GODS. 23 
 
 in her majesty welcomed not only Etruria, but even 
 the rural gods of the old Italian labourer. She per- 
 secuted the Druids, but only as the centre of a dan- 
 gerous 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.
 
 24 THE WITCH. 
 
 A huge gap was made in the world ; and who was 
 to fill it ? The Christians said, The Devil, everywhere 
 the Devil : ubique daemon.* 
 
 Greece, like all other nations, had her energumens, 
 who were sore tried, possessed by spirits. The rela- 
 tion 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 melancholies, loathing, shud- 
 dering 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 ! be- 
 comes demoniac. If there is a devil in the flower, how 
 much more in the gloomy forest ! The light we think 
 
 * 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.
 
 THE DEATH OF THE GODS. 25 
 
 so pure teems with children of the night. The 
 heavens themselves 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 idol- 
 aters. 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,
 
 26 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 fired, 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 : e 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 !'
 
 THE DEATH OF THE GODS. 27 
 
 " ' Ah ! Away from me, young man ! I have no- 
 thing 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.' 
 
 " e Nay, I swear by this flame, the torch of Hymen, 
 thou shalt come home with me to my father. Ilest 
 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/
 
 28 THE WITCH. 
 
 " ' I will warm tliee 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. 
 
 " ' 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 pro- 
 mise ; I have just reclaimed my own. 
 
 "'Alas, dear friend, thou must die: thou woulust 
 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
 
 THE DEATH OF THE GODS. 29 
 
 loving one find rest in the flames. Let the sparks fly 
 upward and the ashes redden. We will go to our 
 olden gods/ " * 
 
 * 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 conies 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 : " Vol- 
 canoes, 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.
 
 WHY THE MIDDLE AGES FELL INTO DESPAIR. 31 
 
 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 them- 
 selves a barren race of rnonkling 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. Bene- 
 dict down to the pedantic Benedict of Aniane ; * 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 
 
 * Benedict founded a convent at Aniane in Languedoc, in 
 the reign of Charlemagne.
 
 3# THE WITCH. 
 
 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 culti- 
 vated 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 charm- 
 ing. 
 
 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,
 
 WHY THE MIDDLE AGES FELL INTO DESPAIR. S3 
 
 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 orna- 
 ments chiefly grotesque, it will go on from age to age, 
 until at last it comes to take high rank in the Golden. 
 Legend. 
 
 AVhen 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 new-born babes/' But they gave 
 to it a meaning, the very last that one would dream of 
 finding in the original thought. As much, as Chris- 
 tianity feared and hated Mature, even so mucli did these 
 others cherish her, deeming her all guileless, hallow- 
 ing 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 lind 
 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 
 
 D
 
 34 THE WITCH. 
 
 bold helpmates of his work, rise again in man's esteem. 
 They have their own laws,* their own festivals. If in 
 God's unbounded goodness there is room for the smallest 
 creatures, if He seems to show them a pitying prefer- 
 ence, " 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 intract- 
 able, stubborn, headstrong; ill short, just like myself." 
 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 ;f enters that he may 
 bear witness. If he kicked of yore against Balaam, 
 it was that before him he beheld the sword of the an- 
 cient 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 
 
 * See J. Grimm, Rechts Alterthiimer, and my Origuies du 
 Droit. 
 
 t According to the ritual of Rouen. See Ducange on the 
 words Festum and Kalendce : also Martene, iii. 110. The Sibyl 
 was crowned and followed by Jews and Gentiles, by Moses, the 
 Prophets, Nebuchadnezzar, <fec. 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.
 
 WHY THE MIDDLE AGES FELL INTO DESPAIR. 35 
 
 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." 
 
 How bold and coarse ye are ! Was it this we asked 
 of you, children rash and wayward, when we told yo 1 1 
 to be as children ? We offered you milk ; you arc- 
 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 independ- 
 ence 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 in- 
 troduce 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 recog- 
 nised by the Church. The clergy, the monks are 
 
 D 2
 
 36 THE WITCH. 
 
 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.* 
 She unsays her words, she gives herself the lie, she 
 says to the children, " Be old ! " 
 
 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 
 clays that come midway betwixt sleep and waking, and 
 * See the Capitularies, passim.
 
 WHY THE MIDDLE AGES FELL INTO DESPAIR. 37 
 
 holds them under the sway of a visitation most irk- 
 some, 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 bfore. 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 crouch- 
 ing 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.* 
 
 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 
 
 * 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."
 
 38 THE WITCH. 
 
 guard her altars from these Barbarian devils.* 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. 
 
 In spite of the Bald Emperor's f 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. 
 
 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.J He gives himself 
 up, and keeps himself, and reserves to himself the 
 right of going elsewhere. " I will go further : the 
 
 * The famous avowal made by Hincmar. 
 t Charles the Bald. TRANS. 
 
 1 A difference too little felt by those who have spoken of 
 the personal recommendation, &c.
 
 WHY THE MIDDLE AGES FELL INTO DESPAIR. 39 
 
 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." 
 
 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 
 wiliest, 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.* 
 
 But, one day, what do I see ? Can my sight be 
 grown dim ? The lord of the valley, as he rides a.bout, 
 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 there- 
 on 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 
 
 * Grimm, Rechts Alterthumer, and my Origines du Droit.
 
 40 THE WITCH. 
 
 boundary-stone, with hat pressed firmly down, he looks 
 at Count or Emperor passing near. "Pass on, Em- 
 peror ; 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
 
 WHY THE MIDDLE AGES FELL INTO DESPAIR. 4J 
 
 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 your- 
 self; 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.* 
 
 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, 
 
 * 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 Chan- 
 cellor of Flanders, the first magistrate of Bruges, who also was 
 claimed as a serf. Gualterius, Scriptores fierum Francicarum, 
 viii. 334.
 
 42 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 crea- 
 ture, a mere nothing, a beast, a soul worth twopence- 
 halfpenny, whose murder can be atoned for by two- 
 pence-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. Mean- 
 while 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 cen- 
 turies of the Middle Ages, in which the legends were 
 self-conceived. Among countryfolk so gently sub- 
 missive, 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 re- 
 ference 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 igno- 
 rance 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 anti- 
 quity which regarded marriage with a stranger as 
 immoral, and allowed only of marriage amongst kins- 
 folk. 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
 
 44 THE WITCH. 
 
 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
 
 THE LITTLE DEVIL OF THE FIRESIDE. 45 
 
 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.* 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 
 
 * " Trois pas du c6te du bane, 
 Et trois pas du cote du lit ; 
 Trois pas du c6te du cofire, 
 
 Et trois pas Revenez ici." 
 
 (Old Sony of the Dancing Master.)
 
 46 THE WITCH. 
 
 up with by and by. She is alone; without a neigh- 
 bour. The bad, unwholesome life of the dark, little, 
 walled towns, the mutual spyings, the wretched dan- 
 gerous 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. 
 
 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 re- 
 minder of the old country spirits, a touching family 
 religion which doubtless had little power in the blus- 
 tering hurly-burly of a great common dwellinghousej 
 but now comes baek again to haunt the lonely cabin. 
 
 It is a singular, a delicate world of fays and hob- 
 goblins, made for a woman's soul. When the great 
 creation of the saintly Legend gets stopped arid 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 inso- 
 lently as to turn their backs upon them. In Brittany
 
 THE LITTLE DEVIL OP THE FIRESIDE. 47 
 
 they Avere dancing at the moment, and never stopped 
 dancing. Hence their hard doom; they are con- 
 demned to live until the Day of Judgment.* 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, remem- 
 bering 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 spin- 
 ning-women they even spin divinely themselves. Do 
 we not talk of spinning like a fairy ? 
 
 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.f 
 
 These tales have an historical side, reminding us, in 
 
 the ogres, &c., of the great famines. But commonly 
 
 * All passages bearing on this point have been gathered 
 
 together in two learned works by M. Maury (Les Fees, 1843 ; 
 
 and La Macjie, I860). See also Grimm. 
 
 t A body of tales by the Trouveres of the twelfth and 
 thirteenth centuries. TBANS.
 
 48 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 re- 
 turns. 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 enchant- 
 ment hidden under a mask. Hence that touching tri- 
 logy, that admirable crescendo of Riquel 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
 
 THE LITTLE DEVIL OF THE FIRESIDE. 49 
 
 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 mon- 
 ster, 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 j it mourns her fallen 
 into the hands of so fierce a lord as Blue-Beard. It 
 yearns with pity towal'ds the beasts ; it seeks to console 
 them for being still in the shape of animals. Let them 
 be patientj 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 beau- 
 tiful enchantment. Humble as she is, and ugly as she 
 
 E
 
 50 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 towns- 
 wife, 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 four- 
 teenth century. Meanwhile, towards the twelfth cen- 
 tury, 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.
 
 THE LITTLE DEVIL OF THE FIRESIDE. 51 
 
 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 ; * 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 particu- 
 larly fond of warmth. They ramble about houses; 
 they are sometimes seen in stables warming themselves 
 beside the beasts. Bereft of incense and burnt-offer- 
 ings, they sometimes take of the milk. The house- 
 wife being thrifty, will not stint her husband, but. 
 lessens her own share, and in the evening leaves a 
 little cream. 
 
 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 ! 
 
 * 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. 
 
 E 2
 
 52 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 wo- 
 manly 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, ar,d
 
 THE LITTLE DEVIL OF THE FIRESIDE. 53 
 
 afterwards by the kindness of some local church trans- 
 formed into a saint.* 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. 
 
 Nor are the sprites ungrateful. One day she awakes, 
 and without having stirred a finger, finds all her house- 
 keeping 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 ram- 
 bles momently about her, and plainly cannot leave her 
 
 * A. Maury, Magie, 159.
 
 54 THE WITCH. 
 
 side. If she goes to the stable, it is there; and she 
 believes that the other day it was in the churn.* 
 
 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 
 
 * 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 (dr6le) ; among the Ger- 
 mans Jcobold, nix. In France he is called follet, goblin, hitin ; 
 in England, Puck, Robin Ooodfellow. Shakespeare says, he does 
 sleepy servants the kindness to pinch them black and blue, in 
 order to rouse them.
 
 THE LITTLE DEVIL OF THE FIRESIDE. 55 
 
 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 intru- 
 sive 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
 
 56 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 hus- 
 band 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 uncer- 
 tainty 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 ser- 
 vice."
 
 58 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 turn- 
 ing up of this sod might bring some treasure to 
 light ! 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 pre- 
 sently go quite away. 
 
 Did he never feel sorry afterwards ? Said he never 
 to himself, " Fool that you are, you will always be un- 
 lucky ? " 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 over-
 
 TEMPTATIONS. 59 
 
 whelming despair, under the weight of dreadful out- 
 rages and dreadful sufferings. 
 
 But those great sufferings, we aretold,must have been 
 greatly lightened about the time of St. Louis, who for- 
 bade 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 pub- 
 lished, 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 e monastery. 
 In all of them he finds the monks leading the life of 
 great feudal lords, wearing arms, getting drunk, fight- 
 ing 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
 
 CO THE \VITCII. 
 
 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 Bceuf, and the other 
 lords of melodramas and romances, are but poor crea- 
 tures 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,* during the years of the Great Terror. 
 
 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 
 
 * A writer of eclogues, fables and dramas ; in youth a 
 friend of Voltaire, afterwards imprisoned during the Terror. 
 TRANS.
 
 TEMPTATIONS. 61 
 
 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 be- 
 lieve 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 ques- 
 tion 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 dis- 
 tinguished 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
 
 62 THE WITCH. 
 
 nobles they were hated, jeered, cruelly plagued. Their 
 new-born 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 any- 
 thing decreed concerning the olden slavery; that it 
 wrote down as an actual right the most grievous out- 
 rage 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.* 
 
 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 Beam 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."f 
 
 * Lauriere, ii. 100 (on the word Narquette). Michelet, 
 Origines du Droit, 264. 
 
 t When I published my Origiiws ia 1837, I could not have 
 known this work, published ia 1842.
 
 TEMPTATIONS. 63 
 
 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,* but who, in her hus- 
 band'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. 
 
 Nothing will she do to hinder the fun, the sport they 
 are making out of you 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 ; 
 
 * This delicacy appears in the treatment these ladies in- 
 flicted on their poet Jean de Meting, author of the Roman de 
 la Rose.
 
 G4 THE WITCH. 
 
 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."* 
 
 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 
 
 * 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.
 
 TEMPTATIONS. C5 
 
 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 suffer- 
 ing, 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 trans- 
 ports 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,
 
 66 THE WITCH. 
 
 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."
 
 TEMPTATIONS. 67 
 
 " Ah, wicked one ! What then art thou, and what 
 \vouldst 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 pro- 
 vidence passed over, which his justice forgot to 
 handle. 
 
 F 2
 
 68 THE WITCH. 
 
 " Of this your husband is an example. Poor, de- 
 serving 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 chil- 
 dren, 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 
 Pair King * 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. 
 
 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 
 
 * Philip the Fair of France, who put down the Templar 
 in Paris, and first secured the liberties of the Gallican Church. 
 TRANS.
 
 70 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 trea- 
 sure ? Oh, that the spirit of hidden treasures would be 
 our guide ! * 
 
 * 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 1 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,
 
 POSSESSION. 71 
 
 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 ; 
 
 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 belovr.
 
 72 THE WITCH. 
 
 "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 acccustoms himself to put on a grave 
 air. It is no joking matter, indeed ; for the lord com- 
 mands 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 atmo- 
 sphere 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 sor- 
 rowful. They walk alone through all the district. 
 The wife's shrewdness marks- the hostile scorn of the
 
 POSSESSION. 73 
 
 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 anta- 
 gonism, 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. Other- 
 wise you will fall short of your engagements ; and 
 then we are undone." 
 
 This suffering by day, however, is a trifle in com- 
 parison 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,
 
 74 THE WITCH. 
 
 however, she falls off. But oh, what suffering visits 
 her then ! The importunate guest is beside her, de- 
 manding 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, cover- 
 ing 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
 
 POSSESSION. 75 
 
 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 him- 
 self in the demoniacs, remains always a spirit through- 
 out the days of the Roman Empire, even in the time 
 of St. Martin or the fifth century. With the Barba- 
 rian 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 plun- 
 derers 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 re- 
 deem 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, be- 
 came at once among the wealthiest of the monastic 
 orders.
 
 7G THE WITCH. 
 
 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
 
 POSSESSION. 77 
 
 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 tasnia. You feel in 
 yourself a double life ; you trace the monster's move- 
 ments, 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 force- 
 fully 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,
 
 78 THE WITCH. 
 
 ;md 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 mer- 
 ciless 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 him- 
 self is in her eyes. 
 
 He has her and yet has her not. She is still herself, 
 and preserves herself. She belongs neither to theDe- 
 mon 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,
 
 POSSESSION. 79 
 
 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; your- 
 self 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 youf 
 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
 
 80 THE WITCH. 
 
 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, stub- 
 born 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 re- 
 luctances, 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
 
 POSSESSION. 81 
 
 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 any- 
 one, straight to the door of a Jew, at which she 
 knocked loudly. It was opened with great caution.
 
 82 THE WITCH. 
 
 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.* Look at my bleed- 
 ing mouth." 
 
 " 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.^ 
 
 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 
 
 * This was a common way of extracting help from the Jews. 
 King John Lackland often tried it. 
 
 t 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 Uni- 
 versity. In the sixteenth century, it was christianised, re- 
 modelled, reduced to mere white magic. See the Deposition of 
 the Wizard Achard, Lord of Beaumont, a Physician of Poitou. 
 Lancre, Incredulite, p. 781.
 
 rossr.ssiox. 83 
 
 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/' 
 
 G 2
 
 84 1IIE WITCH. 
 
 " Ask it, ask it, fair lady/' says the gentlemen 
 laughing; "but make haste, for I am eager to em- 
 brace 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*} 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 in- 
 sults the horse." 
 
 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.f The crowd was astonished, but began to 
 
 * The absurd head-dress of the -women, with its one and 
 often two horns sloping back from the head, in the fourteenth 
 century. TRANS. 
 
 t 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
 
 POSSESSI3X. 85 
 
 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 grey- 
 hounds 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 ? 
 
 -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 Qrigines I have 
 also related the strange claim made by the Lord of Pace, in 
 Anjou, on the pretty (and honest) women of the neighbour- 
 hood. 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.
 
 86 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 
 fii-e. "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
 
 POSSESSION. 87 
 
 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 iu 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
 
 THE COVENANT. 89 
 
 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, ac- 
 cording 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 rne 
 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
 
 90 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 ever- 
 lasting." 
 
 " Oh ! sir, in my present state, what should I say ? 
 For a long, long while back have 1 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 pro- 
 mising 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 so\ils who 
 would give themselves up at once. I prefer the choicer 
 spirits, who have reached a certain dainty stage of fury
 
 THE COVENANT. 91 
 
 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 ani 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 shoxild 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
 
 92 TI:K WITCH. 
 
 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 ser- 
 vice." 
 
 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,* 
 borne up by that one word, " Vengeance ! " 
 
 Far from being crushed or weakened by the infernal 
 thunderbolt, she arose with an awful vigour and flash- 
 ing 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 
 
 * This will be explained further on. We must guard against 
 the pedantic additions of the sixteenth century writers.
 
 THE COVENANT. 93 
 
 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 be- 
 came 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 re- 
 mained, 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
 
 9-i THE WITCH. 
 
 which Satan had pierced her was still there, and, as 
 through a baleful lamp, shot forth a wild, but fear- 
 fully 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 trog- 
 lodyte 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 tear 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 goat- 
 herd, but also a closer conspiracy with nature, a deeper 
 insight into remedies and poisons, a mysterious con- 
 nection, 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 pre- 
 pared for her at the mouth of her gloomy den. By a
 
 THE COVENANT. 95 
 
 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 me- 
 mories 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
 
 THE KIXG OF THE DEAD. 97 
 
 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 de- 
 served an altar." 
 
 To pierce the future and to call up the past, to fore- 
 stal 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 no 
 where 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 ! 
 
 H
 
 98 THE WITCH. 
 
 " 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 cotncs 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 ! "* 
 
 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 be- 
 tween 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 play- 
 thing of such a beast ! You may laugh now, but for 
 
 * The glimmer shines forth in Dumesnil's Immortalite, and 
 La Foi Nouvette, in the Ciel et Terre of Reynaud, Henry Mar- 
 tin. <tc.
 
 THE KING OF THE DEAD. 99 
 
 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 an- 
 tiquity 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 iis 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 
 
 H 2
 
 100 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 my- 
 self 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 anotherin low tones : "I say, neighbour; up there 
 lives a woman of whom folk speak well and ill. For
 
 THE KING OP THE DEAD. 101 
 
 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,
 
 102 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 like- 
 ness, 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 ; 1 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 KING OF THE DEAD. 103 
 
 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 ma- 
 jesty, 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 tra- 
 ditions of a hell of torments ? The one idea neutra- 
 lizes 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,
 
 104 THE WITCH. 
 
 when a very light step became audible. Tl.e 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 mys- 
 tery about her shrinking figure. The other says. to 
 her with a loud voice : " You need not tell mo, 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 every- 
 thing, 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
 
 THE KING OF THE DEAD. 105 
 
 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 tender- 
 ness 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 ? '" 
 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 suffer- 
 ing, 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
 
 THE PRINCE OF NATURE. 107 
 
 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 some- 
 times, 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 uni- 
 form, 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 "crystalliza- 
 tion;" 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 mono- 
 tonous 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.
 
 108 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 with- 
 out, 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 fan- 
 tastic 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, " Corne down/' 
 
 The Witch has something to laugh at, if from the 
 gloom she can see how utterly Dante and St. Thomas,* 
 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 
 
 * St. Thomas Aquinas, the " Angelic Doctor," who died ia 
 1274. TRANS.
 
 THE PRINCE OF NATURE. 109 
 
 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. 
 
 People were too ready to crow over him, when he 
 was shewn by Bartulus* pleading against the woman--- 
 that is, the Virgin who gets him nonsuited and con- 
 demned 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. 
 
 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 
 
 * Bartolus or Bartoli, a lawyer and law-writer of the four- 
 teenth century. TKANS.
 
 110 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 suf- 
 ferings. 
 
 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 them- 
 selves, 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
 
 THE PRINCE OF NATURE. Ill 
 
 I 
 
 crystallized by the teaching of St. Thomas, as to re- 
 main open to the living world, to its vegetative forces ? 
 Three magicians, Albert the Great, Roger Bacon, 
 Arnaud of Villeneuve.* 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. 
 
 But being light and changeful, she is all the less 
 liable to be carked and hardened by pain ! This wo- 
 man, 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 
 
 * Three eminent schoolmen of the thirteenth century, whose 
 scientific researches pointed the way to future discoveries. 
 TRANS.
 
 112 THE WITCH. 
 
 side, she is taken dizzy at the first. Her swelling 
 bosom overflows. The Sibyl of science has her 
 tortures, like her of Cumse or of Delphi. The school- 
 men 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 drunken- 
 ness, 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 PRINCE OF NATURE. 113 
 
 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. 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 ! J 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 
 
 i
 
 114 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 fieiy 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 bound- 
 lessness 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 Infi- 
 nite, 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.
 
 THE PRINCE OF NATURE. 115 
 
 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. 
 
 i 2
 
 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 day- 
 break, 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 centu- 
 ries. 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 gro- 
 tesque 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 scro-
 
 THE DEVIL A PHYSICIAN. 117 
 
 fulous 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, witli 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 stimu- 
 lants 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 inven- 
 tion of distilling and of divers fermented drinks may 
 also have worked in the same direction.
 
 118 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 enjoy- 
 ment, 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.* 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, 
 
 * 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 defile- 
 ment. There was no bathing for a thousand years !
 
 THE DEVIL A PHYSICIAN. 119 
 
 and sharper within rages the coal of fire, made fiercer 
 by despair. 
 
 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. Fvom 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. a What
 
 120 - THE WITCH. 
 
 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 blatnable journey, for which they re- 
 proach 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 
 XXIL, the son of a shoemaker, a Pope no more of 
 Home, 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 Renais- 
 sance, Paracelsus, cast all the wise books of ancient 
 medicine into the tire, Latin, and Jewish, and Arabic, 
 all at once, he declared that he had learned none but
 
 THE DEVIL A PHYSICIAN. 121 
 
 the popular medicine, that of the good women,* 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. 
 
 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 w r itches alone attended her, and became, especially 
 for women, the chief and only physician. 
 
 "What we know for surest with regard to their medi- 
 cinal 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 Solanese.f 
 
 * The name given in fear and politeness to the witches. 
 
 f 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 ! Kay, who now remembers or 
 even acknowledges the old debt of humanity to harmless 
 nature ? The Asdepias 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
 
 122 THE WITCH. 
 
 A vast and popular family, many kinds of which 
 ahound to excess under our feet, in the hedges, every- 
 where a family so numerous that of one kind alone 
 we have eight hundred varieties.* 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. 
 
 Let us, step by step, mount the ladder of their 
 powers. -f The first are simply pot-herbs, good for 
 food, such as the mad-apples and the tomatoes, mis- 
 called "love-apples." Other, of the harmless kinds, 
 are sweetness and tranquillity itself, as the white mul- 
 lens, or lady's fox-gloves, so good for fomentations. 
 
 Going higher up, you come on a plant already sus- 
 
 men, this plant, in the Middle Ages called the Poison-queller 
 (vince-venenum), meets with not one word of historical com- 
 ment in our books of Botany. Perhaps two thousand years 
 hence they will forget the wheat. See Langlois on the Soma 
 of India and the Horn of Persia. Mem. de VAcademie des 
 Inscriptions, xix. 326. 
 
 * M. d'Orbigny's Dictionary of Natural History, article 
 Morelles. 
 
 t 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 Bo- 
 tanique Generale.
 
 THE DEVIL A PHYSICIAN. 123 
 
 picious, which many think a poison, a plant which at 
 first seems like honey and afterwards tastes bitter, re- 
 minding 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 " bitter- 
 sweet " 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 na- 
 ture, with its innermost vessels forming a matchless 
 flower, becomes, through its injeetive and congestive 
 tendencies, the most perfect instrument for causing 
 pain. Sharp, ruthless, restless are the pains she suf- 
 fers. 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."
 
 124 THE WITCH. 
 
 It \vas 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 church- 
 yard, 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,
 
 THE DEVIL A PHYSICIAN. 125 
 
 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 hen- 
 bane, a cruel and dangerous poison, but a powerful 
 emollient, a soft sedative poultice, which melts, un- 
 bends, 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 super- 
 vened 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 hej-self into a sleep, and smoothing 
 the infant's passage, after the manner of the modern 
 chloroform, into the world.* 
 
 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 
 
 * Madame La Chapelle and M. Chaussier have renewed to 
 good purpose these practices of the older medicine. Pouchet, 
 Solanees.
 
 126 THE WITCH. 
 
 everything must be done the wrong way, the very op- 
 posite 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 cen- 
 tury 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 them- 
 selves go, fell into the mighty current, increased the 
 terrible choir.
 
 THE DEVIL A PHYSICIAN. 127 
 
 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.* Doubtless there was some other remedy, 
 of which people were loth to speak. At the time when 
 witchcraft took its first great flight, the wide-spread 
 use of the Solanece, 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, -j- or perry (the strong drinks of the 
 West), set the multitude dancing a dance luxurious 
 indeed, but far from epileptic. 
 
 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 reenfeoff- 
 ment of the stomach and the digestive organs. They 
 
 * We should think that few physicians would quite agree 
 with M. Michelet. TRANS. 
 
 t Cider was first made in the twelfth century.
 
 128 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 spi- 
 ritualism, 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;jbut 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 an 
 the smaller world of men. 
 
 This world is all one piece : each thing in it is at- 
 tached 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* 
 
 There was no lack of injurious treatment. The 
 * This great discovery was made by Claude Bernard.
 
 THE DEVIL A PHYSICIAN. 129 
 
 witches were called filthy, indecent, shameless, im- 
 moral. 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 her- 
 self 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 in- 
 nocent 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. 
 
 K
 
 130 THE WITCH. 
 
 The romances, too, with their subtleties pourtray the 
 converse of the world. Outside the courts and high- 
 born 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 con- 
 trariwise 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 be- 
 tween two worlds, the older dying and the new strug- 
 gling 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 
 
 K 2
 
 132 THE WITCH. 
 
 souls of the dead ; who can throw a spell upon you, 
 turn you into a hare or wolf, enable you to find a trea- 
 sure, 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 ; some- 
 times even out of a mere delight in malice and un- 
 cleanness ? 
 
 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
 
 CHARMS AND PHILTRES. 133 
 
 between them, she has stooped to look upon her little 
 page. 
 
 In these days there are hut two types, two forms of 
 marriage, both of them extreme and outrageous. 
 
 The scornful heiress of a fief, who brings her hus- 
 band 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 daugh- 
 ter or sister of a baron, who might avenge her. If I 
 am not misled by a specious conjecture, we must be- 
 lieve that this tale is of the fourteenth century, and
 
 134 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 gen- 
 tlemen, 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 mislead- 
 ing : 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
 
 CHARMS AND PHILTRES. 135 
 
 leavings ! Seated at the lowermost end of the table, 
 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 won- 
 drous 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 cas- 
 tellan or simple constable of his castle of Coucy. 
 
 The deeper and less passable seemed the gulf be- 
 tween 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 him- 
 self to Satan. " We will take care for that, young
 
 136 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 iipon 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, re- 
 nowned already for deeds of arms? There is some- 
 thing toward, down yonder ! Has that woman cast a 
 spell upon her, or worked some hidden charm ? The
 
 CHARMS AND PHILTRES. 137 
 
 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 barrier, 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 house- 
 hold. 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,
 
 138 THE WITCH. 
 
 not to say ridiculous. The lord never distresses him- 
 self 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 stimu- 
 lants so much abused in the East. Others were dan- 
 gerous, 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 nothiug in it but large halls, led to an utter
 
 CHARMS AND PHILTRES. 139 
 
 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, notoften 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
 
 140 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 hus- 
 band and others equally jealous the moments of happi- 
 ness 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
 
 CHARMS AND PHILTRES. 141 
 
 win back the lover by a spell seemingly copied from 
 antiquity, by means of a cake, of a confarreatio* 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. 
 
 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 re- 
 quital 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 
 
 * One form of wedding among the Romans, in which the 
 bride-cake was broken between the pair, in token of their 
 union. TRANS.
 
 142 THE WITCH. 
 
 warmed up by the lecherous spirit of the Devil. She 
 does not say with Virgil's wizard,* 
 
 " Ducite ab urbe domum, mea carmina, ducite Daphnin ! " 
 
 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, f 
 
 * " Hither, ye spells of mine, bring Daphnis home from the 
 city ! " Virgil, Eclogue viii. 
 
 t 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 XL 
 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.* 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. 
 
 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 
 
 * 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.
 
 144 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 3000 the church is wellnigh 
 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,* 
 may have been celebrated at the Sabbaths. The " Mar- 
 
 * At the battle of Courtray. See also Grimm and my 
 Origines.
 
 THE REBELS' COMMUNION, ETC. 145 
 
 seillaise" 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 ! "* 
 
 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 
 
 * " We are fashioned of one clay : 
 Big as theirs our hearts are aye : 
 We can bear as much as they." TBAXS. 
 
 L
 
 146 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 
 imposssible, 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.* 
 
 * The Peasants' war which raged in France in 1364.
 
 THE REBELS' COMMUNION, ETC. 147 
 
 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. 
 
 L 2
 
 148 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 com- 
 munion, 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
 
 THE REUELS 5 COMMTWION, ETC. J49 
 
 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 repres- 
 sion 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, tfce 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
 
 150 tHE WITCH. 
 
 her contributions from those who were hest 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 goat-skin 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 melan- 
 choly wherein the Eternally Banished seems absorbed.* 
 
 Act First. The magnificent In troit taken by Chris- 
 tendom from antiquity, that is, from those ceremonies 
 
 * 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.
 
 THE REBELS* COMMUNION, ETC. 151 
 
 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, 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
 
 152 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 re- 
 ceiving 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
 
 THE REBELS' COMMUNION, ETC. 153 
 
 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 to- 
 gether, 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.* 
 
 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 pro- 
 ceeding was very great, even tantamount to the forfeiting 
 of her life. Nay, more ; she braved a hell of suffer- 
 ing, of torments such as may hardly be described. Torn 
 by pincers, and broken alive; her breasts torn out; 
 
 * This important fact of the woman being her own altar, is 
 known to us by the trial of La Voisin, which M. Ravaisson, 
 Sen., ia about to publish with the other Papers of the Bastille.
 
 154 THE WITCH. 
 
 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.* 
 
 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, seem- 
 ingly 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 
 
 * 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.
 
 THE REBELS' COMMUNION, ETC. 155 
 
 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 behead- 
 ing the toad, uttered these strange words: "Ah, 
 Philip* if I had you here, you should be served in the 
 same manner ! " 
 
 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 
 
 * Lancre, 136. Why " Philip," I cannot say. By Satan 
 Jesus is always called John or Janicot (Jack). Was she speak- 
 ing of Philip of Valois, who brought on the wasting hundred 
 years' war with England ]
 
 150 THE WITCH. 
 
 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
 
 158 THE WITCH. 
 
 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
 
 LOVE AND DEATH SATAN DISAPPEARS. 159 
 
 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 faith- 
 less gallantries here bring dishonour on some intimate 
 friend. Unknown, unneeded here, for all they say, is 
 the nnclean 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.* 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 child- 
 hood, 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. 
 
 The peasant being fondest of his own family was 
 
 * Of course the allusion here, as shown in the next follow- 
 ing sentence, is to French law in particular. As for the mar- 
 riage of cousins, there is much to say on both sides of the 
 question. TRASS.
 
 160 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 him- 
 self would have been in great danger. 
 
 There was another difficulty. The lord of the young 
 serf forbade his marrying in the next lordship. Be- 
 coming 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 hus- 
 band " 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 Medieval Family better, 
 we give up believing the declamatory assumptions of a 
 general mingling together of the people forming so
 
 LOVE AND DEATH SATAN DISAPPEARS. 161 
 
 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,* varied sometimes with threats and cruel re- 
 proaches. 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.f 
 
 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. 
 
 * The ingenious M. Genin has very recently collected the 
 most curious information on this point. 
 
 t Boguet, Lancre, and other authors, are agreed on this 
 question. 
 
 M
 
 162 THE \VITCH. 
 
 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 pro- 
 hibitions. 
 
 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 be- 
 longing 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 many 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.
 
 LOVE AND DEATH SATAN DISAPPEARS. 163 
 
 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 there- 
 at. 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 
 
 M 2
 
 164 THE WITCH. 
 
 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, heart- 
 less, 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 bora 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
 
 LOVE AND DEATH SATAN DISAPPEARS. 165 
 
 rarely fruitful. They were wisely abandoned; nor 
 would people ever have returned to them, but for that 
 rebellious spirit which, being aroused by absurd re- 
 strictions, 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 crafti- 
 ness, 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
 
 166 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 moor- 
 land. 
 
 She is not, as they say, the dread of all. Many 
 will bless her. More than one have found her beau- 
 tiful, 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 pre- 
 ferable. 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
 
 LOVE AND DEATH SATAN DISAPPEARS. 167 
 
 with alarm, e ' 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.* 
 
 * See the end of the Witch of Berkeley, as told by William 
 of Malmeslury.
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE WITCH IN HER DECLINE SATAN MULTIPLIED AND 
 
 MADE COMMON. 
 
 THE Devil's delicate fondling, the lesser Witch, be- 
 gotten of the Black Mass after the greater one's dis- 
 appearance, 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 ex- 
 pression 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.
 
 THE WITCH IN HER DECLINE. 169 
 
 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 in- 
 ward 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.
 
 170 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 with- 
 out end. 'Tis a poor triumph, however, for him. He 
 grows dull and sick at heart. Still the people keep
 
 THE WITCH IN T HER DECLINE. 171 
 
 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 Guesclm, which had taken place so many years 
 before. For three days and nights was Sodom wal- 
 lowing 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.* 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 
 
 * Even in a very mystic theme, in a vrork 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.
 
 172 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 de- 
 bauchery, the king, the whole company might see the 
 bottomless pit itself yawning for the life, the feeling, 
 the body, and the soul of each. 
 
 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 tight- 
 ness of their clothes.* 
 
 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 gird- 
 ing herself with an array of fair girls. Far otherwise 
 
 * 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.
 
 THE WITCH IX HER DECLINE. 173 
 
 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, iu 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 con- 
 temptuous 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 sen-
 
 174 THE WITCH. 
 
 timental 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. Any- 
 how, 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 her- 
 self. 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
 
 THE WITCH IX HER DECLINE. 175 
 
 keeping still. I want, by night at least, to run free 
 about the forest. Away with stupid servant?, 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 t " 
 " At least you have heard the story of the woman- 
 wolf, whose paw was cut-off.* But, oh ! how sorry I 
 should be." 
 
 " 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 moon- 
 light ; by myself to fasten on the hind, or man like- 
 wise if he comes near me; to attack the tender children, 
 
 * 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 hospi- 
 tality 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-wolfs 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 leav- 
 ing a paw on the battle-field. The husband had the cruelty to 
 give her up to justice, and she was burnt.
 
 176 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 wel- 
 come. "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, hate- 
 ful old hag ! "
 
 THE WITCH IN HER DECLINE. 177 
 
 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 re- 
 turn from a crusade, being bent on copying the man- 
 ners 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 no- 
 thing of pounding her in a mortar.* 
 
 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 
 
 * 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. 
 
 N
 
 178 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 know- 
 ledge or remembrance.* 
 
 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 pil- 
 grimage to our Lady of Grace, or her of the wilderness. 
 All these people, who hobbled, crawled, and stumbled 
 
 * Pouchet, on the Solanece 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.
 
 THE WITCH IN HER DECLINE. 179 
 
 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 !" * 
 
 * 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 cen- 
 tury) 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 
 Hastiness. This was sad enough when the ladies were neither 
 young, nor beautiful, nor witty. But what of that other as- 
 tounding 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 1 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, 
 quMstio, 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 FOB 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 hand-book. 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, hand- 
 books 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 hand-books or directories were ap- 
 pointed. Hammers for Witches, to wit. These hand- 
 books, continually enriched by the zeal of the Domi-
 
 THE HAMMER FOtt WITCHES. 181 
 
 nicans, 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 ? 
 lie 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 some- 
 what 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.
 
 182 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 hand- 
 books, and became a first-rate authority in the pro- 
 cesses against demons. His Malleus was most likely 
 composed during the twenty years between this adven- 
 ture and the important mission entrusted to Sprenger 
 by Pope Innocent VIII., in M84-. 
 
 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. I,n the 
 Low Countries Home had suffered a rude check, which 
 brought the Inquisition into vogue there, and con- 
 sequently closed France against it : Toulouse alone, 
 as being the old Albigensian country, having endured 
 the Inquisition. About the year 1460 a Penitentiary * 
 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 
 
 * Officer charged with the absolution of penitents. TRANS.
 
 THE HAMMER FOR WITCHES. 183 
 
 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. 
 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,
 
 184 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 success- 
 ful 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 dis- 
 putant, of a man well skilled in the Sum,* grounded 
 firm in his St. Thomas, able at any moment to quote 
 texts. Ml this Sprenger certainly was : and best of 
 all, he was a fool. 
 
 " 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 mouth- 
 
 * A mediaeval text-book on theology. TRANS.
 
 THE HAMMER FOR WITCHES. 185 
 
 ful of the two. But " he goes on to say with the 
 gravity of Sganarelle " in Greek etymology dialohis 
 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.* 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, every- 
 where else. 
 
 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. 
 
 * "Thinking ill of the faith." TRANS.
 
 186 THE WITCH. 
 
 He sits down satisfied, calm as a conqueror; seem- 
 ing to say, " Well, what say you now ? WilT 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."
 
 THE HAMMER FOR WITCHES. 187 
 
 "\Vhat a thing, you sec, to have studied ! No weak 
 school could have turned out such a man. Only Paris, 
 Louvaiu, 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?* 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.f 
 
 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. Be- 
 yond 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 
 
 * A character in Rabelais. " Date nobis clochas nostras, &c." 
 Gargantua, ch. 19. TRANS. 
 
 t Ulrich von Hutten, friend of Luther, and author of the 
 witty Epislolcs obscurorum virorum. TRANS.
 
 188 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 fnce 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 want- 
 ing 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 comple- 
 ment 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 throughwalls. 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
 
 THE HAMMER FOR WITCHES. 189 
 
 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 window- 
 panes ! 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 ques- 
 tions, 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
 
 190 THE WITCH. 
 
 plenty of texts. " You are made serfs only by cove- 
 nant 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 wit- 
 nesses 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 cen- 
 tury 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.* 
 
 * Faustin Helie, in his learned and luminous Traite de 
 V 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, espe- 
 cially the risk incurred by prosecutors of being punished for
 
 THE HAMMER FOK WITCHES. 191 
 
 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 un- 
 feeling 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 preg- 
 nant, 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 him- 
 self 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. 
 
 slander. Instead of these were established the dismal pro- 
 cesses of Denunciation and Inquisition. The frightful levity 
 of these latter methods is shown by Soldan. Blood was shed 
 like water.
 
 192 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 18tno, 
 a form at that time scarce. It would not have beeii 
 seemly for a judge in difficulties to open a folio on the 
 table before his audience. But his handbook of folly
 
 THE HAMMER FOR WITCHES. 193 
 
 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 beat 1 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 pro- 
 tection. The Demon is no longer a stealthy sprite, no 
 
 o
 
 194 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 inouth 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 treach- 
 erous 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
 
 THE HAMMER FOR WITCHES. 195 
 
 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 dam- 
 nation 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 Albi- 
 genses, 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 supe- 
 rior. 
 
 o 2
 
 196 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 con- 
 tinual 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 fore- 
 going 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
 
 THE HAMMER FOR WITCHES. 197 
 
 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 gro- 
 tesque. People tremble, but they laugh withal.* 
 
 * See my Memoirs of Luther, concerning the Kilcrops, &c.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 CENTURY OP 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 inter- 
 course 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.
 
 TOLERATION IN FRANCE REACTION. 199 
 
 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 confisca- 
 tion, 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 prosecu- 
 tion 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.* 
 
 * For this and other facts regarding Germany, sec Soldan.
 
 200 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 Bam- 
 berg 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 be- 
 forehand, 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 Lor- 
 raine 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. Some- 
 times 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 dis- 
 grace. I longed for death, and so I told a lie."
 
 TOLERATION IN FRANCE REACTION. 201 
 
 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* said, straightforwardly, "In order 
 to obtain forfeit property, the same persons acted as 
 accusers and judges, and invented a thousand stories 
 in proof." 
 
 That apostle of toleration, Chatillon, who main- 
 tained 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,t Lavatier, above all, Wyer,J 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 
 
 * A famous Italian physician, who lived through the greater 
 part of the sixteenth century. -TKANS. 
 
 t Cornelius Agrippa, of Cologne, horn in 1486, sometime 
 Secretary of the Emperor Maximilian, and author of two works 
 famous in their day, Vanity of the Sciences, and Occult Philo- 
 sophy. TRAK 8. 
 
 * A friend of Sir Philip Sydney, who seat for him when 
 dying. TKAXS.
 
 THE WITCH. 
 
 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. 
 
 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, Cathe- 
 rine 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 con- 
 tained 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* and the fury of the Leaguists,f 
 until they waxed more priest-like than the priests 
 themselves. While scouting the Inquisition from 
 
 * Catholicon, or purgative panacea : i. e. the Inquisition. 
 TRANS. 
 
 t The wars of the Catholic League against Henry of Navarre 
 began in 1576. TBANS.
 
 TOLERATION IX FRANCE REACTION. 203 
 
 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. 
 
 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* him- 
 self die of envy. 
 
 * The infamous Spanish Inquisitor, who died at the close of 
 the fifteenth century, after sixteen years of untold atrocities 
 against the heretics of Spain. TRAXS.
 
 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 
 nee 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
 
 TOLERATION IN FRANCE REACTION. 205 
 
 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 dis- 
 cretion." 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 Parlia- 
 ment, 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 compas :
 
 200 THE WITCH. 
 
 sionately on the Spanish Inquisition, which at Logrofio, 
 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.* 
 
 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 prose- 
 cuted wizards, being wizards themselves. The priests 
 danced, wore swords, and took their mistresses to the 
 Witches' Sabbath. These mistresses acted as their sex- 
 tonesses or benedictes, to keep the churches in order. 
 The parson quarrelled with nobody, offered the White 
 
 * The Basques of the Lower Pyrenees, the Aquitani of Caesar, 
 belonged to the old Iberian race which peopled Western Eu- 
 rope before the Celtic era. TRANS.
 
 203 THE WITCH. 
 
 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, swim- 
 ming like fish. Their natural master is the Prince of 
 the Air, King of Winds and Dreams, the same who in- 
 spired 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 shoul- 
 ders, 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
 
 THE WITCHES OF THE BASQUE COUNTRY. 209 
 
 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 be- 
 tween 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, in- 
 herent to those times. The witches being too nume- 
 rous 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 Logrofio, 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 
 
 p
 
 210 THE WITCH. 
 
 platform were the few condemned to the flames, on 
 another a crowd of reprieved criminals. The confes- 
 sion 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 fan- 
 tastic 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 en- 
 tertain 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
 
 THE WITCHES OF THE BASQUE COUNTRY. 
 
 lady being called as witness, began barking with un- 
 controllable 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. 
 
 p 2
 
 212 THE WITCH. 
 
 When the judges appeared, many persons saved 
 themselves in the hills. Others boldly remained, 
 saying, it was the judges who would he 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 numb-
 
 THE WITCHES OF THE BASQUE COUNTRY. 213 
 
 ness, by the fact that you might stick needles into it 
 \vithout causing pain. While a surgeon thus tor- 
 mented 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, com- 
 missioned to prod them all over with needles, and able 
 at will to assign those bleeding bodies to death ! 
 
 <J O 
 
 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 for- 
 ward ; 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 Ions:
 
 214 THE WITCH. 
 
 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, re- 
 putable witness ! 
 
 M. d'Espagnet could give but a few moments to 
 this matter, having speedily to show himself in the 
 Estates of Beam. 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 im- 
 peaching 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 accu- 
 sations. 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
 
 THE WITCHES OF THE BASQUE COUNTRY. 215 
 
 churchwardens. He even repeats certain tales about 
 the priests having sent off the husbands to Newfound- 
 land, 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 Logrolio 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
 
 216 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 con- 
 quering magistrate avers that, while the last witch was 
 burning, they saw a swarm of toads come out of her
 
 THE WITCHES OF THE BASQUE COUNTRY. 217 
 
 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.* 
 
 * For a more detailed account of these Basque Witches, the 
 English reader may turn to Wright's Narratives of Sorcery and 
 Magic. Bentley, 1851. TBANS.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 SATAN TURNS PRIEST. 
 
 WHATEVER semblance of Satanic fanaticism was still 
 preserved by the witches, it transpires from the nar- 
 ratives 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 reward- 
 ing those who brought new members into the brother- 
 hood. 
 
 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 gentle- 
 men. 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
 
 SATAN TURNS PRIEST. 219 
 
 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 them- 
 selves airs, become fashionable, and, like so many lord- 
 lings, 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 in- 
 vincible charm which sent the whole world of women, 
 wives, daughters, widows the last in great numbers 
 headlong into the Sabbath.
 
 220 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 
 tiiat 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 vic- 
 tims in every way. But they were resigned to every- 
 thing 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
 
 SATAN TURN'S PRIEST. 221 
 
 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," per- 
 formed 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 pro- 
 ducing 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 Setni- 
 ramis 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 bella- 
 donna, that, like one entranced, he came to lose all 
 power of speech and motion, retaining only his sight.
 
 222 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 Benedicts, 
 his sextoness, he who jobs the things of the Church, 
 saying the White Mass of mornings, the Black at
 
 SATAN TURNS PRIEST. 223 
 
 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-con- 
 fessor ; or, if you would rather have it so, the father- 
 confessor had turned Devil. 
 
 The worthy M. de Laucre 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 con- 
 fessor. 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." * Great pity was felt for her on her 
 repenting; and she was speedily saved from all need 
 
 * Massee, Chronique du Monde, 1540 ; and the Chroniclers 
 of Hainault, &c.
 
 224 THE WITCH. 
 
 of blushing, being put into a fine walled-tomb built foe 
 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 busi- 
 ness of Gauffridi, which happened at Marseilles while 
 Lancre was drawing up deeds at Bayonne. 
 
 The Parliament of Provence had no need to envy the 
 success attained by that of Bordeaux. The lay autho- 
 rities caught at the first occasion of a trial for witch- 
 craft 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 over- 
 leap. 
 
 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
 
 SATAN TURNS PRIEST. 225 
 
 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 mys- 
 tery it is which gets torn in twain by the Parlia- 
 ment 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 re- 
 ducing 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 pil- 
 grimage 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. 
 
 Q
 
 226 t THE WITCH. 
 
 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 import- 
 ant 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. Neverthe- 
 less, 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
 
 SATAN TURNS PRIEST. 227 
 
 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 Ma- 
 gicians, and would make her his queen. He put on 
 her finger a silver ring, engraved with magic cha- 
 racters. 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. 
 
 Q 2
 
 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, aim- 
 ing 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 Ca- 
 puchin, 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 listtessness 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.
 
 GAUFFRIDI: 1610. 229 
 
 A nun who hoped to die decently, without bequeath- 
 ing 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 * 
 founded the Visitandine order, whose duty it was to 
 visit the sick in pairs. Ca3sar of Bus and Romillion, 
 who had established the Teaching Priests in connection 
 with the Oratorians f, 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, 
 
 * St. Francis of Sales, famous for his successful missions 
 among the Protestants, and Bishop of Geneva in his later years, 
 died in 1622. TRANS. 
 
 t The Brethren of the Oratory, founded at rlomein 1564. 
 TRAXS.
 
 230 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 morn- 
 ing all had disappeared. 
 
 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
 
 GAUFFRIDI: 1610. 231 
 
 sin with him, was only to be sanctified. A notion, in- 
 deed, ripe through France, and even in Paris, where the 
 mistresses of priests were called " the hallowed ones." * 
 
 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 exerciser 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 con- 
 troversy ; a Protestant by birth, but left an orphan, to 
 fall into the hands of the Father, a convert like her- 
 self from Protestantism. Her name, Louisa Capeau, 
 
 * Lestoile, edit. Michaud, p. 561.
 
 232 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 : Vervine, 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 Grauffridi, prince of ma-, 
 gicians. 
 
 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 magi- 
 cians, even the prince of universal magic. Such was 
 the dreadful diadem of steel and flame which these 
 feminine demons drove into his brow.
 
 GAUFFIUDI: 1C 10. 233 
 
 
 
 Everyone lost his head, even to old Romillion him- 
 self. 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 pre- 
 . tended, 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 elo-
 
 234 THE WITCH. 
 
 
 
 quence, 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 thank- 
 ing God. 
 
 It is a terrible sight, however, even in the dull word- 
 ing 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,
 
 GAUFFBIDI : 1610. 235 
 
 
 
 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 swoon- 
 ing 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 when- 
 ever 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 
 exercisers, 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 !
 
 23G THE WITCH. 
 
 The poor man was bewildered ; humbled himself be- 
 fore the Inquisition. They were too many for him, so 
 he said not another word. 
 
 One of Louisa's tricks was to frighten the by- 
 standers, 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 exerciser, 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."
 
 GAUFFKIDI: 1G10. 237 
 
 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 ex- 
 quisite 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 sec- 
 ing the Inquisition of Avignon pushed into her
 
 238 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 com- 
 manded 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 
 Avith 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."
 
 GAUFFRIDI : 1610. 239 
 
 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 offend- 
 ing 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 night- 
 mare of the stake. 
 
 To withstand these bold attempts of the Papal In- 
 quisition, Marseilles ought to have been backed up by 
 the Parliament of Aix. Unluckily she knew herself
 
 240 THE WITCH. 
 
 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, tliey were charmed to see a Papal In- 
 quisitor 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 in- 
 quiry. It was just as though the inquisitors had for- 
 mally 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."
 
 GAUFFRIDI : 1610. 241 
 
 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 cham- 
 pions, 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 re- 
 proaches of her own heart. 
 
 That heart indeed woke up at the guilty one's ap- 
 proach : 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
 
 242 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 ! 
 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 exerciser 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 act- 
 ing 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.
 
 GATJFFRIDI: 1610. 243 
 
 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 for- 
 saken 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 
 
 K 2
 
 244 THE WITCH. 
 
 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. Lack- 
 ing 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 Magi-
 
 GAUFFKIDJ: 1010. 245 
 
 clan, 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 ex- 
 amined 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 others 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, 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 ad- 
 miration 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
 
 246 THE \VITCH. 
 
 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 swal- 
 lowed, 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 mis- 
 givings 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 obla- 
 tion 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 ? * f I/ said a young man, and he was 
 sacrificed by the magician."
 
 GAUFFKIDI: 1610. 247 
 
 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 every- 
 where, 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
 
 248 THE WITCH. 
 
 child ; one of those fearful tricks that throw a woman 
 into fits, arid sometimes kill her outright. A vicar- 
 general of the archbishopric said that the palace con- 
 tained 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 Gauifridi, 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 blas- 
 pheme 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
 
 GAUFFRIDI: 1010. 240 
 
 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 exercisers 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 her- 
 self. 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, savs almost nothing
 
 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 amaze- 
 ment, 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 acknow- 
 ledging 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
 
 GAUFFKIDI: 1610. 251 
 
 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 Par- 
 liamentaries, 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 1" "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
 
 252 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 un- 
 tamable, 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 ? "VVe 
 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 re- 
 velations 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.
 
 GAUFFRIDI : 1610. 253 
 
 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 re- 
 proached for not speaking Latin, the new demoniac, 
 Denise Lacaille, mingled a few words of it in her gib- 
 berish. 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 for- 
 saken 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
 
 254 , THE WITCH. 
 
 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-con- 
 stables, 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.* 
 
 The wonder was, that the matter had not been 
 sooner known. Having spread so far, it could not 
 
 * Molinos, born at Saragossa in 1627, died a prisoner to the 
 Inquisition in 1696. His followers \vere called Quietists. 
 TBAXS.
 
 256 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 di- 
 rectors 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
 
 URBAN GRANDIEE. 257 
 
 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 physi- 
 cians. The physician Wyer tells some plain stories 
 to show what did come of it from the sixteenth cen- 
 tury onwards. In his Fourth Book he quotes a num- 
 ber 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 listless- 
 ness 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 happen- 
 ing constantly at this period. Travels, events in the 
 
 s
 
 258 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 distrac- 
 tions, desire, nay insist, that their confessors shall ab- 
 solve 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 mys- 
 ticism for the convent. The annihilation of the person 
 and the death of the will form the great mystic prin- 
 ciple. 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." * 
 
 * An old doctrine which often turns up again in the Middle 
 Ages. In the seventeenth century it prevails among the con- 
 vents of France and Spain. A Norman angel, in the Louviers
 
 URBAN GRANDIER. g59 
 
 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 super- 
 vision 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., 
 
 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 surren- 
 dering 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. 1 ' 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." 
 
 s 2
 
 260 THE WITCH. 
 
 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.* 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. 
 
 In order to see a little more clearly, we must not set 
 Grandier by himself; we must keep his place in tlut 
 
 * The History of the Loudun Devils, by the Protestant Aubin, 
 is an earnest, solid book, confirmed by the Keports of Laubarde- 
 mont 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.
 
 URBAN GKANDIER. 261 
 
 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 Sairite- 
 ISaume, 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.* 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 in- 
 deed without metaphor, were accordingly rash, bluster- 
 ous, 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. 
 
 * See Del Rio, Llorente Ricci, <fec.
 
 262 THE WITCH. 
 
 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, * 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 set- 
 tlement. This settlement, as one might easily guess, 
 was rent in twain by the rivalry of the priests and the 
 monks. 
 
 The monks, being numerous and proud, as men spe- 
 cially 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 capture of Eochelle, the last of the Huguenot strong- 
 olds took place in 1628. TBANS.
 
 URBAN GRANDIER. 268 
 
 the ears, drawing the women to his side, while the 
 men were mostly against him. He became lofty, inso- 
 lent, 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 connec- 
 tions, 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
 
 264 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 to- 
 gether 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
 
 UllBAN GUANDIER. 2Go 
 
 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 dispen- 
 sations contrary to the rights of the Bishop. A shrewd 
 accusation, which turned against him his natural de- 
 fender, 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 be- 
 sought 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 spiritxial court of Poitiers, Grandier was con- 
 demned to do penance, to be banished from Loudun, 
 and disgraced as a priest. But the civil court took up
 
 266 THE "WITCH. 
 
 the matter and found him innocent. He had still to 
 await the orders of him by whom Poitiers was spi- 
 ritually 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 look- 
 ing 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 remem- 
 brance the affair of Gauffridi, where the Devil, the 
 Father of Lies, was restored to his honours and ac- 
 cepted 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
 
 URBAN' GRANDIER. 
 
 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 him- 
 self. 
 
 In these tragi-comedies the exerciser 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 witch- 
 craft 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 ex- 
 ercisers distributed among several churches. Lastly, 
 Louviers, as we shall presently see, put a little new life 
 into this fading fashion by inventing midnight scenes,
 
 208 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 Levia- 
 than, 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 feel- 
 ing the devils.* Six girls of the town are possessed. 
 And the bare recital of these alarming events begets 
 two new cases of possession at Chinon. 
 
 Everywhere the thing was talked of, at Paris, at the 
 Court. Our Spanish queen,f who is imaginative and 
 
 * 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 physicaljquestion 
 here stated. TEANS. 
 
 t Anne of Austria, wife of Louis XIII. TBANS.
 
 URBAN GRANDIER. 209 
 
 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 
 Tope. 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. 
 
 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 threat- 
 ened and denounced them. Such, too, was the tacit 
 opinion of the Archbishop of Bordeaux, to whom 
 G randier appealed. He despatched a set of rules for
 
 270 THE WITCH. 
 
 the guidance at least of the exercisers, 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.* 
 
 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. 
 "VVe 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 fright- 
 ened, 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 
 
 * Not of necessity knaves, Mr. Michelet ; at least not wil- 
 fully so ; but silly hysteric patients, of the spirit-rapping, 
 revivalist order, victims of nervous derangement, or undue 
 nervous sensibility. TRANS.
 
 URBAN GRANDIElt. 271 
 
 judges, Laubardemont, and he saved her. He was 
 simply charged to overthrow the strong places of 
 Loudun. He got himself commissioned to try Gran- 
 dier. The Cardinal was given to understand that the 
 accused was vicar and friend of the Loudun shoe- 
 maker,* was one of the numerous agents of Mary 
 of Medici, had made himself his parishioner's secre- 
 tary, and written a disgraceful pamphlet in her name. 
 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 Decem- 
 ber, 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 
 
 * 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. TRAXS.
 
 272 THE WITCH. 
 
 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. Pre- 
 sently 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 con- 
 demned 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
 
 URBAN GRANDIER. 273 
 
 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.* 
 
 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.f 
 
 It is stated that Father Joseph, after a secret journey 
 to the spot, saw to what end the matter was coming, 
 
 * Indians of the coast of Brazil. TRANS. 
 t Esprit de Bosroger, p. 135. 
 
 T
 
 274 THE WITCH. 
 
 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
 
 URBAN GRANDIER. 275 
 
 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 free-thinker. 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.* So they agreed with Grandier, that if he 
 were prudent, he should be saved from burning, per- 
 haps 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. 
 
 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 
 
 * Both Neapolitans, burnt alive, the former at Venice in 
 1COO, the latter at Toulouse in 1619. TBANS. 
 
 T 2
 
 276 THE \VITCH. 
 
 him, the voice of general opinion. Nevertheless, by 
 rewarding the exercisers, 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 re- 
 appear 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.* 
 
 * 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 appa- 
 ritions, heavenly or infernal, and so forth.* 
 
 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 ; 
 
 * 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.
 
 278 THE WITCH. 
 
 and Boule, 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.* 
 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. 
 
 Born at Rouen in 1607, Madeline was left an 
 orphan at nine years old. At twelve she was ap- 
 prenticed 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. 
 
 * I know of no book more important, more dreadful, or 
 worthier of being reprinted. It is the most powerful narra- 
 tive 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.
 
 MADELINE BAVENT. 279 
 
 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 denied the 
 Cloister.* 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. 
 
 * See Floquet ; Parliament of Normandy, vol. v. p. 636.
 
 280 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 com- 
 pany, kept to herself, and succeeded in getting made 
 one of the doorkeepers. 
 
 David died when she was eighteen. Old age pre- 
 vented 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 eextoness, 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
 
 MADELINE BAVENT. 281 
 
 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 bene- 
 factor and second founder of the convent. " Sweet- 
 heart," 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.
 
 282 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 shame- 
 ful 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. Ma- 
 deline 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 Evrenx. 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
 
 MADELINE BAVENT. 283 
 
 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 au 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 j 
 merely a hashing up of the two great trials at Aix and 
 Loudun. They read and followed the printed narra- 
 tives 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
 
 284 THE WITCH. 
 
 actors in the Loudun affair. By his advice, the Bisnop 
 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 dis- 
 graced, 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 insen- 
 sible 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 j 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
 
 MADELINE BAVENT. 285 
 
 surgeon, who had already seen the farce at Lou dun, 
 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 con- 
 versation 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 reve- 
 lation. The scenic arrangements were very bewitching. 
 The shades of night, the torches, the nickering 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 exercisers, the penitentiary, priests, and Capu- 
 chins, 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
 
 286 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 fore- 
 tel, 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 sur- 
 geon 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.
 
 MADELINE BAVENT. 287 
 
 The rotten age of Mazarin, the first cbys 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 good- 
 ness 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 com- 
 mission 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 super- 
 natural, 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
 
 288 THE WITCH. 
 
 "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
 
 MADELINE BAVEXT. 289 
 
 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 sud- 
 den 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 tempation 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 
 
 u
 
 290 THE WITCH. 
 
 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, 
 hesought 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 vile- 
 ness, 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 ruth- 
 less 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
 
 MADELINE BAVENT. 291 
 
 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 : some- 
 times she had the keys herself. But where now should 
 she go, object as she was of so much dread? Thence- 
 forth 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 sup- 
 posed 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 Louv-iers. 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 Yveliu and the magistrate 
 
 u 2
 
 '292 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 every- 
 thing connected with justice. 
 
 Meanwhile, some honey-tongued priests had com- 
 forted 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 in- 
 deed for the clergy, and the victory was sung by a 
 knave of an exerciser, the Capuchin Esprit de Bos- 
 roger, 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 con-
 
 MADELINE BAVENT. 293 
 
 fessors 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 con- 
 fession 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 jest- 
 ing ? 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 victorv, however, is not a negative one, but very
 
 SATAN IX THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 295 
 
 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 Fan 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 contradic- 
 tory, 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 exceed- 
 ingly sanguine habit, with eyes for nothing but blood. 
 In view of so much impotence, magic and witch- 
 craft may find some solace for themselves.
 
 296 THE WITCH. 
 
 While the old faith in the supernatural was thus de- 
 clining, 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, for- 
 bade 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.
 
 SATAN IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 297 
 
 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 ven- 
 tured 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 no- 
 thing 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
 
 298 THE WITCH. 
 
 adultery, laughed at prudence, and boldly followed his 
 natural bent. Pious families, on the other hand, fol- 
 lowed nothing but their Jesuits. ID 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 nega- 
 tion. 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
 
 SATAN IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 299 
 
 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 tne "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 physi- 
 cal storms. "If ^Eolus 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 reme- 
 dies, 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 mix- 
 ture 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 eigh-
 
 300 THE WITCH. 
 
 teenth century, and yet have never seen one of its 
 most essential features. The greater its outward civi- 
 lization, 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 be- 
 lieve 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 any- 
 thing 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 indig- 
 nant. 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."
 
 SATAN T IX THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 301 
 
 This tolerant spirit suffered Cardinal Tencin to ap- 
 pear in public as his sister's husband. This, too, it 
 was that ensured to the masters of convents the peace- 
 ful possession of their nuns, who were even allowed to 
 make declarations of pregnancy, to register the births 
 of their children. * This tolerant temper made excuses 
 for Father Apollinaire, when he was caught in a shame- 
 ful 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. 
 
 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 me- 
 thods 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 
 
 * The noble Chapter of Canons of Pignan were sixteen in 
 number. In one year the provost received from the nuns six- 
 teen declarations of pregnancy. (See MS. History of Besse, 
 by M. Renoux.) One good fruit of this publicity was the de- 
 crease 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.
 
 302 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 exerciser. At last, horrible to say, insteajl 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 ajive 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 re- 
 duced 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 devo- 
 tion, 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.
 
 THIS WITCH. 
 
 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 anec- 
 dotes 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 help- 
 mate, 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,* but credulous and narrow-minded 
 withal ; under whose countenance many a bold venture 
 
 * The great plague of 1720, which carried off 60,000 people 
 ahout Marseilles. Belzunce is the " Marseilles' good bishop " 
 of Pope's line. TRA.XS.
 
 FATHER GIRARD AXD LA CADIERE : 1730. 305 
 
 might be made. Beside him they had placed a Jesuit 
 of Franche-Comte, not wanting in inind, 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 dif- 
 ferent 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.* 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 Avas Sister Remusat, who passed for a 
 saint. 
 
 In spite, or perhaps by reason, of this success, the 
 Jesuits took Girard away from Marseilles : they wanted 
 
 * See "The Proceedings in the Affair of Father Girard and 
 La Cadifcre," Aix, 1733. 
 
 X
 
 306 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 in- 
 fluence of the Lazarists, who ruled them almost every- 
 where. 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.
 
 FATHER GIRAIID AND LA CADIEHE : 1730. 307 
 
 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 some- 
 times 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 vehe- 
 ment 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 Mar- 
 seilles, 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 
 
 x 2
 
 308 THE WITCH. 
 
 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
 
 FATHER GIRAHD AND LA CADIERE : 1730. SOU 
 
 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 en- 
 trance of an immense harbour and a huge arsenal. 
 The sense of this carries the traveller away, and pre- 
 vents his seeing Toulon itself. There is a town how- 
 ever 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 
 ]ies 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,
 
 310 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 bar- 
 racks. Copious kennels, laden and foul with sewage 
 water, run down in torrents. The air is almost stag- 
 nant, 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 1'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 har- 
 bour 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
 
 FATHER GIRARD AND LA CADIERE : 1730. 311 
 
 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 de- 
 stroying 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
 
 THE WITCH. 
 
 from a mother so thrifty and more than temperate, had 
 something to do with this. The brothers had scrofu- 
 lous glands, and in her earlier years the little thing 
 suffered from the same cause. Without being altoge- 
 ther 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 in- 
 habitants when the plague began. It was a huge
 
 FATHER GIRARD AND LA CAD1ERE : 1730. 313 
 
 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.* 
 
 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 cer- 
 tain bales of wool to which was traced the first appear- 
 ance 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 shut- 
 
 * See the work by M. d'Antrechaus, and the excellent 
 treatise by M. Gustave Lambert.
 
 314 THE WITCH. 
 
 ting 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 im- 
 possible, 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 histoiy 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
 
 FATHER GIRARD AND LA CADIERE : 1730. 315 
 
 that fancy. Toulon never raised her head again. She 
 retained her desert-like air. Everything was in ruins, 
 everyone in mourning ; widowers, orphans, desperate 
 heings 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 col- 
 leagues; and was now so gloriously ruined, that he was 
 fain to look to his neighbours for his daily meals. The 
 poor quarelled 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 wretched- 
 ness. 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 impas- 
 sioned 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
 
 310 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 
 *>f Genoa, and she had bought for herself The Castle of 
 the Soul, by St. Theresa. Tew confessors could follow
 
 FATHER GIRARD AND LA CADIERE : 1730. 317 
 
 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 otherin 
 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
 
 318 THE WITCH. 
 
 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
 
 FATHER GIRARD AND LA CADIKUE : 1730. 319 
 
 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 alto- 
 gether." 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. Ca- 
 diere 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
 
 320 TUB WITCH. 
 
 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 per- 
 fection. Her treacherous companion allured her with 
 the proud conceit of being such another and filling her 
 place anon.
 
 FATHER GIRARD AND LA CADIERE : 1730. 321 
 
 During this short trip of hers, Girard, who remained 
 amid the stifling heats of Toulon, had met with a dis- 
 inal 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 con- 
 fessors, 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 Ca- 
 therine, 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 
 
 Y
 
 322 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 doc- 
 trines 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 agree- 
 ing to yield herself into his keeping in Girard' s stead. 
 He never forbade her, but gave her leave to be pos- 
 sessed for one year only. 
 
 Like the rest of the town, she had heard of the 
 scandalous loves of Father Sabatier : an insolent pas- 
 sionate 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."
 
 FATHER GIRARD AND LA CADIERE : 1730. 323 
 
 All through the trial, and when Girarcl, become her 
 foe, was aiming at her death, she never once recurred 
 to this subject. These two parables, so clear in mean- 
 ing, 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 cf 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 docu- 
 ment 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 
 
 Y 2
 
 324 THE WITCH. 
 
 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, hut 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,* 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." 
 
 * A case of mesmerism applied to a very susceptible 
 patient. Tiuxs.
 
 FATHER GIRARD AND LA CAUIEKE : 1730. 325 
 
 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. 
 
 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 meet- 
 ings, 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 
 Avhen 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
 
 326 THE WITCH. 
 
 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
 
 FATHER GIRARD AND LA CADIERE : 1730. 327 
 
 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 True, 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, how- 
 ever 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
 
 328 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 Ilemusat 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 suffer- 
 ing 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 inore 
 amorous she grew. On the twentieth day of Lent
 
 FATHER GTRARD AND LA CADIERE : 1730. 329 
 
 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 loiver angels are than the least of saints, 
 male or female. She saw the Palace of Glory, and 
 mistook herself for the Lauib. 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 goto 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 ear- 
 nest, 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 touch- 
 ing. One is the pure ideal she had formed of a faith- 
 ful 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
 
 330 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 any- 
 thing : the Iktle 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 Vero- 
 nicas,* were taken off on napkins, and doubtless given 
 away by Girard to people of great piety. 
 
 The mother, in her own despite, became an abettor 
 in all this juggling. In truth, she was afraid of 
 
 * After the saint of that name, -whose handkerchief received 
 the impress of Christ's countenance. TBANS.
 
 FATHER GIRARD AND LA CADIERE : 1730. 331 
 
 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
 
 332 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 after- 
 wards ! " 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 main- 
 tained.? 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
 
 FATHER GIRARD AND LA CADIERE : 1730. 333 
 
 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 hither- 
 to, Cadiere now gave some slight tokens of a coming 
 in dependence 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, 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
 
 334 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 deter- 
 mined to snatch Cadiere back by punishing this first
 
 FATHER GIKARD AND LA CADIERE : 1730. 335 
 
 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 weak- 
 ened 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 con- 
 fessing 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.* 
 
 ' 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 su- 
 perior. 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.
 
 336 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 ma- 
 gistrate who represented him, the Lieutenant Civil and
 
 FATHER GIRARD AND LA CADIERE : 1730. 337 
 
 Criminal of Toulon. The last was heard before the 
 great assembly of the Parliament of Aix. 
 
 Observe that all three, agreeing as they do wonder- 
 fully 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 ex- 
 tenuation. 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
 
 838 THE WITCH. 
 
 antagonism of cruelty and caresses ? Was it meant 
 to try her patience and obedience, or did lie 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 down- 
 right 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 under- 
 going 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 Oirard's 
 soul, " I feel that T 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 tt> 
 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 
 
 z 2
 
 3AO THE WITCH. 
 
 to and fro with the greatest freedom. The very same 
 things were going on at Ollioules in 1 730 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 Obser- 
 vantines, 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 agree- 
 able than an old Jesuit confessor, she reckoned on 
 making this prodigy her own, on conquering her with- 
 out 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
 
 CADIERE IN THE CONVENT: 1730. 341 
 
 charmed with her modesty, with her invalid grace, 
 with a certain strangeness at once mysterious and melt- 
 ing. 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, how- 
 ever, 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
 
 342 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 deli- 
 cate, to go and live in common with the novices or the 
 boarders. 
 
 Great was the abbess's surprise ; great her mortifi- 
 cation. She fancied herself scorned. She took a 
 spite against the thankless girl, and never forgave her. 
 
 From the others Cadiere rnet 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 on- 
 ward to disgrace, to some unhappy end. She busied her-
 
 CADIERE IN THE CONVENT: 1730. 343 
 
 self entirely with looking after the girl, saving her from 
 her own rashness, intepreting 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 mysti- 
 cism, 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 wonder- 
 fully devout, but a good child withal, kind-hearted, 
 winning, and entertaining. They were no longer list- 
 less 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 tender- 
 ness. 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 mid- 
 night, 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 
 i&, that Cadiere visited all of them at one same mo-
 
 344 THE WITCH. 
 
 ment. 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 revela- 
 tion. 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 de- 
 served, 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, arid lost all consciousness. 
 
 When she came to, the novices surrounded her, wait- 
 ing 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 in- 
 ward and from without ? She could not make him 
 out. She had much need of support, and yet he never
 
 CADIERE IN THE CONVENT: 1730. 345 
 
 came, except for one moment at rare intervals, to the 
 parlour. 
 
 She wrote to hini on the 28th June, by her bro- 
 thers; 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 nattering 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 noise- 
 lessly 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 un- 
 suundness in the lady's mind. Having failed to sup- 
 plant Girard with Cadiere, she now essayed to supplant 
 Cadiere with Girard. Abruptly, without the least pre- 
 face, 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 !
 
 846 THE WITCH. 
 
 In taking so false a step she started from a true be- 
 lief 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 mor- 
 tification, 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 Obser- 
 vantines. 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 dis- 
 severed both from herself and from every other 
 creature.
 
 CADIERE IN THE CONVENT : 1730. 347 
 
 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 agita- 
 tion 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 
 Ollioulcs 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 w r as 
 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.
 
 348 THE WITCH. 
 
 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, pros- 
 trate 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 re- 
 ceive 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
 
 CAD1ERE IX THE CONVENT: 1730. 349 
 
 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 ere 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
 
 350 THE WITCH. 
 
 away the blood he drank himself,* and made her 
 drink also, and by this hateful communion he thought 
 to bind fast her soul. 
 
 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 im- 
 pression 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, child-like, 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, " 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 
 
 * This communion of blood prevailed among the Northern 
 Reiters. See my Originet.
 
 CADIERE IN THE CONVENT: 1730. 351 
 
 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 
 <?id. 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 con- 
 vent, 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/ 3 
 
 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 Girarcl, reminded him of the
 
 352 THE WITCH. 
 
 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. Cadierc, 
 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 inflict- 
 ing 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 ex- 
 pressive 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 sooth- 
 ing vision. She beheld the sinful Magdalen pardoned, 
 caught up into glory, filling in heaven the place which 
 Lucifer had lost.
 
 CADIERE IN THE CONVENT: 1730. 353 
 
 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 
 1 e 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 w r hich 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 
 
 A A
 
 354 THE WITCH. 
 
 go to see Cadiere. . . . They will settle together what 
 to do and say. If the Grand Vicar and Father Saba- 
 tier 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.
 
 CADIERE IN THE CONVENT: 1730. 355 
 
 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 em- 
 brace 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 sub- 
 mission. It is but too clear that he has set some 
 mighty influences at work ; that from the 29th threats 
 < ome 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 confes- 
 sion their dearest prize. It was needful, on the con- 
 trary-, 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 neighbour- 
 hood 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 
 
 A A 2
 
 350 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 sur- 
 prise 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 con- 
 science, 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 yct.it
 
 CADIERE IN THE CONVENT: ]730. 357 
 
 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. 
 G6d, 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 
 Iambs. 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 arid sent 
 him by the other brother. Thenceforth he had no- 
 thing 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-
 
 358 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 Pro- 
 vence, 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 be- 
 haved 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 in-
 
 CADIEKE IN THE CONVENT: 1730. 359 
 
 terests, 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 dis- 
 arming 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
 
 360 THE WITCH. 
 
 help you. ... I am, and ever will be, all yours in 
 the Secret Heart of Jesus." 
 
 The bishop, however, was not reassured. He fan- 
 cied 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
 
 CADIEEE IX THE CONVENT: 1730. 361 
 
 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 Car- 
 melite 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 t 
 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
 
 362 THE WITCH. 
 
 former was honest, nay, very fresh of heart ; ignorant, 
 for all that had been done to her ; little able to under- 
 stand 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/' 
 
 " 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 WOK 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 
 dfcne 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
 
 CADIERE IN THE CONVENT: 1730. 363 
 
 had changed. The burning summer was over. Na- 
 ture 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 
 afcer 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
 
 364 THE WITCH. 
 
 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, aston- 
 ished 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 every- 
 one 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
 
 CAD1ERE IX THE CONVENT: 1730. 365 
 
 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, passion- 
 ate fellow, went straight to the bishop's palace. He 
 entered into the prelate's presence, like another Po- 
 pilius, 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 free- 
 dom 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 back- 
 ground, 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 spite- 
 fulness, 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 !
 
 366 THE WITCH. 
 
 The Cardinal of Bonzi died indeed of grief at Tou- 
 louse, 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 1'Hopital ! 
 
 Sabatier's threatenings made all the greater impres- 
 sion, 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 be- 
 came 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 trades- 
 man, lost his wits, and called out to his neighbours
 
 968 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 cup- 
 ping-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 her- 
 self. 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 Larme- 
 dieu, and his prosecutor or episcopal advocate, Esprit 
 Reybaud, and commanded them to go to work forth- 
 with.
 
 THE TRIAL OF CADIEKE : 1730~31. 300 
 
 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 objec- 
 tions. But Sabaticr 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 any- 
 one. 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. After- 
 wards, 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 advo- 
 cate at the head, honoured by an escort of two clergy- 
 men, 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 
 
 J! 3
 
 370 THE AVITCH. 
 
 defame herself by speaking out in the ears of justice 
 matters that touched her conscience and the confes- 
 sional only. 
 
 She might have dispensed with an answer, for none 
 of the usual forms had been observed : but she \vould 
 not raise the question. She took the oath that was 
 meant to disarm arid 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. 
 
 Lavmedieu's official statement and his first exami- 
 nation point to a clearly settled agreement between 
 him and the Jesuits. Girard was to be brought for- 
 ward 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
 
 THE TRIAL OF CADIERE : 1730-31. 371 
 
 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 her- 
 self 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 her- 
 self 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 spiri- 
 tual 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 
 
 B B 2
 
 872 THE WITCH. 
 
 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, net 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 punish- 
 ment were thrown. On the 26th November, Cadiere 
 was dragged from her bed and given over to the Ursu- 
 lines, 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
 
 THE TRIAL OP CADIERE : 1730-31. 373 
 
 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 
 cousiu 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 Au- 
 bany'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."
 
 374 THE WITCH. 
 
 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, especi- 
 ally 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
 
 THE TRIAL OF CADIERE : 1730-31. 375 
 
 on the inquiry which two of its councillors were con- 
 ducting at Toulon. 
 
 M. Faucon, a layman, and M. de Charleval, a coun- 
 cillor of the Church, came in fact and straightway 
 marched down among the Jesuits. These eager com- 
 missioners 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 mattrass 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, per- 
 haps 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 sacra- 
 ment. Shs relapsed into her illness from the time she 
 svas debarred the latter privilege. Her fierce foe, the
 
 376 THK WITCH. 
 
 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 commu- 
 nicating. 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 expound- 
 ing 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.
 
 THE TRIAL OF CADIERE : 1730-31. 377 
 
 
 
 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 mas- 
 ter 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 
 Mcllle. 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 commis- 
 sioners 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
 
 378 THE WITCH. 
 
 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,* written 
 in 1780, by a learned member of Parliament, who also 
 became a member of the Great Council; it was dedi- 
 cated to the King, Louis XVI., and crowned with the 
 flattering approval of His Holiness Pius VI. 
 
 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 j 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 remon- 
 strances 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 
 
 * Muyart de Vouglans, in the sequel to his Loix Criminelles, 
 1780.
 
 THE TRIAL OF CADIERE : 1730-31. 379 
 
 the clerk might have moulded into a downright false- 
 hood. But a drug of some kind, perhaps some 
 wizard's simple, which would a<jt 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 commis- 
 sioners 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 de- 
 position, 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 dis-
 
 380 THE WITCH. 
 
 ordered, 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 kind- 
 ness to tell her that the torture was there, at her side ; 
 to describe to her the wooden horse, the points of iron,
 
 THE TRIAL OF CADIEKE : 1730-31. 381 
 
 the wedges for jamming fast her bones. Her courage 
 failed her, so weak she was now of body. She sub- 
 mitted 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 high- 
 way 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 con- 
 fession, 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
 
 382 THE WITCH. 
 
 called, exposing the irregularand blameable proceedings, 
 the wilful breaches of the law, effected in the coolest 
 way, first by the bishop's officer and the King's Lieu- 
 tenant, 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 publichouse 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 villan- 
 ous device, to commit such a one to the chaste keeping 
 of the heroes of the dragonnades.* 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. 
 
 Cadiere was forwarded to the Ursulines of Aix, whd 
 
 * Alluding to the cruelties dealt on the Huguenots by the 
 French dragoon?, at the close of Louis the Fourteenth's 
 reicrn. TRANS.
 
 THE TRIAL OF CADIERE : 1730-31. 383 
 
 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 dis- 
 passionate passers-by asked if the Ursulines had 
 gotten orders to let them kill the girl. We may guess 
 what tender jailers their sick prisorier would find in 
 these good sisters ! 
 
 The ground was prepared with admirable effect. By a 
 spirited concert between Jesuit magistrates and plot- 
 ting 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 poison- 
 ous things stored up by her jailers, for him who should 
 daily show his face in their parlour to await an inter- 
 view 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
 
 384 THE WITCH. 
 
 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, begin- 
 ning 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
 
 THE TRIAL OP CADIERE : 1730-31. 385 
 
 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 de- 
 fence 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 
 
 c c
 
 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 miracu- 
 lous. 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 
 monstei's 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
 
 THE TRIAL OF CADIEUE-: 1730-31. 37 
 
 i 
 
 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 scrib- 
 bling 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 relic/ion 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 pru- 
 dent 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, 
 
 c c 2
 
 388 THE WITCH. 
 
 t 
 
 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 cen- 
 tury. 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.* 
 
 " But France, at least, is surely more humane ? " 
 She is very inconsistent. In 1718, a Wizard is burnt 
 at Bordeaux.f In 1724 and 1726, the faggots were 
 lighted in Greve for offences which passed as school - 
 
 * This fact comes to us from an adviser to the Holy Office, 
 still living. 
 
 t I am not speaking of executions done by the people of 
 their own accord. A hundred years ago, in a village of Pro- 
 vence, 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 Hert- 
 fordshire, according to Wright, were tortured, kicked, and 
 beaten to death, on the plea of witchcraft, by a maddened 
 country mob. TRANS.]
 
 THE TRIAL OF CAD1KKK : 1730-31. 389 
 
 boy 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 Chauffeurs, 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 ! 
 
 Observe what was needed to wash that father clean. 
 It was needful to show that, even if he had done 
 wrong and imitated Des Chauffeurs, 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 awara 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."
 
 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 admi- 
 nistered 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 r 
 a whole people suddenly rose, a violent popular move- 
 ment 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. <e 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
 
 THE TRIAL OF CADIERE : 1730-31. 391 
 
 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 up- 
 rising 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 every- 
 one. 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
 
 392 THE WITCH. 
 
 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.* 
 
 The very friends of Girard, seeing their numbers 
 fall off, their phalanx grow thin, were eager for the 
 sentence. It was pronounced on the llth 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, con- 
 demned 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 
 
 * There is a laughable tale which expresses the state of 
 Parliament with singular nicety. The Recorder wasjreading 
 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 chimney - 
 sweep who had mistaken his chimney.
 
 THE TRIAL OF CADIERE : 1730-31. 393 
 
 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 satis- 
 fied. 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 back- 
 ground. 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, Par- 
 liament 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 per- 
 fume of holiness. The courtier Lebret died in 1735.
 
 394 THE WITCH. 
 
 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 naming 
 theatre wherein so many voices had been raised in 
 her behalf. 
 
 If only to feel an interest in her was a crime de- 
 serving imprisonment, we cannot doubt but that she 
 herself was presently thrown into prison ; that the 
 Jesuits easily obtained a special warrant from Ver- 
 sailles 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 ! * 
 
 * Touching this matter, Voltaire is very flippant : he scoffs 
 at both parties, especially the Jansenists. The historians of 
 our own daj, 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 re- 
 cognise 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 .hink 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
 
 396 EPILOGUE. 
 
 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 appearingas 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
 
 EPILOGUE. 397 
 
 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 for- 
 ward 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.
 
 398 EPILOGUE. 
 
 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 insur- 
 rections, 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 pain- 
 fully 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 
 whait means ? Chiefly by the progress of those very 
 sciences which began with her, through the physician, 
 the naturalist, for whom she had once toiled.
 
 EPILOGUE. 399 
 
 The Witch has perished for ever, but not the Fay. 
 She will re-appear in the form that never dies. 
 
 Busied in these latter days with the affairs of men, 
 Woman lias 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 de- 
 tail, 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,
 
 400 EPILOGUE. 
 
 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 amphi- 
 theatre, 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 pierc- 
 ing? 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
 
 EPILOGUE. 401 
 
 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 un- 
 touched 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 
 
 D D
 
 LIST OF LEADING AUTHOKITIES. 
 
 Graesse, Bibliotheca Magice, Leipsic, 1S43. 
 
 Magie Antique as edited by Soldan, A. Maury, &c. 
 
 Calcagnini, Miscell., Magia Amatoria Antigua, 1544. 
 
 J. Grimm, German Mythology, 
 
 Acta Sanctorum. Acta SS. Ordinis S. Benedict!. 
 
 Michael Psellus, Energie des Demons, 1050. 
 
 Caesar of Heisterbach, lUustria Miranda, 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 tJie Monk- Inquisitors of the Fifteenth and Six- 
 teenth Centuries : Nider's Formicaries ; Sprenger's Malleus. 
 
 C. Bernardus's Lucerna; Spina, Grillandus, &c. 
 
 H. Corn. Agrippee Opera, Lyons. 
 
 Paracelsi Opera. 
 
 Wyer, De Prestigiis Dcemonum, 1569. 
 
 Bodin, Demonomanie, 1580. 
 
 Remigius, Demonolatria, 1596. 
 
 Del Rio, Disquisitiones Magicce, 1599. 
 
 Boguet, Discoursdes Sorciers, Lyons, 1605. 
 
 Leloyer, Histoire des Spectres, Paris, 1 605. 
 
 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.
 
 LIST OF LEADING AUTHORITIES. 403 
 
 Exaine-n de Louviers. Apoloyie de VExamen (by Yvelin), 
 1643. 
 
 Proces du P. Girardet 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 Occidtes, with Introduction by 
 Littre. . 
 
 A. Maury, Les Fees, 1843 : Magie, 1860. 
 
 Soldan, Histoire des Proces de S&rcellerie, 1843. 
 
 Thos. Wright, Narratives of Sorcery, f^c., 1851. 
 
 L. Figuier, Histoire du Merveilleux, 4 TO!S. 
 
 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.
 
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