the ritual of exorcism, and exemplified in the phenomena attributed to the Ursulines at Loudun, as having some groundwork of fact in them, we shall endeavour to ascertain to what cause, or combination of causes, if not to diabolical agency, these facts may be referred. By comparing them with other morbid phenomena and abnormal facts of well-attested reality, and especially by attending to what Sir Henry Holland has named the law of mental continuity, prodigies imagined to be of supernatural origin, or to be due to mysteriously occult causes, can be connected with and shown to be in their essence akin to the commonest and least striking facts of daily occurrence. Thus the almost imperceptible gradations which link together states apparently the most different, the dreaming and reverie of the healthy mind, with illusions and hallucinations; the habit of concentrating the attention on particular subjects, with fixed ideas and monomania; the natural play of the emotions, with hysteria and epilepsy,deserve to be most carefully noted and described. The "method of continuity" as applied to mental phenomena is, indeed, that prescribed by Bacon in natural philosophy. It resolves itself into the collection and arrangement of what he has named respectively clandestine, ostensive, and migratory instances: the first sort exhibiting the phenomenon inquired into "in its weakest and most imperfect state;" the second, in its highest power and intensity; the third showing the phenomena passing from less to greater, or from greater to less. Few or none will now dispute the soundness of this method of research. Many things utterly inexplicable by themselves are at once accounted for when their place is found in a regularly progressive series. The method must at least be proved, not in this or that individual case, but very generally, to fail entirely of resolving the difficulties which it is intended to remove, before miracle can be invoked to supply its place. If it can be demonstrated that it is successful in stripping large numbers of fancied prodigies of their mysterious character, it may be fairly assumed that increased knowledge and greater skill will bring under its power facts which still lie beyond the range of ascertained law. The phenomena actually established, as distinct from those which ought to have been proved, in the case of the nuns of Loudun, and other instances of the marvellous in its several forms, may now, we believe, be assigned by it with some degree of accuracy to their true origin.

The evidence of imposture and chicanery against Laubardement and the exorcists shows, to our minds most convincingly, that they were not merely ignorant and vindictive fanatics, but designing and unscrupulous conspirators against a man guilty enough in many things, but at least innocent of what was laid

to his charge. It is important that this should be proved. If trickery and falsehood can be established against them in any one instance, and, much more, if trickery and falsehood can be established against them in many instances, all the phenomena the credibility of which rests merely on their testimony, and which may have been the result of collusion, become justly open to suspicion. When the deductions from the record which this consideration entitles us to make are taken into account, there remains no knot at all worthy of the Deus (or rather Diabolus) intersit. As the first step in the argument, we shall show that deliberate deception and artifices of the lowest kind formed an essential part of the procedure of the exorcists.

One of the criteria of the reality of possession laid down by the Church of Rome consists in the suspension by the demons of the body of the possessed in the air for a considerable time. After having been discomfited by a series of checks and miscarriages, the priests resolved to make appeal to this decisive test. The suit of the devils of Loudun versus the law of gravitation issued in the defeat of the former.

"It was during the month of May that the greatest miracles were expected. Asmodeus, one of the demons, who had chosen a domicile in the body of the superior, promised to raise her in the air to the height of two feet; the demon Eazas boasted that he would lift up another nun in the same way; and lastly, the demon Cerberus undertook to raise the sister of the latter nun as high as four feet. As the curious loudly demanded the performance of these marvels, Father Lactance called on the demons to accomplish them.

The

The superior raised herself, in fact, high enough to astonish the vulgar; but, just as a miracle was being proclaimed, an inquisitive person bethought him of lifting up the edge of her robe, and disclosed to those who stood near that one of her feet touched the floor. presence of this sceptical spectator was the reason why neither the demon Eazas nor the demon Cerberus ventured even to attempt to keep their word with the public.

After these, the demon Beherit presented himself, vaunting that he would repair all failures. If he had succeeded, as he boasted he would, in lifting Laubardemont's cap from off his head, and holding it suspended in the air during the time of a Miserere, people would have proclaimed the honour of the legion. The thing failed, as we shall see, by reason of another spectator displaying too much curiosity-nimia curiositas, as the exorcists called it.

On the day, or rather the night, on which this miracle was to be performed, the whole town having assembled to witness it, Father Lactance adjured the demon Beherit to proceed to its accomplishment. But his persuasions and menaces were in vain; the cap remained firmly fixed on the head of Laubardemont. Every body had noticed that the hour was late, and that torches were lighted,-a circumstance

G

favourable to some phantasmagoric trick. It had been remarked also, that at the beginning of the séance Laubardemont had taken his seat on a chair placed at a considerable distance from the others, and just under the roof of the church. One of those who had made this sensible remark, communicated it to a neighbour as suspicious as himself, and these two inquisitive people mounted eagerly and in all haste to the roof. They there surprised, and interrupted in his work, a confederate, who took to flight at their approach, carrying with him a little hook and a long horsehair line, to which the hook was fastened. This line was to have been let down into the church through a small hole bored opposite to the place where Laubardemont sat, who, seizing the hook, would have fastened it to his cap while pretending to adjust the latter on his head. The confederate on the roof would only have had to draw the line from the roof, the cap would have followed the thread, and the exorcist would have triumphantly intoned his Miserere, while the head of the commissioner was despoiled of its covering, according to the promises of the demon. But the watchfulness of a couple of indiscreet spectators prevented the success of this neat trick” (Vol. i. pp. 146-8).

If, however, the demons failed entirely to carry out the programme of their entertainments, they were very ingenious in excusing their blunders. Thus Asmodeus accounted for his neglect to answer a question put to him in due form by the plea that, at that particular time, he had been aliud agensengaged, that is to say, in "conducting to hell the soul of Le Prout, the procureur of the Parliament of Paris." This attempt to set up an alibi was thwarted by the discovery that there never had been a procureur of parliament of that name. Nor was the demon merely mistaken in the profession of his client, for it was further ascertained that no person of the name of Le Prout had died in Paris at the time in question. It is more probable that this evasion was devised by the exorcist than that it was a deceit practised on him as well as on the bystanders by the superior, who, with the other nuns, was evidently a passive instrument, or an accomplice only through intimidation, of the priests.

The other authorised tests failed no less completely. One of them is, the knowledge of, and power of speaking, foreign tongues. The demon Asmodeus, who is the subject of the next extract, seems to have been far from manifesting those varied resources which he afterwards displayed when he unroofed the houses of Paris for the benefit of Don Cleophas Perez Zambullo. He came with as little credit out of his examination in languages as out of the tour de force already described:

"Mass having been said, Barré advanced to give her [the superior]

the communion previous to the exorcism. Holding up in both his hands the holy sacrament, he said to her :

Adora Deum tuum, creatorem tuum (Adore thy God, thy Creator).'

She answered, Adoro te (I adore thee).'

A little startled at the response, the exorcist resumed:
"Quem adoras? (Whom dost thou adore ?).'

'Jesus Christus (Jesus Christ),' she replied, committing a solecism in language.

On which an assessor of the provost, Daniel Drouin, who was among the bystanders, could not help exclaiming in a sufficiently loud voice, This devil is no grammarian.'

The exorcist, somewhat disconcerted, repeated the same question, taking care to modify the phrase so as to make a nominative case suit the answer:

Quis est quem tu adoras? (Who is he whom thou adorest?)'

The possessed, who felt that she had made a mistake, thought that she ought to change her answer, but it was mal-à-propos, as we shall see; for this time she made use of the vocative.

'Jesu Christe!' she replied.

'Bad Latin,' cried several of the bystanders. But the exorcist alleged that the answer had been 'Adoro te, Jesu Christe! (I adore Thee, O Jesus Christ!)' and this grammatical dispute went no further."

Afterwards, being asked by a civil officer present to repeat in Greek what she had said in Latin, she remained silent, in spite of the "sweat and prayers" of Barré. On another occa sion, a learned Scotchman, the principal of the college of the Reformed at Loudun, asked her for the Scotch of the word aqua. She replied," Nimia curiositas (You are too curious);" an ingenious evasion, on which she did not improve by adding, in an explanatory tone, "Deus non volo," meaning Deus non vult. An attempt to get from her the Hebrew for water had no better success. Subsequently she was allowed to answer in French instead of in Latin, Father Lactance replying to the spectators, who objected that, as the devil knew all languages, he ought to be able to answer in any, that "there were some devils more ignorant than the peasantry themselves." The same exorcist having demanded of her (the superior) "quoties (how often)" the devil had entered into her, "she confounded this word with quando, and replied, "I did not remark the day." At the instance of Barré, the superior very reluctantly took oath that she did not know Latin, expressing a fear that God would punish her for the great oaths she was compelled to take; she added that she was in the habit of teaching the Credo to her pupils. The character of her Latin responses does not require us to suppose more knowledge than this fact implies. When Grandier himself exorcised the supe

rior, he announced that he would do so in Greek, since she understood Latin, and the demons were familiar with every kind of idiom. To which the demon responded: "O subtle that thou art, thou knowest well that it is one of the first conditions of the pact between us not to answer in Greek." To which he replied, "O pulchra illusio, egregia evasio." The application of another test-that of the cognisance of events passing in distant places-did not favour any more than the others the hypothesis of possession. On one occasion, before Grandier's arrest, the superior being asked where at the moment of inquiry the sorcerer was, answered, that he was in the hall of the castle of Loudun. Search being immediately made, he was found quietly seated in the house of the bailli of Loudun, where he had been more than two hours, in the company of several priests, who testified to his not having quitted them during that interval of time. Annoyed at this exposure, the exorcists, on the return of the messengers, summoned Sister Claire, another of the possessed, to answer the same question. She pronounced that Grandier was walking with the bailli of Loudun in the church of the Holy Cross. It was proved that neither Grandier nor the bailli had been thither at all, either apart or in company.

The development of physical strength to a degree beyond what is natural to the age or sex of the possessed is a sign of diabolic influence. The physician Duncan succeeded in holding in her chair the superior, whom it was pretended six strong men could not hold." If it is a demon," he said, "it ought to be stronger than I am." "What an argument for a philosopher!" said Father Lactance. "Doubtless a demon out of the body is stronger than you are; but when he is in a feeble body, like that of this woman, he cannot resist you, for his operations are in proportion to the strength of the body in which he is domiciled." Other blunders of the demons might be related. In spite of their supernatural knowledge, they could not tell the name of the bishop under whom Grandier received the tonsure, and announced that there were two Huguenots present at a séance when there were really nine. On the first occasion on which Duncan (the physician just mentioned) visited the superior, the demon Grésil des Trones failed to identify him. Being adjured by the exorcists to say who the stranger was, he mentioned the names of two other medical men of the town of Saumur, where Duncan resided-Bénoit and Texier,-and then would stay no further question, though, as M. Figuier remarks, his chance of guessing right the third time was very great. If it were worth while so to occupy our space, we might add to the foregoing many other instances of evident collusion, evasion, and jugglery