The little town was all in a tremble. Monks of every hue provided themselves with nuns, shared them all round, and exorcised them by threes and fours. The churches were parcelled out among them; the Capuchins alone taking two for themselves. The crowd go after them, swollen by all the women in the place, and in this frightened audience, throbbing with anxiety, more than one cries out that she, too, is feeling the devils.[95] Six girls of the town are possessed. And the bare recital of these alarming events begets two new cases of possession at Chinon. [95] The same hysteric contagion marks the “Revivals” of a later period, down to the last mad outbreak in Ireland. The translator hopes some day to work out the physical question here stated.--TRANS. Everywhere the thing was talked of, at Paris, at the Court. Our Spanish queen,[96] who is imaginative and devout, sends off her almoner; nay more, sends her faithful follower, the old papist, Lord Montague, who sees, who believes everything, and reports it all to the Pope. It is a miracle proven. He had seen the wounds on a certain nun, and the marks made by the Devil on the Lady Superior’s hands. [96] Anne of Austria, wife of Louis XIII.--TRANS. What said the King of France to this? All his devotion was turned on the Devil, on hell, on thoughts of fear. It is said that Richelieu was glad to keep him thus. I doubt it; the demons were essentially Spanish, taking the Spanish side: if ever they talked politics, they must have spoken against Richelieu. Perhaps he was afraid of them. At any rate, he did them homage, and sent his niece to prove the interest he took in the matter. * * * * * The Court believed, but Loudun itself did not. Its devils, but sorry imitators of the Marseilles demons, rehearsed in the morning what they had learnt the night before from the well-known handbook of Father Michaëlis. They would never have known what to say but for the secret exorcisms, the careful rehearsal of the day’s farce, by which night after night they were trained to figure before the people. One sturdy magistrate, bailiff of the town, made a stir: going himself to detect the knaves, he threatened and denounced them. Such, too, was the tacit opinion of the Archbishop of Bordeaux, to whom Grandier appealed. He despatched a set of rules for the guidance at least of the exorcisers, for putting a stop to their arbitrary doings; and, better still, he sent his surgeon, who examined the girls, and found them to be neither bewitched, nor mad, nor even sick. What were they then? Knaves, to be sure.[97] [97] Not of necessity knaves, Mr. Michelet; at least not wilfully so; but silly hysteric patients, of the spirit-rapping, revivalist order, victims of nervous derangement, or undue nervous sensibility.--TRANS.