The magistrates were wroth; the civic lieutenant warned Grandier that he would have to arrest him on the morrow. The latter paid no heed to him, and was arrested accordingly. In a moment he was carried off, without form of trial, to the dungeons of Angers. Presently he was taken back and thrown, where think you? Into the house, the room of one of his enemies, who had the windows walled up so as well-nigh to choke him. The loathsome scrutiny of the wizard’s body, in order to find out the Devil’s marks by sticking needles all over it, was carried on by the hands of the accusers themselves, who took their revenge upon him beforehand in the foretaste thus given him of his future punishment. They led him to the churches, confronted him with the girls, who had got their cue from Laubardemont. These Bacchanals, for such they became under the fuddling effect of some drugs administered by the condemned apothecary above-named, flung out in such frantic rages, that Grandier was nearly perishing one day beneath their nails. Unable to imitate the eloquence of the Marseilles demoniac, they tried obscenity in its stead. It was a hideous thing to see these girls give full vent in public to their sensual fury, on the plea of scolding their pretended devils. Thus indeed it was that they managed to swell their audiences. People flocked to hear from the lips of these women what no woman would else have dared to utter. As the matter grew more hateful, so it also grew more laughable. They were sure to repeat all awry what little Latin was ever whispered to them. The public found that the devils had never gone through _their lower classes_. The Capuchins, however, coolly said that if these demons were weak in Latin, they were marvellous speakers of Iroquois and Tupinambi.[99] [99] Indians of the coast of Brazil.--TRANS. * * * * * A farce so shameful, seen from a distance of sixty leagues, from St. Germain or the Louvre, appeared miraculous, awful, terrifying. The Court admired and trembled. Richelieu to please them did a cowardly thing. He ordered money to be paid to the exorcisers, to the nuns. The height of favour to which they had risen, drove the plotters altogether mad. Senseless words were followed by shameful deeds. Pleading that the nuns were tired, the exorcisers got them outside the town, took them about by themselves. One of them, at least to all appearance, returned pregnant. In the fifth or sixth month all outward trace of it disappeared, and the devil within her acknowledged how wickedly he had slandered the poor nun by making her look so large. This tale concerning Loudun we learn from the historian of Louviers.[100] [100] Esprit de Bosroger, p. 135.