We can guess how this alarming blow was taken by the Cadière family. The sick girl’s attacks became frequent and fearful. By a cruel chance they brought on a kind of epidemic among her intimate friends. Her neighbour, the German lady, who had trances also, which she had hitherto deemed divine, now fell into utter fright, and fancied they came from hell. This worthy dame of fifty years remembered that she, too, had often had unclean thoughts: she believed herself given over to the Devil; saw nothing but devils about her; and escaping from her own house in spite of her daughter’s watchfulness, entreated shelter from the Cadières. From that time the house became unbearable; business could not be carried on. The elder Cadière inveighed furiously against Girard, crying, “He shall be served like Gauffridi: he, too, shall be burnt!” And the Jacobin added, “Rather would we waste the whole of our family estate!” On the night of the 17th November, Cadière screamed, and was like one choking. They thought she was going to die. The eldest Cadière, the tradesman, lost his wits, and called out to his neighbours from the window, “Help! the Devil is throttling my sister!” They came running up almost in their shirts. The doctors and surgeons wanted to apply the cupping-glasses to a case of what they called “suffocation of the womb.” While some were gone to fetch these, they succeeded in unlocking her teeth and making her swallow a drop of brandy, which brought her to herself. Meanwhile there also came to the girl some doctors of the soul; first an old priest confessor to Cadière’s mother, and then some parsons of Toulon. All this noise and shouting, the arrival of the priests in full dress, the preparations for exorcising, had brought everyone out into the street. The newcomers kept asking what was the matter. “Cadière has been bewitched by Girard,” was the continual reply. We may imagine the pity and the wrath of the people. Greatly alarmed, but anxious to cast the fear back on others, the Jesuits did a very barbarous thing. They returned to the bishop, ordered and insisted that Cadière should be brought to trial; that the attack should be made that very day; that justice should make an unforeseen descent on this poor girl, as she lay rattling in the throat after the last dreadful seizure. Sabatier never left the bishop until the latter had called his judge, his officer, the Vicar-general Larmedieu, and his prosecutor or episcopal advocate, Esprit Reybaud, and commanded them to go to work forthwith. By the Canon Law this was impossible, illegal. A _preliminary inquiry was needed_ into the facts, before the judicial business could begin. There was another difficulty: the spiritual judge had no right to make such an arrest save for _a rejection of the Sacrament_. The two church-lawyers must have made these objections. But Sabatier would hear of no excuses. If matters were allowed to drag in this cold legal way, he would miss his stroke of terror.