It became necessary to have recourse to exorcisms. This word alone is for some people a subject of ridicule, as if it had been clearly proved that religion is mere folly and the faith of the church a fable. True Christians must despise these grinning impostors. Exorcisms, then, were employed. The demon, forced to manifest himself, yielded his name. He began by giving these girls the most horrible convulsions; he went so far as to raise from the earth the body of the Superior who was being exorcised, and to reply to secret thoughts, which were manifested neither in words nor by any exterior signs. Questioned according to the form prescribed by the ritual, as to why he had entered the body of the nun, he replied, it was from hatred. But when, being questioned as to the name of the magician, he answered that it was Urbain Grandier, profound astonishment seized Canon Mignon and his assistants. They had indeed looked upon Grandier as a scandalous priest; but never had they imagined that he was guilty of Magic. They were therefore not satisfied with one single questioning: they repeated the interrogatory several times, and always received the same reply. FOOTNOTES: [2] Our author takes care not to mention that the Bishop of the Diocese was Grandier's greatest enemy. [3] Huguenots, the name given to the early adherents of the Reformation in France. The origin of the word has been variously accounted for, but it was most probably introduced from Germany as a corruption of the German-Swiss _Eidgenossen_, confederates, or those bound together by an oath. Like many other names it was first given by opponents as a badge of reproach, and subsequently became honourable from its associations. The movement of the Reformation made its appearance in France at the beginning of the sixteenth century; and at the period when Luther was defending its principles before the Diet of Worms, Briconnet, bishop of Meaux, Lefevre, and Farel were labouring zealously for the same cause in France. At first the new doctrines, which seemed to be chiefly directed against the more open sins and derelictions of the clergy, enjoyed the toleration of the king, Francis I. and his sister Margaret of Valois, the queen of Navarre, was an active supporter of the cause. As it progressed however, the alarm and anger of the clergy became fully aroused, and as some of its manifestations had given offence to the king, a determined effort was made to extirpate it by means of fire and sword. In 1535 a solemn procession in vindication of the faith was made at Paris, in which the king walked bareheaded and bearing a taper; as part of the proceedings six Lutherans were burned, having their tongues cut out and being affixed to a movable gallows, which alternately rose and fell over a fire kindled beneath. This was followed by many executions of a similar kind, and by the more wholesale slaughters which exterminated the Vaudois of Provence;