“I know the case to which you refer,” answered Dr. Corning. “It is the case of a certain number of nuns who took it into their heads that they were bewitched by one Urban Grandier, whom they had refused to accept as their director,—a man of a scandalous life, a great criminal, who deserved to be executed as he was, if not for sorcery, at least for his crimes. I see nothing in this case but the usual symptoms of demonopathy, or religious monomania.” “The physicians of the time thought differently, and there were then and there physicians of great eminence who were consulted, and required to make to the authorities twenty-five or thirty elaborate reports on the case. But let us recall some of the facts. “Shortly after, Grandier, a bad priest, was refused by these ladies as their director; he passed by the convent, and threw a bouquet of flowers over the wall, which was taken up and smelt of by several of the nuns. From that moment the disorder commenced. Up to that moment all these ladies were in the enjoyment of the most perfect health, and strictly correct in their deportment. They were all connected with families of distinction and of high birth, and had been carefully brought up, and yielded to none in their education, their intelligence, their piety, their virtues, and their accomplishments. “After some weeks of silence, in which they had sought relief from their vexations by religious exercises, prayers, fasts, and macerations, without avail, recourse was had to exorcism. The phenomena then assumed gigantic proportions. One religious, lying stretched out on her belly, and her arms twisted over her back, defied the priest who pursued her with the Holy Sacrament; another doubled over backwards, contrived to walk with the nape of her neck resting on her heels; another still, shook her head in the most singular and violent manner. The exorcist says he had _frequently_ seen them bent over backwards, with the nape of their neck resting on their heels, walk with surprising swiftness. He saw one of them, rising from that posture, strike rapidly her shoulders and breast with her head. They cried out as the howlings of the damned, as enraged wolves, as terrible beasts, with a force that exceeds the power of imagination. Their tongues hung out black, swollen, dry, and hard, and became soft and natural the moment they were drawn back into the mouth.