There is in the British Museum[4] a full manuscript account from day to day of the whole transaction from beginning to end, written at the time by one of the clerks or secretaries in the Inquisition, who, although he avows himself a partisan of the French faction and of the King's confessor, Froilan Diaz, around whom all the storm raged, declares that he has set down the unvarnished truth of the whole complicated business, in order that people may know after his death what really happened, and how much they "owe to his Sacred Majesty Philip V. for preserving the privileges of the holy tribunal of the Inquisition, or, what is the same, our holy faith." By the aid of this set of documents, and another set in the Museum (part of which has been published in Spanish), {295} the story, which is well worth preserving, may be reconstructed, and the hitherto unrelated particulars of the actual exorcism rescued from oblivion. The most powerful person at Court next to the Queen was Father Matilla, the King's confessor, whose hand was everywhere, and who said on one occasion that he would much rather make bishops than be one. Then came the other members of the Queen's camarilla, an obscure country lawyer who had been created Count Adanero, and Minister of Finance and the Indies, who provided the crew with money to their hearts' content, and squandered and muddled away the national resources, whilst all Spain was groaning under impossible imposts; Madame Berlips, a German woman who had an extraordinary influence over the Queen, and an insatiable greed; two Italian monks, and a mutilated musician of the Royal Chapel. There were two great nobles also who, after several periods of disgrace and hesitation, had at last thrown themselves on to the Queen's side--the Admiral of Castile and Count Oropesa, the ostensibly responsible ministers; but these practically only carried out the designs of the Queen's camarilla, and were content with the appearance and profits of power without its exercise. The populace, as may be imagined, were in deadly opposition to the Queen and her foreign surroundings, and were strongly in favour of one of the younger French princes whom they might adopt and make a Spaniard of, as they never could hope to do with a German archduke, and thus, as they thought, avoid the threatened partition of their {296} country.[5] This was the position of things in March, 1698, when the King, who had partly recovered from his previous attack eighteen months before, was again taken ill.[6] He was dragged out by the Queen to totter and stagger in religious processions, was made to go through the ceremonial forms of his position, nodding and babbling incoherently to ministers and ambassadors whom he was obliged to receive, and at last, weary and sick to death, haunted by an unquiet conscience and with the appalling fear of hourly poison, he sent word by a trusty messenger to the wise, crafty old minister