GAUFFRIDI: 1610.
The order of Ursuline nuns seemed to be the calmest, the least
irrational of them all. They were not wholly idle, but found some
little employment in the bringing up of young girls. The Catholic
reaction which, aiming at a higher flight of ecstasy than was possible
at that time even in Spain, had foolishly built a number of convents,
Carmelite, Bernardine, and Capuchin, soon found itself at the end of
its motive-powers. The girls of whom people got rid by shutting them
up so strictly therein, died off immediately, and their swift decease
led to frightful statements of the cruelty shown by their families.
They perished, indeed, not by their excessive penances, but rather of
heart-sickness and despair. After the first heats of zeal were over,
the dreadful disease of the cloister, described by Cassieu as dating
from the fifteenth century, that crushing, sickening sadness which
came on of an afternoon--that tender listlessness which plunged them
into a state of unutterable exhaustion, speedily wore them away. A few
among them would turn as if raging mad, choking, as it were, with the
exceeding strength of their blood.
A nun who hoped to die decently, without bequeathing too large a share
of remorse to her kindred, was bound to live on about ten years, the
mean term of life in the cloister. She needed to be let gently down;
and men of sense and experience felt that her days could only be
prolonged by giving her something to do, by leaving her not quite
alone. St. Francis of Sales[87] founded the Visitandine order, whose
duty it was to visit the sick in pairs. Cæsar of Bus and Romillion,
who had established the Teaching Priests in connection with the
Oratorians[88], afterwards ordained what might be called the Teaching
Sisters, the Ursulines, who taught under the direction of the said
priests. The whole thing was under the supervision of the bishops, and
had very little of the monastic about it: the nuns were not shut up
again in cloisters. The Visitandines went out; the Ursulines received,
at any rate, their pupils' kinsfolk. Both of them had connection with
the world under guardians of good repute. The result was a certain
mediocrity. Though the Oratorians and the Doctrinaries numbered among
them persons of high merit, the general character of the order was
uniformly moderate, commonplace; it took care never to soar too high.
Romillion, founder of the Ursulines, was an oldish man, a convert
from Protestantism, who had roamed everywhere, and come back again to
his starting point. He deemed his young Provencials wise enough
already, and counted on keeping his little flock on the slender
pasturage of an Oratorian faith, at once monotonous and rational. And
being such, it came in time to be utterly wearisome. One fine morning
all had disappeared.
[87] St. Francis of Sales, famous for his successful missions
among the Protestants, and Bishop of Geneva in his later
years, died in 1622.--TRANS.
[88] The Brethren of the Oratory, founded at Rome in
1564.--TRANS.
Gauffridi, the mountaineer of Provence, the travelled mystic, the man
of strong feelings and restless mind, had quite another effect upon
them, when he came thither as Madeline's ghostly guide. They felt a
certain power, and by those who had already passed out of their wild,
amorous youth, were doubtless assured that it was nothing less than a
power begotten of the Devil. All were seized with fear, and more than
one with love also. Their imaginations soared high; their heads began
to turn. Already six or seven may be seen weeping, shrieking, yelling,
fancying themselves caught by the Devil. Had the Ursulines lived in
cloisters, within high walls, Gauffridi, being their only director,
might one way or another have made them all agree. As in the cloisters
of Quesnoy, in 1491, so here also it might have happened that the
Devil, who gladly takes the form of one beloved, had under that of
Gauffridi made himself lover-general to the nuns. Or rather, as in
those Spanish cloisters named by Llorente, he would have persuaded
them that the priestly office hallowed those to whom the priest made
love, that to sin with him, was only to be sanctified. A notion,
indeed, ripe through France, and even in Paris, where the mistresses
of priests were called "the hallowed ones."[89]
[89] Lestoile, edit. Michaud, p. 561.
Did Gauffridi, thus master of all, keep to Madeline only? Did not the
lover change into the libertine? We know not. The sentence points to a
nun who never showed herself during the trial, but reappeared at the
end, as having given herself up to the Devil and to him.
The Ursuline convent was open to all visitors. The nuns were under the
charge of their Doctrinaries, men of fair character, and jealous
withal. The founder himself was there, indignant, desperate. How
woeful a mishap for the rising order, just as it was thriving amain
and spreading all over France! After all its pretensions to wisdom,
calmness, good sense, thus suddenly to go mad! Romillion would have
hushed up the matter if he could. He caused one of his priests to
exorcise the maidens. But the demons laughed the exorciser to scorn.
He who dwelt in the fair damsel, even the noble demon Beelzebub,
Spirit of Pride, never deigned to unclose his teeth.
Among the possessed was one sister from twenty to twenty-five years
old, who had been specially adopted by Romillion; a girl of good
culture, bred up in controversy; a Protestant by birth, but left an
orphan, to fall into the hands of the Father, a convert like herself
from Protestantism. Her name, Louisa Capeau, sounds plebeian. She
showed herself but too clearly a girl of exceeding wit, and of a
raging passion. Her strength, moreover, was fearful to see. For three
months, in addition to the hellish storm within, she carried on a
desperate struggle, which would have killed the strongest man in a
week.
She said she had three devils: Verrine, a good Catholic devil, a
volatile spirit of the air; Leviathan, a wicked devil, an arguer and a
Protestant; lastly, another, acknowledged by her to be the spirit of
uncleanness. One other she forgot to name, the demon of jealousy.
She bore a savage hate to the little fair-faced damsel, the favoured
rival, the proud young woman of rank. This latter, in one of her fits,
had said that she went to the Sabbath, where she was made queen, and
received homage, and gave herself up, but only to the prince--"What
prince?" To Louis Gauffridi, prince of magicians.
Pierced by this revelation as by a dagger, Louisa was too wild to
doubt its truth. Mad herself, she believed the mad woman's story in
order to ruin her. Her own devil was backed by all the jealous demons.
The women all exclaimed that Gauffridi was the very king of wizards.
The report spread everywhere, that a great prize had been taken, a
priest-king of magicians, even the prince of universal magic. Such was
the dreadful diadem of steel and flame which these feminine demons
drove into his brow.
Everyone lost his head, even to old Romillion himself. Whether from
hatred of Gauffridi, or fear of the Inquisition, he took the matter
out of the bishop's hands, and brought his two bewitched ones, Louisa
and Madeline, to the Convent of Sainte-Baume, whose prior was the
Dominican Michaëlis, papal inquisitor in the Pope's domain of Avignon,
and, as he himself pretended, over all Provence. The great point was
to get them exorcised. But as the two women were obliged to accuse
Gauffridi, the business ended in making him fall into the hands of the
Inquisition.
Michaëlis had to preach on Advent Sunday at Aix, before the
Parliament. He felt how much so striking a drama would exalt him. He
grasped at it with all the eagerness of a barrister in a Criminal
Court, when a very dramatic murder, or a curious case of adultery
comes before him.
The right thing in matters of this sort was, to spin out the play
through Advent, Christmas, Lent, and burn no one before the Holy Week,
the vigil, as it were, of the great day of Easter. Michaëlis kept
himself for the last act, entrusting the bulk of the business to a
Flemish Dominican in his service, Doctor Dompt, from Louvain, who had
already exorcised, was well-skilled in fooleries of that nature.
The best thing the Fleming could do, was to do nothing. In Louisa, he
found a terrible helpmate, with thrice as much zeal in her as the
Inquisition itself, unquenchable in her rage, of a burning eloquence,
whimsical, and sometimes very odd, but always raising a shudder; a
very torch of Hell.
The matter was reduced to a public duel between the two devils, Louisa
and Madeline.
Some simple folk who came thither on a pilgrimage to Sainte-Baume, a
worthy goldsmith, for instance, and a draper, both from Troyes, in
Champagne, were charmed to see Louisa's devil deal such cruel blows at
the other demons, and give so sound a thrashing to the magicians. They
wept for joy, and went away thanking God.
It is a terrible sight, however, even in the dull wording of the
Fleming's official statement, to look upon this unequal strife; to
watch the elder woman, the strong and sturdy Provencial, come of a
race hard as the flints of its native Crau, as day after day she
stones, knocks down, and crushes her young and almost childish victim,
who, wasted with love and shame, has already been fearfully punished
by her own distemper, her attacks of epilepsy.
The Fleming's volume, which, with the additions made by Michaëlis,
reaches to four hundred pages in all, is one condensed epitome of the
invectives, threats, and insults spewed forth by this young woman in
five months; interspersed with sermons also, for she used to preach on
every subject, on the sacraments, on the next coming of Antichrist, on
the frailty of women, and so forth. Thence, on the mention of her
devils, she fell into the old rage, and renewed twice a-day, the
execution of the poor little girl; never taking breath, never for one
minute staying the frightful torrent, until at least the other in her
wild distraction, "with one foot in hell"--to use her own
words--should have fallen into a convulsive fit, and begun beating the
flags with her knees, her body, her swooning head.
It must be acknowledged that Louisa herself is a trifle mad: no amount
of mere knavishness would have enabled her to maintain so long a
wager. But her jealousy points with frightful clearness to every
opening by which she may prick or rend the sufferer's heart.
Everything gets turned upside down. This Louisa, possessed of the
Devil, takes the sacrament whenever she pleases. She scolds people of
the highest authority. The venerable Catherine of France, the oldest
of the Ursulines, came to see the wonder, asked her questions, and at
the very outset caught her telling a flagrant and stupid falsehood.
The impudent woman got out of the mess by saying in the name of her
evil spirit, "The Devil is the Father of Lies."
A sensible Minorite who was present, took up the word and said, "Now,
thou liest." Turning to the exorcisers, he added, "Cannot ye make her
hold her tongue?" Then he quoted to them the story of one Martha, a
sham demoniac of Paris. By way of answer, she was made to take the
communion before him. The Devil communicate, the Devil receive the
body of God! The poor man was bewildered; humbled himself before the
Inquisition. They were too many for him, so he said not another word.
One of Louisa's tricks was to frighten the bystanders, by saying she
could see wizards among them; which made every one tremble for
himself.
Triumphant over Sainte-Baume, she hits out even at Marseilles. Her
Flemish exorciser, being reduced to the strange part of secretary and
bosom-counsellor to the Devil, writes, under her dictation, five
letters: first, to the Capuchins of Marseilles, that they may call
upon Gauffridi to recant; second, to the same Capuchins, that they may
arrest Gauffridi, bind him fast with a stole, and keep him prisoner in
a house of her describing; thirdly, several letters to the moderate
party, to Catherine of France, to the Doctrinal Priests, who had
declared against her; and then this lewd, outrageous termagant ends
with insulting her own prioress: "When I left, you bade me be humble
and obedient. Now take back your own advice."
Her devil Verrine, spirit of air and wind, whispered to her some
trivial nonsense, words of senseless pride which harmed friends and
foes, and the Inquisition itself. One day she took to laughing at
Michaëlis, who was shivering at Aix, preaching in a desert while all
the world was gone to hear strange things at Sainte-Baume. "Michaëlis,
you preach away, indeed, but you get no further forward; while Louisa
has reached, has caught hold of the quintessence of all perfection."
This savage joy was mainly caused by her having quite conquered
Madeline at last. One word had done more for her than a hundred
sermons: "Thou shalt be burnt." Thenceforth in her distraction the
young girl said whatever the other pleased, and upheld her statements
in the meanest way. Humbling herself before them all, she besought
forgiveness of her mother, of her superior Romillion, of the
bystanders, of Louisa. According to the latter, the frightened girl
took her aside, and begged her to be merciful, not to chasten her too
much.
The other woman, tender as a rock and merciful as a hidden reef, felt
that Madeline was now hers, to do whatever she might choose. She
caught her, folded her round, and bedazed her out of what little
spirit she had left. It was a second enchantment; but all unlike that
by Gauffridi, a _possession_ by means of terror. The poor downtrodden
wretch, moving under rod and scourge, was pushed onward in a path of
exquisite suffering which led her to accuse and murder the man she
loved still.
Had Madeline stood out, Gauffridi would have escaped, for every one
was against Louisa. Michaëlis himself at Aix, eclipsed by her as a
preacher, treated by her with so much coolness, would have stopped the
whole business rather than leave the honour of it in her hands.
Marseilles supported Gauffridi, being fearful of seeing the
Inquisition of Avignon pushed into her neighbourhood, and one of her
own children carried off from her threshold. The Bishop and Chapter
were specially eager to defend their priest, maintaining that the
whole affair sprang from nothing but a rivalry between confessors,
nothing but the hatred commonly shown by monks towards secular
priests.
The Doctrinaries would have quashed the matter. They were sore
troubled by the noise it made. Some of them in their annoyance were
ready to give up everything and forsake their house.
The ladies were very wroth, especially Madame Libertat, the lady of
the Royalist leader who had given Marseilles up to the King.
The Capuchins whom Louisa had so haughtily commanded to seize on
Gauffridi, were, like all other of the Franciscan orders, enemies of
the Dominicans. They were jealous of the prominence gained for these
latter by their demoniac friend. Their wandering life, moreover, by
throwing them into continual contact with the women, brought them a
good deal of moral business. They had no wish to see too close a
scrutiny made into the lives of clergymen; and so they also took the
side of Gauffridi. Demoniacs were not so scarce, but that one was
easily found and brought forward at the first summons. Her devil,
obedient to the rope-girdle of St. Francis, gainsaid everything said
by the Dominicans' devil: it averred--and the words were straightway
written down--that "Gauffridi was no magician at all, and could not
therefore be arrested."
They were not prepared for this at Sainte-Baume. Louisa seemed
confounded. She could only manage to say that apparently the Capuchins
had not made their devil swear to tell the truth: a sorry reply,
backed up, however, by the trembling Madeline, who, like a beaten
hound that fears yet another beating, was ready for anything, ready
even to bite and tear. Through her it was that Louisa at such a crisis
inflicted an awful bite.
She herself merely said that the Bishop was offending God unawares.
She clamoured against "the wizards of Marseilles" without naming any
one. But the cruel, the deadly word was spoken at her command by
Madeline. A woman who had lost her child two years before, was pointed
out by her as having throttled it. Afraid of being tortured, she fled
or hid herself. Her husband, her father, went weeping to Sainte-Baume,
hoping of course to soften the inquisitors. But Madeline durst not
unsay her words; so she renewed the charge.
No one now could feel safe. As soon as the Devil came to be accounted
God's avenger, from the moment that people under his dictation began
writing the names of those who should pass through the fire, every one
had before him, day and night, the hideous nightmare of the stake.
To withstand these bold attempts of the Papal Inquisition, Marseilles
ought to have been backed up by the Parliament of Aix. Unluckily she
knew herself to be little liked at Aix. That small official town of
magistrates and nobles was always jealous of the wealth and splendour
of Marseilles, the Queen of the South. On the other hand, the great
opponent of Marseilles, the Papal Inquisitor, forestalled Gauffridi's
appeal to the Parliament by carrying his own suit thither first. This
was a body of utter fanatics, headed by some heavy nobles, whose
wealth had been greatly increased in a former century by the massacre
of the Vaudois. As lay judges, too, they were charmed to see a Papal
Inquisitor set the precedent of acknowledging that, in a matter
touching a priest, in a case of witchcraft, the Inquisition could not
go beyond the preliminary inquiry. It was just as though the
inquisitors had formally laid aside their old pretensions. The people
of Aix, like those of Bordeaux before them, were also bitten by the
flattering thought, that these lay-folk had been set up by the Church
herself as censors and reformers of the priestly morals.
In a business where all would needs be strange and miraculous, not
least among those marvels was it to see so raging a demon grow all at
once so fair-spoken towards the Parliament, so politic and
fine-mannered. Louisa charmed the Royalists by her praises of the late
King. Henry IV.--who would have thought it?--was canonized by the
Devil. One morning, without any invitation, he broke forth into
praises of "that pious and saintly King who had just gone up to
heaven."
Such an agreement between two old enemies, the Parliament and the
Inquisition, which latter was thenceforth sure of the secular arm, its
soldiers, and executioner; this and the sending of a commission to
Sainte-Baume to examine the possessed, take down their statements,
hear their charges, and impannel a jury, made up a frightful business
indeed. Louisa openly pointed out the Capuchins, Gauffridi's
champions, and proclaimed "their coming punishment _temporally_" in
their bodies, and in their flesh.
The poor Fathers were sorely bruised. Their devil would not whisper
one word. They went to find the Bishop, and told him that indeed they
might not refuse to bring Gauffridi forward at Sainte-Baume, in
obedience to the secular power; but afterwards the Bishop and Chapter
could claim him back, and replace him under the shelter of episcopal
justice.
Doubtless they had also reckoned on the agitation that would be shown
by the two young women at the sight of one they loved; on the extent
to which even the terrible Louisa might be shaken by the reproaches of
her own heart.
That heart indeed woke up at the guilty one's approach: for one moment
the furious woman seemed to grow tender. I know nothing more fiery
than her prayer for God to save the man she has driven to death:
"Great God, I offer thee all the sacrifices that have been offered
since the world began, that will be offered until it ends. All, all,
for Lewis. I offer thee all the tears of every saint, all the
transports of every angel. All, all, for Lewis. Oh, that there were
yet more souls to reckon up, that so the oblation might be all the
greater! It should be all for Lewis. O God, the Father of Heaven, have
pity on Lewis! O God the Son, Redeemer of the world, have pity on
Lewis!" &c.
Bootless pity! baneful as well as bootless! Her real desire was that
the accused _should not harden his heart_, should plead guilty. In
that case by our laws he would most assuredly be burnt.
She herself, in short, was worn out, unable to do anything more. The
inquisitor Michaëlis was so humbled by a victory he could not have
gained without her, so wroth with the Flemish exorciser who had become
her obedient follower, and let her see into all the hidden springs of
the tragedy, that he came simply to crush Louisa, and save Madeline by
substituting the one for the other, if he could, in this popular
drama. This move of his implies some skill, and a knowing eye for
scenery. The winter and the Advent season had been wholly taken up
with the acting of that awful sibyl, that raging bacchante. In the
milder days of a Provencial spring, in the season of Lent, he would
bring upon the scene a more moving personage, a demon all womanly,
dwelling in a sick child, in a fair-haired frightened girl. The nobles
and the Parliament of Provence would feel an interest in a little lady
who belonged to an eminent house.
Far from listening to his Flemish agent, Louisa's follower, Michaëlis
shut the door upon him when he sought to enter the select council of
Parliament-men. A Capuchin who also came, on the first words spoken by
Louisa, cried out, "Silence, accursed devil!"
Meanwhile Gauffridi had arrived at Sainte-Baume, where he cut a sorry
figure. A man of sense, but weak and blameworthy, he foreboded but too
truly how that kind of popular tragedy would end; and in coming to a
strait so dreadful, he saw himself forsaken and betrayed by the child
he loved. He now entirely forsook himself. When he was confronted with
Louisa, she seemed to him like a judge, like one of those cruel and
subtle schoolmen who judged the causes of the Church. To all her
questions concerning doctrine, he only answered _yes_, assenting even
to points most open to dispute; as, for instance, to the assumption
"that the Devil in a court of justice might be believed on his word
and his oath."
This lasted only a week, from the 1st to the 8th January. The clergy
of Marseilles demanded Gauffridi back. His friends, the Capuchins,
declared that they had found no signs of magic in his room. Four
canons of Marseilles came with authority to take him, and carried him
away home.
If Gauffridi had fallen very low, his adversaries had not risen much.
Even the two inquisitors, Michaëlis and the Fleming, were in shameful
variance with each other. The partiality of the former for Madeline,
of the latter for Louisa, went beyond mere words, leading them into
opposite lines of action. That chaos of accusations, sermons,
revelations, which the Devil had dictated by the mouth of Louisa, the
Fleming who wrote it down maintained to be the very word of God, and
expressed his fear that somebody might tamper with the same. He owned
to a great mistrust of his chief, Michaëlis, who, he was sore afraid,
would so amend the papers in behalf of Madeline, as to ensure the ruin
of Louisa. To guard them to the best of his power, he shut himself up
in his room and underwent a regular siege. Michaëlis, with the
Parliament-men on his side, could only get at the manuscript by using
the King's name and breaking the door open.
Louisa, afraid of nothing, sought to array the Pope against the King.
The Fleming carried an appeal to the legate at Avignon, against his
chief, Michaëlis. But the Papal Court had a prudent fear of causing
scandal by letting one inquisitor accuse another. Lacking its support,
the Fleming had no resource but to submit. To keep him quiet Michaëlis
gave him back his papers.
Those of Michaëlis, forming a second report, dull and nowise
comparable with the former, are full of nought but Madeline. They
played music to try and soothe her: care was taken to note down when
she ate, and when she did not eat. Too much time indeed was taken up
about her, often in a way but little edifying. Strange questions are
put to her touching the Magician, and what parts of his body might
bear the mark of the Devil. She herself was examined. This would have
to be done at Aix by surgeons and doctors; but meanwhile, in the
height of his zeal, Michaëlis examined her at Sainte-Baume, and put
down the issue of his researches. No matron was called to see her. The
judges, lay and monkish, agreeing in this one matter, and having no
fear of each other's overlooking, seem to have quietly passed over
this contempt of outward forms.
In Louisa, however, they found a judge. The bold woman branded the
indecency as with hot iron. "They who were swallowed up by the Flood
never behaved so ill!... Even of thee, O Sodom, the like was never
said!"
She also averred that Madeline was given over to uncleanness. This was
the saddest thing of all. In her blind joy at being alive, at escaping
the flames, or else from some cloudy notion that it was her turn now
to act upon her judges, the poor simpleton would sing and dance at
times with a shameful freedom, in a coarse, indecent way. The old
Doctrinal father, Romillion, blushed for his Ursuline. Shocked to
remark the admiration of the men for her long hair, he said that such
a vanity must be taken from her, be cut away.
In her better moments she was gentle and obedient.
They would have liked to make her a second Louisa; but her devils were
vain and amorous; not, like the other's, eloquent and raging. When
they wanted her to preach, she could only utter sorry things.
Michaëlis was fain to play out the piece by himself. As chief
inquisitor, and bound greatly to outdo his Flemish underling, he
avowed that he had already drawn out of this small body a host of six
thousand, six hundred, and sixty devils: only a hundred still
remained. By way of convincing the public, he made her throw up the
charm or spell which by his account she had swallowed, and he drew it
from her mouth in some slimy matter. Who could hold out any longer?
Assurance itself stood stupefied and convinced.
Madeline was in a fair way to escape: the only hindrance was herself.
Every moment she would be saying something rash, something to arouse
the misgivings of her judges, and urge them beyond all patience. She
declared that everything to her recalled Gauffridi, that everywhere
she saw him present. Nor would she hide from them her dreams of love.
"To-night," she said, "I was at the Sabbath. To my statue all covered
with gilding the magicians offered their homage. Each of them, in
honour thereof, made oblation of some blood drawn from his hands with
a lancet. _He_ was also there, on his knees, a rope round his neck,
beseeching me to go back and betray him not. I held out. Then said he,
'Is there anyone here who would die for her?' 'I,' said a young man,
and he was sacrificed by the magician."
At another time she saw him, and he asked her only for one of her fine
fair locks. "And when I refused, he said, 'Only the half of one
hair.'"
She swore, however, that she never yielded. But one day, the door
happening to be open, behold our convert running off at the top of her
speed to rejoin Gauffridi!
They took her again, at least her body. But her soul? Michaëlis knew
not how to catch that again. Luckily he caught sight of her magic
ring, which was taken off, cut up, destroyed, and thrown into the
fire. Fancying, moreover, that this perverseness on the part of one so
gentle was due to unseen wizards who found their way into her room, he
set there a very substantial man at arms, with a sword to slash about
him everywhere, and cut the invisible imps into pieces.
But the best physic for the conversion of Madeline was the death of
Gauffridi. On the 5th February, the inquisitor went to Aix for his
Lent preachings, saw the judges, and stirred them up. The Parliament,
swiftly yielding to such a pressure, sent off to Marseilles an order
to seize the rash man, who, finding himself so well backed by Bishop,
Chapter, Capuchins, and all the world, had fancied they would never
dare so far.
Madeline from one quarter, Gauffridi from another, arrived at Aix. She
was so disturbed that they were forced to bind her. Her disorder was
frightful, and all were in great perplexity what to do. They bethought
them at least of one bold way of dealing with this sick child; one of
those fearful tricks that throw a woman into fits, and sometimes kill
her outright. A vicar-general of the archbishopric said that the
palace contained a dark narrow charnel-house, such as you may see in
the Escurial, and called in Spain a "rotting vat."
There, in olden days, old bones of unknown dead were left to waste
away. Into this tomb-like cave the trembling girl was led. They
exorcised her by putting those chilly bones to her face. She did not
die of fright, but thenceforth gave herself up to their will and
pleasure; and so they got what they wanted, the death of the
conscience, the destruction of all that remained to her of moral
insight and free will.
She became their pliant tool, ready to obey their least desire, to
flatter them, to try and guess beforehand what would give them most
pleasure. Huguenots were brought before her: she called them names.
Confronted with Gauffridi, she told forth by heart her grievances
against him, better than the King's own officers could have done. This
did not prevent her from squalling violently, when she was brought to
the church to excite the people against Gauffridi, by making her devil
blaspheme in the magician's name. Beelzebub speaking through her said,
"In the name of Gauffridi I abjure God;" and again, at the lifting up
of the Host, "Let the blood of the just be upon me, in the name of
Gauffridi!"
An awful fellowship indeed! This twofold devil condemns one out of the
other's mouth; whatever Madeline says, is ascribed to Gauffridi. And
the scared crowd were impatient to behold the burning of the dumb
blasphemer, whose ungodliness so loudly declared itself by the voice
of the girl.
The exorcisers then put to her this cruel question, to which they
themselves could have given the best answer:--"Why, Beelzebub, do you
speak so ill of your great friend?" Her answer was frightful: "If
there be traitors among men, why not among demons also? When I am with
Gauffridi, I am his to do all his will. But when you constrain me, I
betray him and turn him to scorn."
However, she could not keep up this hateful mockery. Though the demon
of fear and fawning seemed to have gotten fast hold of her, there was
room still for despair. She could no longer take the slightest food;
and they who for five months had been killing her with exorcisms and
pretending to relieve her of six or seven thousand devils, were fain
to admit that she longed only to die, and greedily sought after any
means of self-destruction. Courage alone was wanting to her. Once she
pricked herself with a lancet, but lacked the spirit to persevere.
Once she caught up a knife, and when that was taken from her, tried to
strangle herself. She dug needles into her body, and then made one
last foolish effort to drive a long pin through her ear into her head.
What became of Gauffridi? The inquisitor, who dwells so long on the
two women, says almost nothing about him. He walks as it were over
the fire. The little he does say is very strange. He relates that
having bound Gauffridi's eyes, they pricked him with needles all over
the body, to find out the callous places where the Devil had made his
mark. On the removal of the bandage, he learned, to his horror and
amazement, that the needle had thrice been stuck into him without his
feeling it; so he was marked in three places with the sign of Hell.
And the inquisitor added, "If we were in Avignon, this man should be
burnt to-morrow."
He felt himself a lost man; and defended himself no more. His only
thought now was to see if he could save his life through any of the
Dominicans' foes. He wished, he said, to confess himself to the
Oratorians. But this new order, which might have been called the right
mean of Catholicism, was too cold and wary to take up a matter already
so hopeless and so far advanced.
Thereon he went back again to the Begging Friars, confessing himself
to the Capuchins, and acknowledging all and more than all the truth,
that he might purchase life with dishonour. In Spain he would
assuredly have been enlarged, barring a term of penance in some
convent. But our Parliaments were sterner: they felt bound to prove
the greater purity of the lay jurisdiction. The Capuchins, themselves
a little shaky in the matter of morals, were not the people to draw
the lightning down on their own body. They surrounded Gauffridi,
sheltered him, gave him comfort day and night; but only in order that
he might own himself a magician, and so, because magic formed the main
head of his indictment, the seduction wrought by a confessor to the
great discredit of the clergy might be left entirely in the
background.
So his friends the Capuchins, by dint of tender caresses and urgent
counsel, drew from him the fatal confession which, by their showing,
was to save his soul, but which was very certain to hand his body over
to the stake.
The man thus lost and done for, they made an end with the girls whom
it was not their part to burn. A farcical scene took place. In a large
gathering of the clergy and the Parliament, Madeline was made to
appear, and, in words addressed to herself, her devil Beelzebub was
summoned to quit the place or else offer some opposition. Not caring
to do the latter, he went off in disgrace.
Then Louisa, with her demon Verrine, was made to appear. But before
they drove away a spirit so friendly to the Church, the monks regaled
the Parliamentaries, who were new to such things, with the clever
management of this devil, making him perform a curious pantomime. "How
do the Seraphim, the Cherubim, the Thrones, behave before God?" "A
hard matter this:" says Louisa, "they have no bodies." But on their
repeating the command, she made an effort to obey, imitating the
flight of the one class, the fiery longing of the others; and ending
with the adoration, when she bowed herself before the judges, falling
prostrate with her head downwards. Then was the far-famed Louisa, so
proud and so untamable, seen to abase herself, kissing the pavement,
and with outstretched arms laying all her length thereon.
It was a strange, frivolous, unseemly exhibition, by which she was
made to atone for her terrible success among the people. Once more she
won the assembly by dealing a cruel dagger-stroke at Gauffridi, who
stood there strongly bound. "Where," said they, "is Beelzebub now, the
devil who went out of Madeline?" "I see him plainly at Gauffridi's
ear."
Have you had shame and horror enough? We should like further to know
what the poor wretch said, when put to the torture. Both the ordinary
and the extraordinary forms were used upon him. His revelations must
undoubtedly have thrown light on the curious history of the nunneries.
Those tales the Parliament stored up with greediness, as weapons that
might prove serviceable to itself; but it retained them "under the
seal of the Court."
The inquisitor Michaëlis, who was fiercely assailed in public for an
excess of animosity so closely resembling jealousy, was summoned by
his order to a meeting at Paris, and never saw the execution of
Gauffridi, who was burnt alive four days afterwards, 30th April, 1611,
at Aix.
The name of the Dominicans, damaged by this trial, was not much
exalted by another case of _possession_ got up at Beauvais in such a
way as to ensure them all the honours of a war, the account of which
they got printed in Paris. Louisa's devil having been reproached for
not speaking Latin, the new demoniac, Denise Lacaille, mingled a few
words of it in her gibberish. They made a plenty of noise about her,
often displayed her in the midst of a procession, and even carried her
from Beauvais to Our Lady of Liesse. But the matter kept quite cool.
This Picard pilgrimage lacked the horror, the dramatic force of the
affair at Sainte-Baume. This Lacaille, for all her Latin, had neither
the burning eloquence, nor the mettle, nor the fierce rage, that
marked the woman of Provence. The only end of all her proceedings was
to amuse the Huguenots.
What became of the two rivals, Madeline and Louisa? The former, or at
least her shadow, was kept on Papal ground, for fear of her being led
to speak about so mournful a business. She was never shown in public,
save in the character of a penitent. She was taken out among the poor
women to cut wood, which was afterwards sold for alms; the parents,
whom she had brought to shame, having forsworn and forsaken her.
Louisa, for her part, had said during the trial: "I shall make no
boast about it. The trial over, I shall soon be dead." But this was
not to be. Instead of dying, she went on killing others. The
murdering devil within her waxed stormier than ever. She set about
revealing to the inquisitors the names, both Christian and surnames,
of all whom she fancied to have any dealings with magic; among others
a poor girl named Honoria, "blind of both eyes," who was burnt alive.
"God grant," says Father Michaëlis, in conclusion, "that all this may
redound to His own glory and to that of His Church!"