THE TRIAL OF CADIERE: 1730-1731.
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.
Larmedieu was a compliant judge, a friend of the clergy. He was not
one of your rude magistrates who go straight before them, like blind
boars, on the high-road of the law, without seeing or respecting
anyone. He had shown great regard for Aubany, the patron of Ollioules,
during his trial; helping him to escape by the slowness of his own
procedure. Afterwards, when he knew him to be at Marseilles, as if
that was far from France, in the _ultima thule_ or _terra incognita_
of ancient geographers, he would not budge any further. This, however,
was a very different case: the judge who was so paralytic against
Aubany, had wings, and wings of lightning, for Cadière. It was nine in
the morning when the dwellers in the lane saw with much curiosity a
grand procession arrive at the Cadières' door, with Master Larmedieu
and the episcopal advocate at the head, honoured by an escort of two
clergymen, doctors of theology. The house was invaded: the sick girl
was summoned before them. They made her swear to tell the truth
against herself; swear to defame herself by speaking out in the ears
of justice matters that touched her conscience and the confessional
only.
She might have dispensed with an answer, for none of the usual forms
had been observed: but she would not raise the question. She took the
oath that was meant to disarm and betray her. For, being once bound
thereby, she told everything, even to those shameful and ridiculous
details which it must be very painful for any girl to acknowledge.
Larmedieu's official statement and his first examination point to a
clearly settled agreement between him and the Jesuits. Girard was to
be brought forward as the dupe and prey of Cadière's knavery. Fancy a
man of sixty, a doctor, professor, director of nuns, being therewithal
so innocent and credulous, that a young girl, a mere child, was enough
to draw him into the snare! The cunning, shameless wanton had beguiled
him with her visions, but failed to draw him into her own excesses.
Enraged thereat, she endowed him with every baseness that the fancy of
a Messalina could suggest to her!
So far from giving grounds for any such idea, the examination brings
out the victim's gentleness in a very touching way. Evidently she
accuses others only through constraint, under the pressure of her oath
just taken. She is gentle towards her enemies, even to the faithless
Guiol who, in her brother's words, had betrayed her; had done her
worst to corrupt her; had ruined her, last of all, by making her give
up the papers which would have insured her safety.
The Cadière brothers were frightened at their sister's artlessness. In
her regard for her oath she gave herself up without reserve to be
vilified, alas! for ever; to have ballads sung about her; to be mocked
by the very foes of Jesuits and silly scoffing libertines.
The mischief done, they wanted at least to have it defined, to have
the official report of the priests checked by some more serious
measure. Seeming though she did to be the party accused, they made her
the accuser, and prevailed on Marteli Chantard, the King's Lieutenant
Civil and Criminal, to come and take her deposition. In this document,
short and clear, the fact of her seduction is clearly established;
likewise the reproaches she uttered against Girard for his lewd
endearments, reproaches at which he only laughed; likewise the advice
he gave her, to let herself be possessed by the Demon; likewise the
means he used for keeping her wounds open, and so on.
The King's officer, the Lieutenant, was bound to carry the matter
before his own court. For the spiritual judge in his hurry had failed
to go through the forms of ecclesiastic law, and so made his
proceedings null. But the lay magistrate lacked the courage for this.
He let himself be harnessed to the clerical inquiry, accepted
Larmedieu for his colleague, went himself to sit and hear the evidence
in the bishop's court. The clerk of the bishopric wrote it down, and
not the clerk of the King's Lieutenant. Did he write it down
faithfully? We have reason to doubt that, when we find him threatening
the witnesses, and going every night to show their statements to the
Jesuits.
The two curates of Cadière's parish, who were heard first, deposed
drily, not in her favour, yet by no means against her, certainly not
in favour of the Jesuits. These latter saw that everything was going
amiss for them. Lost to all shame, at the risk of angering the people,
they determined to break all down. They got from the bishop an order
to imprison Cadière and the chief witnesses she wanted to be heard.
These were the German lady and Batarelle. The girl herself was placed
in the Refuge, a convent-prison; the ladies in a bridewell, the
_Good-Shepherd_, where mad women and foul streetwalkers needing
punishment were thrown. On the 26th November, Cadière was dragged from
her bed and given over to the Ursulines, penitents of Girard's, who
laid her duly on some rotten straw.
A fear of them thus established, the witnesses might now be heard.
They began with two, choice and respectable. One was the Guiol,
notorious for being Girard's pander, a woman of keen and clever
tongue, who was commissioned to hurl the first dart and open the wound
of slander. The other was Laugier, the little seamstress, whom Cadière
had supported and for whose apprenticeship she had paid. While she lay
with child by Girard, this Laugier had cried out against him; now she
washed away her fault by sneering at Cadière and defiling her
benefactress, but in a very clumsy way, like the shameless wanton she
was; ascribing to her impudent speeches quite contrary to her known
habits. Then came Mdlle. Gravier and her cousin Reboul--all the
_Girardites_, in short, as they were called in Toulon.
But, do as they would, the light would burst forth now and then. The
wife of a purveyor in the house where these Girardites met together,
said, with cruel plainness, that she could not abide them, that they
disturbed the whole house; she spoke of their noisy bursts of
laughter, of their suppers paid for out of the money collected for the
poor, and so forth.
They were sore afraid lest the nuns should speak out for Cadière. The
bishop's clerk told them, as if from the bishop himself, that those
who spoke evil should be chastised. As a yet stronger measure, they
ordered back from Marseilles the gay Father Aubany, who had some
ascendant over the nuns. His affair with the girl he had violated was
got settled for him. Her parents were made to understand that justice
could do nothing in their case. The child's good name was valued at
eight hundred livres, which were paid on Aubany's account. So, full of
zeal, he returned, a thorough Jesuit, to his troop at Ollioules. The
poor troop trembled indeed, when this worthy father told them of his
commission to warn them that, if they did not behave themselves, "they
should be put to the torture."
For all that, they could not get as much as they wanted from these
fifteen nuns. Two or three at most were on Girard's side, but all
stated facts, especially about the 7th July, which bore directly
against him.
In despair the Jesuits came to an heroic decision, in order to make
sure of their witnesses. They stationed themselves in an outer hall
which led into the court. There they stopped those going in, tampered
with them, threatened them, and, if they were against Girard, coolly
debarred their entrance by thrusting them out of doors.
Thus the clerical judge and the King's officer were only as puppets in
the Jesuits' hands. The whole town saw this and trembled. During
December, January, and February, the Cadière family drew up and
diffused a complaint touching the way in which justice was denied them
and witnesses suborned. The Jesuits themselves felt that the place
would no longer hold them. They evoked help from a higher quarter.
This seemed best available in the shape of a decree of the Great
Council, which would have brought the matter before itself and hushed
up everything, as Mazarin had done in the Louviers affair. But the
Chancellor was D'Aguesseau; and the Jesuits had no wish to let the
matter go up to Paris. They kept it still in Provence. On the 16th
January, 1731, they got the King to determine that the Parliament of
Provence, where they had plenty of friends, should pass sentence on
the inquiry which two of its councillors were conducting at Toulon.
M. Faucon, a layman, and M. de Charleval, a councillor of the Church,
came in fact and straightway marched down among the Jesuits. These
eager commissioners made so little secret of their loud and bitter
partiality, as to toss out an order for Cadière's remand, just as they
might have done to an accused prisoner; whilst Girard was most
politely called up and allowed to go free, to keep on saying mass and
hearing confessions. And so the plaintiff was kept under lock and key,
in her enemies' hands, exposed to all manner of cruelty from Girard's
devotees.
From these honest Ursulines she met with just such a reception as if
they had been charged to bring about her death. The room they gave her
was the cell of a mad nun who made everything filthy. In the nun's old
straw, in the midst of a frightful stench, she lay. Her kinsmen on the
morrow had much ado to get in a coverlet and mattress for her use. For
her nurse and keeper she was allowed a poor tool of Girard's, a
lay-sister, daughter to that very Guiol who had betrayed her; a girl
right worthy of her mother, capable of any wickedness, a source of
danger to her modesty, perhaps even to her life. They submitted her to
a course of penance in her case specially painful, refusing her the
right of confessing herself or taking the sacrament. She relapsed into
her illness from the time she was debarred the latter privilege. Her
fierce foe, the Jesuit Sabatier, came into her cell, and formed a new
and startling scheme to win her by a bribe of the holy wafer. The
bargaining began. They offered her terms: she should communicate if
she would only acknowledge herself a slanderer, unworthy of
communicating. In her excessive humbleness she might have done so.
But, while ruining herself, she would also have ruined the Carmelite
and her own brethren.
Reduced to Pharisaical tricks, they took to expounding her speeches.
Whatever she uttered in a mystic sense they feigned to accept in its
material hardness. To free herself from such snares she displayed,
what they had least expected, very great presence of mind.
A yet more treacherous plan for robbing her of the public sympathy and
setting the laughers against her, was to find her a lover. They
pretended that she had proposed to a young blackguard that they should
set off together and roam the world.
The great lords of that day, being fond of having children and little
pages to wait on them, readily took in the better-mannered of their
peasant's sons. In this way had the bishop dealt with the boy of one
of his tenants. He washed his face, as it were; made him tidy.
Presently, when the favourite grew up, he gave him the tonsure,
dressed him up like an abbé, and dubbed him his chaplain at the age of
twenty. This person was the Abbé Camerle. Brought up with the footmen
and made to do everything, he was, like many a half-scrubbed country
youth, a sly, but simple lout. He saw that the prelate since his
arrival at Toulon had been curious about Cadière and far from friendly
to Girard. He thought to please and amuse his master by turning
himself, at Ollioules, into a spy on their suspected intercourse. But
after the bishop changed through fear of the Jesuits, Camerle became
equally zealous in helping Girard with active service against Cadière.
He came one day, like another Joseph, to say that Mdlle. Cadière had,
like Potiphar's wife, been tempting him, and trying to shake his
virtue. Had this been true, it was all the more cowardly of him thus
to punish her for a moment's weakness, to take so mean an advantage of
some light word. But his education as page and seminarist was not such
as to bring him either honour or the love of women.
She extricated herself with spirit and success, covering him with
shame. The two angry commissioners saw her making so triumphant an
answer, that they cut the investigation short, and cut down the number
of her witnesses. Out of the sixty-eight she summoned, they allowed
but thirty-eight to appear. Regardless alike of the delays and the
forms of justice, they hurried forward the confronting of witnesses.
Yet nothing was gained, thereby. On the 25th and again on the 26th
February, she renewed her crushing declarations.
Such was their rage thereat, that they declared their regret at the
want of torments and executioners in Toulon, "who might have made her
sing out a little." These things formed their _ultima ratio_. They
were employed, by the Parliaments through all that century. I have
before me a warm defence of torture,[114] written in 1780, by a
learned member of Parliament, who also became a member of the Great
Council; it was dedicated to the King, Louis XVI., and crowned with
the flattering approval of His Holiness Pius VI.
[114] Muyart de Vouglans, in the sequel to his _Loix
Criminelles_, 1780.
But, in default of the torture that would have made her sing, she was
made to speak by a still better process. On the 27th February, Guiol's
daughter, the lay-sister who acted as her jailer, came to her at an
early hour with a glass of wine. She was astonished: she was not at
all thirsty: she never drank wine, especially pure wine, of a morning.
The lay-sister, a rough, strong menial, such as they keep in convents
to manage crazy or refractory women, and to punish children,
overwhelmed the feeble sufferer with remonstrances that looked like
threats. Unwilling as she was, she drank. And she was forced to drink
it all, to the very dregs, which she found unpleasantly salt.
What was this repulsive draught? We have already seen how clever these
old confessors of nuns were at remedies of various kinds. In this case
the wine alone would have done for so weakly a patient. It had been
quite enough to make her drunk, to draw from her at once some
stammering speeches, which the clerk might have moulded into a
downright falsehood. But a drug of some kind, perhaps some wizard's
simple, which would act for several days, was added to the wine, in
order to prolong its effects and leave her no way of disproving
anything laid to her charge.
In her declaration of the 27th February, how sudden and entire a
change! It is nothing but a defence of Girard! Strange to say, the
commissioners make no remark on so abrupt a change. The strange,
shameful sight of a young girl drunk causes no astonishment, fails to
put them on their guard. She is made to own that all which had passed
between herself and Girard was merely the offspring of her own
diseased fancy; that all she had spoken of as real, at the bidding of
her brethren and the Carmelite, was nothing more than a dream. Not
content with whitening Girard, she must blacken her own friends, must
crush them, and put the halter round their necks.
Especially wonderful is the clearness of her deposition, the neat way
in which it is worded. The hand of the skilful clerk peeps out
therefrom. It is very strange, however, that now they are in so fair a
way, they do not follow it up. From the 27th to the 6th of March there
is no further questioning.
On the 28th, the poison having doubtless done its work, and plunged
her into a perfect stupor, or else a kind of Sabbatic frenzy, it was
impossible to bring her forth. After that, while her head was still
disordered, they could easily give her other potions of which she
would know and remember nothing. What happened during those six days
seems to have been so shocking, so sad for poor Cadière, that neither
she nor her brother had the heart to speak of it twice. Nor would they
have spoken at all, had not the brethren themselves incurred a
prosecution aiming at their own lives.
Having won his cause through Cadière's falsehood, Girard dared to come
and see her in her prison, where she lay stupefied or in despair,
forsaken alike of earth and heaven, and if any clear thoughts were
left her, possessed with the dreadful consciousness of having by her
last deposition murdered her own near kin. Her own ruin was complete
already. But another trial, that of her brothers and the bold
Carmelite, would now begin. She may in her remorse have been tempted
to soften Girard, to keep him from proceeding against them, above all
to save herself from being put to the torture. Girard, at any rate,
took advantage of her utter weakness, and behaved like the determined
scoundrel he really was.
Alas! her wandering spirit came but slowly back to her. It was on the
6th March that she had to face her accusers, to renew her former
admissions, to ruin her brethren beyond repair. She could not speak;
she was choking. The commissioners had the kindness to tell her that
the torture was there, at her side; to describe to her the wooden
horse, the points of iron, the wedges for jamming fast her bones. Her
courage failed her, so weak she was now of body. She submitted to be
set before her cruel master, who might laugh triumphant now that he
had debased not only her body, but yet more her conscience, by making
her the murderess of her own friends.
No time was lost in profiting by her weakness. They prevailed
forthwith on the Parliament of Aix to let the Carmelite and the two
brothers be imprisoned, that they might undergo a separate trial for
their lives, as soon as Cadière should have been condemned.
On the 10th March, she was dragged from the Ursulines of Toulon to
Sainte-Claire of Ollioules. Girard, however, was not sure of her yet.
He got leave to have her conducted, like some dreaded highway robber,
between some soldiers of the mounted police. He demanded that she
should be carefully locked up at Sainte-Claire. The ladies were moved
to tears at the sight of a poor sufferer who could not drag herself
forward, approaching between those drawn swords. Everyone pitied her.
Two brave men, M. Aubin, a solicitor, and M. Claret, a notary, drew up
for her the deeds in which she withdrew her late confession, fearful
documents that record the threats of the commissioners and of the
Ursuline prioress, and above all, the fact of the drugged wine she had
been forced to drink.
At the same time these daring men drew up for the Chancellor's court
at Paris a plea of error, as it is called, exposing the irregular and
blameable proceedings, the wilful breaches of the law, effected in the
coolest way, first by the bishop's officer and the King's Lieutenant,
secondly by the two commissioners. The Chancellor D'Aguesseau showed
himself very slack and feeble. He let these foul proceedings stand;
left the business in charge of the Parliament of Aix, sullied as it
already seemed to be by the disgrace with which two of its members had
just been covering themselves.
So once more they laid hands on their victim, and had her dragged, in
charge as before of the mounted police, from Ollioules to Aix. In
those days people slept at a public house midway. Here the corporal
explained that, by virtue of his orders, he would sleep in the young
girl's room. They pretended to believe that an invalid unable to walk,
might flee away by jumping out of window. Truly, it was a most
villanous device, to commit such a one to the chaste keeping of the
heroes of the _dragonnades_.[115] Happily, her mother had come to see
her start, had followed her in spite of everything, and they did not
dare to beat her away with their butt-ends. She stayed in the room,
kept watch--neither of them, indeed, lying down--and shielded her
child from all harm.
[115] Alluding to the cruelties dealt on the Huguenots by the
French dragoons, at the close of Louis the Fourteenth's
reign.--TRANS.
Cadière was forwarded to the Ursulines of Aix, who had the King's
command to take her in charge. But the prioress pretended that the
order had not yet come. We may see here how savage a woman who was
once impassioned will grow, until she has lost all her woman's nature.
She kept the other four hours at her street-door, as if she were a
public show. There was time to fetch a mob of Jesuits' followers, of
honest Church artizans, to hoot and hiss, while children might help by
throwing stones. For these four hours she was in the pillory. Some,
however, of the more dispassionate passers-by asked if the Ursulines
had gotten orders to let them kill the girl. We may guess what tender
jailers their sick prisoner would find in these good sisters!
The ground was prepared with admirable effect. By a spirited concert
between Jesuit magistrates and plotting ladies, a system of deterring
had been set on foot. No pleader would ruin himself by defending a
girl thus heavily aspersed. No one would digest the poisonous things
stored up by her jailers, for him who should daily show his face in
their parlour to await an interview with Cadière. The defence in that
case would devolve on M. Chaudon, syndic of the Aix bar. He did not
decline so hard a duty. And yet he was so uneasy as to desire a
settlement, which the Jesuits refused. Thereupon he showed what he
really was, a man of unswerving honesty, of amazing courage. He
exposed, with the learning of a lawyer, the monstrous character of the
whole proceeding. So doing, he would for ever embroil himself with
the Parliament no less than the Jesuits. He brought into sharp outline
the spiritual incest of the confessor, though he modestly refrained
from specifying how far he had carried his profligacy. He also
withheld himself from speaking of Girard's girls, the loose-lived
devotees, as a matter well-known, but to which no one would have liked
to bear witness. In short, he gave Girard the best case he could by
assailing him _as a wizard_. People laughed, made fun of the advocate.
He undertook to prove the existence of demons by a series of sacred
texts, beginning with the Gospels. This made them laugh the louder.
The case had been cleverly disfigured by the turning of an honest
Carmelite into Cadière's lover, and the weaver of a whole chain of
libels against Girard and the Jesuits. Thenceforth the crowd of
idlers, of giddy worldlings, scoffers and philosophers alike, made
merry with either side, being thoroughly impartial as between
Carmelite and Jesuit, and exceedingly rejoiced to see this battle of
monk with monk. Those who were presently to be called _Voltairites_,
were even better inclined towards the polished Jesuits, those men of
the world, than towards any of the old mendicant orders.
So the matter became more and more tangled. Jokes kept raining down,
but raining mostly on the victim. They called it a love-intrigue. They
saw in it nothing but food for fun. There was not a scholar nor a
clerk who did not turn a ditty on Girard and his pupil, who did not
hash up anew the old provincial jokes about Madeline in the Gauffridi
affair, her six thousand imps, their dread of a flogging, and the
wonderful chastening-process whereby Cadière's devils were put to
flight.
On this latter point the friends of Girard had no difficulty in
proving him clean. He had acted by his right as director, in
accordance with the common wont. The rod is the symbol of fatherhood.
He had treated his penitent with a view to the healing of her soul.
They used to thrash demoniacs, to thrash the insane and sufferers in
other ways. This was the favourite mode of hunting out the enemy,
whether in the shape of devil or disease. With the people it was a
very common idea. One brave workman of Toulon, who had witnessed
Cadière's sad plight, declared that a bull's sinew was the poor
sufferer's only cure.
Thus strongly supported, Girard had only to act reasonably. He would
not take the trouble. His defence is charmingly flippant. He never
deigns even to agree with his own depositions. He gives the lie to his
own witnesses. He seems to be jesting, and says, with the coolness of
a great lord of the Regency, that if, as they charge him, he was ever
shut up with her, "it could only have happened nine times."
"And why did the good father do so," would his friends say, "save to
watch, to consider, to search out the truth concerning her? 'Tis the
confessor's duty in all such cases. Read the life of the most holy
Catherine of Genoa. One evening her confessor hid himself in her room,
waiting to see the wonders she would work, and to catch her in the act
miraculous. But here, unhappily, the Devil, who never sleeps, had laid
a snare for this lamb of God, had belched forth this devouring monster
of a she-dragon, this mixture of maniac and demoniac, to swallow him
up, to overwhelm him in a cataract of slander."
It was an old and excellent custom to smother monsters in the cradle.
Then why not later also? Girard's ladies charitably advised the
instant using against her of fire and sword. "Let her perish!" cried
the devotees. Many of the great ladies also wished to have her
punished, deeming it rather too bad that such a creature should have
dared to enter such a plea, to bring into court the man who had done
her but too great an honour.
Some determined Jansenists there were in the Parliament, but these
were more inimical to the Jesuits than friendly to the girl. And they
might well be downcast and discouraged, seeing they had against them
at once the terrible Society of Jesus, the Court of Versailles, the
Cardinal Minister (Fleury), and, lastly, the drawing-rooms of Aix.
Should they be bolder than the head of the law, the Chancellor
D'Aguesseau, who had proved so very slack? The Attorney-General did
not waver at all: being charged with the indictment of Girard, he
avowed himself his friend, advised him how to meet the charges
against him.
There was, indeed, but one question at issue, to ascertain by what
kind of reparation, of solemn atonement, of exemplary chastening, the
plaintiff thus changed into the accused might satisfy Girard and the
Company of Jesus. The Jesuits, with all their good-nature, affirmed
the need of an example, in the interests of religion, by way of some
slight warning both to the Jansenist Convulsionaries and the
scribbling philosophers who were beginning to swarm.
There were two points by which Cadière might be hooked, might receive
the stroke of the harpoon.
Firstly, she had borne false witness. But, then, by no law could
slander be punished with death. To gain that end you must go a little
further, and say, "The old Roman text, _De famosis libellis_,
pronounces death on those who have uttered libels hurtful to the
Emperor or to _the religion_ of the Empire. The Jesuits represent that
religion. Therefore, a memorial against a Jesuit deserves the last
penalty."
A still better handle, however, was their second. At the opening of
the trial the episcopal judge, the prudent Larmedieu, had asked her if
she had never _divined_ the secrets of many people, and she had
answered yes. Therefore they might charge her with the practice named
in the list of forms employed in trials for witchcraft, as _Divination
and imposture_. This alone in ecclesiastic law deserved the stake.
They might, indeed, without much effort, call her a _Witch_, after
the confession made by the Ollioules ladies, that at one same hour of
the night she used to be in several cells together. Their infatuation,
the surprising tenderness that suddenly came over them, had all the
air of an enchantment.
What was there to prevent her being burnt? They were still burning
everywhere in the eighteenth century. In one reign only, that of
Philip V., sixteen hundred people were burnt in Spain: one Witch was
burnt as late as 1782. In Germany one was burnt in 1751; in
Switzerland one also in 1781. Rome was always burning her victims, on
the sly indeed, in the dark holes and cells of the Inquisition.[116]
[116] This fact comes to us from an adviser to the Holy
Office, still living.
"But France, at least, is surely more humane?" She is very
inconsistent. In 1718, a Wizard is burnt at Bordeaux.[117] In 1724 and
1726, the faggots were lighted in Grève for offences which passed as
schoolboy jokes at Versailles. The guardians of the Royal child, the
Duke and Fleury, who are so indulgent to the Court, are terrible to
the town. A donkey-driver and a noble, one M. des Chauffours, are
burnt alive. The advent of the Cardinal Minister could not be
celebrated more worthily than by a moral reformation, by making a
severe example of those who corrupted the people. Nothing more timely
than to pass some terrible and solemn sentence on this infernal girl,
who made so heinous an assault on the innocent Girard!
[117] I am not speaking of executions done by the people of
their own accord. A hundred years ago, in a village of
Provence, an old woman on being refused alms by a landowner,
said in her fury, "You will be dead to-morrow." He was
smitten and died. The whole village, high and low, seized the
old woman, and set her on a bundle of vine-twigs. She was
burnt alive. The Parliament made a feint of inquiring, but
punished nobody.--[In 1751 an old couple of Tring, in
Hertfordshire, according to Wright, were tortured, kicked,
and beaten to death, on the plea of witchcraft, by a maddened
country mob.--TRANS.]
Observe what was needed to wash that father clean. It was needful to
show that, even if he had done wrong and imitated Des Chauffours, he
had been the sport of some enchantment. The documents were but too
plain. By the wording of the Canon Law, and after these late decrees,
somebody ought to be burnt. Of the five magistrates on the bench, two
only would have burnt Girard. Three were against Cadière. They came to
terms. The three who formed the majority would not insist on burning
her, would forego the long, dreadful scene at the stake, would content
themselves with a simple award of death.
In the name of these five, it was settled, pending the final assent of
Parliament, "That Cadière, having first been put to the torture in
both kinds, should afterwards be removed to Toulon, and suffer death
by hanging on the Place des Prêcheurs."
This was a dreadful blow. An immense revulsion of feeling at once took
place. The worldlings, the jesters ceased to laugh: they shuddered.
Their love of trifling did not lead them to slur over a result so
horrible. That a girl should be seduced, ill-used, dishonoured,
treated as a mere toy, that she should die of grief, or of frenzy,
they had regarded as right and good; with all that they had no
concern. But when it was a case of punishment, when in fancy they saw
before them the woeful victim, with rope round her neck, by the
gallows where she was about to hang, their hearts rose in revolt. From
all sides went forth the cry, "Never, since the world began, was there
seen so villanous a reversal of things; the law of rape administered
the wrong way, the girl condemned for having been made a tool, the
victim hanged by her seducer!"
In this town of Aix, made up of judges, priests, and the world of
fashion, a thing unforeseen occurred: a whole people suddenly rose, a
violent popular movement was astir. A crowd of persons of every class
marched in one close well-ordered body straight towards the Ursulines.
Cadière and her mother were bidden to show themselves. "Make yourself
easy, mademoiselle," they shouted: "we stand by you: fear nothing!"
The grand eighteenth century, justly called by Hegel the "reign of
mind," was still grander as the "reign of humanity." Ladies of
distinction, such as the granddaughter of Mde. de Sévigné, the
charming Madame de Simiane, took possession of the young girl and
sheltered her in their bosoms.
A thing yet prettier and more touching was it, to see the Jansenist
ladies, elsewhile so sternly pure, so hard towards each other, in
their austerities so severe, now in this great conjuncture offer up
Law on the altar of Mercy, by flinging their arms round the poor
threatened child, purifying her with kisses on the forehead, baptizing
her anew in tears.
If Provence be naturally wild, she is all the more wonderful in these
wild moments of generosity and real greatness. Something of this was
later seen in the earliest triumphs of Mirabeau, when he had a million
of men gathered round him at Marseilles. But here already was a great
revolutionary scene, a vast uprising against the stupid Government of
the day, and Fleury's pets the Jesuits: a unanimous uprising in behalf
of humanity, of compassion, in defence of a woman, a very child, thus
barbarously offered up. The Jesuits fancied that among their own
rabble, among their clients and their beggars, they might array a kind
of popular force, armed with handbells and staves to beat back the
party of Cadière. This latter, however, included almost everyone.
Marseilles rose up as one man to bear in triumph the son of the
Advocate Chaudon. Toulon went so far for the sake of her poor
townswoman, as to think of burning the Jesuit college.
The most touching of all these tokens in Cadière's favour, reached
her from Ollioules. A simple boarder, Mdlle. Agnes, for all her
youthful shyness, followed the impulse of her own heart, threw herself
into the press of pamphlets, and published a defence of Cadière.
So widespread and deep a movement had its effect on the Parliament
itself. The foes of the Jesuits raised their heads, took courage to
defy the threats of those above, the influence of the Jesuits, and the
bolts that Fleury might hurl upon them from Versailles.[118]
[118] There is a laughable tale which expresses the state of
Parliament with singular nicety. The Recorder was reading his
comments on the trial, on the share the Devil might have had
therein, when a loud noise was heard. A black man fell down
the chimney. In their fright they all ran away, save the
Recorder only, who, being entangled in his robe, could not
move. The man made some excuse. It was simply a chimneysweep
who had mistaken his chimney.
The very friends of Girard, seeing their numbers fall off, their
phalanx grow thin, were eager for the sentence. It was pronounced on
the 11th October, 1731.
In sight of the popular feeling, no one dared to follow up the savage
sentence of the bench, by getting Cadière hanged. Twelve councillors
sacrificed their honour, by declaring Girard innocent. Of the twelve
others, some Jansenists condemned him to the flames as a wizard; and
three or four, with better reason, condemned him to death as a
scoundrel. Twelve being against twelve, the President Lebret had to
give the casting vote. He found for Girard. Acquitted of the capital
crime of witchcraft, the latter was then made over, as priest and
confessor, to the Toulon magistrate, his intimate friend Larmedieu,
for trial in the bishop's court.
The great folk and the indifferent ones were satisfied. And so little
heed was given to this award, that even in these days it has been said
that "both were _acquitted_." The statement is not correct. Cadière
was treated as a slanderer, was condemned to see her memorials and
other papers burnt by the hand of the executioner.
There was still a dreadful something in the background. Cadière being
so marked, so branded for the use of calumny, the Jesuits were sure to
keep pushing underhand their success with Cardinal Fleury, and to urge
her being punished in some secret, arbitrary way. Such was the notion
imbibed by the town of Aix. It felt that, instead of sending her home,
Parliament would rather _yield her up_. This caused so fearful a rage,
such angry menaces, against President Lebret, that he asked to have
the regiment of Flanders sent thither.
Girard was fleeing away in a close carriage, when they found him out
and would have killed him, had he not escaped into the Jesuits'
Church. There the rascal betook himself to saying mass. After his
escape thence he returned to Dôle, to reap honour and glory from the
Society. Here, in 1733, he died, _in the perfume of holiness_. The
courtier Lebret died in 1735.
Cardinal Fleury did whatever the Jesuits pleased. At Aix, Toulon,
Marseilles, many were banished, or cast into prison. Toulon was
specially guilty, as having borne Girard's effigy to the doors of his
_Girardites_, and carried about the thrice holy standard of the
Jesuits.
According to the terms of the award, Cadière should have been free to
return home, to live again with her mother. But I venture to say that
she was never allowed to re-enter her native town, that flaming
theatre wherein so many voices had been raised in her behalf.
If only to feel an interest in her was a crime deserving imprisonment,
we cannot doubt but that she herself was presently thrown into prison;
that the Jesuits easily obtained a special warrant from Versailles to
lock up the poor girl, to hush up, to bury with her an affair so
dismal for themselves. They would wait, of course, until the public
attention was drawn off to something else. Thereon the fatal clutch
would have caught her anew; she would have been buried out of sight in
some unknown convent, snuffed out in some dark _In pace_.
She was but one-and-twenty at the time of the award, and she had
always hoped to die soon. May God have granted her that mercy![119]
[119] Touching this matter, Voltaire is very flippant: he
scoffs at both parties, especially the Jansenists. The
historians of our own day, MM. Cabasse, Fabre, Méry, not
having read the _Trial_, believe themselves impartial, while
they are bearing down the victim.
EPILOGUE.
A woman of genius, in a burst of noble tenderness, has figured to
herself the two spirits whose strife moulded the Middle Ages, as
coming at last to recognise each other, to draw together, to renew
their olden friendship. Looking closer at each other, they discern,
though somewhat late, the marks of a common parentage. How if they
were indeed brethren, and this long battle nought but a mistake? Their
hearts speak, and they are softened. The haughty outlaw and the gentle
persecutor have forgotten everything: they dart forward and throw
themselves into each other's arms.--(_Consuelo._)
A charming, womanly idea. Others, too, have dreamed the same dream.
The sweet Montanelli turned it into a beautiful poem. Ay, who would
not welcome the delightful hope of seeing the battle here hushed down
and finished by an embrace so moving?
What does the wise Merlin think of it? In the mirror of his lake,
whose depths are known to himself only, what did he behold? What said
he in the colossal epic produced by him in 1860? Why, that Satan will
not disarm, if disarm he ever do, until the Day of Judgment. Then,
side by side, at peace with each other, the two will fall asleep in a
common death.
* * * * *
It is not so hard, indeed, to bend them into a kind of compromise. The
weakening, relaxing effects of so long a battle allow of their
mingling in a certain way. In the last chapter we saw two shadows
agreeing to form an alliance in deceit; the Devil appearing as the
friend of Loyola, devotees and demoniacs marching abreast, Hell
touched to softness in the Sacred Heart.
It is a quiet time now, and people hate each other less than formerly.
They hate few indeed but their own friends. I have seen Methodists
admiring Jesuits. Those lawyers and physicians whom the Church in the
Middle Ages called the children of Satan, I have seen making shrewd
covenant with the old conquered Spirit.
But get we away from these pretences. They who gravely propose that
Satan should make peace and settle down, have they thought much about
the matter?
There is no hindrance as regards ill-will. The dead are dead. The
millions of former victims sleep in peace, be they Albigenses,
Vaudois, or Protestants, Moors, Jews, or American Indians. The Witch,
universal martyr of the Middle Ages, has nought to say. Her ashes have
been scattered to the winds.
Know you, then, what it is that raises a protest, that keeps these two
spirits steadily apart, preventing them from coming nearer? It is a
huge reality, born five hundred years ago; a gigantic creation
accursed by the Church, even that mighty fabric of science and modern
institutions, which she excommunicated stone by stone, but which with
every anathema has grown a storey higher. You cannot name one science
which has not been itself a rebellion.
There is but one way of reconciling the two spirits, of joining into
one the two churches. Demolish the younger, that one which from its
first beginning was pronounced guilty and doomed as such. Let us, if
we can, destroy the natural sciences, the observatory, the museum, the
botanical garden, the schools of medicine, and all the modern
libraries. Let us burn our laws, our bodies of statutes, and return to
the Canon Law.
All these novelties came of Satan. Each step forward has been a crime
of his doing.
He was the wicked logician who, despising the clerical law, preserved
and renewed that of jurists and philosophers, grounded on an impious
faith, on the freedom of the will.
He was that dangerous magician who, while men were discussing the sex
of angels and other questions of like sublimity, threw himself
fiercely on realities, and created chemistry, physics, mathematics--ay,
even mathematics. He sought to revive them, and that was rebellion.
People were burnt for saying that three made three.
Medicine especially was a Satanic thing, a rebellion against disease,
the scourge so justly dealt by God. It was clearly sinful to check the
soul on its way towards heaven, to plunge it afresh into life!
What atonement shall we make for all this? How are we to put down, to
overthrow, this pile of insurrections, whereof at this moment all
modern life is made up? Will Satan destroy his work, that he may tread
once more the way of angels? That work rests on three everlasting
rocks, Reason, Right, and Nature.
* * * * *
So great is the triumph of the new spirit, that he forgets his
battles, hardly at this moment deigns to remember that he has won.
It were not amiss to remind him of his wretched beginnings, how
coarsely mean, how rude and painfully comic were the shapes he wore in
the season of persecution, when through a woman, even the unhappy
Witch, he made his first homely flights in science. Bolder than the
heretic, the half-Christian reasoner, the scholar who kept one foot
within the sacred circle, this woman eagerly escaped therefrom, and
under the open sunlight tried to make herself an altar of rough
moorland stones.
She has perished, as she was certain to perish. By what means? Chiefly
by the progress of those very sciences which began with her, through
the physician, the naturalist, for whom she had once toiled.
The Witch has perished for ever, but not the Fay. She will reappear in
the form that never dies.
Busied in these latter days with the affairs of men, Woman has in
return given up her rightful part, that of the physician, the
comforter, the healing Fairy. Herein lies her proper priesthood--a
priesthood that does belong to her, whatever the Church may say.
Her delicate organs, her fondness for the least detail, her tender
consciousness of life, all invite her to become Life's shrewd
interpreter in every science of observation. With her tenderly pitiful
heart, her power of divining goodness, she goes of her own accord to
the work of doctoring. There is but small difference between children
and sick people. For both of them we need the Woman.
She will return into the paths of science, whither, as a smile of
nature, gentleness and humanity will enter by her side.
The Anti-natural is growing dim, nor is the day far off when its
eclipse will bring back daylight to the earth.
* * * * *
The gods may vanish, but God is still there. Nay, but the less we see
of them, the more manifest is He. He is like a lighthouse eclipsed at
moments, but alway shining again more clearly than before.
It is a remarkable thing to see Him discussed so fully, even in the
journals themselves. People begin to feel that all questions of
education, government, childhood, and womanhood, turn on that one
ruling and underlying question. As God is, so must the world be.
From this we gather that the times are ripe.
* * * * *
So near, indeed, is that religious dayspring that I seemed momently to
see it breaking over the desert where I brought this book to an end.
How full of light, how rough and beautiful looked this desert of mine!
I had made my nest on a rock in the mighty roadstead of Toulon, in a
lowly villa surrounded with aloe and cypress, with the prickly pear
and the wild rose. Before me was a spreading basin of sparkling sea;
behind me the bare-topt amphitheatre, where, at their ease, might sit
the Parliament of the world.
This spot, so very African, bedazzles you in the daytime with
flashings as of steel. But of a winter morning, especially in
December, it seemed full of a divine mystery. I was wont to rise
exactly at six o'clock, when the signal for work was boomed from the
Arsenal gun. From six to seven I enjoyed a delicious time of it. The
quick--may I call it piercing?--twinkle of the stars made the moon
ashamed, and fought against the daybreak. Before its coming, and
during the struggle between two lights, the wonderful clearness of the
air would let things be seen and heard at incredible distances. Two
leagues away I could make everything out. The smallest detail about
the distant mountains, a tree, a cliff, a house, a bend in the ground,
was thrown out with the most delicate sharpness. New senses seemed to
be given me. I found myself another being, released from bondage, free
to soar away on my new wings. It was an hour of utter purity, all hard
and clear. I said to myself, "How is this? Am I still a man?"
An unspeakable bluish hue, respected, left untouched by the rosy dawn,
hung round me like a sacred ether, a spirit that made all things
spiritual.
One felt, however, a forward movement, through changes soft and slow.
The great marvel was drawing nearer, to shine forth and eclipse all
other things. It came on in its own calm way: you felt no wish to
hurry it. The coming transfiguration, the expected witcheries of the
light, took not a whit away from the deep enjoyment of being still
under the divinity of night, still, as it were, half-hidden, and slow
to emerge from so wonderful a spell.... Come forth, O Sun! We worship
thee while yet unseen, but will reap all of good we yet may from these
last moments of our dream!
He is about to break forth. In hope let us await his welcome.
THE END.
LIST OF LEADING AUTHORITIES.
Graesse, _Bibliotheca Magiæ_, Leipsic, 1843.
_Magie Antique_--as edited by Soldan, A. Maury, &c.
Calcagnini, _Miscell., Magia Amatoria Antiqua_, 1544.
J. Grimm, _German Mythology_.
_Acta Sanctorum._--Acta SS. Ordinis S. Benedicti.
Michael Psellus, _Energie des Démons_, 1050.
Cæsar of Heisterbach, _Illustria Miracula_, 1220.
_Registers of the Inquisition_, 1307-1326, in Limburch; and the
extracts given by Magi, Llorente, Lamothe-Langon, &c.
_Directorium._ Eymerici, 1358.
Llorente, _The Spanish Inquisition_.
Lamothe-Langon, _Inquisition de France_.
_Handbooks of the Monk-Inquisitors of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth
Centuries_: Nider's _Formicarius_; Sprenger's _Malleus_.
C. Bernardus's _Lucerna_; Spina, Grillandus, &c.
H. Corn. Agrippæ _Opera_, Lyons.
Paracelsi _Opera_.
Wyer, _De Prestigiis Dæmonum_, 1569.
Bodin, _Démonomanie_, 1580.
Remigius, _Demonolatria_, 1596.
Del Rio, _Disquisitiones Magicæ_, 1599.
Boguet, _Discours des Sorciers_, Lyons, 1605.
Leloyer, _Histoire des Spectres_, Paris, 1605.
Lancre, _Inconstance_, 1612: _Incredulité_, 1622.
Michaëlis, _Histoire d'une Pénitente, &c._, 1613.
Tranquille, _Relation de Loudun_, 1634.
_Histoire des Diables de Loudun_ (by Aubin), 1716.
_Histoire de Madeleine Bavent_, de Louviers, 1652.
_Examen de Louviers. Apologie de l'Examen_ (by Yvelin), 1643.
_Procès du P. Girard et de la Cadière_; Aix, 1833.
_Pièces relatives à ce Procès_; 5 vols., Aix, 1833.
_Factum, Chansons, relatifs, &c._ MSS. in the Toulon Library.
Eugène Salverte, _Sciences Occultes_, with Introduction by Littré.
A. Maury, _Les Fées_, 1843; _Magie_, 1860.
Soldan, _Histoire des Procès de Sorcellerie_, 1843.
Thos. Wright, _Narratives of Sorcery, &c._, 1851.
L. Figuier, _Histoire du Merveilleux_, 4 vols.
Ferdinand Denis, _Sciences Occultes: Monde Enchanté_.
_Histoire des Sciences au Moyen Age_, by Sprenger, Pouchet, Cuvier, &c.
Printed by Woodfall and Kinder, Angel Court, Skinner Street, London.