fraid to listen, regarded him with so stern a gaze that the
giver of advice deemed it prudent to seek shelter in Italy.

* * * * *

Laubardemont arrived at Loudun on the 6th December, 1633, bringing
along with him great fear, and unbounded powers; even those of the
King himself. The whole strength of the kingdom became, as it were, a
dreadful bludgeon to crush one little fly.

The magistrates were wroth; the civic lieutenant warned Grandier that
he would have to arrest him on the morrow. The latter paid no heed to
him, and was arrested accordingly. In a moment he was carried off,
without form of trial, to the dungeons of Angers. Presently he was
taken back and thrown, where think you? Into the house, the room of
one of his enemies, who had the windows walled up so as well-nigh to
choke him. The loathsome scrutiny of the wizard's body, in order to
find out the Devil's marks by sticking needles all over it, was
carried on by the hands of the accusers themselves, who took their
revenge upon him beforehand in the foretaste thus given him of his
future punishment.

They led him to the churches, confronted him with the girls, who had
got their cue from Laubardemont. These Bacchanals, for such they
became under the fuddling effect of some drugs administered by the
condemned apothecary above-named, flung out in such frantic rages,
that Grandier was nearly perishing one day beneath their nails.

Unable to imitate the eloquence of the Marseilles demoniac, they tried
obscenity in its stead. It was a hideous thing to see these girls give
full vent in public to their sensual fury, on the plea of scolding
their pretended devils. Thus indeed it was that they managed to swell
their audiences. People flocked to hear from the lips of these women
what no woman would else have dared to utter.

As the matter grew more hateful, so it also grew more laughable. They
were sure to repeat all awry what little Latin was ever whispered to
them. The public found that the devils had never gone through _their
lower classes_. The Capuchins, however, coolly said that if these
demons were weak in Latin, they were marvellous speakers of Iroquois
and Tupinambi.[99]

[99] Indians of the coast of Brazil.--TRANS.

* * * * *

A farce so shameful, seen from a distance of sixty leagues, from St.
Germain or the Louvre, appeared miraculous, awful, terrifying. The
Court admired and tremble