aker of clothes for the nuns, was dependent on the Church. The monk
caused the apprentices, whom he doubtless made drunk with belladonna
and other magical drinks, to believe that they had been taken to the
Sabbath and there married to the devil Dagon. Three were already
possessed by him, and Madeline at fourteen became the fourth.

She was a devout worshipper, especially of St. Francis. A Franciscan
monastery had just been founded at Louviers, by a lady of Rouen, widow
of lawyer Hennequin, who was hanged for cheating. She hoped by this
good deed of hers to help in saving her husband's soul. To that end
she sought counsel of a holy man, the old priest David, who became
director to the new foundation. Standing at the entrance of the town,
with a wood surrounding it, this convent, born of so tragical a
source, seemed quite gloomy and poor enough for a place of stern
devotion. David was known as author of a _Scourge for Rakes_, an odd
and violent book against the abuses that defiled the Cloister.[105]
All of a sudden this austere person took up some very strange ideas
concerning purity. He became an Adamite, preached up the nakedness of
Adam in his days of innocence. The docile nuns of Louviers sought to
subdue and abase the novices, to break them into obedience, by
insisting--of course in summer-time--that these young Eves should
return to the plight of their common mother. In this state they were
sent out for exercise in some secluded gardens, and were taken into
the chapel itself. Madeline, who at sixteen had come to be received as
a novice, was too proud, perhaps in those days too pure also, to
submit to so strange a way of life. She got an angry scolding for
having tried at communion to hide her bosom with the altar-cloth.

[105] See Floquet; _Parliament of Normandy_, vol. v. p. 636.

Not less unwilling was she to uncover her soul, to confess to the Lady
Superior, after the usual monastic custom of which the abbesses were
particularly fond. She would rather trust herself with old David, who
kept her apart from the rest. He himself confided his own ailments
into her ear. Nor did he hide from her his inner teaching, the
Illuminism, which governed the convent: "You must kill sin by being
made humble and lost to all sense of pride through sin." Madeline was
frightened at the depths of depravity reached by the nuns, who quietly
carried out the teaching with which they had been imbued. She avoided
their company, kept t