ed 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 Cadiere
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 Cadiere 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 Cadiere. 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