ch had made the
cardinal supreme in the state, he had succeeded in introducing into the
palace a new confessor selected by himself. In a very short time the
King's malady took a new form. That he was too weak to lift his food
to his misshapen mouth, that, at thirty-seven, he had the bald head and
wrinkled face of a man of seventy, that his complexion was turning from
yellow to green, that he frequently fell down in fits and remained long
insensible, these were no longer the worst symptoms of his malady.
He had always been afraid of ghosts and demons; and it had long been
necessary that three friars should watch every night by his restless bed
as a guard against hobgoblins. But now he was firmly convinced that he
was bewitched, that he was possessed, that there was a devil within him,
that there were devils all around him. He was exorcised according to the
forms of his Church; but this ceremony, instead of quieting him, scared
him out of almost all the little reason that nature had given him. In
his misery and despair he was induced to resort to irregular modes of
relief. His confessor brought to court impostors who pretended that they
could interrogate the powers of darkness. The Devil was called up, sworn
and examined. This strange deponent made oath, as in the presence of
God, that His Catholic Majesty was under a spell, which had been laid on
him many years before, for the purpose of preventing the continuation of
the royal line. A drug had been compounded out of the brains and kidneys
of a human corpse, and had been administered in a cup of chocolate.
This potion had dried up all the sources of life; and the best remedy
to which the patient could now resort would be to swallow a bowl of
consecrated oil every morning before breakfast. Unhappily, the authors
of this story fell into contradictions which they could excuse only by
throwing the blame on Satan, who, they said, was an unwilling witness,
and a liar from the beginning. In the midst of their conjuring, the
Inquisition came down upon them. It must be admitted that, if the Holy
Office had reserved all its terrors for such cases, it would not now
have been remembered as the most hateful judicature that was ever known
among civilised men. The subaltern impostors were thrown into dungeons.
But the chief criminal continued to be master of the King and of
the kingdom. Meanwhile, in the distempered mind of Charles one mania
succeeded another. A longing to pry into those