the reality
of the possession. It was ardently attacked and loudly denied by a
monk of the Minimite order, named Claude Pithoy, who had the temerity
to say that he would pray to God to send the devil into himself, in
case the woman whom they were exorcising at Nancy was possessed; and
again, that God was not God if he did not command the devil to seize
his body, if the woman they exorcised at Nancy was really possessed.

M. Pichard refutes him fully; but he remarks that persons who are weak
minded, or of a dull and melancholy character, heavy, taciturn,
stupid, and who are naturally disposed to frighten and disturb
themselves, are apt to fancy that they see the devil, that they speak
to him, and even that they are possessed by him; above all, if they
are in places where others are possessed, whom they see, and with whom
they converse. He adds that, thirteen or fourteen years ago, he
remarked at Nancy a great number of this kind, and with the help of
God he cured them. He says the same thing of atrabilarians, and women
who suffer from _furor uterine_, who sometimes do such things and
utter such cries, that any one would believe they were possessed.

Mademoiselle Ranfaing having become a widow in 1617, was sought in
marriage by a physician named Poviot. As she would not listen to his
addresses, he first of all gave her philtres to make her love him,
which occasioned strange derangements in her health. At last he gave
her some magical medicaments (for he was afterwards known to be a
magician, and burnt as such by a judicial sentence). The physicians
could not relieve her, and were quite at fault with her extraordinary
maladies. After having tried all sorts of remedies, they were obliged
to have recourse to exorcisms.

Now these are the principal symptoms which made it believed that
Mademoiselle Ranfaing was really possessed. They began to exorcise her
the 2d September, 1619, in the town of Remiremont, whence she was
transferred to Nancy; there she was visited and interrogated by
several clever physicians, who, after having minutely examined the
symptoms of what happened to her, declared that the casualties they
had remarked in her had no relation at all with the ordinary course of
known maladies, and could only be the result of diabolical possession.

After which, by order of M. de Porcelets, Bishop of Toul, they
nominated for the exorcists M. Viardin, a doctor of divinity,
counselor of state of the Duke of Lorraine,