as if fire had been
there, and had left a pretty deep impression. After that, he vanished
with so much noise that it was heard three houses off.

I related in the first edition of this dissertation on the return of
spirits, an adventure which happened at Fontenoy on the Moselle, where
it was affirmed that a spirit had in the same manner made the
impression of its hand on a handkerchief, and had left the impress of
the hand and of the palm well marked. The handkerchief is in the hands
of one Casmar, a constable living at Toul, who received it from his
uncle, the cure of Fontenoy; but, on a careful investigation of the
thing, it was found that a young blacksmith, who courted a young girl
to whom the handkerchief belonged, had forged an iron hand to print it
on the handkerchief, and persuade people of the reality of the
apparition.

At St. Avold, a town of German Lorraine, in the house of the cure,
named M. Royer de Monelos, there was something very similar which
appears to have been performed by a servant girl, sixteen years of
age, who heard and saw, as she said, a woman who made a great noise in
the house; but she was the only person who saw and heard her, although
others heard also the noise which was made in the house. They saw also
the young servant, as it were, pushed, dragged, and struck by the
spirit, but never saw it, nor yet heard his voice. This contrivance
began on the night of the 31st of January, 1694, and finished about
the end of February the same year. The cure conjured the spirit in
German and French. He made no reply to the exorcisms in French but
sighs; and as they terminated the German exorcism, saying, "Let every
spirit praise the Lord," the girl said that the spirit had said, "And
me also;" but she alone heard it.

Some monks of the abbey were requested to come also and exorcise the
spirit. They came, and with them some burgesses of note of St. Avold;
and neither before nor after the exorcisms did they see or hear
anything, except that the servant girl seemed to be pushed violently,
and the doors were roughly knocked at. By dint of exorcisms they
forced the spirit, or rather the servant who alone heard and saw it,
to declare that she was neither maid nor wife; that she was called
Claire Margaret Henri; that a hundred and fifty years ago she had died
at the age of twenty, after having lived servant at the cure of St.
Avold's first of all for eight years, and that she had died at
Guenviller of gr