forsake their houses, and coming from the ends of the town, bring
their flock beds to the market-place to pass the night there. Every
one complained of some new insult; you heard nothing but lamentations
at night-fall; and the most sensible people went into the country.

"Amidst such a general prepossession we made up our minds to say
nothing; we should not only have been considered as absurd, but as
infidels. How can you convince a whole people of error? Those who
believed in their own minds that we had our doubts of the truth of the
fact, came and reproached us for our incredulity, and pretended to
prove that there were such things as vroucolacas, by some authority
which they derived from Father Richard, a Jesuit missionary. It is
Latin, said they, and consequently you ought to believe it. We should
have done no good by denying this consequence. They every morning
entertained us with the comedy of a faithful recital of all the new
follies which had been committed by this bird of night; he was even
accused of having committed the most abominable sins.

"The citizens who were most zealous for the public good believed that
they had missed the most essential point of the ceremony. They said
that the mass ought not to be celebrated until after the heart of this
wretched man had been torn out; they affirmed that with that
precaution they could not have failed to surprise the devil, and
doubtless he would have taken care not to come back again; instead of
which had they begun by saying mass, he would have had, said they,
plenty of time to take flight, and to return afterwards at his
leisure.

"After all these arguments they found themselves in the same
embarrassment as the first day it began; they assembled night and
morning; they reasoned upon it, made processions which lasted three
days and three nights; they obliged the priests to fast; they were
seen running about in the houses with the asperser or sprinkling brush
in their hands, sprinkling holy water and washing the doors with it;
they even filled the mouth of that poor vroucolaca with holy water. We
so often told the administration of the town that in all Christendom
people would not fail in such a case to watch by night, to observe all
that was going forward in the town, that at last they arrested some
vagabonds, who assuredly had a share in all these disturbances.
Apparently they were not the principal authors of them, or they were
too soon set at liberty; for tw