t night'. St. Mesmin appealed to the king, the Fathers
were imprisoned, and the youth was kept in Fumee's house, and plied
with questions. He confessed the trick, and the friars were
punished. Of all this confession, and of the mode of imposture,
nothing is said in the legal process. From the whole affair came a
popular saying, c'est l'esprit d'Orleans, when any fable was told.
Buchanan talks of cauta parum pietas in fraude paranda.

The evidence, it may be seen, is not very coherent, and the
Franciscans may have been the deceived, not the deceivers. {117}
Wierus himself admits that he often heard a brownie in his father's
house, which frightened him not a little, and Georgius Pictorius
avers that a noisy spirit haunted his uncle's house for thirty
years, a very protracted practical joke, if it was a practical joke.
{118} This was a stone-throwing demon.

A large book might easily be filled with old stories of mysterious
flights of stones, and volatile chairs and tables. The ancient
mystics of the Levant were acquainted with the phenomena, as
Iamblichus shows. The Eskimo knew them well. Glanvill is rich in
examples, the objects flying about in presence of a solitary
spectator, who has called at a 'haunted house,' and sometimes the
events accompany the presence of a single individual, who may, or
may not be a convulsionary or epileptic. Sometimes they befall
where no individual is suspected of constitutional electricity or of
imposture.

We may select a laughable example from a rare tract. 'An authentic,
candid, and circumstantial narrative of the astonishing transactions
at Stockwell, in the county of Surrey, on Monday and Tuesday, the
6th and 7th of January, 1772. Published with the consent and
approbation of the family and other parties concerned, to
authenticate which, the original copy is signed by them. London,
1772, printed for J. Marks, bookseller, in St. Martin's Lane.'

The dramatis personae are old Mrs. Golding, of Stockwell parish, 'a
gentlewoman of unblemished honour and character'; Mrs. Pain, her
niece, a farmer's wife, 'respected in the parish'; Mary Martin, her
servant, previously with Mrs. Golding; Richard Fowler, a labourer,
living opposite Mrs. Pain; Sarah Fowler his wife--all these sign the
document,--and Ann Robinson, Mrs. Golding's maid, just entered on
her service. Ann does _not_ sign.

The trouble began at ten a.m. on January 6, when Mrs. Golding heard
a great smash of crockery