ravage the old world and the new, for Diabolism is quite up to
date in one respect. It is highly centralized and very capably
administered. There are committees, subcommittees, a sort of curia,
which rules America and Europe, like the curia of a pope.

"The biggest of these societies founded as long ago as 1855 is the
society of the Re-Theurgistes-Optimates. Beneath an apparent unity it is
divided into two camps, one aspiring to destroy the universe and reign
over the ruins, the other thinking simply of imposing upon the world a
demoniac cult of which it shall be high priest.

"This society has its seat in America. It was formerly directed by one
Longfellow, an adventurer, born in Scotland, who entitled himself grand
priest of the New Evocative Magism. For a long time it has had branches
in France, Italy, Germany, Russia, Austria, even Turkey.

"It is at the present moment moribund, or perhaps quite dead, but
another has just been created. The object of this one is to elect an
antipope who will be the exterminating Antichrist. And those are only
two of them. How many others are there, more or less important
numerically, more or less secret, which, by common accord, at ten
o'clock the morning of the Feast of the Holy Sacrament, celebrate black
masses at Paris, Rome, Bruges, Constantinople, Nantes, Lyons, and in
Scotland--where sorcerers swarm!

"Then, outside of these universal associations and local assemblies,
isolated cases abound, on which little light can be shed, and that with
great difficulty. Some years ago there died, in a state of penitence, a
certain comte de Lautree, who presented several churches with statues
which he had bewitched so as to satanize the faithful. At Bruges a
priest of my acquaintance contaminates the holy ciboria and uses them to
prepare spells and conjurements. Finally one may, among all these, cite
a clear case of possession. It is the case of Cantianille, who in 1865
turned not only the city of Auxerre, but the whole diocese of Sens,
upside down.

"This Cantianille, placed in a convent of Mont-Saint-Sulpice, was
violated, when she was barely fifteen years old, by a priest who
dedicated her to the Devil. This priest himself had been corrupted, in
early childhood, by an ecclesiastic belonging to a sect of possessed
which was created the very day Louis XVI was guillotined.

"What happened in this convent, where many nuns, evidently mad with
hysteria, were associated in erotic devilry a