La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages Part 19

The report spread everywhere, that a great prize had been taken, a priest-king of magicians, even the prince of universal magic. Such was the dreadful diadem of steel and flame which these feminine demons drove into his brow.

Everyone lost his head, even to old Romillion himself. Whether from hatred of Gauffridi, or fear of the Inquisition, he took the matter out of the bishop's hands, and brought his two bewitched ones, Louisa and Madeline, to the Convent of Sainte-Baume, whose prior was the Dominican Michaelis, papal inquisitor in the Pope's domain of Avignon, and, as he himself pretended, over all Provence. The great point was to get them exorcised. But as the two women were obliged to accuse Gauffridi, the business ended in making him fall into the hands of the Inquisition.

Michaelis had to preach on Advent Sunday at Aix, before the Parliament. He felt how much so striking a drama would exalt him. He grasped at it with all the eagerness of a barrister in a Criminal Court, when a very dramatic murder, or a curious case of adultery comes before him.

The right thing in matters of this sort was, to spin out the play through Advent, Christmas, Lent, and burn no one before the Holy Week, the vigil, as it were, of the great day of Easter. Michaelis kept himself for the last act, entrusting the bulk of the business to a Flemish Dominican in his service, Doctor Dompt, from Louvain, who had already exorcised, was well-skilled in fooleries of that nature.

The best thing the Fleming could do, was to do nothing. In Louisa, he found a terrible helpmate, with thrice as much zeal in her as the Inquisition itself, unquenchable in her rage, of a burning eloquence, whimsical, and sometimes very odd, but always raising a shudder; a very torch of h.e.l.l.

The matter was reduced to a public duel between the two devils, Louisa and Madeline.

Some simple folk who came thither on a pilgrimage to Sainte-Baume, a worthy goldsmith, for instance, and a draper, both from Troyes, in Champagne, were charmed to see Louisa's devil deal such cruel blows at the other demons, and give so sound a thrashing to the magicians. They wept for joy, and went away thanking G.o.d.

It is a terrible sight, however, even in the dull wording of the Fleming's official statement, to look upon this unequal strife; to watch the elder woman, the strong and st.u.r.dy Provencial, come of a race hard as the flints of its native Crau, as day after day she stones, knocks down, and crushes her young and almost childish victim, who, wasted with love and shame, has already been fearfully punished by her own distemper, her attacks of epilepsy.

The Fleming's volume, which, with the additions made by Michaelis, reaches to four hundred pages in all, is one condensed epitome of the invectives, threats, and insults spewed forth by this young woman in five months; interspersed with sermons also, for she used to preach on every subject, on the sacraments, on the next coming of Antichrist, on the frailty of women, and so forth. Thence, on the mention of her devils, she fell into the old rage, and renewed twice a-day, the execution of the poor little girl; never taking breath, never for one minute staying the frightful torrent, until at least the other in her wild distraction, "with one foot in h.e.l.l"--to use her own words--should have fallen into a convulsive fit, and begun beating the flags with her knees, her body, her swooning head.

It must be acknowledged that Louisa herself is a trifle mad: no amount of mere knavishness would have enabled her to maintain so long a wager. But her jealousy points with frightful clearness to every opening by which she may p.r.i.c.k or rend the sufferer's heart.

Everything gets turned upside down. This Louisa, possessed of the Devil, takes the sacrament whenever she pleases. She scolds people of the highest authority. The venerable Catherine of France, the oldest of the Ursulines, came to see the wonder, asked her questions, and at the very outset caught her telling a flagrant and stupid falsehood.

The impudent woman got out of the mess by saying in the name of her evil spirit, "The Devil is the Father of Lies."

A sensible Minorite who was present, took up the word and said, "Now, thou liest." Turning to the exorcisers, he added, "Cannot ye make her hold her tongue?" Then he quoted to them the story of one Martha, a sham demoniac of Paris. By way of answer, she was made to take the communion before him. The Devil communicate, the Devil receive the body of G.o.d! The poor man was bewildered; humbled himself before the Inquisition. They were too many for him, so he said not another word.

One of Louisa's tricks was to frighten the bystanders, by saying she could see wizards among them; which made every one tremble for himself.

Triumphant over Sainte-Baume, she hits out even at Ma.r.s.eilles. Her Flemish exorciser, being reduced to the strange part of secretary and bosom-counsellor to the Devil, writes, under her dictation, five letters: first, to the Capuchins of Ma.r.s.eilles, that they may call upon Gauffridi to recant; second, to the same Capuchins, that they may arrest Gauffridi, bind him fast with a stole, and keep him prisoner in a house of her describing; thirdly, several letters to the moderate party, to Catherine of France, to the Doctrinal Priests, who had declared against her; and then this lewd, outrageous termagant ends with insulting her own prioress: "When I left, you bade me be humble and obedient. Now take back your own advice."

Her devil Verrine, spirit of air and wind, whispered to her some trivial nonsense, words of senseless pride which harmed friends and foes, and the Inquisition itself. One day she took to laughing at Michaelis, who was shivering at Aix, preaching in a desert while all the world was gone to hear strange things at Sainte-Baume. "Michaelis, you preach away, indeed, but you get no further forward; while Louisa has reached, has caught hold of the quintessence of all perfection."

This savage joy was mainly caused by her having quite conquered Madeline at last. One word had done more for her than a hundred sermons: "Thou shalt be burnt." Thenceforth in her distraction the young girl said whatever the other pleased, and upheld her statements in the meanest way. Humbling herself before them all, she besought forgiveness of her mother, of her superior Romillion, of the bystanders, of Louisa. According to the latter, the frightened girl took her aside, and begged her to be merciful, not to chasten her too much.

The other woman, tender as a rock and merciful as a hidden reef, felt that Madeline was now hers, to do whatever she might choose. She caught her, folded her round, and bedazed her out of what little spirit she had left. It was a second enchantment; but all unlike that by Gauffridi, a _possession_ by means of terror. The poor downtrodden wretch, moving under rod and scourge, was pushed onward in a path of exquisite suffering which led her to accuse and murder the man she loved still.

Had Madeline stood out, Gauffridi would have escaped, for every one was against Louisa. Michaelis himself at Aix, eclipsed by her as a preacher, treated by her with so much coolness, would have stopped the whole business rather than leave the honour of it in her hands.

Ma.r.s.eilles supported Gauffridi, being fearful of seeing the Inquisition of Avignon pushed into her neighbourhood, and one of her own children carried off from her threshold. The Bishop and Chapter were specially eager to defend their priest, maintaining that the whole affair sprang from nothing but a rivalry between confessors, nothing but the hatred commonly shown by monks towards secular priests.

The Doctrinaries would have quashed the matter. They were sore troubled by the noise it made. Some of them in their annoyance were ready to give up everything and forsake their house.

The ladies were very wroth, especially Madame Libertat, the lady of the Royalist leader who had given Ma.r.s.eilles up to the King.

The Capuchins whom Louisa had so haughtily commanded to seize on Gauffridi, were, like all other of the Franciscan orders, enemies of the Dominicans. They were jealous of the prominence gained for these latter by their demoniac friend. Their wandering life, moreover, by throwing them into continual contact with the women, brought them a good deal of moral business. They had no wish to see too close a scrutiny made into the lives of clergymen; and so they also took the side of Gauffridi. Demoniacs were not so scarce, but that one was easily found and brought forward at the first summons. Her devil, obedient to the rope-girdle of St. Francis, gainsaid everything said by the Dominicans' devil: it averred--and the words were straightway written down--that "Gauffridi was no magician at all, and could not therefore be arrested."

They were not prepared for this at Sainte-Baume. Louisa seemed confounded. She could only manage to say that apparently the Capuchins had not made their devil swear to tell the truth: a sorry reply, backed up, however, by the trembling Madeline, who, like a beaten hound that fears yet another beating, was ready for anything, ready even to bite and tear. Through her it was that Louisa at such a crisis inflicted an awful bite.

She herself merely said that the Bishop was offending G.o.d unawares.

She clamoured against "the wizards of Ma.r.s.eilles" without naming any one. But the cruel, the deadly word was spoken at her command by Madeline. A woman who had lost her child two years before, was pointed out by her as having throttled it. Afraid of being tortured, she fled or hid herself. Her husband, her father, went weeping to Sainte-Baume, hoping of course to soften the inquisitors. But Madeline durst not unsay her words; so she renewed the charge.

No one now could feel safe. As soon as the Devil came to be accounted G.o.d's avenger, from the moment that people under his dictation began writing the names of those who should pa.s.s through the fire, every one had before him, day and night, the hideous nightmare of the stake.

To withstand these bold attempts of the Papal Inquisition, Ma.r.s.eilles ought to have been backed up by the Parliament of Aix. Unluckily she knew herself to be little liked at Aix. That small official town of magistrates and n.o.bles was always jealous of the wealth and splendour of Ma.r.s.eilles, the Queen of the South. On the other hand, the great opponent of Ma.r.s.eilles, the Papal Inquisitor, forestalled Gauffridi's appeal to the Parliament by carrying his own suit thither first. This was a body of utter fanatics, headed by some heavy n.o.bles, whose wealth had been greatly increased in a former century by the ma.s.sacre of the Vaudois. As lay judges, too, they were charmed to see a Papal Inquisitor set the precedent of acknowledging that, in a matter touching a priest, in a case of witchcraft, the Inquisition could not go beyond the preliminary inquiry. It was just as though the inquisitors had formally laid aside their old pretensions. The people of Aix, like those of Bordeaux before them, were also bitten by the flattering thought, that these lay-folk had been set up by the Church herself as censors and reformers of the priestly morals.

In a business where all would needs be strange and miraculous, not least among those marvels was it to see so raging a demon grow all at once so fair-spoken towards the Parliament, so politic and fine-mannered. Louisa charmed the Royalists by her praises of the late King. Henry IV.--who would have thought it?--was canonized by the Devil. One morning, without any invitation, he broke forth into praises of "that pious and saintly King who had just gone up to heaven."

Such an agreement between two old enemies, the Parliament and the Inquisition, which latter was thenceforth sure of the secular arm, its soldiers, and executioner; this and the sending of a commission to Sainte-Baume to examine the possessed, take down their statements, hear their charges, and impannel a jury, made up a frightful business indeed. Louisa openly pointed out the Capuchins, Gauffridi's champions, and proclaimed "their coming punishment _temporally_" in their bodies, and in their flesh.

The poor Fathers were sorely bruised. Their devil would not whisper one word. They went to find the Bishop, and told him that indeed they might not refuse to bring Gauffridi forward at Sainte-Baume, in obedience to the secular power; but afterwards the Bishop and Chapter could claim him back, and replace him under the shelter of episcopal justice.

Doubtless they had also reckoned on the agitation that would be shown by the two young women at the sight of one they loved; on the extent to which even the terrible Louisa might be shaken by the reproaches of her own heart.

That heart indeed woke up at the guilty one's approach: for one moment the furious woman seemed to grow tender. I know nothing more fiery than her prayer for G.o.d to save the man she has driven to death: "Great G.o.d, I offer thee all the sacrifices that have been offered since the world began, that will be offered until it ends. All, all, for Lewis. I offer thee all the tears of every saint, all the transports of every angel. All, all, for Lewis. Oh, that there were yet more souls to reckon up, that so the oblation might be all the greater! It should be all for Lewis. O G.o.d, the Father of Heaven, have pity on Lewis! O G.o.d the Son, Redeemer of the world, have pity on Lewis!" &c.

Bootless pity! baneful as well as bootless! Her real desire was that the accused _should not harden his heart_, should plead guilty. In that case by our laws he would most a.s.suredly be burnt.

She herself, in short, was worn out, unable to do anything more. The inquisitor Michaelis was so humbled by a victory he could not have gained without her, so wroth with the Flemish exorciser who had become her obedient follower, and let her see into all the hidden springs of the tragedy, that he came simply to crush Louisa, and save Madeline by subst.i.tuting the one for the other, if he could, in this popular drama. This move of his implies some skill, and a knowing eye for scenery. The winter and the Advent season had been wholly taken up with the acting of that awful sibyl, that raging bacchante. In the milder days of a Provencial spring, in the season of Lent, he would bring upon the scene a more moving personage, a demon all womanly, dwelling in a sick child, in a fair-haired frightened girl. The n.o.bles and the Parliament of Provence would feel an interest in a little lady who belonged to an eminent house.

Far from listening to his Flemish agent, Louisa's follower, Michaelis shut the door upon him when he sought to enter the select council of Parliament-men. A Capuchin who also came, on the first words spoken by Louisa, cried out, "Silence, accursed devil!"

Meanwhile Gauffridi had arrived at Sainte-Baume, where he cut a sorry figure. A man of sense, but weak and blameworthy, he foreboded but too truly how that kind of popular tragedy would end; and in coming to a strait so dreadful, he saw himself forsaken and betrayed by the child he loved. He now entirely forsook himself. When he was confronted with Louisa, she seemed to him like a judge, like one of those cruel and subtle schoolmen who judged the causes of the Church. To all her questions concerning doctrine, he only answered _yes_, a.s.senting even to points most open to dispute; as, for instance, to the a.s.sumption "that the Devil in a court of justice might be believed on his word and his oath."

This lasted only a week, from the 1st to the 8th January. The clergy of Ma.r.s.eilles demanded Gauffridi back. His friends, the Capuchins, declared that they had found no signs of magic in his room. Four canons of Ma.r.s.eilles came with authority to take him, and carried him away home.

If Gauffridi had fallen very low, his adversaries had not risen much.

Even the two inquisitors, Michaelis and the Fleming, were in shameful variance with each other. The partiality of the former for Madeline, of the latter for Louisa, went beyond mere words, leading them into opposite lines of action. That chaos of accusations, sermons, revelations, which the Devil had dictated by the mouth of Louisa, the Fleming who wrote it down maintained to be the very word of G.o.d, and expressed his fear that somebody might tamper with the same. He owned to a great mistrust of his chief, Michaelis, who, he was sore afraid, would so amend the papers in behalf of Madeline, as to ensure the ruin of Louisa. To guard them to the best of his power, he shut himself up in his room and underwent a regular siege. Michaelis, with the Parliament-men on his side, could only get at the ma.n.u.script by using the King's name and breaking the door open.

Louisa, afraid of nothing, sought to array the Pope against the King.

The Fleming carried an appeal to the legate at Avignon, against his chief, Michaelis. But the Papal Court had a prudent fear of causing scandal by letting one inquisitor accuse another. Lacking its support, the Fleming had no resource but to submit. To keep him quiet Michaelis gave him back his papers.

Those of Michaelis, forming a second report, dull and nowise comparable with the former, are full of nought but Madeline. They played music to try and soothe her: care was taken to note down when she ate, and when she did not eat. Too much time indeed was taken up about her, often in a way but little edifying. Strange questions are put to her touching the Magician, and what parts of his body might bear the mark of the Devil. She herself was examined. This would have to be done at Aix by surgeons and doctors; but meanwhile, in the height of his zeal, Michaelis examined her at Sainte-Baume, and put down the issue of his researches. No matron was called to see her. The judges, lay and monkish, agreeing in this one matter, and having no fear of each other's overlooking, seem to have quietly pa.s.sed over this contempt of outward forms.

In Louisa, however, they found a judge. The bold woman branded the indecency as with hot iron. "They who were swallowed up by the Flood never behaved so ill!... Even of thee, O Sodom, the like was never said!"

She also averred that Madeline was given over to uncleanness. This was the saddest thing of all. In her blind joy at being alive, at escaping the flames, or else from some cloudy notion that it was her turn now to act upon her judges, the poor simpleton would sing and dance at times with a shameful freedom, in a coa.r.s.e, indecent way. The old Doctrinal father, Romillion, blushed for his Ursuline. Shocked to remark the admiration of the men for her long hair, he said that such a vanity must be taken from her, be cut away.

In her better moments she was gentle and obedient.

They would have liked to make her a second Louisa; but her devils were vain and amorous; not, like the other's, eloquent and raging. When they wanted her to preach, she could only utter sorry things.

Michaelis was fain to play out the piece by himself. As chief inquisitor, and bound greatly to outdo his Flemish underling, he avowed that he had already drawn out of this small body a host of six thousand, six hundred, and sixty devils: only a hundred still remained. By way of convincing the public, he made her throw up the charm or spell which by his account she had swallowed, and he drew it from her mouth in some slimy matter. Who could hold out any longer?

a.s.surance itself stood stupefied and convinced.

Madeline was in a fair way to escape: the only hindrance was herself.

Every moment she would be saying something rash, something to arouse the misgivings of her judges, and urge them beyond all patience. She declared that everything to her recalled Gauffridi, that everywhere she saw him present. Nor would she hide from them her dreams of love.

"To-night," she said, "I was at the Sabbath. To my statue all covered with gilding the magicians offered their homage. Each of them, in honour thereof, made oblation of some blood drawn from his hands with a lancet. _He_ was also there, on his knees, a rope round his neck, beseeching me to go back and betray him not. I held out. Then said he, 'Is there anyone here who would die for her?' 'I,' said a young man, and he was sacrificed by the magician."

At another time she saw him, and he asked her only for one of her fine fair locks. "And when I refused, he said, 'Only the half of one hair.'"

She swore, however, that she never yielded. But one day, the door happening to be open, behold our convert running off at the top of her speed to rejoin Gauffridi!