Part 19 (1/2)
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 thras.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+vering 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.