of Geneva in his later
years, died in 1622.--TRANS.

[88] The Brethren of the Oratory, founded at Rome in
1564.--TRANS.

Gauffridi, the mountaineer of Provence, the travelled mystic, the man
of strong feelings and restless mind, had quite another effect upon
them, when he came thither as Madeline's ghostly guide. They felt a
certain power, and by those who had already passed out of their wild,
amorous youth, were doubtless assured that it was nothing less than a
power begotten of the Devil. All were seized with fear, and more than
one with love also. Their imaginations soared high; their heads began
to turn. Already six or seven may be seen weeping, shrieking, yelling,
fancying themselves caught by the Devil. Had the Ursulines lived in
cloisters, within high walls, Gauffridi, being their only director,
might one way or another have made them all agree. As in the cloisters
of Quesnoy, in 1491, so here also it might have happened that the
Devil, who gladly takes the form of one beloved, had under that of
Gauffridi made himself lover-general to the nuns. Or rather, as in
those Spanish cloisters named by Llorente, he would have persuaded
them that the priestly office hallowed those to whom the priest made
love, that to sin with him, was only to be sanctified. A notion,
indeed, ripe through France, and even in Paris, where the mistresses
of priests were called "the hallowed ones."[89]

[89] Lestoile, edit. Michaud, p. 561.

Did Gauffridi, thus master of all, keep to Madeline only? Did not the
lover change into the libertine? We know not. The sentence points to a
nun who never showed herself during the trial, but reappeared at the
end, as having given herself up to the Devil and to him.

The Ursuline convent was open to all visitors. The nuns were under the
charge of their Doctrinaries, men of fair character, and jealous
withal. The founder himself was there, indignant, desperate. How
woeful a mishap for the rising order, just as it was thriving amain
and spreading all over France! After all its pretensions to wisdom,
calmness, good sense, thus suddenly to go mad! Romillion would have
hushed up the matter if he could. He caused one of his priests to
exorcise the maidens. But the demons laughed the exorciser to scorn.
He who dwelt in the fair damsel, even the noble demon Beelzebub,
Spirit of Pride, never deigned to unclose his teeth.

Among the possessed was one sister from twenty to twenty-five years
o