ld, who had been specially adopted by Romillion; a girl of good
culture, bred up in controversy; a Protestant by birth, but left an
orphan, to fall into the hands of the Father, a convert like herself
from Protestantism. Her name, Louisa Capeau, sounds plebeian. She
showed herself but too clearly a girl of exceeding wit, and of a
raging passion. Her strength, moreover, was fearful to see. For three
months, in addition to the hellish storm within, she carried on a
desperate struggle, which would have killed the strongest man in a
week.

She said she had three devils: Verrine, a good Catholic devil, a
volatile spirit of the air; Leviathan, a wicked devil, an arguer and a
Protestant; lastly, another, acknowledged by her to be the spirit of
uncleanness. One other she forgot to name, the demon of jealousy.

She bore a savage hate to the little fair-faced damsel, the favoured
rival, the proud young woman of rank. This latter, in one of her fits,
had said that she went to the Sabbath, where she was made queen, and
received homage, and gave herself up, but only to the prince--"What
prince?" To Louis Gauffridi, prince of magicians.

Pierced by this revelation as by a dagger, Louisa was too wild to
doubt its truth. Mad herself, she believed the mad woman's story in
order to ruin her. Her own devil was backed by all the jealous demons.
The women all exclaimed that Gauffridi was the very king of wizards.
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 o