mount
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 prick 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 God! 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 Marseilles. 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 Marseilles, 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 qu