k again to the Begging Friars, confessing himself
to the Capuchins, and acknowledging all and more than all the truth,
that he might purchase life with dishonour. In Spain he would
assuredly have been enlarged, barring a term of penance in some
convent. But our Parliaments were sterner: they felt bound to prove
the greater purity of the lay jurisdiction. The Capuchins, themselves
a little shaky in the matter of morals, were not the people to draw
the lightning down on their own body. They surrounded Gauffridi,
sheltered him, gave him comfort day and night; but only in order that
he might own himself a magician, and so, because magic formed the main
head of his indictment, the seduction wrought by a confessor to the
great discredit of the clergy might be left entirely in the
background.

So his friends the Capuchins, by dint of tender caresses and urgent
counsel, drew from him the fatal confession which, by their showing,
was to save his soul, but which was very certain to hand his body over
to the stake.

The man thus lost and done for, they made an end with the girls whom
it was not their part to burn. A farcical scene took place. In a large
gathering of the clergy and the Parliament, Madeline was made to
appear, and, in words addressed to herself, her devil Beelzebub was
summoned to quit the place or else offer some opposition. Not caring
to do the latter, he went off in disgrace.

Then Louisa, with her demon Verrine, was made to appear. But before
they drove away a spirit so friendly to the Church, the monks regaled
the Parliamentaries, who were new to such things, with the clever
management of this devil, making him perform a curious pantomime. "How
do the Seraphim, the Cherubim, the Thrones, behave before God?" "A
hard matter this:" says Louisa, "they have no bodies." But on their
repeating the command, she made an effort to obey, imitating the
flight of the one class, the fiery longing of the others; and ending
with the adoration, when she bowed herself before the judges, falling
prostrate with her head downwards. Then was the far-famed Louisa, so
proud and so untamable, seen to abase herself, kissing the pavement,
and with outstretched arms laying all her length thereon.

It was a strange, frivolous, unseemly exhibition, by which she was
made to atone for her terrible success among the people. Once more she
won the assembly by dealing a cruel dagger-stroke at Gauffridi, who
stood there strongly bound. "Where