d. Richelieu to please them did a cowardly
thing. He ordered money to be paid to the exorcisers, to the nuns.

The height of favour to which they had risen, drove the plotters
altogether mad. Senseless words were followed by shameful deeds.
Pleading that the nuns were tired, the exorcisers got them outside the
town, took them about by themselves. One of them, at least to all
appearance, returned pregnant. In the fifth or sixth month all outward
trace of it disappeared, and the devil within her acknowledged how
wickedly he had slandered the poor nun by making her look so large.
This tale concerning Loudun we learn from the historian of
Louviers.[100]

[100] Esprit de Bosroger, p. 135.

It is stated that Father Joseph, after a secret journey to the spot,
saw to what end the matter was coming, and noiselessly backed out of
it. The Jesuits also went, tried their exorcisms, did next to nothing,
got scent of the general feeling, and stole off in like manner.

But the monks, the Capuchins, were gone so far, that they could only
save themselves by frightening others. They laid some treacherous
snares for the daring bailiff and his wife, seeking to destroy them,
and thereby quench the coming reaction of justice. Lastly, they urged
on the commissioners to despatch Grandier. Things could be carried no
further: the nuns themselves were slipping out of their hands. After
that dreadful orgie of sensual rage and immodest shouting in order to
obtain the shedding of human blood, two or three of them swooned away,
were seized with disgust and horror; vomited up their very selves.
Despite the hideous doom that awaited them if they spoke the truth,
despite the certainty of ending their days in a dungeon, they owned in
church that they were damned, that they had been playing with the
Devil, and Grandier was innocent.

* * * * *

They ruined themselves, but could not stay the issue. A general
protest by the town to the King failed to stay it also. On the 18th
August, 1634, Grandier was condemned to the stake. So violent were his
enemies that, for the second time before burning him, they insisted on
having him stuck with needles in order to find out the Devil's marks.
One of his judges would have had even his nails torn out of him, had
not the surgeon withheld his leave.

They were afraid of the last words their victim might say on the
scaffold. Among his papers there had been found a manuscript
con