and deadly sin; that she felt the need of rescuing that soul,
by offering the Devil victim for victim, by agreeing to yield herself
into his keeping in Girard's stead. He never forbade her, but gave her
leave to be possessed for one year only.

Like the rest of the town, she had heard of the scandalous loves of
Father Sabatier--an insolent passionate man, with none of Girard's
prudence. The scorn which the Jesuits--to her mind, such pillars of
the Church--were sure to incur, had not escaped her notice. She said
one day to Girard, "I had a vision of a gloomy sea, with a vessel full
of souls tossed by a storm of unclean thoughts. On this vessel were
two Jesuits. Said I to the Redeemer, whom I saw in heaven, 'Lord, save
them, and let me drown! The whole of their shipwreck do I take upon
myself,' And God, in His mercy, granted my prayer."

All through the trial, and when Girard, become her foe, was aiming at
her death, she never once recurred to this subject. These two
parables, so clear in meaning, she never explained. She was too
high-minded to say a word about them. She had doomed herself to very
damnation. Some will say that in her pride she deemed herself so
deadened and impassive as to defy the impurity with which the Demon
troubled a man of God. But it is quite clear that she had no accurate
knowledge of sensual things, foreseeing nought in such a mystery save
pains and torments of the Devil. Girard was very cold, and quite
unworthy of all this sacrifice. Instead of being moved to compassion,
he sported with her credulity through a vile deceit. Into her casket
he slipped a paper, in which God declared that, for her sake, He would
indeed save the vessel. But he took care not to leave so absurd a
document there: she would have read it again and again until she came
to perceive how spurious it was. The angel who brought the paper
carried it off the next day.

With the same coarseness of feeling Girard lightly allowed her, all
unsettled and incapable of praying as she plainly was, to communicate
as much as she pleased in different churches every day. This only made
her worse. Filled already with the Demon, she harboured the two foes
in one place. With equal power they fought within her against each
other. She thought she would burst asunder. She would fall into a
dead faint, and so remain for several hours. By December she could
not move even from her bed.

Girard had now but too good a plea for seeing her. He was p