, demanded the termination of the long-winded procedure
and the punishment of the evil-doers, with a fanaticism whose fire was
tended and fed by mysterious agents; while, finally, the court, in the
uncontrollably increasing flood of accusations and calumnies, lost its
sense of direction, and was gradually becoming a tool in the hands of
the populace;--in the meanwhile the boundless forces at work succeeded
in poisoning the mind of a child, who appeared as a witness against
father and mother, and led the deluded people to believe that God
himself had by a miracle loosened the tongue of an infant.

[Illustration: JAKOB WASSERMANN]

At the outset the eleven-year-old Madeleine Bancal had been questioned
by the police magistrate; she knew nothing. Subsequently the child came
to the tavern, and at once people came forward who had heard from
others, who again had heard from third or fourth parties, that the girl
had seen the old man laid upon the table and her mother receiving
money. Of course it was ascertained by Counselor Pinaud, the only man
who retained clarity and judgment in the wild confusion, that Madeleine
had taken presents from the managers of the tavern, as well as from
other people; but it was too late by that time to discover and
extirpate the root of the lie. She was persuaded ever more firmly into
a belief of her first statement, and the recital kept expanding the
greater the attention paid her, the more her vanity was flattered,
until she believed she had really witnessed all that she related, and
she experienced a feeling of satisfaction in the sympathy and pity of
the grown people. Her mother had taken her to the attic, so she
reported, but fearing the cold, she had stealthily crept downstairs and
hidden herself in the bed in the alcove. Through a hole in the curtain
she could see and hear everything. When the old man was about to be
stabbed, the lady with the green feather ran terrified into the room
and attempted to escape through the window. Bastide Grammont dragged
her forth and wanted to kill her. Bancal and Colard begged him to spare
her, and she had to swear an awful oath which pledged her to silence. A
little later, Grammont, whose suspicions were not silenced, examined
the bed also. Madeleine pretended to be asleep. He felt her twice, and
then said to the mother that she must attend to getting rid of the
child, which Madame Bancal promised to do for a sum of four hundred
francs. The next morning t