"The Archbishop need scarcely have troubled himself with this
demonstration. Public ridicule has made an end of the project, and
even if Madame Caillavah carried out her threat of a lawsuit, no
tribunal would hold her entitled to carry on excavations _ad libitum_,
with a risk, perhaps, of herself and her workmen being buried under the
ruins of the finest of French cathedrals. In debating the Fine Arts
Department estimates, M. Delattre, Deputy for St. Denis, animadverted
on the divining rod experiments in the cathedral. M. Tirard replied
that the Government had had no share in this ridiculous business. The
treaty with the sorceress was concluded in January, 1881, by an
official who had since been superannuated, but was not acted upon till
she could deposit two hundred francs guarantee, and as soon as he
himself heard of the experiments he put a peremptory stop to them.

"It is important here to observe that it afterwards transpired that the
object of Madame Caillavah's lawsuit was not so much to obtain damages
for any breach of contract as to vindicate her private and public
character and her professional reputation as a so-called 'diviner' from
the odium, scorn, and defamation which the repudiation of the treaty so
universally entailed. The sad result of all this was that the
unfortunate and sensitive lady was not able to withstand the opprobrium
that was heaped upon her, nor 'the ridicule that made an end of her
project.' This maligned and misunderstood lady (who, as expressly
stated, 'had no doubt brought a good pedigree with her') after a few
months of sorrow, and conscious of her rectitude, at length succumbed
and, as reported, ultimately died of a 'broken heart.'"

[1] "_Corpuscular philosophy_, that which attempts to account for the
phenomena of nature, by the motion, figure, rest, position, etc., of
the minute particles of matter."--_Webster's Dictionary_.

[2] Andrew Lang writes in a chapter on the divining rod in _Custom and
Myth_:

"The great authority for the modern history of the divining rod is a
work published by M. Chevreul in Paris in 1854. M. Chevreul, probably
with truth, regarded the wand as much on a par with the turning tables
which, in 1854, attracted a good deal of attention.... M. Chevreul
could find no earlier book on the twig than the _Testament du Frere_,
Basile Valentin, a holy man who flourished (the twig) about 1413, but
whose treatise is possibly apocryphal. According to