uestion was propounded in the
prescribed terms, she was bound to answer, so she said that Grandier was
in the great hall of the castle.

"That is not correct," said the bailiff, "for before coming here I
pointed out a house to Grandier and asked him to stay in it till I came
back. If anybody will go there, they will be sure to find him, for he
wished to help me to discover the truth without my being obliged to
resort to sequestration, which is a difficult measure to take with
regard to nuns."

Barre was now ordered to send some of the monks present to the castle,
accompanied by a magistrate and a clerk. Barre chose the Carmelite
prior, and the bailiff Charles Chauvet, assessor of the bailiwick,
Ismael Boulieau a priest, and Pierre Thibaut, an articled clerk, who
all set out at once to execute their commission, while the rest of those
present were to await their return.

Meanwhile the superior, who had not spoken a word since the bailiff's
declaration, remained, in spite of repeated exorcisms, dumb, so Barre
sent for Sister Claire, saying that one devil would encourage the other.
The bailiff entered a formal protest against this step, insisting that
the only result of a double exorcism would be to cause confusion, during
which suggestions might be conveyed to the superior, and that the proper
thing to do was, before beginning new conjurations, to await the
return of the messengers. Although the bailiff's suggestion was most
reasonable, Barre knew better than to adopt it, for he felt that no
matter what it cost he must either get rid of the bailiff and all the
other officials who shared his doubts, or find means with the help of
Sister Claire to delude them into belief. The lay sister was therefore
brought in, in spite of the opposition of the bailiff and the other
magistrates, and as they did not wish to seem to countenance a fraud,
they all withdrew, declaring that they could no longer look on at such a
disgusting comedy. In the courtyard they met their messengers returning,
who told them they had gone first to the castle and had searched the
great hall and all the other rooms without seeing anything of Grandier;
they had then gone to the house mentioned by the bailiff, where they
found him for whom they were looking, in the company of Pere Veret, the
confessor of the nuns, Mathurin Rousseau, and Nicolas Benoit, canons,
and Conte, a doctor, from whom they learned that Grandier had not been
an instant out of their sig