the narrator does), we can only
say that, in ordinary life, Providence permits a number of
undesirable events to occur. Why should the behaviour of ghosts be
an exception?

Other witnesses swore to corroborating circumstances. Auguier
denied everything, experts admitted that the receipt was like his
writing, but declared it to be forged; the ribbon was explained as
part of his little daughter's dress. The judge decided--no one will
guess what--_that Auguier should be put to the torture_!

Auguier appealed: his advocate urged the absurdity of a ghost-story
on a priori grounds: if there was no ghost, then there was no
treasure: if there was a treasure, would not the other digger have
secured his share? That digger, Bernard, was not called. Then
Auguier pled an alibi, he was eight leagues away when he was said to
have received the treasure. Why he did not urge this earlier does
not appear.

Mirabel's advocate first defended from the Bible and the Fathers,
the existence of ghosts. The Faculty of Theology, in Paris, had
vouched for them only two years before this case, in 1724. The
Sorbonne had been as explicit, in 1518. 'The Parliament of Paris
_often_ permitted the tenant of a haunted house to break his
contract.' {253} Ghosts or no ghosts, Mirabel's counsel said, there
_was_ a treasure. In his receipt Auguier, to deceive a simple
peasant, partially disguised his hand. Auguier's alibi is
worthless, he might easily have been at Marseilles and at Pertuis on
the same day: the distance is eight leagues.

Bernard was now at last called in; he admitted that Mirabel told him
of the ghost, that they dug, and found some linen, but that he never
saw any gold. He had carried the money from Mirabel to pay for the
masses due to the ghost. Mirabel had shown him a document, for
which he said he had paid a crown, and Bernard (who probably could
not read) believed it to be like Auguier's receipt. Bernard, of
course, having been denied his share, was not a friendly witness. A
legal document was put in, showing that Madame Placasse (on whose
land the treasure lay) summoned Mirabel to refund it to her. The
document was a summons to him. But this document was forged, and
Mirabel, according to a barrister whom he had consulted about it,
said it was handed to him by a man unknown. Why the barrister
should have betrayed his client is not clear. Mirabel and
Marguerite Caillot, his first witness, who had deposed to hi