r, you can do nothing worth while."

As it was easy to see that nothing of importance was to be expected from
this new patient, she was soon suppressed, and her place taken by the lay
sister Claire who had already made her debut in the mother superior's
room.

Hardly had she entered the choir than she uttered a groan, but as soon as
they placed her on the little bed on which the other nuns had lain, she
gave way to uncontrollable laughter, and cried out between the
paroxysms--

"Grandier, Grandier, you must buy some at the market."

Barre at once declared that these wild and whirling words were a proof of
possession, and approached to exorcise the demon; but Sister Claire
resisted, and pretending to spit in the face of the exorcist, put out her
tongue at him, making indecent gestures, using a word in harmony with her
actions. This word being in the vernacular was understood by everyone
and required no interpretation.

The exorcist then conjured her to give the name of the demon who was in
her, and she replied--

"Grandier."

But Barre by repeating his question gave her to understand that she had
made a mistake, whereupon she corrected herself and said--

"Elimi."

Nothing in the world could induce her to reveal the number of evil
spirits by whom Elimi was accompanied, so that Barre, seeing that it was
useless to press her on this point, passed on to the next question.

"Quo pacto ingressus est daemon"(By what pact did the demon get in?).

"Duplex" (Double), returned Sister Claire.

This horror of the ablative, when the ablative was absolutely necessary,
aroused once more the hilarity of the audience, and proved that Sister
Claire's devil was just as poor a Latin scholar as the superior's, and
Barre, fearing some new linguistic eccentricity on the part of the evil
spirit, adjourned the meeting to another day.

The paucity of learning shown in the answers of the nuns being sufficient
to convince any fairminded person that the whole affair was a ridiculous
comedy, the bailiff felt encouraged to persevere until he had unravelled
the whole plot. Consequently, at three o'clock in the afternoon, he
returned to the convent, accompanied by his clerk, by several
magistrates, and by a considerable number of the best known people of
Loudun, and asked to see the superior. Being admitted, he announced to
Barre that he had come to insist on the superior being separated from
Sister Claire, so that each could be exorci