their devotion; and furthermore, that the
affliction of these poor sisters was so peculiar and had lasted so long,
that charity impelled all those who had the right to work for their
deliverance and the expulsion of the devils, to employ the power
entrusted to them with their office in accomplishing so worthy a task by
the forms of exorcism prescribed by the Church to its ministers; then
addressing Grandier, he said that he having been anointed as a priest
belonged to this number, and that he ought to help with all his power and
with all his energy, if the bishop were pleased to allow him to do so,
and to remit his suspension from authority. The bishop having granted
permission, the Franciscan friar offered a stole to Grandier, who,
turning towards the prelate, asked him if he might take it. On receiving
a reply in the affirmative, he passed it round his neck, and on being
offered a copy of the ritual, he asked permission to accept it as before,
and received the bishop's blessing, prostrating himself at his feet to
kiss them; whereupon the Veni Creator Spiritus having been sung, he rose,
and addressing the bishop, asked--

"'My lord, whom am I to exorcise?'"

The said bishop having replied--

"'These maidens.'

"Grandier again asked--

"'What maidens?'

"'The possessed maidens,' was the answer.

"'That is to say, my lord,' said he; 'that I am obliged to believe in the
fact of possession. The Church believes in it, therefore I too believe;
but I cannot believe that a sorcerer can cause a Christian to be
possessed unless the Christian consent.'

"Upon this, some of those present exclaimed that it was heretical to
profess such a belief; that the contrary was indubitable, believed by the
whole Church and approved by the Sorbonne. To which he replied that his
mind on that point was not yet irrevocably made up, that what he had said
was simply his own idea, and that in any case he submitted to the opinion
of the whole body of which he was only a member; that nobody was declared
a heretic for having doubts, but only for persisting in them, and that
what he had advanced was only for the purpose of drawing an assurance
from the bishop that in doing what he was about to do he would not be
abusing the authority of the Church. Sister Catherine having been
brought to him by the Franciscan as the most ignorant of all the nuns,
and the least open to the suspicion of being acquainted with Latin, he
began the exorcism in