mont threatened her with the full weight of his displeasure, but
she answered, weeping bitterly, that all she now dreaded was her sin, for
though the mercy of the Saviour was great, she felt that the crime she
had committed could never be pardoned. M. de Laubardemont exclaimed that
it was the demon who dwelt in her who was speaking, but she replied that
the only demon by whom she had even been possessed was the spirit of
vengeance, and that it was indulgence in her own evil thoughts, and not a
pact with the devil, which had admitted him into her heart.

With these words she withdrew slowly, still weeping, and going into the
garden, attached one end of the cord round her neck to the branch of a
tree, and hanged herself. But some of the sisters who had followed her
cut her down before life was extinct.

The same day an order for her strict seclusion was issued for her as for
Sister Claire, and the circumstances that she was a relation of M. de
Laubardemont did not avail to lessen her punishment in view of the
gravity of her fault.

It was impossible to continue the exorcisms other nuns might be tempted
to follow the example, of the superior and Sister Claire, and in that
case all would be lost. And besides, was not Urbain Grandier well and
duly convicted? It was announced, therefore, that the examination had
proceeded far enough, and that the judges would consider the evidence and
deliver judgment.

This long succession of violent and irregular breaches of law procedure,
the repeated denials of his claim to justice, the refusal to let his
witnesses appear, or to listen to his defence, all combined to convince
Grandier that his ruin was determined on; for the case had gone so far
and had attained such publicity that it was necessary either to punish
him as a sorcerer and magician or to render a royal commissioner, a
bishop, an entire community of nuns, several monks of various orders,
many judges of high reputation, and laymen of birth and standing, liable
to the penalties incurred by calumniators. But although, as this
conviction grew, he confronted it with resignation, his courage did not
fail,--and holding it to be his duty as a man and a Christian to defend
his life and honour to the end, he drew up and published another
memorandum, headed Reasons for Acquittal, and had copies laid before his
judges. It was a weighty and, impartial summing up of the whole case,
such as a stranger might have written, and began,