Canon Docre! Ah, was she
Satanic, too? No, she certainly did not act like a possessed. "Surely
this astrologer is cracked," he thought. She! And he called her image
before him, and thought that tomorrow night she would probably give
herself to him. Ah, those strange eyes of hers, those dark clouds
suddenly cloven by radiant light!

She came now and took complete possession of him, as before he had
ascended to the tower. "But if I didn't love you would I have come to
you?" That sentence which she had spoken, with a caressing inflection of
the voice, he heard again, and again he saw her mocking and tender face.

"Ah, you are dreaming," said Des Hermies, tapping him on the shoulder.
"We have to go. It's striking ten."

When they were in the street they said good night to Gevingey, who lived
on the other side of the river. Then they walked along a little way.

"Well," said Des Hermies, "are you interested in my astrologer?"

"He is slightly mad, isn't he?"

"Slightly? Humph."

"Well, his stories are incredible."

"Everything is incredible," said Des Hermies placidly, turning up the
collar of his overcoat. "However, I will admit that Gevingey astounds me
when he asserts that he was visited by a succubus. His good faith is not
to be doubted, for I know him to be a man who means what he says, though
he is vain and doctorial. I know, too, that at La Salpetriere such
occurrences are not rare. Women smitten with hystero-epilepsy see
phantoms beside them in broad daylight and mate with them in a
cataleptic state, and every night couch with visions that must be
exactly like the fluid creatures of incubacy. But these women are
hystero-epileptics, and Gevingey isn't, for I am his physician. Then,
what can be believed and what can be proved? The materialists have taken
the trouble to revise the accounts of the sorcery trials of old. They
have found in the possession-cases of the Ursulines of Loudun and the
nuns of Poitiers, in the history, even, of the convulsionists of Saint
Medard, the symptoms of major hysteria, the same contractions of the
whole system, the same muscular dissolutions, the same lethargies, even,
finally, the famous arc of the circle. And what does this demonstrate,
that these demonomaniacs were hystero-epileptics? Certainly. The
observations of Dr. Richet, expert in such matters, are conclusive, but
wherein do they invalidate possession? From the fact that the patients
of La Salpetriere are not possessed,