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The juge de paix, as we have seen, pronounced that the clearest point in the case was 'the absence of known cause for the effects, and he non-suited Thorel, the plaintiff. The cause of the phenomena is, of course, as obscure for us as for the worthy magistrate.
Massenet's latest work, 'Thérèse' , is a return to the breathless, palpitating style of 'La Navarraise. It is a story of the revolution, high-strung and emotional. Thérèse is the wife of the Girondin Thorel, who has bought the castle of Clerval, in the hope of eventually restoring it to its former owner, Armand de Clerval. Armand returns in disguise, on his way to join the Royalists in Vendée.
'In the evening, said Bunel, 'Lemonier en eut une crise de nerfs dans laquelle il avait perdu connaissance. Leaving the boys' sworn evidence, and returning to the narrative with its gossip, we learn that Thorel boasted of his success, and said that, if he could but touch one of the lads again, the furniture would dance, and the windows would be broken.
'A kind of human phantasm, clad in a blouse, haunted me for fifteen days wherever I went; none but myself could see it. He was dragged by the leg by a mysterious force. 'As soon as I saw him I recognised the phantasm which had haunted me for a fortnight, and I said to M. Tinel: "There is the man who follows me". Thorel knelt to the boy, asked his pardon, and pulled violently at his clothes.
The famous action against the ghosts in the Eyrbyggja Saga was not before a Christian court, and is too well known for quotation. Thorel v. Tinel. Action for libel in 1851. Mr. Dale Owen's incomplete version of this affair. The suit really a trial for witchcraft. Spectral obsession. Movements of objects. Rappings. Incidental folklore. Old G. Thorel and the cure. The wizard's revenge.
On a farm near the cure's house in Cideville was another shepherd, named Thorel, a man of forty, described as dull, illiterate, and given to boasting about his powers as a disciple of the venerable G. Popular opinion decided that G. employed Thorel to procure his vengeance; it was necessary that a sorcerer should touch his intended victim, and G. had not the same conveniency for doing so as Thorel.
As defendant, perhaps, the cure could not be asked to corroborate these statements. The evidence of the other boy, Bunel, was that, on Nov. 26, he heard first a rush of wind, then tappings on the wall. He corroborated Lemonier's testimony to the musical airs knocked out, the volatile furniture, and the recognition in Thorel of the phantom.
At the trial of Bridget Bishop, in the court of Oyer and Terminer, held at Salem, June 2, 1692, there was testimony brought in that a man striking once at the place where a bewitched person said the shape of Mrs. Then followed a curious scene in which Thorel tried, in presence of the maire, to touch the cure, who retreated to the end of the room, and struck the shepherd with his cane.
The haunted parlour boarder. Examples of magical tripping up, and provoked hallucinations. Case of Dr. Gibotteau and Berthe the hospital nurse. Similar case in the Salem affair, 1692. Evidence of witnesses to abnormal phenomena. Mr. Robert de Saint Victor. M. de Mirville. Thorel non-suited. Other modern French examples of witchcraft. Perhaps the last trial for witchcraft was the case of Thorel v.
Just as when a man prosecutes another for saying that he cheated at cards, or when a woman prosecutes another for saying that the plaintiff stole diamonds, it is really the guilt or innocence of the plaintiff that is in question, so the issue before the court at Yerville was: 'Is Thorel a warlock or not? The court decided that he himself had been the chief agent in spreading the slander against himself, he was non-suited, and had to pay costs, but as to the real cause of the events which were attributed to the magic of Thorel, the court was unable to pronounce an opinion.
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