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Updated: June 9, 2025
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.
She had been taught some traditional feats of rural sorcery, among others that of making a man stumble, or fall, as he walked. The doctor does not make any allusion to the Cideville affair, and it seems probable that this trick is part of the peasant's magical repertoire, or, rather, that the peasant warlocks boast of being able to perform the trick.
Zaire, written in a few weeks, was played for the first time on the 13th of August, 1732; he had dedicated it to Mr. Falkner, an English merchant who had overwhelmed him with attentions during his exile. "My satisfaction grows as I write to tell you of it," he writes to his friend Cideville in the fulness of joy: "never was a piece so well played as Zaire at the fourth appearance.
At the lowest, we have all the notes of sorcery as our rude ancestors knew it, in this modern affair. Two hundred years earlier, Thorel would have been burned, and G., too, probably, for the Maire of Cideville swore that before the disturbances, and three weeks after G. was let out of prison, Thorel had warned him of the trouble which G. would bring on the cure.
We may admit that, from rural tradition, the boys might have learned what the customary phenomena are, knocks, raps, moving tables, heavy objects sailing tranquilly about a room. It would be less easy for them to produce these phenomena, nor did the people of all classes who flocked to Cideville detect any imposture.
The affair of Cideville by no means stands alone in modern France. In 1853, two doctors and other witnesses signed a deposition as to precisely similar phenomena attending Adelaide Francoise Millet, a girl of twelve, at Songhien, in Champagne. The trouble, as at Cock Lane, began by a sound of scratching on the wood of her bed.
Thus all the notes of a bad affair of witchcraft are attested in a modern trial, under the third Empire. Finally, some curious folklore is laid bare, light is cast on rural life and superstition, and a singular corroboration of a singular statement, much more recent than the occurrences at Cideville, is obtained.
In March, 1849, M. Tinel, Cure of Cideville, visited a sick peasant, and advised him to discard old G., the shepherd magical, and send for a physician.
A curious piece of traditional folklore came out, but only as hearsay, in court. M. Cheval, Maire of Cideville, deposed that a M. Savoye told him that Thorel had once been shepherd to a M. Tricot. Gibotteau, on his experiments with a hospital nurse called Berthe. This woman, according to the doctor, had the power of making him see hallucinations, of a nature more or less horrible, from a distance.
If I be still in Holland when your orders come, I will obey in a moment. Letter Second, of which a fragment may be given, is to one Cideville, a month later; all the more genuine as there was no chance of the King's hearing about this one.
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