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The marquis merrily insisted that it was a case of exorcism; that the devil was in the castle, and out he must go; that if Satan assisted in the detection of the guilty and the purging of the innocent, then was he divided against himself, and what could be better for the church or the world?
The good father had not learned as a priest to defy the spiritual host, whom, as a soldier, he had dreaded more than any mortal enemy; but he began to recite, with chattering teeth, the exorcism of the church, "Conjuro vos omnes, spiritus maligni, magni, atque parvi," when he was interrupted by the voice of Eveline, who called out, "Is it you, Father Aldrovand?"
"Certainly you are very clever," said Manuel, when they had passed this serpent. "Still, your employment of those first two articles was unprecedented, and your disposal of the carved figure absolutely embarrassed me." "Before such danger as confronted us, Manuel, it does not pay to be squeamish," replied Niafer, "and my exorcism was good Dirgham."
One thing is certain: that in the dioceses of humanely sceptical prelates the cases of possession were sporadic only, and either cured, or at least hindered from becoming epidemic, by episcopal mandate. Cardinal Mazarin, when Papal vice-legate at Avignon, made an end of the trade of exorcism within his government. But scepticism, down to the beginning of the eighteenth century, was the exception.
Ambrose during the search; and, before the service for exorcism commenced, one of them gave the well-known signs of horror and distress which were customarily excited by the presence of what had been the tabernacle of divine grace. The skeletons were raised and transported to the neighbouring church of St. Fausta.
I know that the creature was there before the exorcism, but whether it was there afterward or not is a thing which I cannot be so positive about.
The "Viciousness of Anne Thorn's opticks," the silly character of the clergyman's evidence, and the spiritual juggles at exorcism, all these things roused his merriment. As for Jane's confession, it was the result of ensnaring questions.
"The reason we feel so certain that our work is pleasing to God is that it is also pleasing to the king," wrote Pere Lactance. The arrival of the bishop was followed by a new exorcism; and of this an eye-witness, who was a good Catholic and a firm believer in possession, has left us a written description, more interesting than any we could give.
Death himself cannot quit scores with him; like the demoniac in the gospel, he lives among tombs, nor is all the holy water shed by widows and orphans a sufficient exorcism to dispossess him. Thus the cat sucks your breath and the fiend your blood; nor can the brotherhood of witchfinders, so sagely instituted with all their terror, wean the familiars.
A son of Satan, moved by a most diabolical ingenuity, had converted it into a den of wickedness surpassing sinful belief; and the procession and awful conclave were to assist His Serenity in restoring the water to wholesomeness, impossible, in the belief of consumers, except by solemn exorcism.... Heed now, my friend I am about to tap the heart of my story.
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