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Concerning the bewitching of Elizabeth and Deborah Pacy, aged eleven and nine, their father declared that Deborah was suddenly taken with lameness.
In September, 1800, the two coaches from Caen to Paris were stopped between Evreux and Pacy, at a place called Riquiqui, by two hundred armed brigands, and 48,000 livres belonging to the State taken. Again, in 1800, the coach from Rouen to Pont-Audemer was attacked by twenty Chouans and a part of the funds carried off.
This was what the committee had expected, and they declared their belief that the whole transaction was a mere imposture. One would have supposed that every one else must come to the same conclusion, but Mr. Pacy, the girl's father, offered an explanation of her mistake that seems to have found favor.
Even so influential a man as Thomas Dudley did not disdain to leave by specification to his daughter Pacy a "ffeather beed & boulster." In 1666 Nicholas Upsall, of Boston, left a "Bedstead fitted with a Rope Matt & Curtains to it."
Edmunds for the County of Suffolk, the Tenth day of March, in the Sixteenth Year of the Reign of our Sovereign, Lord King Charles II., before Mathew Hale, Knight, Lord Chief Baron of His Majesties Court of Exchequer; Rose Callender and Amy Duny, Widows, both of Leystoff, in the county aforesaid, were severally indicted for bewitching Elizabeth and Anne Durent, Jane Bocking, Susan Chandler, William Durent, Elizabeth and Deborah Pacy and the said Callender and Duny, being arrainged upon the same indictments, pleaded not guilty; and afterwards upon a long evidence, were found guilty, and thereupon had judgment to dye for the same."
On the 13th of July its army under the Baron de Wimpffen, a constitutional monarchist, was met by a Parisian army at Pacy, 30 miles from the capital. The Normans met with defeat, a defeat they were never able to retrieve. On the same day a dramatic event was occurring at Paris, the last despairing stroke of the Gironde against its detested opponents.
Henry was ever ready for peace, and a new conference took place at Chatillon on the Indre, where it was found that Philip's proposition was the exchange of his conquests in Berri for those of Richard in Toulouse, and the handing over to him of the castle of Pacy, near Mantes, as a pledge that the treaty would be kept.
"He may have stopped at Poissy; he may have stopped at Triel; if he did not get out at Meulan, he may have got out at Mantes, unless he got out at Rolleboise, or if he did not go on as far as Pacy, with the choice of turning to the left at Evreus, or to the right at Laroche-Guyon. Run after him, aunty. What the devil am I to write to that good old soul?"
The maid, he said, "might be deceived by a suspicion that the Witch touched her when she did not." One would suppose that this subtle suggestion would have broken the spell, and that Mr. Pacy would have been laughed out of court. Alas for the rarity of humor in seventeenth-century court rooms!
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