Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/87

Rh attended by their acolytes, and went through with the benedictions, adjurations, and aspersions prescribed by the ritual. No sooner did the girl perceive them than she cried out, "There come the parsons with their hocus-pocus!" and as they recited the litany, instead of responding with ora pro nobis, she used the word said to have been uttered by Cambroche at the battle of Waterloo when the Old Guard was summoned to surrender, repeating it three times in an angry tone. This conduct only confirmed the exorcists in their theory of diabolism. Indeed, one young priest recognized the different devils by their accent in speaking, and made a long list of their names: Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Mammon, etc. Thus encouraged, the conjurers continued their efforts with unabated zeal, and finally succeeded, according to their own statement, in casting out all the large demons, and had only twenty-eight lesser demons to expel, when the bishop of Versailles, in view of the scandal which the discussion of the affair by the press threatened to bring on the Church, recalled the director of the seminary, and put an end to the ceremony which he had himself authorized. What became of the residue of devilkins that remained in possession of the maiden we are not informed.

About the same time, in the spring of 1893, in the French hamlet of Cras-Culot, the parents of a small boy who had fallen ill and was assumed to have been bewitched, enticed into their house a woman suspected of having caused the trouble and commanded her to exorcise the victim of her sorceries. On her protesting that she knew nothing of such arts, the parents of the child and their assembled friends began to beat the supposed witch and to stick hairpins into her neck and shoulders, and one of the fanatical crowd expressed his regret that it was no longer possible to burn her publicly at the stake. Perhaps a private auto da fé would have been held had she not succeeded finally in escaping and claiming the protection of the police court, which sentenced her principal persecutors each to fourteen days imprisonment and a fine of twenty-six francs.

In June, 1891, a Viennese waitress named Fanny Strobl brought a suit for slander against Maria Wirzar, a servant girl, who had sent the plaintiff several postal cards, addressing her as "cannibal, witch, night hag," and accusing her of coming down the chimney in the dark and sucking all the blood out of her (Maria Wirzar's) veins until she was reduced to skin and bone. The curiosity of the judge was excited, and he requested the defendant to state more clearly what she meant. "Well," she replied, "such a night hag comes over a person when asleep like a current of air, benumbing and stupefying him. If the sleeper is able to rouse himself and cry out 'Jesus! Mary! Joseph!' then the witch