called into the dormitory of ’les enfans,’—­novices,—­with holy water and everything proper.  Knocking was going on, and by a system of knocks, the spirit said it wanted its body to be taken out of holy ground, said it was Madame St Mesmin, and was damned for Lutheranism and extravagance!  The experiment was repeated before churchmen and laymen, but the lay observers rushed up to the place whence the knocks came where they found nothing.  They hid some one there, after which there was no knocking.  On a later day, the noises as in Cock Lane and elsewhere, began by scratching.  “M. l’Official,” the bishop’s vicar, ’ouit gratter, qui etoit le commencement de ladite accoutummee tumulte dudit Esprit’.  But no replies were given to questions, which the Franciscans attributed to the disturbance of the day before, and the breaking into various places by the people.  One Alicourt seems to have been regarded as the ‘medium,’ and the sounds were heard as in Cock Lane and at Tedworth when he was in bed.  Later experiments gave no results, and the friars were severely punished, and obliged to recant their charges against Madame de Mesmin.  The case, scratches, raps, false accusations and all, is parallel to that of the mendacious ‘Scratching Fanny,’ examined by Dr. Johnson and Douglas, Bishop of Salisbury.  In that affair the child was driven by threats to make counterfeit noises, but, as to the method of imposture at Orleans, nothing is said in the contemporary legal document.

We now turn to the account by Sleidan, in Wierus.  The provost’s wife had left directions for a cheap funeral in the Franciscan Church.  This economy irritated the Fathers, who only got six pieces of gold, ‘having expected much greater plunder’.  ‘Colimannus’ (Colimant), an exorcist named in the process, was the ringleader.  They stationed a lad in the roof of the church, who rapped with a piece of wood, and made a great noise ’when they mumbled their prayers at night’.  St. Mesmin appealed to the king, the Fathers were imprisoned, and the youth was kept in Fumee’s house, and plied with questions.  He confessed the trick, and the friars were punished.  Of all this confession, and of the mode of imposture, nothing is said in the legal process.  From the whole affair came a popular saying, c’est l’esprit d’Orleans, when any fable was told.  Buchanan talks of cauta parum pietas in fraude paranda.

The evidence, it may be seen, is not very coherent, and the Franciscans may have been the deceived, not the deceivers. {117} Wierus himself admits that he often heard a brownie in his father’s house, which frightened him not a little, and Georgius Pictorius avers that a noisy spirit haunted his uncle’s house for thirty years, a very protracted practical joke, if it was a practical joke. {118} This was a stone-throwing demon.