“That’s a good one.  The ‘possessed’ are made so or kept so by the priests themselves, who are thus assured of subjects and accomplices, especially in the convents.  All kinds of murderous and sadistic follies can be covered with the antique and pious mantle of exorcism.”

“Let us be just,” said Carhaix.  “The Satanist would not be complete if he were not an abominable hypocrite.”

“Hypocrisy and pride are perhaps the most characteristic vices of the perverse priest,” suggested Durtal.

“But in the long run,” Des Hermies went on, “in spite of the most adroit precautions, everything comes out.  Up to now I have spoken only of local Satanistic associations, but there are others, more extensive, which ravage the old world and the new, for Diabolism is quite up to date in one respect.  It is highly centralized and very capably administered.  There are committees, subcommittees, a sort of curia, which rules America and Europe, like the curia of a pope.

“The biggest of these societies founded as long ago as 1855 is the society of the Re-Theurgistes-Optimates.  Beneath an apparent unity it is divided into two camps, one aspiring to destroy the universe and reign over the ruins, the other thinking simply of imposing upon the world a demoniac cult of which it shall be high priest.

“This society has its seat in America.  It was formerly directed by one Longfellow, an adventurer, born in Scotland, who entitled himself grand priest of the New Evocative Magism.  For a long time it has had branches in France, Italy, Germany, Russia, Austria, even Turkey.

“It is at the present moment moribund, or perhaps quite dead, but another has just been created.  The object of this one is to elect an antipope who will be the exterminating Antichrist.  And those are only two of them.  How many others are there, more or less important numerically, more or less secret, which, by common accord, at ten o’clock the morning of the Feast of the Holy Sacrament, celebrate black masses at Paris, Rome, Bruges, Constantinople, Nantes, Lyons, and in Scotland—­where sorcerers swarm!

“Then, outside of these universal associations and local assemblies, isolated cases abound, on which little light can be shed, and that with great difficulty.  Some years ago there died, in a state of penitence, a certain comte de Lautree, who presented several churches with statues which he had bewitched so as to satanize the faithful.  At Bruges a priest of my acquaintance contaminates the holy ciboria and uses them to prepare spells and conjurements.  Finally one may, among all these, cite a clear case of possession.  It is the case of Cantianille, who in 1865 turned not only the city of Auxerre, but the whole diocese of Sens, upside down.

“This Cantianille, placed in a convent of Mont-Saint-Sulpice, was violated, when she was barely fifteen years old, by a priest who dedicated her to the Devil.  This priest himself had been corrupted, in early childhood, by an ecclesiastic belonging to a sect of possessed which was created the very day Louis XVI was guillotined.