A prolonged murmur arose from the gathering, but, upon some halberdiers
advancing, all became silent.

"We have seen, with grief, the young and respectable Superior of the
Ursulines tear her bosom with her own hands and grovel in the dust; we
have seen the sisters, Agnes, Claire, and others, deviate from the
modesty of their sex by impassioned gestures and unseemly laughter.
When impious men have inclined to doubt the presence of the demons,
and we ourselves felt our convictions shaken, because they refused to
answer to unknown questions in Greek or Arabic, the reverend fathers
have, to establish our belief, deigned to explain to us that the
malignity of evil spirits being extreme, it was not surprising that they
should feign this ignorance in order that they might be less pressed with
questions; and that in their answers they had committed various solecisms
and other grammatical faults in order to bring contempt upon themselves,
so that out of this disdain the holy doctors might leave them in quiet.
Their hatred is so inveterate that just before performing one of their
miraculous feats, they suspended a rope from a beam in order to involve
the reverend personages in a suspicion of fraud, whereas it has been
deposed on oath by credible people that there never had been a cord in
that place.

"But, my lords, while Heaven was thus miraculously explaining itself by
the mouths of its holy interpreters, another light has just been thrown
upon us. At the very time the judges were absorbed in profound
meditation, a loud cry was heard near the hall of council; and upon going
to the spot, we found the body of a young lady of high birth. She had
just exhaled her last breath in the public street, in the arms of the
reverend Father Mignon, Canon; and we learned from the said father here
present, and from several other grave personages, that, suspecting the