“What happened in this convent, where many nuns, evidently mad with hysteria, were associated in erotic devilry and sacrilegious rages with Cantianille, reads for all the world like the procedure in the trials of wizards of long ago, the histories of Gaufredy and Madeleine Palud, of Urbain Grandier and Madeleine Bavent, or the Jesuit Girard and La Cadiere, histories, by the way, in which much might be said about hystero-epilepsy on one hand and about Diabolism on the other.  At any rate, Cantianille, after being sent away from the convent, was exorcised by a certain priest of the diocese, abbe Thorey, who seems to have been contaminated by his patient.  Soon at Auxerre there were such scandalous scenes, such frenzied outbursts of Diabolism, that the bishop had to intervene.  Cantianille was driven out of the country, abbe Thorey was disciplined, and the affair went to Rome.

“The curious thing about it is that the bishop, terrified by what he had seen, requested to be dismissed, and retired to Fontainebleau, where he died, still in terror, two years later.”

“My friends,” said Carhaix, consulting his watch, “it is a quarter to eight.  I must be going up into the tower to sound the angelus.  Don’t wait for me.  Have your coffee.  I shall rejoin you in ten minutes.”

He put on his Greenland costume, lighted a lantern, and opened the door.  A stream of glacial air poured in.  White molecules whirled in the blackness.

“The wind is driving the snow in through the loopholes along the stair,” said the woman.  “I am always afraid that Louis will take cold in his chest this kind of weather.  Oh, well, Monsieur des Hermies, here is the coffee.  I appoint you to the task of serving it.  At this hour of day my poor old limbs won’t hold me up any longer.  I must go lie down.”

“The fact is,” sighed Des Hermies, when they had wished her good night, “the fact is that mama Carhaix is rapidly getting old.  I have vainly tried to brace her up with tonics.  They do no good.  She has worn herself out.  She has climbed too many stairs in her life, poor woman!”

“All the same, it’s very curious, what you have told me,” said Durtal.  “To sum up, the most important thing about Satanism is the black mass.”

“That and the witchcraft and incubacy and succubacy which I will tell you about; or rather, I will get another more expert than I in these matters to tell you about them.  Sacrilegious mass, spells, and succubacy.  There you have the real quintessence of Satanism.”

“And these hosts consecrated in blasphemous offices, what use is made of them when they are not simply destroyed?”

“But I already told you.  They are used to consummate infamous acts.  Listen,” and Des Hermies took from the bell-ringers bookshelf the fifth volume of the Mystik of Goerres.  “Here is the flower of them all: 

“’These priests, in their baseness, often go so far as to celebrate the mass with great hosts which then they cut through the middle and afterwards glue to a parchment, similarly cloven, and use abominably to satisfy their passions.’”

“Holy sodomy, in other words?”