sometimes some hope: perhaps he would let himself be touched, perhaps a tear would escape him when he discovered this surprise, this mark of so great a love. “He will see how I love him; he will think that it is sweet to be together.” Thus she lost herself for days in her dreams, which usually ended in fits of complete prostration.

‘At last the day came when the set of linen was complete. What to do with it? The idea of forcing him to accept a set, to be her debtor in something, took possession of her absolutely.

‘She wanted, if I dare say so, to steal his thanks, violently to force him to be obliged to her for something. That is what she imagined. It had no common sense in it, it was a trick easily found out: but her reason was asleep, and for a long time now she had only followed the will-o’-the-wisps of her disordered imagination.

‘It was the time of the Christmas festival. After the midnight Mass the vicar had a custom of receiving at his vicarage the mayor and the notables of the village, and serving them a light repast. The vicarage was joined to the church. Besides the principal entrance on the village square, it had two exits: one leading to the inside of the vestry, and so putting the church and the priest in communication: the other, at the end of the garden, led into the fields. The manor-house of Kermelle was about a quarter of a league away. To save the young lad who came to take lessons from the vicar a detour, he had been given the key of this back door. The poor possessed girl secured this key during the midnight Mass, and entered the vicarage. The vicar’s servant, so as to be able to go to the Mass, had laid the table beforehand. Our mad girl rapidly took off all the linen and hid it in the manor-house.

‘When the people came out from Mass, the theft was discovered at once. The excitement was extreme. First of all they were greatly astonished that only the linen had disappeared. The vicar did not want to send his guests away without their repast. At the moment when the embarrassment was most acute, the girl appeared.

‘Oh, this time, you will accept our services, sir. In a quarter of hour our linen will be brought to your house.’

‘Old Kermelle added his entreaties, and the vicar agreed, not suspecting, naturally, such a refinement of duplicity in a creature who was supposed to have only the most limited intelligence.

‘Next day, they thought over this peculiar theft. There was no trace of house-breaking. The principal door of the vicarage and that of the garden were untouched, shut as they should have been. As to the idea that the key entrusted to Kermelle could have served for the execution of the theft, an idea of this kind would have seemed extravagant; it occurred to nobody. There remained the door of the vestry; it seemed obvious that the theft could only have been accomplished through that. The sacristan had been seen in the church all the time of the service. The vestry-woman, on the other hand, had been absent on several occasions; she had been to the fireplace of the vestry to get charcoal for the censers; she had attended to two or three other little matters: suspicion, then, fell on her. She was an excellent woman; her guilt appeared superlatively improbable: but what was to be done against overwhelming coincidences? People couldn’t get away from this reasoning: the thief came in by the vestry door; now the vestry-woman alone could have gone through that door, and it is proved that in reality she did go through it: she admits it herself.

‘At that time the idea was too often yielded to that it was right that every crime should be followed by an arrest. That gave a great idea of the extraordinary sagacity of justice, of the promptitude with which it surveyed and the sureness with which it seized on the scent of a crime. The innocent woman was taken away on foot between two policemen. The effect of the police, when they arrived in the village with their glittering arms and their fine leather straps, was immense. Everybody wept; the vestry-woman alone remained calm, and told them all that she was certain her innocence would be brought to light.

‘In fact, next day or the day after, the impossibility of the supposition that had been made was recognized. The third day the villagers hardly dared to accost one another. Everybody in fact had the same thought,