A SURVIVAL OF MEDIEVAL CREDULITY. 585 



with his wliip. He then descended from the carriage, and soon 

 found the wafers covered with blood. They were carried back 

 with solemn ceremony to the church, which became a place of pil- 

 grimage with a wonder-working pyx. What a hardened and hope- 

 less skeptic a man must be, who is not convinced by conclusive evi- 

 dence of this kind, when even horses bear witness to the truth by 

 their genuflections! 



Still more sensational was the part played in this spicy comedy 

 by Miss Diana Vaughan, whom Taxil introduced to the public as 

 a descendant of the Rosicrucian alchemist and Oxford professor 

 Thomas Vaughan, and who was said to have in her possession a copy 

 of the written pact with Satan, signed by her ancestor on March 

 25, 1645. The young lady claimed to have been born in Paris on 

 February 29, 1874. The fact that there was no February 29th in 

 the year 1874 would make this date an impossible natal day for 

 ordinary mortals, but a person with Luciferian blood in her veins 

 would naturally take no note of the divisions of time as recorded 

 in human calendars; for, according to Taxil, her forbear was 

 the goddess Astarte, who appeared to Thomas Yaughan on a sum- 

 mer night in 1646, while he was sojourning among the American 

 Indians, in all her marvelous beauty, bringing with her a bed sur- 

 rounded with flames and attended by little demons bearing flowers. 

 She approached Vaughan and put a wedding ring on his finger, 

 and eleven days later gave birth to a daughter named Diana, from 

 whom the Miss Diana Vaughan in question traced her descent. 

 Several instances of similar commerce with incarnate demons are 

 said to have occurred in the history of her family, so that she in- 

 herited a strong Satanic taint; even her own mother was guilty of 

 the same criminal conduct. Her inherited qualities were carefully 

 fostered by education, inasmuch as she was brought up by her 

 father and uncle on strictly Luciferian principles. One day, when 

 her instructors were praising Cain and Judas as ideals of excellence, 

 she expressed some doubt of the superior worthiness of the fratri- 

 cide and venal traitor. This dangerous unbelief was attributed to 

 angelical possession, and it was soon ascertained that the archangel 

 Kaphael was the cause of the lapse from Luciferianism. Recourse 

 was had to exorcism, the whole process of which, as described by 

 Taxil, is a clever travesty of the ceremonial prescribed by the 

 Romish Church for the expulsion of evil spirits. The dance per- 

 formed by the father and uncle on this occasion consisted of the 

 same saltatory movements that are executed by the " procession of 

 jumpers " every year at the grave of St. Willibord, in Echternach, 

 Luxemburg.* Devil's ointment took the place of holy oil, and the 



* Cf. Popular Sci'ence Monthly, November, 1 895, p. 83. 

 vol.. Lvi. — 48 



