now
recognized that she must remain near the spring. So after bathing there
a third time and being again completely cured, she erected a monastery
on the spot and became the prioress. The institution flourished, but a
few years later the saintly prioress was horrified to see that the
Devil was busy with her nuns. Once more she sought for divine aid, and
she was given authority to imprison the Evil One should she catch him
in the monastery. This she did, but the Devil was crafty enough to make
his escape. Near the spot where the monastery stood was a mass of
heaped-up boulders, through which led a way called the Chasm Road which
led to a rocky aperture of unknown depth. This was fabled to afford
egress and ingress to the Devil in his passage out of and back to the
infernal regions. Along this road he fled when he escaped from the
monastery; St. Enimie fearlessly pursued, but the agile demon was on
the point of slipping back again into his own realm, when the saint
made a supreme appeal and called upon the rocks to help her. As she
raised her arms in supplication, one of the largest boulders, called
"La Sourde," moved of its own accord and fell upon the Devil, pinning
him fast to the ground beneath its ponderous weight. In hisi rage and
despair he made frantic efforts to free himself and his bloody claws
left an imprint on the rock. This mark, still observable a half-century
ago, though it has now disappeared, was prosaically explained by
scientists as a stain of iron-oxide. The other boulders were in motion
to assist in the good work, but when the Devil had been caught they
stopped short in their downward course, and this is supposed to account
for the strange angles at which they stand.21 It would be pleasant to fancy that His Satanic Majesty eventually failed
" Mile. Marie König, " Poupées et légendes de France," Parie, n. d., pp. 77-80.
