Berthe de Courrière

Berthe de Courrière (June 1852, Lille – 14 June 1916, She was his model for the bust of Marianne for the Sénat as well as for the colossal statue of the Republic for the 1878 Exposition Universelle.

Occultism de Courrière was interested in occultism and found herself involved in a Black Mass affair that nearly went awry and earned her a month 's stay in a psychiatric hospital. In the early morning of 8 September 1890 the Bruges police were informed that a naked woman was parading on the fortresses near the Smedenpoort. She showed signs of mental disorder and was taken to the Sint-Juliaan psychiatric institution in the Boeveriestraat where she was identified as Berthe de Courrière. On 6 October, Gourmont travelled from Paris and removed her from the institution. It turned out that de Courrière had spent the night of 7 to 8 September at Moerstraat 36, the house of Canon Louis Van Haecke, rector of the chapel of the Holy Blood and alleged exorcist. She was also in touch with ex-Father Joseph-Antoine Boullan, who was laicized as a heretic.

de Courrière had to be interned a second time in Brussels in 1906, against Jean-Martin Charcot, which is characteristic of the hatred that patients sometimes devote to their psychiatrist.

She had a morbid passion for ecclesiastics, whom she endeavored to seduce by all means. Rachilde claims to have seen her take out of her tapestry bag of consecrated hosts to throw them to stray dogs. and Le Fantôme (1893), both tales of religio-sadistic eroticism, on de Courrière.