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. The interior of her residence, according to
Henry de Groux, "is the most heterogeneous thing I could ever have imagined in the taste of this half-pagan, half-catholic, or so-called world. These are only chasubles, altar cloths, objects of worship adapted to the most unexpected destinations, monstrances, corporals, dalmatics, candelabra with multicolored candles, mysteriously lit in corners of shadow, near a superb lectern on its wings works by Félicien Rops or the Marquis de Sade. The scent of
benzoin,
amber and rose essence alternately suffocate with those of
incense." As a practitioner of the cult of Satan, her vault in the cemetery of Pere Lachaise still attracts lovers of black masses. ==In popular culture==