We can now much more clearly appreciate Baron Harkonnen's fear. Count Fenring was indirectly threatening to have such an anonymous proces verbal drawn up against himself (being in fact if not in form unsigned, such an accusation richly deserved the adjective "loose"). When brought before the court, Fenring would then have called Harkonnen as a defense witness, catching the Baron in this dilemma: if Harkonnen refused to testify, he could be jailed on contempt; if he testified before a truthtrance observer, he would certainly have revealed more than enough to subject himself to a whole spectrum pf Imperial Charges. Despite this brilliant and intuitive piece of scholarship, Perobler felt that what he had found still did not completely explain the situation of Alia's proces verbal. Surely she could not have called all the Fedaykin as defense witnesses; that line of action would have been too much for even the complacent courts of her regency. As Perobler discovered, Alia directed that the proces verbal charging 423 crimes against the Impenum be drawn up not by "Agnan" but against him, and signed simply, 'a Fedaykin " She then directed the court to bring an indictment against the mdi vidual Fedaykin who (so the fiction went) had made the accusation All Fedaykin were summoned to establish who that anonymous (indeed, nonexistent) accuser had been Aha thus took serious advantage of the comic lament that only with the proces vefbat could both plaintiff and defendant be guilty In running down these facts, Perobler stum bled across one of history's most savage ironies Alia's proces verbal against the Fedaykin was, of course, aimed indirectly against her mother In countering the threat Lady Jessica sent a simple message to Stilgar ' 'My daughter is possessed and must be put to the trial" (Sugar's Chronicles HI 92) With this short message, Lady Jessica played on the deep revulsion the Bremen felt for possession by spirits, and at the same time included a reply for Aha alone Both the pre born Aha and her mother, die Bene Gessent-tramed Reverend Mother Jessica, had the experience of all their predecessors avail able to their conscious minds Both could therefore have recognized that m one of the ancestor tongues of Galaeh, the official impen al language, the first use of proces verbal was m the title of a book Although only that tide has survived, it is nevertheless instructive A Relation of the Devill Balams Departure out of the Body of the Mother Prtoresse of the Vrsulttie Nuns of London, with the Extract of the proces verballt touching the Exorasmes wrought at London (1635) Lady Jessica was certainly aw*re of the fitness of this coincidence, whether Aha knew but disregarded it in her choice of legal maneuver even Perobler does not venture to guess WEM PRCJ-DOOR.