not appear. The act was, of course, ascribed
to the devil.

So it happened, during the reign of Henry
the Fourth of France, to a quack in Paris,
named Csesar, who professed himself skilled
in astrology, necromancy, chiromancy, physic,
the art of divination, and many other occult
acquirements. He also sold talismans,
extracted teeth without pain, and, to those who
were more than commonly curious exhibited
the devil himself with horns, hoofs, and
maleficent tail. He carried on his trade
until the year sixteen hundred and eleven,
when it was currently reported in Paris
that he and another sorcerer had been
strangled by the fiend. The details of how it
came to pass were published in a small
pamphlet, and great faith was attached to
the narration: for, Dr. Cassar and his friend
were never seen again. But, the public forgot
that there was a prison called the Bastille,
out of which no necromancy could deliver
those whom the State had once shut up.

Amongst the number of those who had
no objection to the designation of sorcerer,
Jacques Eaollet, a native of Maumusson,
near Nantes, deserves honourable mention.
He was a lycanthrope, and if the account be
true which Eickins gives, he must have looked
something like one; he says that ,when
Eaollet was captured—very probably by the
aid of dogs—his hair floated over his
shoulders like a mane, his eyes were buried
in his head, his brows knit, his nails
excessively long, and he smelt so disagreeably that
nobody liked to go near him. Eaollet was
condemned to death by the Parliament of
Angers, and during his examination he asked
a gentleman who was present if he did not
remember once to have discharged his
arquebuss at three wolves? The gentleman, who
was a noted sportsman, readily admitted that
he might have done so, upon which Eaollet
declared that he was one of those wolves,
and if they had not been put to flight by
the peppering they received on that occasion,
they should have devoured a woman who was
working in a field hard-by. While the mania
for confession was on him Eaollet added that
it had been a frequent custom with him to
devour lawyers, and bailiffs, and people of
that sort, but their flesh was so tough he could
never digest it. Surely some compensation
ought to have been made to Eaollet after this
avowal, but the Angevine parliament only
recompensed him with the stake and faggot.

Akin to the self-elected witches were the
impostors who declared themselves to be
possessed by devils: the race is not extinct
at the present day, only their practice assumes
a milder form. Amongst the most celebrated
of these convulsionnaires was Martha
Brossier, the daughter of a carpet-weaver of
Eomorantin who, in the year fifteen hundred
and sixty-nine, being then twenty-two years
of age, gave out that the Evil One had
entered her body. She went from town to
town, speaking Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and
English, before people who did not understand
those languages, but—what was more
intelligible to them—she also cut some very
remarkable capers, suspending herself in the
air four feet above the ground. The official
of orleans who entertained doubts of the
young lady's honesty, informed her that he
should exorcise the demon, and straightway
began to conjugate some Latin verbs, on
hearing which she threw herself on the
ground, making the most violent contortions.
She was then conducted before M. Miron, the
bishop of Angers, who had her placed with
some persons in whom he could confide.
Unknown to her they put holy water into her
drink, but it produced no effect; they then
presented her with some plain water in a
beuitier, and Martha, believing it to have
been blessed, went through her customary
grimaces. The bishop, then, with Virgil in
his hand, pretended to exorcise her, and
opening upon the demon with " Arma
virunquecano," the convulsions were redoubled.
Satisfied, in consequence that Madamoiselle
Brossier was an impostor, the bishop turned her
out of the city, and she proceeded to Paris,
where for a time she divided the opinions of
the medical world as to her actual condition.
Finally, however, they declared that Martha
exhibited very few signs of disease, a great
many of fraud, and that the devil had
nothing to do with the matter (Nihil a daemone,
multa ficta, a morbo pauca). The parliament
of Paris took up the affair, sent Martha back
again to Romorantin, and prohibited her
from leaving her father's house under pain
of corporal punishment. She managed,
notwithstanding to get away again, and tried to
take in the bishop of Vermont; but, being
unsuccessful in the attempt she fled to Rome,
where she was shut up in a convent, and
there the history of the possession ended.

Let me add to this account of the self-
deluded, the cruel, the ignorant, and the
designing, the brief history of a man who,
happening to be somewhat more ingenious
than his neighbours, was involved in a charge
of sorcery through which he lost his life.
This person was named Allix, a native of
Aix, in Provence, where he lived about the
middle of the seventeenth century. He was
a skilful musician, and having a great turn
for mechanical contrivances, invented a skeleton
figure which, by means of some concealed
mechanism, played upon a guitar. This
instrument was tuned in unison with one on
which he played himself, and the figure was
then set at an open window, and the skeleton
and Monsieur Allix used to perform duets
together, in the fine calm summer evenings.
The people of Aix marvelled at first, and
then trembled. Monsieur Allix was
denounced for witchcraft. In spite of all his
attempts at explanation, his judges refused to
believe that the automaton performed by
mechanism alone, and sentenced him to be