for the poor man whose land she wasted with hail.
He pities the husband, who though himself no wizard, clearly sees his
wife to be a witch, and drags her with a rope round her neck before
Sprenger, who has her burnt.

From a cruel judge escape was sometimes possible; but from our worthy
Sprenger it was hopeless. His humanity is too strong: it needs great
management, a very large amount of ready wit, to avoid a burning at
his hands. One day there was brought before him the plaint of three
good ladies of Strasburg who, at one same hour of the same day, had
been struck by an arm unseen. Ah, indeed! They are fain to accuse a
man of evil aspect, of having laid them under a spell. On being
brought before the inquisitor, the man vows and swears by all the
saints that he knows nothing about these ladies, has never so much as
seen them. The judge is hard of believing: nor tears nor oaths avail
aught with him. His great compassion for the ladies made him
inexorable, indignant at the man's denials. Already he was rising from
his seat. The man would have been tortured into confessing his guilt,
as the most innocent often did. He got leave to speak, and said: "I
remember, indeed, having struck some one yesterday at the hour named;
but whom? No Christian beings, but only three cats which came
furiously biting at my legs." The judge, like a shrewd fellow, saw the
whole truth of the matter; the poor man was innocent; the ladies were
doubtless turned on certain days into cats, and the Evil One amused
himself by sending them at the legs of Christian folk, in order to
bring about the ruin of these latter by making them pass for wizards.

A judge of less ability would never have hit upon this. But such a man
was not always to be had. It was needful to have always handy on the
table of the Inquisition a good fool's guide, to reveal to simple and
inexperienced judges the tricks of the Old Enemy, the best way of
baffling him, the clever and deep-laid tactics employed with such
happy effect by the great Sprenger in his campaigns on the Rhine. To
that end the _Malleus_, which a man was required to carry in his
pocket, was commonly printed in small 18mo, a form at that time
scarce. It would not have been seemly for a judge in difficulties to
open a folio on the table before his audience. But his handbook of
folly he might easily squint at from the corner of his eye, or turn
over its leaves as he held it under the table.

* *