to the Parliament of Bourdeaux that the grand hurrah for lay
jurisdiction is sent up in Lancre's book on _The Fickleness of
Demons_. The author, a man of some sense, a counsellor in this same
Parliament, tells with a triumphant air of his fight with the Devil in
the Basque country, where, in less than three months, he got rid of I
know not how many witches, and, better still, of three priests. He
looks compassionately on the Spanish Inquisition, which at Logrono,
not far off, on the borders of Navarre and Castille, dragged on a
trial for two years, ending in the poorest way by a small
_auto-da-fe_, and the release of a whole crowd of women.

CHAPTER IV.

THE WITCHES OF THE BASQUE COUNTRY: 1609.[84]

[84] The Basques of the Lower Pyrenees, the Aquitani of
Caesar, belonged to the old Iberian race which peopled Western
Europe before the Celtic era.--TRANS.

That strong-handed execution of the priests shows M. Lancre to have
been a man of independent spirit. In politics he is the same. In his
book on _The Prince_ (1617), he openly declares "the law to be above
the King."

Never was the Basque character better drawn than in his book on _The
Fickleness of Demons_. In France, as in Spain, the Basque people had
privileges which almost made them a republic. On our side they owed
the King no service but that of arms: at the first beat of drum they
were bound to gather two thousand armed men commanded by Basque
captains. They were not oppressed by their clergy, who seldom
prosecuted wizards, being wizards themselves. The priests danced, wore
swords, and took their mistresses to the Witches' Sabbath. These
mistresses acted as their sextonesses or _benedictes_, to keep the
churches in order. The parson quarrelled with nobody, offered the
White Mass to God by day, the Black by night to the Devil, and
sometimes, according to Lancre, in the same church.

The Basques of Bayonne and St. Jean de Luz, a race of men quaint,
venturesome, and fabulously bold, left many widows, from their habit
of sailing out into the roughest seas to harpoon whales. Leaving their
wives to God or the Devil, they threw themselves in crowds into the
Canadian settlements of Henry IV. As for the children, these honest
worthy sailors would have thought about them more, if they had been
clear as to their parentage. But on their return home they would
reckon up the months of their absence, and they never found the
reckoning right.

The w