and
daring sailors' wives. Another source of danger was in the priests,
many of whom were wizards, needing to be tried by the lay
commissioners, despite the lively opposition of the clergy.

When the judges appeared, many persons saved themselves in the hills.
Others boldly remained, saying, it was the judges who would be burnt.
So little fear had the witches themselves, that before the audience
they would sink into the Sabbatic slumber, and affirm on awaking that,
even in court, they had enjoyed the blessedness of Satan. Many said,
they only suffered from not being able to prove to him how much they
burned to suffer for his sake.

Those who were questioned said they could not speak. Satan rising into
their throats blocked up their gullets. Lancre, who wrote this
narrative, though the younger of the commissioners, was a man of the
world. The witches guessed that, with a man of his sort, there were
means of saving themselves. The league between them was broken. A
beggar-girl of seventeen, La Murgui, or Margaret, who had found
witchcraft gainful, and, while herself almost a child, had brought
away children as offerings to the Devil, now betook herself, with
another girl, Lisalda, of the same age, to denouncing all the rest. By
word of mouth or in writing she revealed all; with the liveliness, the
noise, the emphatic gestures of a Spaniard, entering truly or falsely
into a hundred impure details. She frightened, amused, wheedled her
judges, drawing them after her like fools. To this corrupt, wanton,
crazy girl, they entrusted the right of searching about the bodies of
girls and boys, for the spot whereon Satan had set his mark. This spot
discovered itself by a certain numbness, by the fact that you might
stick needles into it without causing pain. While a surgeon thus
tormented the elder ones, she took in hand the young, who, though
called as witnesses, might themselves be accused, if she pronounced
them to bear the mark. It was a hateful thing to see this brazen-faced
girl made sole mistress of the fate of those wretched beings,
commissioned to prod them all over with needles, and able at will to
assign those bleeding bodies to death!

She had gotten so mighty a sway over Lancre, as to persuade him that,
while he was sleeping in Saint Pe, in his own house, guarded by his
servants and his escort, the Devil came by night into his room, to say
the Black Mass; while the witches getting inside his very curtains,
would hav