the Sabbaths, his fellowship with priests. Who
is yon parson coming along with his _Benedicte_, his sextoness, he who
jobs the things of the Church, saying the White Mass of mornings, the
Black at night? "Satan," says Lancre, "persuades him to make love to
his daughters in the spirit, to debauch his fair penitents." Innocent
magistrate! He pretends to be unaware that for a century back the
Devil had been working away at the Church livings, like one who knew
his business! He had made himself father-confessor; or, if you would
rather have it so, the father-confessor had turned Devil.

The worthy M. de Lancre should have remembered the trials that began
in 1491, and helped perchance to bring the Parliament of Paris into a
tolerant frame of mind. It gave up burning Satan, for it saw nothing
of him but a mask.

A good many nuns were conquered by his new device of borrowing the
form of some favourite confessor. Among them was Jane Pothierre, a
holy woman of Quesnoy, of the ripe age of forty-five, but still, alas!
all too impressible. She owns her passion to her ghostly counsellor,
who loth to listen to her, flies to Falempin, some leagues off. The
Devil, who never sleeps, saw his advantage, and perceiving her, says
the annalist, "goaded by the thorns of Venus, he slily took the shape
of the aforesaid 'Father,' and returning every night to the convent,
was so successful in befooling her, that she owned to having received
him 434 times."[86] Great pity was felt for her on her repenting; and
she was speedily saved from all need of blushing, being put into a
fine walled-tomb built for her in the Castle of Selles, where a few
days after she died the death of a good Catholic. Is it not a deeply
moving tale? But this is nothing to that fine business of Gauffridi,
which happened at Marseilles while Lancre was drawing up deeds at
Bayonne.

[86] Massee, _Chronique du Monde_, 1540; and the Chroniclers
of Hainault, &c.

The Parliament of Provence had no need to envy the success attained by
that of Bordeaux. The lay authorities caught at the first occasion of
a trial for witchcraft to institute a reform in the morals of the
clergy. They sent forth a stern glance towards the close-shut
convent-world. A rare opportunity was offered by the strange
concurrence of many causes, by the fierce jealousies, the revengeful
longings which severed priest from priest. But for those mad passions
which ere long began to burst forth at every