them." One of my friends made me laugh the other day, when, speaking
of the pretended incubuses, he said that those who believed in them
were not wise to marry. Again, what shall we say of those tacit
compacts so often mentioned by the author, and which he supposes to be
real? Can we not see that such an opinion is making a god of the
devil? For that any one, for example, living three or four hundred
leagues off, may have made a compact with the devil, that every time a
pendulum shall be suspended above a glass it shall mark the hour as
regularly as the most exact clock. According to this idea, that same
marvel will happen equally, and at the same moment, not only in this
town where we are, but all over the earth, and will be repeated as
often as they may wish to make the experiment. Now this is quite
another thing from carrying a witch to the sabbath through the air,
which the author asserts is beyond the power of the demon; it is
attributing to this malicious spirit a kind of almightiness and
immensity. But what would happen if some one, having made a compact
with a demon for fine weather, another on his part shall have made a
compact with the demon for bad weather? Good Father Le Brun wishes us
to ascribe to tacit compacts all those effects which we cannot explain
by natural causes. If it be so, what a number of tacit compacts there
must be in the world! He believes in the stories about the divining
rod, and the virtue ascribed to it of finding out robbers and
murderers; although all France has since acknowledged that the first
author of this fable was a knave, who having been summoned to Paris,
could never show there any of those effects he had boasted of. Let any
one have the least idea of the invisible atoms scattered abroad
throughout the world, of their continually issuing from natural
bodies, and the hidden and wonderful effects which they produce, one
can never be astonished that at a moderate distance water and metals
should operate on certain kinds of wood. The same author sincerely
believes what was said, that the contagion and mortality spread
amongst the cattle proceeded from a spell; like the man who affirmed
that his father and mother remained impotent for seven years, and this
ceased only when an old woman had broken the spell. On this subject,
he cites a ritual of which Father Martenus does not speak at all,
whence it follows that he did not recognize it for authentic. To give
an idea of the credulity