he time stated their wives were comfortably asleep in
their arms; but it was all in vain. Their word was taken, but the
archbishop told them they had been deceived by the devil and their own
senses. It was true they might have had the semblance of their wives in
their beds, but the originals were far away at the devil's dance under the
oak. The honest fellows were confounded, and their wives burned forthwith.

[Illustration: CHARLES IX.]

In the year 1561, five poor women of Verneuil were accused of transforming
themselves into cats, and in that shape attending the sabbath of the
fiends--prowling around Satan, who presided over them in the form of a
goat, and dancing, to amuse him, upon his back. They were found guilty,
and burned.[27]

[27] Bodin, p. 95 Garinet, p. 125; _Anti-demon de Serclier_,
p. 346.

In 1564, three wizards and a witch appeared before the Presidents Salvert
and D'Avanton: they confessed, when extended on the rack, that they
anointed the sheep-pens with infernal unguents to kill the sheep; that
they attended the sabbath, where they saw a great black goat, which spoke
to them, and made them kiss him, each holding a lighted candle in his hand
while he performed the ceremony. They were all executed at Poitiers.

In 1571 the celebrated sorcerer Trois Echelles was burned in the Place de
Greve in Paris. He confessed, in the presence of Charles IX., and of the
Marshals de Montmorency, De Retz, and the Sieur du Mazille, physician to
the king, that he could perform the most wonderful things by the aid of a
devil to whom he had sold himself. He described at great length the
saturnalia of the fiends, the sacrifices which they offered up, the
debaucheries they committed with the young and handsome witches, and the
various modes of preparing the infernal unguent for blighting cattle. He
said he had upwards of twelve hundred accomplices in the crime of
witchcraft in various parts of France, whom he named to the king, and many
of whom were afterwards arrested and suffered execution.

At Dole, two years afterwards, Gilles Garnier, a native of Lyons, was
indicted for being a _loup-garou_, or man-wolf, and for prowling in that
shape about the country at night to devour little children. The indictment
against him, as read by Henri Camus, doctor of laws and counsellor of the
king, was to the effect that he, Gilles Garnier, had seized upon a little
girl, twelve years of age, whom he drew into a vineyard