He tore off her apron with great
vehemence, and found that she had no hand, and that the stump was even
then bleeding. She was given into custody, and burnt at Riom in presence
of some thousands of spectators.[28]

[28] Tablier. See also Boguet, _Discours sur les Sorciers_; and M.
Jules Garinet, _Histoire de la Magie_, p. 150.

In the midst of these executions, rare were the gleams of mercy. Few
instances are upon record of any acquittal taking place when the crime was
witchcraft. The discharge of fourteen persons by the parliament of Paris,
in the year 1589, is almost a solitary example of a return to reason.
Fourteen persons condemned to death for witchcraft appealed against the
judgment to the parliament of Paris, which for political reasons had been
exiled to Tours. The parliament named four commissioners--Pierre Pigray,
the king's surgeon, and Messieurs Leroi, Renard, and Falaiseau, the king's
physicians--to visit and examine these witches, and see whether they had
the mark of the devil upon them. Pigray, who relates the circumstance in
his work on Surgery (book vii. chap. 10), says the visit was made in
presence of two counsellors of the court. The witches were all stripped
naked, and the physicians examined their bodies very diligently, pricking
them in all the marks they could find to see whether they were insensible
to pain, which was always considered a certain proof of guilt. They were,
however, very sensible of the pricking, and some of them called out very
lustily when the pins were driven into them. "We found them," continues
Pierre Pigray, "to be very poor, stupid people, and some of them insane.
Many of them were quite indifferent about life, and one or two of them
desired death as a relief for their sufferings. Our opinion was, that they
stood more in need of medicine than of punishment; and so we reported to
the parliament. Their case was thereupon taken into further consideration;
and the parliament, after mature counsel amongst all the members, ordered
the poor creatures to be sent to their homes, without inflicting any
punishment upon them."

Such was the dreadful state of Italy, Germany, and France during the
sixteenth century, which was far from being the worst crisis of the
popular madness with regard to witchcraft. Let us see what was the state
of England during the same period. The Reformation, which in its progress
had rooted out so many errors, stopped short at this, the greate