of this secret crime, that out of a million of witches not one would
be convicted if the usual course were followed!" Henri Boguet, a
witch-finder, who styled himself "The Grand Judge of Witches for the
Territory of St. Claude," drew up a code for the guidance of all persons
engaged in the witch-trials, consisting of seventy articles, quite as
cruel as the code of Bodinus. In this document he affirms, that a mere
suspicion of witchcraft justifies the immediate arrest and torture of the
suspected person. If the prisoner muttered, looked on the ground, and did
not shed any tears, all these were proofs positive of guilt! In all cases
of witchcraft, the evidence of the child ought to be taken against its
parent; and persons of notoriously bad character, although not to be
believed upon their oaths on the ordinary occasions of dispute that might
arise between man and man, were to be believed, if they swore that any
person had bewitched them! Who, when he hears that this diabolical
doctrine was the universally received opinion of the ecclesiastical and
civil authorities, can wonder that thousands upon thousands of unhappy
persons should be brought to the stake? that Cologne should for many years
burn its three hundred witches annually? the district of Bamberg its four
hundred? Nuremberg, Geneva, Paris, Toulouse, Lyons, and other cities,
their two hundred?

A few of these trials may be cited, taking them in the order of priority,
as they occurred in different parts of the Continent. In 1595, an old
woman residing in a village near Constance, angry at not being invited to
share the sports of the country people on a day of public rejoicing, was
heard to mutter something to herself, and was afterwards seen to proceed
through the fields towards a hill, where she was lost sight of. A violent
thunder-storm arose about two hours afterwards, which wet the dancers to
the skin, and did considerable damage to the plantations. This woman,
suspected before of witchcraft, was seized and imprisoned, and accused of
having raised the storm, by filling a hole with wine, and stirring it
about with a stick. She was tortured till she confessed, and was burned
alive the next evening.

[Illustration: CITY OF LYONS.]

About the same time two sorcerers in Toulouse were accused of having
dragged a crucifix about the streets at midnight, stopping at times to
spit upon and kick it, and uttering at intervals an exorcism to raise the
devil. The next day