entleman, dressed all in black, with boots, spurs, and sword; and
very often as a shapeless mass, resembling the trunk of a blasted tree,
seen indistinctly amid the darkness. They generally proceeded to the
Domdaniel, riding on spits, pitchforks, or broomsticks, and on their
arrival indulged with the fiends in every species of debauchery. Upon one
occasion they had had the audacity to celebrate this festival in the very
heart of the city of Bourdeaux. The throne of the arch fiend was placed in
the middle of the Place de Gallienne, and the whole space was covered with
the multitude of witches and wizards who flocked to it from far and near,
some arriving even from distant Scotland.

After two hundred poor wretches had been hanged and burned, there seemed
no diminution in the number of criminals to be tried. Many of the latter
were asked upon the rack what Satan had said when he found that the
commissioners were proceeding with such severity? The general reply was,
that he did not seem to care much about it. Some of them asserted that
they had boldly reproached him for suffering the execution of their
friends, saying, "_Out upon thee, false fiend! thy promise was that they
should not die! Look, how thou hast kept thy word! They have been burned,
and are a heap of ashes!_" Upon these occasions he was never offended: he
would give orders that the sports of the Domdaniel should cease, and
producing illusory fires that did not burn, he encouraged them to walk
through, assuring them that the fires lighted by the executioner gave no
more pain than those. They would then ask him, where their friends were,
since they had not suffered; to which the "Father of Lies" invariably
replied, that they were happy in a far country, and could see and hear all
that was then passing; and that, if they called by name those they wished
to converse with, they might hear their voices in reply. Satan then
imitated the voices of the defunct witches so successfully that they were
all deceived. Having answered all objections, the orgies recommenced and
lasted till the cock crew.

De l'Ancre was also very zealous in the trial of unhappy monomaniacs for
the crime of lycanthropy. Several who were arrested confessed, without
being tortured, that they were _weir-wolves_, and that at night they
rushed out among the flocks and herds killing and devouring. One young man
at Besancon, with the full consciousness of the awful fate that awaited
him, voluntarily