than a passing notice in this place. It did not spring from the epidemic
dread of sorcery then so prevalent, but was carried on by wretched
intriguers, who had sworn to have the life of their foe. Such a charge
could not be refuted in 1634: the accused could not, as Bodinus expresses
it, "make the malice of the prosecutors more clear than the sun;" and his
own denial, however intelligible, honest, and straightforward, was held as
nothing in refutation of the testimony of the crazy women who imagined
themselves bewitched. The more absurd and contradictory their assertions,
the stronger the argument employed by his enemies that the devil was in
them. He was burned alive, under circumstances of great cruelty.[37]

[37] A very graphic account of the execution of this unfortunate
gentleman is to be found in the excellent romance of M.
Alfred de Vigny, entitled _Cinq Mars_; but if the reader
wishes for a full and accurate detail of all the
circumstances of one of the most extraordinary trials upon
record, he is referred to a work published anonymously, at
Amsterdam, in 1693, entitled _Histoire des Diables de Loudun,
ou de la Possession des Religieuses Ursulines, et de la
Condemnation et du Supplice d'Urbain Grandier_.

A singular instance of the epidemic fear of witchcraft occurred at Lille,
in 1639. A pious but not very sane lady, named Antoinette Bourignon,
founded a school, or _hospice_, in that city. One day, on entering the
schoolroom, she imagined that she saw a great number of little black
angels flying about the heads of the children. In great alarm she told her
pupils of what she had seen, warning them to beware of the devil whose
imps were hovering about them. The foolish woman continued daily to repeat
the same story, and Satan and his power became the only subject of
conversation, not only between the girls themselves, but between them and
their instructors. One of them at this time ran away from the school. On
being brought back and interrogated, she said she had not run away, but
had been carried away by the devil; she was a witch, and had been one
since the age of seven. Some other little girls in the school went into
fits at this announcement, and, on their recovery, confessed that they
also were witches. At last the whole of them, to the number of fifty,
worked upon each other's imaginations to such a degree that they also
confessed t