s that of Jacques Aymar of Lyons. The full details of the
doings of this remarkable person are given by Mr. Baring-Gould in his
Curious Myths of the Middle Ages; but the story is told more concisely
by another writer: 'On July 5, 1692, a vintner and his wife were found
dead in the cellar of their shop at Lyons. They had been killed by blows
from a hedging-knife, and their money had been stolen. The culprits
could not be discovered, and a neighbour took upon him to bring to Lyons
a peasant out of Dauphine, named Jacques Aymar, a man noted for his
skill with the divining-rod. The Lieutenant-Criminel and the Procureur
du Roi took Aymar into the cellar, furnishing him with a rod of the
first wood that came to hand. According to the Procureur du Roi the rod
did not move till Aymar reached the very spot where the crime had been
committed. His pulse then beat, and the wand twisted rapidly. Guided by
the wand, or by some internal sensation, Aymar now pursued the track of
the assassins, entered the court of the Archbishop's palace, left the
town by the bridge over the Rhone, and followed the right bank of the
river. He reached a gardener's house, which he declared the men had
entered, and some children confessed that three men, whom they
described, had come into the house one Sunday morning. Aymar followed
the track up the river, pointed out all the places where the men had
landed, and, to make a long story short, stopped at last at the door of
the prison of Beaucaire. He was admitted, looked at the prisoners, and
picked out as the murderer a little hunchback, who had just been
brought in for a small theft. The hunchback was taken to Lyons, and he
was recognised on the way by the people at all the stages where he had
stopped. At Lyons he was examined in the usual manner, and confessed
that he had been an accomplice in the crime, and had guarded the door.
Aymar pursued the other culprits to the coast, followed them by sea,
landed where they had landed, and only desisted from his search when
they crossed the frontier. As for the hunchback, he was broken on the
wheel, being condemned on his own confession.'

This is briefly the story of Jacques Aymar, which is authenticated by
various eye-witnesses, and of which many explanations have been tendered
from time to time. Mr. Baring-Gould commits himself to no definite
expression of opinion, but says: 'I believe that the imagination is the
principal motive force in those who use the divi