pot where Satan's gilded chair was usually
stationed. The devil was much offended at such an affront, and yet had
so little power in the matter that he could only express his resentment
by threats that he would hang Messieurs D'Amon and D'Urtubbe, gentlemen
who had solicited and promoted the issuing of the Commission, and would
also burn the Commissioners themselves in their own fire. We regret to
say that Satan was unable to execute either of these laudable
resolutions. Ashamed of his excuses, he abandoned for three or four
sittings his attendance on the Sabbaths, sending as his representative
an imp of subordinate account, and in whom no one reposed confidence.
When he took courage again to face his parliament, the Arch-fiend
covered his defection by assuring them that he had been engaged in a
lawsuit with the Deity, which he had gained with costs, and that six
score of infant children were to be delivered up to him in name of
damages, and the witches were directed to procure such victims
accordingly. After this grand fiction he confined himself to the petty
vengeance of impeding the access of confessors to the condemned, which
was the more easy as few of them could speak the Basque language. I have
no time to detail the ingenious method by which the learned Councillor
de Lancre explains why the district of Labourt should be particularly
exposed to the pest of sorcery. The chief reason seems to be that it is
a mountainous, a sterile, and a border country, where the men are all
fishers and the women smoke tobacco and wear short petticoats.

To a person who, in this presumptuous, trifling, and conceited spirit,
has composed a quarto volume full of the greatest absurdities and
grossest obscenities ever impressed on paper, it was the pleasure of the
most Christian Monarch to consign the most absolute power which could be
exercised on these poor people; and he might with as much prudence have
turned a ravenous wolf upon an undefended flock, of whom the animal was
the natural enemy, as they were his natural prey. The priest, as well as
the ignorant peasant, fell under the suspicion of this fell Commission;
and De Lancre writes, with much complacency, that the accused were
brought to trial to the number of forty in one day--with what chance of
escape, when the judges were blinded with prejudice, and could only hear
the evidence and the defence through the medium of an interpreter, the
understanding of the reader may easily an