tending the
sabbath of the fiends--prowling around Satan, who presided over them in
the form of a goat, and dancing, to amuse him, upon his back. They were
found guilty, and burned. [Bodin, page 95. Garinet, page 125.
"Anti-demon de Serclier," page 346.]

In 1564, three wizards and a witch appeared before the Presidents
Salvert and D'Avanton: they confessed, when extended on the rack, that
they anointed the sheep-pens with infernal unguents to kill the
sheep--that they attended the sabbath, where they saw a great black
goat, which spoke to them, and made them kiss him, each holding a
lighted candle in his hand while he performed the ceremony. They were
all executed at Poitiers.

In 1571, the celebrated sorcerer, Trois Echelles, was burned in the
Place de Greve, in Paris. He confessed, in the presence of Charles IX,
and of the Marshals de Montmorency, De Retz, and the Sieur du Mazille,
physician to the King, that he could perform the most wonderful things
by the aid of a devil to whom he had sold himself. He described at
great length the saturnalia of the fiends--the sacrifices which they
offered up--the debaucheries they committed with the young and handsome
witches, and the various modes of preparing the infernal unguent for
blighting cattle. He said he had upwards of twelve hundred accomplices
in the crime of witchcraft in various parts of France, whom he named to
the King, and many of whom were afterwards arrested and suffered
execution.

At Dole, two years afterwards, Gilles Garnier, a native of Lyons, was
indicted for being a loupgarou, or man-wolf, and for prowling in that
shape about the country at night to devour little children. The
indictment against him, as read by Henri Camus, doctor of laws and
counsellor of the King, was to the effect that he, Gilles Garnier, had
seized upon a little girl, twelve years of age, whom he drew into a
vineyard and there killed, partly with his teeth and partly with his
hands, seeming like wolf's paws--that from thence he trailed her
bleeding body along the ground with his teeth into the wood of La
Serre, where he ate the greatest portion of her at one meal, and
carried the remainder home to his wife; that, upon another occasion,
eight days before the festival of All Saints, he was seen to seize
another child in his teeth, and would have devoured her had she not
been rescued by the country-people--and that the said child died a few
days afterwards of the injuries he had infl