e 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 gave himself up to the commissioner
Espaignel, and confessed that he was the servant of a strong fiend, who
was known by the name of "Lord of the Forests." By his power, he was
transformed into the likeness of a wolf. The "Lord of the Forests"
assumed the same shape, but was much larger, fiercer, and stronger.
They prowled about the pastures together at midnight, strangling the
watch-dogs that defended the folds, and killing more sheep than they
could devour. He felt, he said, a fierce pleasure in these excursions,
and howled in excess of joy as he tore with his fangs the warm flesh of
the sheep asunder. This youth was not alone in this horrid confession;
many others voluntarily owned that they were weir-wolves, and many more
were forced by torture to make the same avowal. Such criminals were
thought to be too atrocious to be hanged first, and then burned: they
were generally sentenced to be burned alive, and their ashes to be
scattered to the winds. Grave and learned doctors of divinity openly
sustained the possibility of these transformations, relying mainly upon
the history of Nebuchadnezzar. They could not imagine why, if he had
been an ox, modern men could not become wolves, by Divine permission
and the power of the devil. They also contended that, if men should
confess, it was evidence enough, if there ha