e, called Heiligenstein, was found at five o'clock in the
morning in the garret of a cooper at Bar. This cooper having gone up
to fetch the wood for his trade that he might want to use during the
day, and having opened the door, which was fastened with a bolt _on
the outside_, perceived a man lying at full length upon his stomach,
and fast asleep. He recognized him, and having asked him what he did
there, the carpenter in the greatest surprise told him he knew neither
by what means, nor by whom, he had been taken to that place.

The cooper not believing this, told him that assuredly he was come
thither to rob him, and had him taken before the magistrate of Bar,
who having interrogated him concerning the circumstance just spoken
of, he related to him with great simplicity, that, having set off
about four o'clock in the morning to come from Heiligenstein to
Bar--there being but a quarter of an hour's distance between those two
places--he saw on a sudden, in a place covered with verdure and grass,
a magnificent feast, brightly illuminated, where a number of persons
were highly enjoying themselves with a sumptuous repast and by dancing;
that two women of his acquaintance, inhabitants of Bar, having asked him
to join the company, he sat down to table and partook of the good cheer,
for a quarter of an hour at the most; after that, one of the guests
having cried out "_Cito, Cito_," he found himself carried away gently
to the cooper's garret, without knowing how he had been transported there.

This is what he declared in presence of the magistrate. The most
singular circumstance of this history is, that hardly had the
carpenter deposed what we read, than those two women of Bar who had
invited him to join their feast hung themselves, each in her own
house.

The superior magistrates, fearing to carry things so far as to
compromise perhaps half the inhabitants of Bar, judged prudently that
they had better not inquire further; they treated the carpenter as a
visionary, and the two women who hung themselves were considered as
lunatics; thus the thing was hushed up, and the matter ended.

If this is what they call the witches' sabbath, neither the carpenter,
nor the two women, nor apparently the other guests at the festival,
had need to come mounted on a demon; they were too near their own
dwellings to have recourse to superhuman means in order to have
themselves transported to the place of meeting. We are not informed
how these