and the saints may be much more faithful guardians of them than the
demons, who usually have no power to enrich, or to deliver from the
horrors of poverty, from punishment and death itself, those who yield
themselves to them in order to receive some reward from them.

Melancthon relates[296] that the demon informed a priest where a
treasure was hid; the priest, accompanied by one of his friends, went
to the spot indicated; they saw there a black dog lying on a chest.
The priest, having entered to take out the treasure, was crushed and
smothered under the ruins of the cavern.

M. Remy[297], in his Demonology, speaks of several persons whose
causes he had heard in his quality of Lieutenant-General of Lorraine,
at the time when that country swarmed with wizards and witches; those
amongst them who believed they had received money from the demon,
found nothing in their purses but bits of broken pots, coals, or
leaves of trees, or other things equally vile and contemptible.

The Reverend Father Abram, a Jesuit, in his manuscript History of the
University of Pont a Mousson, reports that a youth of good family, but
small fortune, placed himself at first to serve in the army among the
valets and serving men: from thence his parents sent him to school,
but not liking the subjection which study requires, he quitted the
school and returned to his former kind of life. On his way he met a
man dressed in a silk coat, but ill-looking, dark, and hideous, who
asked him where he was going to, and why he looked so sad: "I am able
to set you at your ease," said this man to him, "if you will give
yourself to me."

The young man, believing that he wished to engage him as a servant,
asked for time to reflect upon it; but beginning to mistrust the
magnificent promises which he made him, he looked at him more
narrowly, and having remarked that his left foot was divided like that
of an ox, he was seized with affright, made the sign of the cross, and
called on the name of Jesus, when the spectre directly disappeared.

Three days after, the same figure appeared to him again, and asked him
if he had made up his mind; the young man replied that he did not want
a master. The spectre said to him, "Where are you going?" "I am going
to such a town," replied he. At that moment the demon threw at his
feet a purse which chinked, and which he found filled with thirty or
forty Flemish crowns, amongst which were about twelve which appeared
to be gold, new