ions of these bugbears; those of Maco, after their visions
were dissipated, felt an equal fear of being punished by the Turks and
by the Bishop of Tina. None of the papas would be present at St.
George when this body was burned, lest the bishop should exact a sum
of money for having disinterred and burned the dead body without his
permission. As for the Turks, it is certain that at their first visit
they did not fail to make the community of Maco pay the price of the
blood of this poor devil, who in every way became the abomination and
horror of his country. After this, must we not own that the Greeks of
to-day are not great Greeks, and that there is only ignorance and
superstition among them?"[517]

So says Monsieur de Tournefort.

Footnotes:

[517] This took place nearly a hundred and fifty years ago.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

HAS THE DEMON POWER TO CAUSE ANY ONE TO DIE AND THEN TO RESTORE THE
DEAD TO LIFE?

Supposing the principle which we established as indubitable at the
commencement of this dissertation--that God alone is the sovereign
arbitrator of life and death; that he alone can give life to men, and
restore it to them after he has taken it from them--the question that
we here propose appears unseasonable and absolutely frivolous, since
it concerns a supposition notoriously impossible.

Nevertheless, as some learned men have believed that the demon has
power to restore life, and to preserve from corruption, for a time,
certain bodies which he makes use of to delude mankind and frighten
them, as it happens with the ghosts of Hungary, we shall treat of it
in this place, and relate a remarkable instance furnished by Monsieur
Nicholas Remy, procureur-general of Lorraine, and which occurred in
his own time;[518] that is to say, in 1581, at Dalhem, a village
situated between the Moselle and the Sare. A goatherd of this village,
named Pierron, a married man and father of a boy, conceived a violent
passion for a girl of the village. One day, when his thoughts were
occupied with this young girl, she appeared to him in the fields, or
the demon in her likeness. Pierron declared his love to her; she
promised to reply to it on condition that he would give himself up to
her, and obey her in all things. Pierron consented to this, and
consummated his abominable passion with this spectre. Some time
afterwards, Abrahel, which was the name assumed by the demon, asked of
him as a pledge of his love, that he would sacri