ticipate.

Among other gross transgressions of the most ordinary rules, it may be
remarked that the accused, in what their judges called confessions,
contradicted each other at every turn respecting the description of the
Domdaniel in which they pretended to have been assembled, and the fiend
who presided there. All spoke to a sort of gilded throne; but some saw a
hideous wild he-goat seated there; some a man disfigured and twisted, as
suffering torture; some, with better taste, beheld a huge indistinct
form, resembling one of those mutilated trunks of trees found in ancient
forests. But De Lancre was no "Daniel come to judgment," and the
discrepancy of evidence, which saved the life and fame of Susannah, made
no impression in favour of the sorcerers of Labourt.

Instances occur in De Lancre's book of the trial and condemnation of
persons accused of the crime of _lycanthropy_, a superstition which was
chiefly current in France, but was known in other countries, and is the
subject of great debate between Wier, Naude, Scot, on the one hand, and
their demonological adversaries on the other. The idea, said the one
party, was that a human being had the power, by sorcery, of transforming
himself into the shape of a wolf, and in that capacity, being seized
with a species of fury, he rushed out and made havoc among the flocks,
slaying and wasting, like the animal whom he represented, far more than
he could devour. The more incredulous reasoners would not allow of a
real transformation, whether with or without the enchanted hide of a
wolf, which in some cases was supposed to aid the metamorphosis, and
contended that lycanthropy only subsisted as a woful species of disease,
a melancholy state of mind, broken with occasional fits of insanity, in
which the patient imagined that he committed the ravages of which he was
accused. Such a person, a mere youth, was tried at Besancon, who gave
himself out for a servant, or yeoman pricker, of the Lord of the
Forest--so he called his superior--who was judged to be the devil. He
was, by his master's power, transformed into the likeness and performed
the usual functions of a wolf, and was attended in his course by one
larger, which he supposed the Lord of the Forest himself. These wolves,
he said, ravaged the flocks, and throttled the dogs which stood in their
defence. If either had not seen the other, he howled, after the manner
of the animal, to call his comrade to his share of the prey; if