ierre de l'Ancre, and its President,
Espaignel, to inquire into the matter, with full powers to punish the
offenders. They arrived at Labourt in May 1619. De l'Ancre wrote a
book, setting forth all his great deeds, in this battle against the
powers of evil. It is full of obscenity and absurdity; but the facts
may be relied on as far as they relate to the number of trials and
executions, and the strange confessions which torture forced from the
unhappy criminals.

De l'Ancre states as a reason why so many witches were to be found at
Labourt, that the country was mountainous and sterile! He discovered
many of them from their partiality to smoking tobacco. It may be
inferred from this, that he was of the opinion of King James, that
tobacco was the "devil's weed." When the commission first sat, the
number of persons brought to trial was about forty a day. The
acquittals did not average so many as five per cent. All the witches
confessed that they had been present at the great Domdaniel, or
Sabbath. At these saturnalia the devil sat upon a large gilded throne,
sometimes in the form of a goat; sometimes as a gentleman, dressed all
in black, with boots, spurs, and sword; and very often as a shapeless
mass, resembling the trunk of a blasted tree, seen indistinctly amid
the darkness. They generally proceeded to the Domdaniel, riding on
spits, pitchforks, or broomsticks, and, on their arrival, indulged with
the fiends in every species of debauchery. Upon one occasion they had
had the audacity to celebrate this festival in the very heart of the
city of Bourdeaux. The throne of the arch fiend was placed in the
middle of the Place de Gallienne, and the whole space was covered with
the multitude of witches and wizards, who flocked to it from far and
near; some arriving even from distant Scotland.

After two hundred poor wretches had been hanged and burned, there
seemed no diminution in the number of criminals to be tried. Many of
the latter were asked upon the rack what Satan had said, when he found
that the commissioners were proceeding with such severity? The general
reply was, that he did not seem to care much about it. Some of them
asserted, that they had boldly reproached him for suffering the
execution of their friends, saying, "Out upon thee, false fiend! thy
promise was, that they should not die! Look! how thou hast kept thy
word! They have been burned, and are a heap of ashes!" Upon these
occasions he was never offended. H