d been no other. Delrio
mentions that one gentleman accused of lycanthropy was put to the
torture no less than twenty times, but still he would not confess. An
intoxicating draught was then given him, and under its influence he
confessed that he was a weir-wolf. Delrio cites this to show the
extreme equity of the commissioners. They never burned anybody till he
confessed; and if one course of torture would not suffice, their
patience was not exhausted, and they tried him again and again, even to
the twentieth time! Well may we exclaim, when such atrocities have been
committed in the name of religion,

"Quel lion, quel tigre egale en cruaute,
Une injuste fureur qu'arme la piete?"

The trial of the unhappy Urbain Grandier, the curate of Loudun, for
bewitching a number of girls in the convent of the Ursulines in that
town, was, like that of the Marechale d'Ancre, an accusation resorted
to by his enemies to ruin one against whom no other charge could be
brought so readily. This noted affair, which kept France in commotion
for months, and the true character of which was known even at that
time, merits no more than a passing notice in this place. It did not
spring from the epidemic dread of sorcery then so prevalent, but was
carried on by wretched intriguers, who had sworn to have the life of
their foe. Such a charge could not be refuted in 1634: the accused
could not, as Bodinus expresses it, "make the malice of the prosecutors
more clear than the sun;" and his own denial, however intelligible,
honest, and straightforward, was held as nothing in refutation of the
testimony of the crazy women who imagined themselves bewitched. The
more absurd and contradictory their assertions, the stronger the
argument employed by his enemies that the devil was in them. He was
burned alive, under circumstances of great cruelty. [A very graphic
account of the execution of this unfortunate gentleman is to be found
in the excellent romance of M. Alfred de Vigny, entitled "Cinq Mars;"
but if the reader wishes for a full and accurate detail of all the
circumstances of one of the most extraordinary trials upon record, he
is referred to a work published anonymously, at Amsterdam, in 1693,
entitled "Histoire des Diables de Loudun, ou de la Possession des
Religieuses Ursulines, et de la Condemnation et du Supplice d'Urbain
Grandier."]

A singular instance of the epidemic fear of witchcraft occurred at
Lille, in 1639. A pious, but not very s