Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/542

 526 WITCHCRAFT. de Beauffort, to ten years' prison, and to fines amounting to one thousand four hundred livres, of which two hundred went to the Inquisition ; but, as in de Beauffort's case, there were secret con- tributions exacted from him. The third was Pierre du Carieulx, another rich citizen. His sentence recited that he had been to the Sabbat innumerable times ; holding a lighted candle he had kissed, under the tail, the devil in the shape of a monkey ; he had given him his soul in a compact written with his own blood ; he had thrice given to the Abbe-de- peu-de-sens consecrated wafers received at Easter, out of which, with the bones of men hanged, which he had picked up under the gallows, and the blood of young children, of whom he had slain four, he had helped to make the infernal ointment and certain powders, with which they injured men and beasts. When asked to confirm this he denied it, saying that it had been forced from him by torture ; and he would have added much more, but he was silenced. Abandoned to secular justice, the eschevins demanded him as their bourgeois, and on their paying his prison expenses he was delivered to them. They allowed him to talk in the town- hall, when he disculpated all whom he had accused, of whom he said there were many present, eschevins and others, adding that, under torture, he had accused every one he knew, and if he had known more he would have included them. He was burned the same day. The fourth was Huguet Aubry, a man of uncommon force and resolution. In spite of the severest and most prolonged torture, he had confessed nothing. He had been accused by nine witnesses, and he was now asked if he would confess under promise of mercy; but he repeated that he knew nothing of Vauderie, and had never been to the Sabbat. Then the inquisitor told him that he had broken jail and been recaptured, which rendered him guilty. He threw himself on his knees and begged for mercy, but was con- demned to prison, on bread and water, for twenty years ; a most irregular sentence, which could never have been rendered under the perfected system of procedure, for the evidence against him was strong, and his constancy under torture only proved that Satan had endowed him with the gift of taciturnity. This was the last of the persecution. There had been only thirty-four arrests and twelve burnings; which, in the flourishing