Page:The history of Witchcraft and demonology.djvu/167

 babes were brought there, yet alive, whom the witches had kidnapped from their homes if opportunity offered.” In many places the witches were not lucky enough to get bumpers of malmsey, for Boguet notes that at some Sabbats “They not unseldom drink wine but more often water.”

There are occasional records of unsavoury and tasteless viands, and there is even mention of putrefying garbage and carrion being placed before his evil worshippers by their Master. Such would appear to have been the case at those darker orgies when there was a manifestation of supernatural intelligences from the pit.

The Salamanca doctors say: “They make a meal from food either furnished by themselves or by the Devil. It is sometimes most delicious and delicate, and sometimes a pie baked from babies they have slain or disinterred corpses. A suitable grace is said before such a table.” Guazzo thus describes their wine: “Moreover the wine which is usually poured out for the revellers is like black and clotted blood served in some foul and filthy vessel. Yet there seems to be no lack of cheer at these banquets, save that they furnish neither bread nor salt. Isabella further added that human flesh was served.”

Salt never appeared at the witches’ table. Bodin gives us the reason that it is an emblem of eternity, and Philip Ludwig Elich emphatically draws attention to the absence of salt at these infernal banquets. “At these meals,” remarks Boguet, “salt never appears.” Gentien le Clerc, who was tried in Orleans in 1615, confessed: “They sit down to table, but no salt is ever seen.” Madeleine de la Palud declared that she had never seen salt, olives, or oil at the Devil’s feasts.

When all these wretches are replete they proceed to a solemn parody of Holy Mass.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century Marcelline Pauper of the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of Nevers was divinely called to offer herself up as a victim of reparation for the outrages done to the Blessed Sacrament, especially by sorcerers in their black masses at the Sabbat. In March, 1702, a frightful sacrilege was committed in a convent chapel. The tabernacle was forced open, the ciborium stolen, and those of the Hosts which had not been