A Modern Trial for Witchcraft - Page 2

singular corroboration of a singular statement, much more recent than the occurrences at Cideville, is obtained. A more astonishing example of survival cannot be imagined, of survival, or of disconnected and spontaneous revival and recrudescence. {276}

There was at Auzebosc, near famous Yvetot, an old shepherd named G---: he was the recognised 'wise man,' or white witch of the district, and some less noted rural adepts gave themselves out as his pupils. In March, 1849, M. Tinel, Cure of Cideville, visited a sick peasant, and advised him to discard old G., the shepherd magical, and send for a physician. G. was present, though concealed, heard the cure's criticisms, and said: 'Why does he meddle in my business, I shall meddle in his; he has pupils in his house, we'll see how long he keeps them.' In a few days, G. was arrested, as practising medicine unauthorised, was imprisoned for some months, and fancied that the cure had a share in this persecution. All this, of course, we must take as 'the clash of the country side,' intent, as there was certainly damnum secutum, on establishing malum minatum.

On a farm near the cure's house in Cideville was another shepherd, named Thorel, a man of forty, described as dull, illiterate, and given to boasting about his powers as a disciple of the venerable G. Popular opinion decided that G. employed Thorel to procure his vengeance; it was necessary that a sorcerer should touch his intended victim, and G. had not the same conveniency for doing so as Thorel. In old witch trials we sometimes find the witch kissing her destined prey. {277} Thorel, so it was said, succeeded in touching, on Nov. 25, 1850, M. Tinel's two pupils, in a crowd at a sale of wood. The lads, of fifteen and twelve, were named Lemonier and Bunel. For what had gone before, we have, so far, only public chatter, for what followed we have the sworn evidence in court of the cure's pupils, in January and February, 1851. According to Lemonier, on Nov. 26, while studying, he heard light blows of a hammer, these recurred daily, about 5. p.m. When M. Tinel, his tutor, said plus fort, the noises were louder. To condense evidence which becomes tedious by its eternal uniformity, popular airs were beaten on demand; the noise grew unbearable, tables moved untouched, a breviary, a knife, a spit, a shoe flew wildly about. Lemonier was buffeted by a black hand, attached to nobody. 'A kind of human phantasm, clad in a blouse, haunted me for fifteen days wherever I went; none but myself could see it.' He was dragged by the leg by a mysterious force. On a certain day, when Thorel found a pretext for visiting the house, M. Tinel made him beg Lemonier's pardon, clearly on the ground that the swain had bewitched the boy. 'As soon as I saw him I recognised the phantasm which had haunted me for a fortnight, and I said to M. Tinel: "There is the man who follows me".' Thorel knelt to the boy, asked his pardon, and pulled violently at his