The following story is laid near Nantes:--Therein a young girl baulked of her lover, mutters something like a modern order to him to go to the foul fiend, and remarks to herself that a demon would be a better friend. She is betrayed in the usual manner, and finds, when too late, that she is embracing a hairy incubus which has a long tail. She exclaims fearfully. The "affreet" blows in her face and leaves her. She is found frightfully disfigured, and is brought to bed seven days after of a black cat. The remaining histories are of a similar nature, all alike showing how completely the so-called Christian people of Modern Europe believed that disembodied spirits could assume human form with such completeness as to be the father of offspring. We may fairly compare these tales with that told by heathen Greeks about Jupiter and Alcmena, but when we place them side by side, the ancients show a far superior fancy in their fables than do the comparative moderns. I find from _Reville's History of the Devil_, p. 54 (London: Williams & Norgate, 1871), that so late as a.d. 1756, at Landshut, in Bavaria, a young girl of thirteen years of age, was convicted of impure intercourse with the devil, and put to death. It is a pity that no account of the trial is appended. Talboys Wheeler, in his _History of India_, vol. IL, p. 515, indicates that there is to this day, in India, a belief in _incubi_. Speaking of Paisacha marriages, in which a woman is united to a man without her knowledge or consent, he remarks:--"The origin of the name is somewhat curious. The Paisachas were evil spirits or ghosts (see "_Lilith" and "Satyr" Ancient Faiths_, vol. ii.) who were supposed to haunt the earth.... If, therefore, a damsel found herself likely to become a mother without her being able to furnish a satisfactory reason for her maternity, she would naturally plead that she had been victimized by a Paisach.... In modern times, however, the belief is still very general throughout the rural districts of India, that wives, as well as maidens, may be occasionally victimized by such ghostly admirers."