Torture was used thoroughly where witches were concerned, and no doubt the delirium thus occasioned, the victim being willing to put an end to her torments by saying what she knew her judge wanted her to say or imagined he would like to hear, was productive of many of the most marvellous witch stories to be found in inquisitorial archives. But the severity of the torture administered in these cases was due to the extraordinary obduracy frequently shown by the victims. Such obstinacy was taken as proof positive of Satanic assistance afforded to these servants of hell, and the inquisitor was therefore goaded to greater and greater cruelty, because he felt himself put upon his mettle. The silence of the accused thus became positive evidence of guilt, as damning as confession under the pains of rack or pulley—perhaps even more so.[226] The gift of taciturnity, it was conjectured, might be due to the wearing of a charm somewhere on the person, so that as a preliminary to the application the alleged witch had to be divested of all her clothing for thorough investigation to be made.[227] It was held that a witch was unable to shed tears under torment, whereas—as Sprenger urges sententiously—it is natural for women to weep. It was desirable therefore to adjure the accused to shed tears.[228] If this solemn exhortation was successful and the victim did cry and lament under torture, she was not necessarily the better off; for this might well be a device to deceive, a wile of the Devil’s to defeat the ends of justice. The inquisitor, ever on the alert to discover such signs of Satanic intervention, was apt to disbelieve in the genuineness of the witch’s tears accordingly. Thus, whether it produced confession or only obduracy, lamentation or silence, torture was in any event practically certain to be successful. Indeed anyone defamed of witchcraft before the Inquisition became so inextricably enmeshed in the toils that escape from conviction was hardly possible save in the event of being able to prove that the accuser was actuated by mortal enmity.[229] And even the most persistent silence must, one imagines, practically always in the end have been overborne. A sufficiently prolonged continuance of torture must have produced the desired result—answers to leading questions about the Sabbat, detailed descriptions culled from the imagination of demon orgies, confessions as to the invocation of evil spirits and malpractices carried on by their help, finally the incrimination of others. So the witchcraft legend grew in substance, in precision, in lurid picturesqueness. From the lips of the witches themselves came the authentic particulars of the Sabbat, the flittings through the air on broomsticks, the blasting of human lives by foul spells, the inculpation of ever-increasing numbers in the guilt and the heresy of witchcraft.