Thus says the Prosecutor of the Council of Bordeaux, but he fails to support his statements by a single material fact, not even one individual case being proven. His trials show nothing but a few poor demented women, who responded always in the affirmative to the obscene and indecent questions of the judges and prosecutors _employed by the Most Holy Inquisition_. A sad thing philosophy registers celebrated names during this Age. We mention only those of Rene Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Nicholas Malebranche, Thomas Hobbes, Francis Bacon, Leibnitz, and the immortal Newton. Unfortunately these great geniuses could not take part in the struggle between the clerical party and free thinkers. Honored as scholars, their Governments never asked their advice on questions claimed to be under the control of religious orders. The clergy had all the latitude they desired in writing the history of demonology, and also the evidence wrung from those accused of sorcery—vague responses drawn out by fear, by torture, by suggestion imposed in the obscurity of a penitential tabernacle. A witness of veracity, as we have before stated, never gave testimony as to the conduct of the sorcerers at the secret vigils. Their invocations on initiation, their famous inunctions used on the body, with magical ointments while in a condition of absolute nudity; their equestrian position on broom sticks; their flying tricks up the chimney and their bewitched reunions when horned devils rode on their shoulders, are legendary recitals which could only be accepted by ignorant fanatics and judges firm in the Faith. How a man with the seeming intelligence of Prosecutor Bodin, who was delegated by the State, who wrote six works on _The Republic_ and _The Constitution_—works which have been compared in point of ability as ranking with Montesquieu’s _Spirit of the Law_; how a publicist of talent could support such stories as we have mentioned in his work on sorcery is a matter of profound amazement. Yet, Bodin testifies as to his faith in the story of that peasant of Touraine “who found himself naked, wandering around the fields in the morning,” and who gave as an explanation of his conduct that he had surprised his wife the night before as she was making preparations to go to a sorcerers’ vigil, and that he had followed his better half, accompanied by the Devil, as far as Bordeaux, many leagues away. Bodin also believed the narration of that girl from Lyons “whom the lover perceived rubbing herself with magical ointment preparatory to attending a sorcerers’ vigil; and the lover, using the same ointment, followed his girl and arrived at the vigil almost as soon as she.” As to that poor peasant who was found naked and alone in the field and forced to denounce his wife to the authorities, Bodin remarks impressively, “The woman confessed and was condemned to be burnt at the stake.”