Originally from Venoix near Caen, his real name was Adam Coeuret. His portrait is sketched by La Vigoureux: 'he wore a ruddy wig, was ill formed, clothed as a rule in grey, with a cloak of homespun.' He was a wool merchant. Though he had a wife in Lower Normandy, he promised La Voisin that he would marry her if she became a widow. The first alias he chose was Duboisson. In 1667 he was arrested, condemned to the galleys for dealings with the devil, and liberated in 1672 through the kind offices of La Voisin. The galley in which he rowed was lying in sight of the port of Genoa when the pardon reached him. Set at liberty, Coeuret returned to Paris, where he renewed his relations with the witches. His whole art consisted in a remarkable talent for jugglery, by which he deceived the witches themselves, persuading them that he possessed 'all the science of the cabala.' They adopted him as partner in their lucrative operations. The reports of the examination of La Voisin give curious information on this head. 'Lesage took a live pigeon in the Vale of Misery (on the quay of La Mégisserie, where poultry was sold) and burnt it in a warming-pan. Having then sifted its ashes, he put them in his room. It was the beginning of Lent, during which he used to recite the Passion of our Lord daily, with his feet in water, though it was freezing hard. Then he put a white cloth on the table, lit two tapers, and sent for three crystal glasses, with which having performed his "mystery," which was Greek to La Voisin, he shut them up in a cupboard with a twig of laurel, and then, though he retained the key, he asked her for the three glasses and the laurel twig which he had locked in the cupboard. They were not found there; and then he said that he would give her nothing else to keep, and having sent her into the garden, she found them all three in a row in the summer-house. And when she asked him how he did that, Lesage said that he was one of the apostles and of the company of the Sibyls.'