The great difficulty, however, is the confessions. In many cases, no doubt, the victims, worn down by terror and torture, said whatever their examiners seemed to wish them to say; in other cases, their statements were exaggerated by the reporters. Yet enough remains, after every deduction, to render witches' confessions a very curious mental problem. Was it vision, or monomania, or nervous delusion, all influenced by foregone conclusion? or was it, as the mesmerists seem to hold, an instance of clairvoyance in a high degree? The case of Gaufridi is of this puzzling nature. Gaufridi was a French priest of licentious character, who succeeded by the opportunities which his priestly influence gave him, or by some pretended supernatural arts. His crimes were discovered through the confession of one of his victims, a nun whom he had abused before profession. After a time, she appeared to be possessed; and, under treatment by a celebrated exorcist, (an inferior hand having failed,) she, or the demon in possession, among other things accused Gaufridi. _Her_ revelations may be resolved into an imposture instigated by revenge, or a pious fraud caused by remorse, or hysterical fits, with utterance shaped by memory; but what can be said of Gaufridi's, made with a full knowledge of consequences? "The priests who conducted this affair seem almost to have lost sight of Louis Gaufridi, in their anxiety to collect these important evidences of the true faith. It was not till towards the close of winter that the reputed wizard was again thought of. A warrant was then obtained against him, and he was taken into custody, and confined in the prison of the conciergerie at Marseilles. On the fifth of March he was for the first time confronted with sister Magdalen, but without producing the result anticipated by his persecutors. Little information is given as to the subsequent proceedings against him; but he appears to have been treated with great severity, and to have persevered in asserting his innocence. Sister Magdalen, or rather the demon within her, gave information of certain marks on his body which had been placed there by the Evil One; and on search they were found exactly as described. It is not to be wondered at, if, after the intercourse which had existed between them, sister Magdalen were able to give such information. Still Gaufridi continued unshaken, and he made no confession; until at length, on Easter Eve, the twenty-sixth of March, 1611, a full avowal of his guilt was drawn from him, we are not told through what means, by two Capuchins of the Convent of Aix, to which place he had been transferred for his trial. At the beginning of April, another witness, the Demoiselle Victoire de Courbier, came forward to depose that she had been bewitched by the renegade priest, who had obtained