Nicole Aubri, a native of Vervius, being possessed by several devils, one of these devils, named Baltazo, took from the gibbet the body of a man who had been hanged near the plain of Arlon, and in this body went to the husband of Nicole Aubri, promising to deliver his wife from her possession if he would let him pass the night with her. The husband consulted the schoolmaster, who practiced exorcising, and who told him on no account to grant what was asked of him. The husband and Baltazo having entered the church, the woman who was possessed called him by his name, and immediately this Baltazo disappeared. The schoolmaster conjuring the possessed, Beelzebub, one of the demons, revealed what Baltazo had done, and that if the husband had granted what he asked, he would have flown away with Nicole Aubri, both body and soul. Le Loyer again relates[538] four other instances of persons whom the demon had seemed to restore to life, to satisfy the brutal passion of two lovers. Footnotes: [536] Le Loyer, des Spectres, lib. ii. pp. 376, 392, 393. [537] Pliny, lib. vii. c. 52. [538] Le Loyer, pp. 412-414. CHAPTER XXXVI. DEVOTING TO DEATH, A PRACTICE AMONG THE PAGANS. The ancient heathens, both Greeks and Romans, attributed to magic and to the demon the power of occasioning the destruction of any person by a manner of devoting them to death, which consisted in forming a waxen image as much as possible like the person whose life they wished to take. They devoted him or her to death by their magical secrets: then they burned the waxen statue, and as that by degrees was consumed, so the doomed person became languid and at last died. Theocritus[539] makes a woman transported with love speak thus: she invokes the image of the shepherd, and prays that the heart of Daphnis, her beloved, may melt like the image of wax which represents him. Horace[540] brings forward two enchantresses, who evoke the shades to make them announce the future. First of all, the witches tear a sheep with their teeth, shedding the blood into a grave, in order to bring those spirits from whom they expect an answer; then they place next to themselves two statues, one of wax, the other of wool; the latter is the largest, and mistress of the other. The waxen image is at its feet, as a suppliant, and awaiting only death. After divers magical ceremonies, the waxen image was inflamed and consumed. He speaks of this again elsewhere; and after having with a mocking laugh made his complaints to the enchantress Canidia, saying that he is ready to make her honorable reparation, he owns that he feels all the effects of her too-powerful art, as he himself has experienced it to give motion to waxen figures, and bring down the moon from the sky.[541] Virgil also speaks[542] of these diabolical operations, and these waxen images, devoted by magic art.