Peter, the venerable Abbot of Cluny,[241] relates so extraordinary a thing which happened in his time, that I should not repeat it here, had it not been seen by the whole town of Macon. The count of that town, a very violent man, exercised a kind of tyranny over the ecclesiastics, and against whatever belonged to them, without troubling himself either to conceal his violence, or to find a pretext for it; he carried it on with a high hand and gloried in it. One day, when he was sitting in his palace in company with several nobles and others, they beheld an unknown person enter on horseback, who advanced to the count and desired him to follow him. The count rose and followed him, and having reached the door, he found there a horse ready caparisoned; he mounts it, and is immediately carried up into the air, crying out, in a terrible tone to those who were present, "Here, help me!" All the town ran out at the noise, but they soon lost sight of him; and no doubt was entertained that the devil had flown away with him to be the companion of his tortures, and to bear the pain of his excesses and his violence. It is, then, not absolutely impossible that a person may be raised into the air and transported to some very high and distant place, by order or by permission of God, by good or evil spirits; but we must own that the thing is of rare occurrence, and that in all that is related of sorcerers and witches, and their assemblings at the witches' sabbath, there is an infinity of stories, which are false, absurd, ridiculous, and even destitute of probability. M. Remi, attorney-general of Lorraine, author of a celebrated work entitled _Demonology_, who tried a great number of sorcerers and sorceresses, with which Lorraine was then infested, produces hardly any proof whence we can infer the truth and reality of witchcraft, and of wizards and witches being transported to the sabbath. Footnotes: [241] Petrus Venerab. lib. ii. de Miraculis, c. 1, p. 1299. CHAPTER XXIII. OBSESSION AND POSSESSION OF THE DEVIL.