On March 7, 1679, in Heimfels, Tyrol, a poor woman, Emerencia Pichler, was brought before the inquisitors. In spite of her solemn pledges by God and the Virgin that she knew nothing about witchcraft she was submitted to torture. On the third day of her sufferings the inquisitors wrung from the unfortunate creature a confession, that Satan had visited her one day, wearing a blue jacket, a white vest and red socks. In his company she made a flight to a high mountain, both riding on the same oven-shovel. Here they took part in the witches-sabbath, during which several infants were killed and eaten. The remains were used in concocting all kinds of ointments and powders, to be used in the producing of thunderstorms and plagues. The most horrible part of these confessions was that the woman, when questioned about accomplices, in her agonies named twenty-four persons, among them her own four children. Of course the poor woman withdrew her confessions, when the tortures were interrupted. Nevertheless she was found guilty. On her way to the place of execution she was twitched with red-hot pincers and afterwards burnt at the stake. Her two oldest children, a boy of fourteen and a girl of twelve, were beheaded and their bodies burnt to ashes on July 29, 1679. Their little brother Sebastian, nine years old, and his sister Maria, six years old, were terribly flogged and forced to attend the execution of their mother and playmates. Of all the other “accomplices,” named by the woman, not one escaped the clutches of the inquisitors and death at the stake. There are on record thousands and thousands of similar cases, many of them horrible beyond belief and defying description. No country in Europe escaped the visitation of such inquisitors, many of whom journeyed from place to place in search of victims. In numerous cities the arrival of these fiends was regarded with greater fear than famine or pestilence, especially by women, against whom their malice was chiefly directed. That there was cause for such fear, is proven by the fact that in Treves seven thousand women lost their lives. In Geneva five thousand were executed in a single month. And in Toulouse, France, four hundred witches were burnt in one day, dying the horrible death by fire for a crime which never existed save in the imagination of their benighted persecutors.—