An Examen of Witches/Chapter 45
Chapter XLV.
So much for Françoise Secretain. I am sure that all will agree that she was worthy of death, and of a witch’s death by burning. But this she forestalled; for when we were on the point of pronouncing her sentence, she was found dead in prison.
In other instances witches have strangled themselves, and it seems that they have done so at the instigation of Satan. For, fearing lest witches, in dying at the hands of Justice, should be induced to repent, he either kills them or impels them to kill themselves, so that they may not escape him. In this manner he urged Antide Colas to hurl herself out of a window, or to hang herself from a window four days after she had been incarcerated at the Château de Betoncourt, appearing to her in the shape of a big black man. And I have no doubt that the Devil suffocated Françoise Secretain; for she had reported to us that they had tried four or five times to burn her in prison, to the extent of thrusting fire down her throat.
I must add that, when she was questioned about these threatened burnings, she always answered that they might do what they would with her, but that they would never burn her. It may be that Satan had revealed to her that she would die in prison; for I have read of the same in the case of a witch of Biévres. Bodin, Demonom. IV. 4.This woman said to her Judge that he would play her a scurvy trick; and before her sentence was pronounced she told him that he would cause her to be burned alive. The Judge sentenced her to be first strangled and then burned; but owing to a mistake on the part of the executioner, she was burned alive. When Clauda Jamguillaume who was executed in this place, was at the stake ready to be burned alive, she also said to the executioner that she knew that he would serve her ill and cause her to die slowly. And so it happened; for she broke loose and jumped out of the fire three times, so that in order to control her the executioner was forced to stun her. I remember also that, when sentence of death had been passed on Antoine Gandillon, she repeatedly entreated us not to let her die a slow death; and orders were accordingly given to the executioner, and yet she died more hardly than six others who were executed with her, among whom were her father and brother. It is obvious then that this foreknowledge of witches comes of the Devil. Nevertheless these last two died penitent. What then? It may be that Satan revealed to them that they would die a slow death with a view to bringing them to despair at the prospect of the pain they would have to suffer.
We read of another witch named Ascletario, who, although he was not a prisoner, told the Emperor Domitian that he would be eaten by dogs; and this happened to him although the Emperor had caused him to be put to death, for he was accidentally eaten by dogs after his death.