poisoned. On the other hand, I believe that the powder in the cheese which Claude Roy ate was not poison; for several persons ate of the same cheese, but none was ill except Claude: moreover, when Thievenne Paget was questioned on this matter, she said that she had been quite certain that the cheese would harm no one except Claude Roy, since it was her intention to kill him only. In such a case, then, it is Satan who secretly procures death or illness; and this he does by invisibly mingling some venomous juice with the food of those whom the witch wishes to injure.
I shall quote two examples to make this more evident. When Jacques Bocquet was beaten by the man of Mi-joux and proposed to revenge himself for the wrong which he thought had been done him, he put some powder under the threshold of a shed where the man kept seven calves, five of which belonged to him, and the other two to one of his neighbours. The seven calves, on returning from the fields, passed over the threshold, and the five which belonged to the man died at once, while the other two remained healthy and unharmed.
Early one morning Antoine Tornier threw some powder into the fountain of Orcieres, wishing by this means to kill the cattle of Big Claude Fontaine; and she commanded her son Antoine David not to water his cattle before those of Big Claude had drunk. Her son, forgetting what his mother had said, or not thinking about the spell she had cast, watered his cattle first, became blind after a few days and remained so till his death; while neither Big Claude’s cattle nor those of others which drank at the fountain after Antoine
