of Witches
73
Card. de subtil. lib. 2.had opened a chest found in the temple of Apollo at Selancia, a town of Babylon, the air which came from it was so poisonous that it wasted the whole country with the pestilence; and being brought from there to Greece, and from Greece to Rome, it provoked such a plague that almost a third of the human race died of it.
While I am treating of this subject, I wish to set down the strange story of one of the so-called Reformed Religion, who was executed at Nyon not fifteen months ago. This man was returning from Berne in a state of despair because his only brother had caused him to lose the greater part of his goods in a lawsuit. The Devil appeared to him in the shape of a big black man, and said to him that, if he would give himself to him, he would cause him not only to recover his goods, but also to gain possession of all his brother’s goods, and told him how to proceed so as to secure such a result. “Here is a box,” he said, “in which there is some grease. Take it, and go to your brother, and beg him to settle matters with you in return for a sum of money. Invite him to dinner, and mix some of this grease in his broth, and you will see him die in a few days. As he has two sons, you will be appointed their guardian. You will send the older to school, and keep the younger in your house and in like manner make him eat of this grease, and he will die like his father. Then you will bring back the elder son and do to him as you did the younger; and so you will be left master of all their goods as well as of your own, for they will leave no nearer kin than yourself to succeed them.” The poor man, hearing this speech and knowing that he who spoke to him was the Devil (for he had so