organized, and essentially dangerous coven, and there is every indication that he did his work with a thoroughness and a practicality which alone could efficiently cope with so alarming and ominous a situation. It is a question whether in the background, behind those who were brought to trial, may not have lurked personages and influences justice could not, or at least did not, reach. When we consider the zeal of Bodin, of Henry Boguet, Nicolas Remy, and Pierre de Lancre, we must always remember the difficulties and hazards these brave men had to face. Already had the seeds of anarchy and revolution been widely sown. The wizard Trois-eschelles openly boasted to King Charles IX that within the French coasts there were some thirty thousand witches, and, as Boguet himself writes, there was hardly a country which was not “infested with this miserable and damnable vermin.” Their contest with the evil thing was hard and long; it was a
