THE INQUISITORIAL PROCESS. ;,!.; all died within three days; suspicion was aroused, and the two women were arrested and confessed. The mother was burned, but the daughter obtained a respite on the plea of pregnancy, es- caped from jail and fled to Hainault, but was brought back and was carried on appeal to Paris. Yves was rich and well-con- nected. He was arrested and confined in the prison of the Bishop of Paris, but he obtained counsel and appealed to the Parlement ; the Parlement allowed the appeal, tried him, and acquitted him.* All secular tribunals were not as enlightened as the Parlement of Paris, but there seems to have been at least sometimes an effort to administer even-handed justice. About this time a case occurred at Constance in which an accuser formally inscribed himself against a peasant whom he had met riding on a wolf, and had immediately become crippled. He applied to the peasant, who cured him, but ob- serving that the wizard bewitched others, he felt it his duty to prose- cute him. The case was exhaustively argued before the magistrates, for the prosecution and the defence, by two eloquent advocates, Con- rad Schatz and Ulric Biaser. Torture was not used, but the accused was condemned and burned on the testimony of witnesses. f In the ecclesiastical tribunals offenders had not the same chance. We have seen in a former chapter how skilfully the inquisitorial process was framed to secure conviction, and when, after a prolonged period of comparative inactivity, the Inquisi- tion was aroused to renewed exertion in combating the legions of Satan, it sharpened its rusted weapons to a yet keener edge. The old hesitation about pronouncing a sentence of acquittal was no longer entertained, for though the accused might be dismissed with a verdict of not proven, the inquisitor was formally instruct- ed never to declare him innocent. Yet few there were upon whom even this doubtful clemency was exercised, for all the resources of
- Memoires de Jacques du Clercq, Liv. iv. ch. xxiii.
The constant recurrence of the toad in all the operations of witchcraft opens a suggestive question in zoological mythology. Space will not admit its discus- sion here, but I may mention, as a proof of the antiquity of the superstitions con- nected with the animal, that in Mazdcism the toad was one of the special crea- tions of Ahriman, and was devoted to his service. It was a toad which he set to destroying the Gokard, or Tree of all plants, and which will always be endeavor- ing to do so until the resurrection (Bundehesh, ch. xviii.). t Ulric. Molitoris de Python. Mulierib. c. iv. III.— 33
