The Baroness de Beausoleil
ous reports were circulated relative to the Beausoleils, and they were accused of various crimes. The suspicion of magic, which had attached to them from the time of the inquisition of the provost of Morlaix, was revived, and the prejudices of the age tended to give it force to overthrow the noble pair. Old superstitions concerning gnomes of the mines and subterranean demons were not yet extinct. The Baroness herself believed in them, and in one of her works speaks of her having encountered some of them. In the mines of Neusol and Chemnitz in Hungary, she says, "I saw little dwarfs about three or four palms high, old, and dressed like miners, that is, clothed in an old suit, and with a leather apron, a white tunic and cap, a lamp and staff in hand—terrible spectres to those who are unaccustomed to mines." Several times already, as appears from her writings, she and her husband had been exposed to the violence of the rude and ignorant rustics, who thought their scientific instruments means for conjuring up the devil, and the authorities were, as we have seen at Morlaix, quite prepared to second the popular superstition when profit could be obtained thereby. The divining rod, then much in vogue in Germany, was used by the Baron and his wife, who had strong belief in its magnetic properties, and the employment of it may have given some colour to the charges now raised against them on all sides of being necromancers in league with evil spirits.
In 1642, by order of Cardinal Richelieu, the
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