the ability to transform themselves into cats by rubbing their bodies
with a special salve or ointment provided by Satan himself, found equal
credence. The witchcraft trials abound in evidences of such universal
beliefs."

Dr. Silence quoted chapter and verse from many writers on the subject,
and showed how every detail of Vezin's adventure had a basis in the
practices of those dark days.

"But that the entire affair took place subjectively in the man's own
consciousness, I have no doubt," he went on, in reply to my questions;
"for my secretary who has been to the town to investigate, discovered
his signature in the visitors' book, and proved by it that he had
arrived on September 8th, and left suddenly without paying his bill. He
left two days later, and they still were in possession of his dirty
brown bag and some tourist clothes. I paid a few francs in settlement of
his debt, and have sent his luggage on to him. The daughter was absent
from home, but the proprietress, a large woman very much as he described
her, told my secretary that he had seemed a very strange, absent-minded
kind of gentleman, and after his disappearance she had feared for a long
time that he had met with a violent end in the neighbouring forest where
he used to roam about alone.

"I should like to have obtained a personal interview with the daughter
so as to ascertain how much was subjective and how much actually took
place with her as Vezin told it. For her dread of fire and the sight of
burning must, of course, have been the intuitive memory of her former
painful death at the stake, and have thus explained why he fancied more
than once that he saw her through smoke and flame."