parish-priests, rural deans, were swept away in this ruin. So far, at
length, did the madness of the furious populace and of the courts go in
this thirst for blood and booty that there was scarcely anybody who was
not smirched by some suspicion of this crime.

"Meanwhile notaries, copyists, and innkeepers grew rich. The executioner
rode a blooded horse, like a noble of the court, and went clad in gold
and silver; his wife vied with noble dames in the richness of her array.
The children of those convicted and punished were sent into exile; their
goods were confiscated; plowman and vintner failed." (_The Witch
Persecutions_, pp. 13-14, BURR.)

Fanaticism did not rule and ruin without hindrance and remonstrance. Men
of great learning and exalted position struck mighty blows at the root
of the evil. They could not turn the tide but they stemmed it, and their
attacks upon the whole theory of Satanic power and the methods of
persecution were potent in the reaction to humanity and a reign of
reason.

Always to be remembered among these men of power are Johann Wier,
Friedrich Spee, and notably Reginald Scot, who in his _Discovery of
Witchcraft_, in 1584, undertook to prove that "the contracts and
compacts of witches with devils and all infernal spirits and familiars,
are but erroneous novelties and erroneous conceptions."

"After all it is setting a high value on our conjectures to roast a man
alive on account of them." (MONTAIGNE.)

Who may measure in romance and the drama the presence, the cogent and
undeniable power of those same abiding elements of mysticism and