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walked. The doctor does not make any allusion to the Cideville affair, and it seems probable that this trick is
part of the peasant's magical repertoire, or, rather, that the peasant warlocks boast of being able to perform the
trick. But, if we can accept the physician's evidence, as 'true for him,' at least, then a person like Berthe really
might affect, from a distance, a boy like Lemonier with a haunting hallucination. To do this is witchcraft, and
for crimes of this kind, or on false charges of this kind, poor Mrs. Bishop was burned at Salem in 1692.
At the lowest, we have all the notes of sorcery as our rude ancestors knew it, in this modern affair. Two
hundred years earlier, Thorel would have been burned, and G., too, probably, for the Maire of Cideville swore
that before the disturbances, and three weeks after G. was let out of prison, Thorel had warned him of the
trouble which G. would bring on the cur. Meanwhile the evidence shows no conscious malignity on the part
of the two boys. They at first took very little notice of the raps, attributing the noises to mice. Not till the
sounds increased, and showed intelligence, as by drumming tunes, did the lads concern themselves, much
about the matter. At no time (it seems) did they ask to be sent home, and, of course, to be relieved from their
lessons and sent home would be their motive, if they practised a fraud. We may admit that, from rural
tradition, the boys might have learned what the customary phenomena are, knocks, raps, moving tables, heavy
objects sailing tranquilly about a room. It would be less easy for them to produce these phenomena, nor did
the people of all classes who flocked to Cideville detect any imposture.
A land surveyor swore that the raps went on when he had placed the boy in an attitude which made fraud (in
his opinion) impossible. A gentleman M. de B. 'took all possible precautions' but, nevertheless, was
entertained by 'a noise which performed the tunes demanded'. He could discover no cause of the noise. M.
Huet, touching a table with his finger, received responsive raps, which answered questions, 'at the very place
where I struck, and beneath my finger. I cannot explain the fact, which, I am convinced, was not caused by
the child, nor by any one in the house.' M. Cheval saw things fly about, he slept in the boy's room, and his
pillow flew from under his head. He lay down between the children, holding their hands, and placing his feet
on theirs, when the coverlet of the bed arose, and floated away. The Marquis de Mirville had a number of
answers by raps, which staggered him very much, but the force was quite feeble when he asked for portions of
Italian music. Madame de St. Victor felt herself pushed, and her clothes pulled in the cur's house, when no
one was near her. She also saw furniture behave in a fantastic manner, and M. Raoul Robert de St. Victor had
many such experiences. M. Paul de St. Victor was not present. A desk sailed along: paused in air, and fell: 'I
had never seen a movement of this kind, and I admit that I was alarmed'. Le Seigneur, a farmer, saw 'a variety
of objects arise and sail about': he was certain that the boys did not throw them, and when in their company, in
the open air, between Cideville and Anzooville, 'I saw stones come to us, without striking us, hurled by some
invisible force'. There was other confirmatory evidence, from men of physic, and of the law.
The juge de paix, as we have seen, pronounced that the clearest point in the case was 'the absence of known
cause for the effects,' and he non-suited Thorel, the plaintiff.
The cause of the phenomena is, of course, as obscure for us as for the worthy magistrate. We can only say
that, when precisely similar evidence was brought before judges and juries in England and New England, at a
period when medicine, law, and religion all recognised the existence of witchcraft, magic, and diabolical
possession, they had scarcely any choice but to condemn the accused. Causa patet, they said: 'The devil is at
the bottom of it all, and the witch is his minister'.
The affair of Cideville by no means stands alone in modern France. In 1853, two doctors and other witnesses
signed a deposition as to precisely similar phenomena attending Adelaide Franoise Millet, a girl of twelve, at
Songhien, in Champagne. The trouble, as at Cock Lane, began by a sound of scratching on the wood of her
bed. The clerk of the juge de la paix, the master of the Douane, two doctors, and others visited her, and tied
A MODERN TRIAL FOR WITCHCRAFT 95
Cock Lane and Common-Sense
her hands and feet. The noise continued. Mysterious missiles pursued a girl in Martinique, in 1854. The
house, which was stormed by showers of stone, in Paris (1846), entirely baffled the police. {283a} There is a
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