Anybody might be an accuser,--a personal enemy, an
infamous person, a child, parent, brother, or sister. Once accused, the
culprit was not to be allowed to touch the ground on the way to prison,
was not to be left alone there lest she have interviews with the Devil
and get from him the means of being insensible under torture, was to be
stripped and shaved in order to prevent her concealing some charm, or to
facilitate the finding of witch-marks. Her right thumb tied to her left
great-toe, and _vice versa_, she was thrown into the water. If she
floated, she was a witch; if she sank and was drowned, she was lucky.
This trial, as old as the days of Pliny the Elder, was gone out of
fashion, the author of _De Lamiis_ assures us, in his day, everywhere but
in Westphalia. "On halfproof or strong presumption," says Bodin, the
judge may proceed to torture. If the witch did not shed tears under the
rack, it was almost conclusive of guilt. On this topic of torture he
grows eloquent. The rack does very well, but to thrust splinters between
the nails and flesh of hands and feet "is the most excellent gehenna of
all, and practised in Turkey." That of Florence, where they seat the
criminal in a hanging chair so contrived that if he drop asleep it
overturns and leaves him hanging by a rope which wrenches his arms
backwards, is perhaps even better, "for the limbs are not broken, and
without trouble or labor one gets out the truth.
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