DOOM OF A PRETENDED SORCERESS. 29 



Oh ! how much sap there is in this Spanish nation ! 

 What a pity that they will not make it yield fruit ! 



In 1807, the tribunal of the Inquisition existed still at 

 Valencia, and at times performed its functions. The 

 reverend fathers, it is true, did not burn people, but they 

 pronounced sentences in which the ridiculous contended 

 with the odious. During my residence in this town, the 

 holy office had to busy itself about a pretended sorceress ; 

 it doomed her to go through all quarters of the town 

 astride on an ass, her face turned towards the tail, and 

 naked down to the waist. Merely to observe the com 

 monest rules of decency, the poor woman had been 

 plastered with a sticky substance, partly honey, they 

 told me, to which adhered an enormous quantity of little 

 feathers, so that to say the truth, the victim resembled a 

 fowl with a human head. The procession, whether at 

 tended by a crowd I leave it to be imagined, stationed 

 itself for some time in the cathedral square, where I 

 lived. I was told that the sorceress was struck on the 

 back a certain number of blows with a shovel ; but I do 

 not venture to affirm this, for I was absent at the mo 

 ment when this hideous procession passed before my 

 windows. 



We thus see, however, what sort of spectacles were 

 given to the people in the commencement of the nine 

 teenth century, in one of the principal towns of Spain, 

 the seat of a celebrated university, and the native country 

 of numerous citizens distinguished by their knowledge, 

 their courage, and their virtues. Let not the friends of 

 humanity and of civilization disunite ; let them form, on 

 the contrary, an indissoluble union, for superstition is 

 always on the watch, and waits for the moment again to 

 seize its prey. 



