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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. 
