5. To take the bridegroom's point-hose and pass it through the wedding ring: knot the said point, holding the fingers in the ring, and afterwards cut the knot saying, "God loosens what the Devil fastens."
6. When the new-married couple are about to retire for the night to fasten upon the thigh of each a little slip of paper, inscribed with these words, Domine, quis similis tibi?
7. To broach a cask of white wine from which none has yet been drawn, and pour the first of the liquor which flows, through the wedding ring.
8. To rub with wolf's grease the door posts through which the married couple pass on their way to the nuptial bed.
9. To write upon virgin parchment before sunrise, and for nine days successively, the word Arigazartor.
10. To pronounce the word Temon three times successively at sunrise, provided the day promises to be fine.
But the mode of procedure in which the learned curate Thiers appears to place the greatest confidence is that employed by a priest of his acquaintance. This person's plan was to tie the bride and bridegroom to a pillar and administer to them with his own hand the stimulus with which the pedagogue awakens the genius of idle and sluggish pupils; after this flagellation they are unbound and left together, amply provided with such restorative and stimulants as are proper to maintain the condition so favourable to Venus, in which he had placed them. The result was in the highest degree satisfactory.
Bodin informs us that he knew at Bordeaux, a woman of middle age, but still lively and fresh, who professed to cure radically all enchantments of this description. Nothing could be more natural than her modus operandi. She got into bed with her patients, and there by the resources of her amatory powers succeeded so well in arousing their flagged and sluggish desires that their domestic peace was never afterwards disturbed by the reproaches of their disappointed spouses. Upon her mother's death, the daughter embraced the same interesting profession and in addition to acquiring considerable reputation by her successful practise, realized a handsome fortune.
Ridiculous and contemptible as this quackery now appears, so great at one time was its power, that persons every way qualified for the generative act, have been seen suddenly reduced to a humiliating nullity, in consequence of an impudent charlatan, a village sorcerer or a fortune-teller having threatened them with point-tying. Saint André, a French physician, gives an account of a poor weaver, who having disappointed Madame André in not bringing home some work was threatened by that lady with being point-tied by her husband the doctor. The poor fellow was so alarmed that the charm had the same effect as a reality, nor was it until the work he had in hand was finished, and the lady had consented to restore him to his natural state, that he could resume the exercises of his conjugal duties.
Venette gives the case of one Pierre Buriel. "This man," to use Venette's own words, "was about thirty-five years of age, a cooper and brandy manufacturer by trade. Being at work one day for my father in one of his country houses, he offended me by some impertinent observations, to punish which I told him the next day that I would point-tie him when he married. It so happened that he had the intention of uniting himself with a servant girl who lived in the neighbourhood, and although I had threatened him merely in a jesting manner, it made so strong an impression upon him that although, when married, he felt the most ardent desire to enjoy his connubial rights, he found himself totally incapacitated for the work of love. Sometimes when he flattered himself with being on the point of accomplishing his wishes, the idea of the witchcraft obtruded itself, and rendered him for the time completely impotent. This incapacity alienated the affections of his wife, and produced on her part towards him the most repulsive coldness. I need not say what gain I felt on witnessing these effects, how I regretted having, I may truly say, unintentionally caused so unpleasant a state of things, and I did and said everything in my power to disabuse the man, and prove to him the folly of his impressions. But the more I did so, the more he testified his abhorrence of me, and his conviction that I had really bewitched him. At length the curate of Notre Dame, who had married them, interfered, and after some time succeeded, though with considerable difficulty, in freeing him from his imaginary bonds. They lived together for twenty-eight years, and several children, now citizens of Rochelle, were the issue of their union."