“Brothers, he is mad,” exclaimed the lady, turning pale and trembling.
“Woman,” replied the knight, rising, and seizing the lady by the wrist, “woman, I am not mad. Hear ye all: this woman loved Maleficus; she called him here the day I sailed; she devised with him my death; but God struck him with that death he would have prepared for me, and now he lies buried in my chamber. Come, let us see this great wonder.”
The hiding-place of the body was opened, and the remains found where the knight had said; then did he declare before the judges and the people the great crimes of his wife; and the judges condemned her to death at the stake, and bade the executioner scatter her ashes to the four winds of heaven.
“Few practices were more prevalent among the witches than that which your tale illustrates, of effecting the death of an enemy through the medium of an enchanted image of the person intended to be affected,” said Herbert.
“As old Ben Jonson sings:
“‘With pictures full,
Of wax and wool,
Their livers I stick,
With needles quick.’”
“Yes,” said Herbert; “it was a very approved method to melt a waxen image before the fire, under the idea that the person by it represented would pine away, as the figure melted; or to stick pins and needles into the heart or less vital parts of the waxen resemblance, with the hopes of affecting, by disease and pain, the portions of the human being thus represented and treated.”