to his usual manner, a most grievous stink arose suddenly, which by degrees spread itself to every corner of the room. Here upon he commends himself and his family to God by Prayer. The smell nevertheless encreased, and became above all measure pestilently noisom, insomuch that he was forced to go up to his chamber. He and his Wife had not been in bed a quarter of an hour, but they find the same stink in the bedchamber; of which, while they are complaining one to another out steps the Spectre from the Wall, and creeping to his bedside, breathes upon him an exceeding cold breath, of so intolerable stinking and malignant a scent, as is beyond all imagination and expression. Here upon the Theologer, good soul, grew very ill, and was fain to keep his bed, his face, belly, and guts swelling as if he had been poysoned; whence he was also troubled with a difficulty of breathing, and with a putrid inflamation of his eyes, so that he could not well use them of a long time after.”[66] In the Malleus Maleficarum, Part II, Qn. 1., Ch. 11, the following is related: “In the territory of the Black Forest, a witch was being lifted by a gaoler on to the pile of wood prepared for her burning and said: ‘I will pay you,’ and blew into his face. And he was at once afflicted with a horrible leprosy all over his body and did not survive many days.” Boguet, Discours des Sorciers, gives as his rubric to Chapter XXV, Si les Sorciers tuent de leur souffle & haleine. He tells us: “Les Sorciers tuent & endommagent de leur souffle & haleine: en quoy Clauda Gaillard dicte la Fribolette nous seruita de tesmoignage; car ayant soufflé contre Clauda Perrier, qu’elle r’encontra en l’Eglise d’Ebouchoux, tout aussi tost ceste femme tomba malade, & fut rendue impotente, & en fin mourut apres auoir trainé par l’espace d’vn an en toute pauurieté, & langueur: de mesme aussi comme Marie Perrier luy eut vne fois refusé l’aumosne, elle luy souffla fort rudement contre, de façon que Marie tomba par terre, & s’estant releuée ause peine elle demeura malade par quelques iours, & iusques à tant que Pierre Perrier son neueu eut menacé la Sorciere.”
Sinistrari in his Demoniality (24) says that if we ask how it is possible that the Demon, who has no body, yet can perform actual coitus with man or woman, most authorities answer that the demon assumes or animates the corpse of another human being, male or female, as the case may be, and Delrio
