And what a wealth of terrifying stories there
was! Hundreds of stories, so that there was no finishing on the evenings
when somebody started them. First came the wehrwolf adventures, the tales
of the unhappy men whom the demon forced to enter into the bodies of
dogs, the great white dogs of the mountains. If you fire a gun at the dog
and a single shot should strike him, the man will be delivered; but if
the shot should fall on the dog's shadow, the man will immediately die.
Then came the endless procession of sorcerers and sorceresses. In one of
these tales Bernadette evinced a passionate interest; it was the story of
a clerk of the tribunal of Lourdes who, wishing to see the devil, was
conducted by a witch into an untilled field at midnight on Good Friday.
The devil arrived clad in magnificent scarlet garments, and at once
proposed to the clerk that he should buy his soul, an offer which the
clerk pretended to accept. It so happened that the devil was carrying
under his arm a register in which different persons of the town, who had
already sold themselves, had signed their names. However, the clerk, who
was a cunning fellow, pulled out of his pocket a pretended bottle of ink,
which in reality contained holy water, and with this he sprinkled the
devil, who raised frightful shrieks, whilst the clerk took to flight,
carrying the register off with him. Then began a wild, mad race, which
might last throughout the night, over the mountains, through the valleys,
across the forests and the torrents.
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