# An Examen of Witches/Chapter 23

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Chapter XXIII.
Of the Powder Used by Witches.
The sixth and seventh points of Françoise Secretain’s confession were that she had caused the death of Loys Monneretand of several cows; and this brings me to speak of the calamities occasioned by witches. For they afflict persons, cattle and the fruits of the earth; but since the means they use for such purposes are ​innumerable and for the most part unknown, I shall confine myself to treating of the more obvious of them.
And first there is the powder which they use. This is sometimes black, sometimes white or of an ashen colour, and sometimes of some other colour. They use it when they produce hail, as we saw in the last chapter; and they also use it against persons or cattle, to kill them or make them ill. When Jacques Bocquet and Françoise Secretain wished to kill Loys Monneret they made her eat a crust of bread dusted with a white powder which their master had given them. When Thievenne Paget wanted to be revenged on Claude Roy she mixed the powder in a cheese which she made him eat, and he died immediately afterwards. Michel Udon and Pierre Burgot confessed that their masters, who were named Moyset and Guillemin, gave them an ashen powder with which they rubbed their left arms and hands, and that by this means they killed every animal that they touched.
There are others who bury some of this powder under the threshold of a door or in some other place, and those who pass over that spot are taken ill. This is what Groz-Jacques did to a man of Mi-joux, of whom we shall speak later. Some have thought that the powder thus given to witches is veritable poison, and others have not held this opinion. But my own belief is that both these opinions may be right. For since the Devil has knowledge of the properties of every herb, it is easy for him to compound a poison and give it to his disciples to cause, by this means, the death or illness of a person or beast. And it is likely that the bread which Loys Monneret ate was ​poisoned. On the other hand, I believe that the powder in the cheese which Claude Roy ate was not poison; for several persons ate of the same cheese, but none was ill except Claude: moreover, when Thievenne Paget was questioned on this matter, she said that she had been quite certain that the cheese would harm no one except Claude Roy, since it was her intention to kill him only. In such a case, then, it is Satan who secretly procures death or illness; and this he does by invisibly mingling some venomous juice with the food of those whom the witch wishes to injure.
I shall quote two examples to make this more evident. When Jacques Bocquet was beaten by the man of Mi-joux and proposed to revenge himself for the wrong which he thought had been done him, he put some powder under the threshold of a shed where the man kept seven calves, five of which belonged to him, and the other two to one of his neighbours. The seven calves, on returning from the fields, passed over the threshold, and the five which belonged to the man died at once, while the other two remained healthy and unharmed.
Early one morning Antoine Tornier threw some powder into the fountain of Orcieres, wishing by this means to kill the cattle of Big Claude Fontaine; and she commanded her son Antoine David not to water his cattle before those of Big Claude had drunk. Her son, forgetting what his mother had said, or not thinking about the spell she had cast, watered his cattle first, became blind after a few days and remained so till his death; while neither Big Claude’s cattle nor those of others which drank at the fountain after Antoine ​David took the least hurt. Now if the powder which Antoine Tornier threw into the fountain of Orcieres had been poison, there is no doubt that all the cattle which drank there would have died at once. Similarly it is certain that all seven of the calves which the man of Mi-joux kept in his shed would have died if the powder which Groz-Jacques buried under the threshold had been poisonous. But we should further consider that it was impossible for this last powder, being buried as we have said, to have the power to penetrate through the earth and reach the animals so as to harm them.