A Young Witch.
For the last three weeks an entire quarter of the town of Bordeaux has been thrown into a state of excitement, in consequence of a series of occurrences which seemed traceable to no other source than witchcraft. In a house in the rue Nanjac, inhabited by one Landon, the windows were shattered by stones launched from an invisible hand; some occasionally fell into the fire, or, in other instances, a quantity of water was poured over it without the possibility of discovering by what means.
The police had already arrested five persons on suspicion, but still the same performances were repeated. At last, however, all these mysteries have been explained, and, says the Memorial Bordelais, the magician has been under lock and key since Saturday. He was conducted, under the guise of a fresh visaged young girl of fifteen, by two police officers, before the Procurator of the Republic, who discovered the pretended devil to be no other than the servant of the man Landon, who had been in the service of a fortune teller, from whom she had probably received a few lessons in the magic art, which she was anxious to put into practice.
The whole mystery was discovered in the following manner:- For two days previous to the discovery, peace had returned to the rue Nanjac, and to the family of the employe in the contributione indirectes.Five persons had been arrested, as was already stated, and among their number one or two of the inventors of the shower of stones were thought to be in safe custody. Nevertheless Landon deemed it safe to cause the upper part of the chimney to be grated over. Thanks to these useful precautions, he reckoned upon enjoying a tranquil night, when a fresh volley of stones fell into the chimney-place and smashed the kettle which was on the fire.
This time there could be no doubt it was the devil himself, for the apertures of the grating were very narrow and the stones very large. Such was the decided verdict of all the gossips of the quarter, but the chief of the police de surete was bold to dissent from it. To arrive at some satisfactory conclusion, he took the servant aside and accused her of being alone guilty of this prolonged mystification. The young girl immediately grew confused, and confessed that ever since a stone had struck one of the panes of glass in the window, and had frightened her mistress, she had conceived the idea of breaking more, and setting it down to the account of the devil; that all the stones which had fallen upon the hearth had simply come from her pocket, where she had carefully concealed them; and that with respect to the water which had extinguished the fire, it was also thrown on by her when her mistress’s back was turned; and lastly, in order to give more weight to these devilries of hers, she had struck the head of the child that it might be believed a stone had been hurled at its head by an evil spirit.
These confessions having been repeated two or three times before the authorities, there was no longer any pretext for detaining the previously suspected persons in custody, and they were accordingly immediately liberated.
Elgin Courier, 22nd March 1850.