SORCERY IN FRANCE

Evening Star, Issue 17928, 25 March 1922, Page 9

SORCERY IN FRANCE

STRANGE DISCLOSURES.

Extraordinary revelations have followed the arrest of the supposed sorcerer, Pierre Paget, who (states a Paris message to the London ‘Daily Telegraph’) is alleged to have incited two men to murder Marc Delias, a fanner, who was thought to have exorcised an evil spell so that cattle died and crops withered, while the members of his family were rendered unhappy. Pierre Paget is a little hunch-backed man, and a septuagenarian, wearing colored glasses. From voluminous correspondence which the police discovered at his house he seems to have had a considerable “ practice.” Ho had consulting rooms in three departments, the Lot-Tarn and Lot-ot-Garonno, and those who consulted him belonged to all classes of society. He told the examining magistrate that ho was a “medium in direct correlation with the Eternal Father,’’ and that he had been made conscious of bis powers from the ago of seven. A bod, presumably used for medical examinations, a press filled with dried herbs, and a miniature chapel, before which was a screen, wore in the consulting room of his house at Auvillar. On the walls were statuettes of saints and the Virgin, and testimonials duly legalised by the mayors of communes from clients who had been healed.

The “sorcerer's” activities seem to have been of a varied character. Ho gave advice on local disputes, commercial transactions, love affairs, and on ail sorts of maladies. One woman had written asking him to do all ho could to make her husband happy when her mother carno to see her. Another expressed her effusive thanks because everything had gone well. “She is dead,” she wrote. It was her mother-in-law who had died. A young woman counted on tho “sorcerer ” finding her work and good health for her fiance; and a second maiden, who had been jilted by her sweetheart, a non-com-missioned officer, asked Pierre Paget to see to it that tho fickle young man did not get any promotion, Tho examining magistrate at Ncrac has a heavy task in trout of him, for there are heaps of letters on which light will have to bo thrown before ho can got at tho truth about this old man’s dealings with credulous people.