XXVI.—A wonderful and strange accident which fell out at Lyons in France.
A Lieutenant of a guard, called Jaquette, having supped one night in a rich merchant’s house, was passing home, and by the way, said, “I wonder what I have eaten and drunken at the merchant’s house: for I find myself so hot, that if I met with the devil’s dame this night, I could not forbear using of her.” Hereupon, a little after, he overtook a gentlewoman masked, whom he would needs usher home to her lodging, but discharged all his company except two. She brought him, to his apprehension, to a low house hard by the city wall, where there were only two rooms. After he had enjoyed her, he desired her, that, according to the custom of French Gentlemen, his two comrades might partake of the same pleasure; so she admitted them one after another. And when all was done, as they sat together, she told them, “If they knew well who she was, none of them would have ventured upon her.” Thereupon she whistled three times, and all evanished. The next morning the two comrades that had gone with Lieutenant Jaquette were found dead under the city wall, among the ordure and excrements, and Jaquette himself a little way off half dead; who was taken up, and coming to himself again, confessed all this, and presently died. This may verify the preceding relation.