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Transcriber's Notes

The original was printed with the Latin on verso and English on recto
pages with sections aligned. To preserve as much as possible of this
effect, Latin sections are followed immediately by the corresponding
translation.

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations
in hyphenation spelling and punctuation remain unchanged.

Italics are represented thus _italic_, except in the main Latin text
which is almost entirely printed in italic script. Here the italics are
unmarked and plain text is indicted thus =plain=.

S. Augustinus (or Augustini) in the Latin text is translated as S.
Austin in the English.

       *       *       *       *       *




                              DEMONIALITY
                                  OR
                          INCUBI AND SUCCUBI
                              A TREATISE

 _wherein is shown that there are in existence on earth rational
 creatures besides man, endowed like him with a body and a soul, that
 are born and die like him, redeemed by our Lord Jesus-Christ, and
 capable of receiving salvation or damnation_,

                          BY THE REV. FATHER
                          SINISTRARI OF AMENO

                           (17^{th} century)

             _Published from the original Latin manuscript
                discovered in London in the year 1872,
             and translated into French by_ ISIDORE LISEUX
                   Now first translated into English
                         With the Latin Text.

                       [Illustration: Colophon]


                                 PARIS
                  _Isidore LISEUX, 2, Rue Bonaparte._
                                 1879




[Illustration: Decoration]


PREFACE

TO THE FIRST EDITION (_Paris, 1875, in-8º_)


I was in London in the year 1872, and I hunted after old books:

 _Car que faire là bas, à moins qu’on ne bouquine?_[1]

They caused me to live in past ages, happy to escape from the present,
and to exchange the petty passions of the day for the peaceable
intimacy of Aldus, Dolet or Estienne.

 [1] What can one do over there, unless he hunts up old books?

One of my favourite booksellers was Mr Allen, a venerable old
gentleman, whose place of business was in the Euston road, close to the
gate of Regent’s park. Not that his shop was particularly rich in dusty
old books; quite the reverse: it was small, and yet never filled.
Scarcely four or five hundred volumes at a time, carefully dusted,
bright, arrayed with symmetry on shelves within reach of one’s hand;
the upper shelves remained unoccupied. On the right, Theology; on the
left, the Greek and Latin Classics in a majority, with some French and
Italian books; for such were Mr Allen’s specialties; it seemed as if
he absolutely ignored Shakespeare and Byron, and as if, in his mind,
the literature of his country did not go beyond the sermons of Blair or
Macculloch.

What, at first sight, struck one most in those books, was the
moderateness of their price, compared with their excellent state of
preservation. They had evidently not been bought in a lot, at so much a
cubic yard, like the rubbish of an auction, and yet the handsomest, the
most ancient, the most venerable from their size, folios or quartos,
were not marked higher than 2 or 3 shillings; an octavo was sold 1
shilling, the duodecimo six pence: each according to its size. Thus
ruled Mr Allen, a methodical man, if ever there was one; and he was all
the better for it, since, faithfully patronized by clergymen, scholars
and collectors, he renewed his stock at a rate which more assuming
speculators might have envied.

But how did he get those well bound and well preserved volumes,
for which, everywhere else, five or six times more would have been
charged? Here also Mr Allen had his method, sure and regular. No one
attended more assiduously the auctions which take place every day in
London: his stand was marked at the foot of the auctioneer’s desk.
The rarest, choicest books passed before his eyes, contended for at
often fabulous prices by Quaritch, Sotheran, Pickering, Toovey, and
other bibliopolists of the British metropolis; Mr Allen smiled at such
extravagance; when once a bid had been made by another, he would not
add a penny, had an unknown _Gutenberg_ or _Valdarfer’s Boccaccio_
been at stake. But if occasionally, through inattention or weariness,
competition slackened (_habent sua fata libelli_), Mr Allen came
forward: _six pence!_, he whispered, and sometimes the article was left
