ost the hope of seeing her again before I
die, for they say that several persons have met her going about the
churchyards and the cross-roads in various forms, and who knows but I
may fall in with her some time or other, and be able to ask her whether
I can do anything for the relief of her conscience?"

Every word that the old hag uttered in praise of her she called my
mother went like a knife to my heart; I longed to fall upon her and tear
her to pieces, and only refrained from unwillingness that death should
find her in such a wicked state. Finally she told me that she intended
to anoint herself that night and go to one of their customary
assemblies, and inquire of her master as to what was yet to befal me. I
should have liked to ask her what were the ointments she made use of;
and it seemed as though she read my thoughts, for she replied to my
question as though it had been uttered.

"This ointment," she said, "is composed of the juices of exceedingly
cold herbs, and not, as the vulgar assert, of the blood of children whom
we strangle. And here you may be inclined to ask what pleasure or profit
can it be to the devil to make us murder little innocents, since he
knows that being baptised they go as sinless creatures to heaven, and
every Christian soul that escapes him is to him a source of poignant
anguish. I know not what answer to give to this except by quoting the
old saying, that some people would give both their eyes to make their
enemy lose one. He may do it for sake of the grief beyond imagination
which the parents suffer from the murder of their children; but what is
still more important to him is to accustom us to the repeated commission
of such a cruel and perverse sin. And all this God allows by reason of
our sinfulness; for without his permission, as I know by experience, the
devil has not the power to hurt a pismire; and so true is this, that one
day when I requested him to destroy a vineyard belonging to an enemy of
mine, he told me that he could not hurt a leaf of it, for God would not
allow him. Hence you may understand when you come to be a man, that all
the casual evils that befal men, kingdoms, and cities, and peoples,
sudden deaths, shipwrecks, devastations, and all sorts of losses and
disasters, come from the hand of the Almighty, and by his sovereign
permission; and the evils which fall under the denomination of crime,
are caused by ourselves. God is without sin, whence it follows that we
ourse