is done; and next morning the lady finds herself worn out and
depressed. In one night she must have travelled some thirty leagues.
She has been hunting and slaying until she is covered with blood. But
the blood, perhaps, comes from her having torn herself among the
brambles.

A great triumph and danger also for her who has wrought this miracle.
From the lady, however, whose command provoked it, she receives but a
gloomy welcome. "Witch, 'tis a fearful power you have; I should never
have guessed it. But now I fear and dread you. Good cause, indeed,
they have to hate you. A happy day will it be when you are burnt. I
can ruin you when I please. One word of mine about last night, and my
peasants would this evening whet their scythes upon you. Out, you
black-looking, hateful old hag!"

* * * * *

The great folk, her patrons, launch her into strange adventures. For
what can she refuse to her terrible protectors, when nothing but the
castle saves her from the priest, from the faggot? If the baron, on
his return from a crusade, being bent on copying the manners of the
Turks, sends for her, and orders her to steal him a few children, what
can she do? Raids such as those grand ones in which two thousand pages
were sometimes carried off from Greek ground to enter the seraglio,
were by no means unknown to the Christians; were known from the tenth
century to the barons of England, at a later date to the knights of
Rhodes and Malta. The famous Giles of Retz, the only one brought to
trial, was punished, not for having stolen his small serfs, a crime
not then uncommon, but for having sacrificed them to Satan. She who
actually stole them, and was ignorant, doubtless, of their future lot,
found herself between two perils: on the one hand the peasant's fork
and scythe; on the other, those torments which awaited her, when
recusant, within the tower. Retz's terrible Italian would have made
nothing of pounding her in a mortar.[67]

[67] See my _History of France_, and still more the learned
and careful account by the lamented Armand Gueraud: _Notice
sur Gilles de Rais_, Nantes, 1855. We there find that the
purveyors of that horrible child's charnel-house were mostly
men.

On all sides the perils and the profits went together. A position more
frightfully corrupting could not have been found. The Witches
themselves did not deny the absurd powers imputed to them by the
people. They aver