false," she declared, "was all the pretended knowledge of the Europeans.
Their doctors asserted that the drinking of milk gave yellowness to the
complexion; yet milk was her only food, and was not her face white?" Her
intellectual abstemiousness was not less severe than her physical
self-denial. Upon book or newspaper she never cast a glance, but trusted
wholly to the stars for her sublime knowledge. Her nights she usually
spent in absorbed communion with these silent but eloquent teachers, and
took her rest during the daytime. She spoke contemptuously of the
frivolity and benighted ignorance of the modern Europeans, and gave as a
proof their ignorance not only of astrology, but of the common and
every-day phenomena produced by the magic art. She evidently desired her
hearer to believe that she had at her command all the spells which
exercise control over the creatures of the unseen world, but refrained
from employing them because it would be derogatory to her exalted rank
in the heavenly kingdom. She said that the charm by which the face of an
absent person is thrown upon a mirror lay within the reach of the
humblest magicians, but that the practice of such arts was unholy as
well as vulgar.

Reference was made to the divining rod or twig (Virgil's "Aurea
virga"[23]), by means of which precious metals may be discovered.

"In relation to this," says Kinglake, "the prophetess told me a story
rather against herself, and inconsistent with the notion of her being
perfect in her science; but I think that she mentioned the facts as
having happened before she attained to the great spiritual authority
which she now arrogated. She told me that vast treasures were known to
exist in a situation which she mentioned, if I remember rightly, as
being near Suez; that Napoleon, profanely brave, thrust his arm into the
cave containing the coveted gold, and that instantly his flesh became
palsied. But the youthful hero (for she said he was great in
his generation) was not to be thus daunted; he fell back,
characteristically, upon his brazen resources, and ordered up his
artillery; yet man could not strive with demons, and Napoleon was
foiled. In latter years came Ibrahim Pasha, with heavy guns and wicked
spells to boot, but the infernal guardians of the treasure were too
strong for him. It was after this that Lady Hester passed by the spot;
and she described, with animated gesture, the force and energy with
which the divining twig had s