chastity, that they attributed the fall of
Adam solely to his want of this virtue. Besides defending themselves in
this manner, they entered into a further confession of their faith. They
discarded for ever all the old tales of sorcery and witchcraft, and
communion with the devil. They said there were no such horrid, unnatural,
and disgusting beings as the incubi and succubi, and the innumerable
grotesque imps that men had believed in for so many ages. Man was not
surrounded with enemies like these, but with myriads of beautiful and
beneficent beings, all anxious to do him service. The air was peopled with
sylphs, the water with undines or naiads, the bowels of the earth with
gnomes, and the fire with salamanders. All these beings were the friends
of man, and desired nothing so much as that men should purge themselves of
all uncleanness, and thus be enabled to see and converse with them. They
possessed great power, and were unrestrained by the barriers of space or
the obstructions of matter. But man was in one particular their superior.
He had an immortal soul, and they had not. They might, however, become
sharers in man's immortality if they could inspire one of that race with
the passion of love towards them. Hence it was the constant endeavour of
the female spirits to captivate the admiration of men, and of the male
gnomes, sylphs, salamanders, and undines to be beloved by a woman. The
object of this passion, in returning their love, imparted a portion of
that celestial fire, the soul; and from that time forth the beloved became
equal to the lover, and both, when their allotted course was run, entered
together into the mansions of felicity. These spirits, they said, watched
constantly over mankind by night and day. Dreams, omens, and presentiments
were all their works, and the means by which they gave warning of the
approach of danger. But though so well inclined to befriend man for their
own sakes, the want of a soul rendered them at times capricious and
revengeful; they took offence on slight causes, and heaped injuries
instead of benefits on the heads of those who extinguished the light of
reason that was in them by gluttony, debauchery, and other appetites of
the body.

The excitement produced in Paris by the placards of the brotherhood and
the attacks of the clergy wore itself away after a few months. The stories
circulated about them became at last too absurd even for that age of
absurdity, and men began to lau