[30] The devils trouble the world all through the Middle
Ages; but not before the thirteenth century does Satan put on
a settled shape. "_Compacts_," says M. Maury, "are very rare
before that epoch;" and I believe him. How could they treat
with one who as yet had no real existence? Neither of the
treating parties was yet ripe for the contract. Before the
will could be reduced to the dreadful pass of selling itself
for ever, it must be made thoroughly desperate. It is not the
unhappy who falls into despair, but the truly wretched, who
being quite conscious of his misery, and having yet more to
suffer, can find no escape therefrom. The wretched in this
way are the men of the fourteenth century, from whom they ask
a thing so impossible as payments in gold. In this and the
following chapter I have touched on the circumstances, the
feelings, the growing despair, which brought about the
enormity of _compacts_, and, worse still than these, the
dreadful character of the _Witch_. If the name was freely
used, the thing itself was then rare, being no less than a
marriage and a kind of priesthood. For ease of illustration,
I have joined together the details of so delicate a scrutiny
by a thread of fiction. The outward body of it matters
little. The essential point is to remember that such things
were not caused, as they try to persuade us, by _human
fickleness, by the inconstancy of our fallen nature, by the
chance persuasions of desire_. There was needed the deadly
pressure of an age of iron, of cruel needs: it was needful
that Hell itself should seem a shelter, an asylum, by
contrast with the hell below.

While all are desperate, the woman with the goblin is already seated
on her sacks of corn in the little neighbouring village. She is alone,
the rest being still at their debate in the village.

She sells at her own price. But even when the rest come up, everything
favours her, some strange magical allurement working on her side. No
one bargains with her. Her husband, before his time, brings his rent
in good sounding coin to the feudal elm. "Amazing!" they all say, "but
the Devil is in her!"

They laugh, but she does not. She is sorrowful and afraid. In vain she
tries to pray that night. Strange prickings disturb her slumber.
Fantastic forms appear before her. The small gentle sprite seems to
have grown imperious.