ch the priesthood can never have done with their
faggots, nor the people with their insults, nor the children with
their stones. The poet, childlike, flings her one more stone, for a
woman the cruellest of all. On no grounds whatever, he imagines her to
have been always old and ugly. The word "witch" brings before us the
frightful old women of _Macbeth_. But their cruel processes teach us
the reverse of that. Numbers perished precisely for being young and
beautiful.

The Sibyl foretold a fortune, the Witch accomplishes one. Here is the
great, the true difference between them. The latter calls forth a
destiny, conjures it, works it out. Unlike the Cassandra of old, who
awaited mournfully the future she foresaw so well, this woman herself
creates the future. Even more than Circe, than Medea, does she bear in
her hand the rod of natural miracle, with Nature herself as sister and
helpmate. Already she wears the features of a modern Prometheus. With
her industry begins, especially that queen-like industry which heals
and restores mankind. As the Sibyl seemed to gaze upon the morning, so
she, contrariwise, looks towards the west; but it is just that gloomy
west, which long before dawn--as happens among the tops of the
Alps--gives forth a flush anticipant of day.

Well does the priest discern the danger, the bane, the alarming
rivalry, involved in this priestess of nature whom he makes a show of
despising. From the gods of yore she has conceived other gods. Close
to the Satan of the Past we see dawning within her a Satan of the
Future.

* * * * *

The only physician of the people for a thousand years was the Witch.
The emperors, kings, popes, and richer barons had indeed their doctors
of Salerno, their Moors and Jews; but the bulk of people in every
state, the world as it might well be called, consulted none but the
_Saga_, or wise-woman. When she could not cure them, she was insulted,
was called a Witch. But generally, from a respect not unmixed with
fear, she was called good lady or fair lady (_belle dame_--_bella
donna_[1]), the very name we give to the fairies.

[1] Whence our old word _Beldam_, the more courteous meaning
of which is all but lost in its ironical one.--TRANS.

Soon there came upon her the lot which still befalls her favourite
plant, belladonna, and some other wholesome poisons which she employed
as antidotes to the great plagues of the Middle Ages. Children and