its
four acts. Only at that time I left in it too many of the grotesque
adornments which clothed the Sabbath of a later period; nor did I
clearly enough define what belonged to the older shell, so dark and
dreadful.

* * * * *

Its date is strongly marked by certain savage tokens of an age
accursed, and yet more by the ruling place therein assigned to woman,
a fact most characteristic of the fourteenth century.

It is strange to mark how, at that period, the woman who enjoys so
little freedom still holds her royal sway in a hundred violent
fashions. At this time she inherits fiefs, brings her kingdoms to the
king. On the lower levels she has still her throne, and yet more in
the skies. Mary has supplanted Jesus. St. Francis and St. Dominic have
seen the three worlds in her bosom. By the immensity of her grace she
washes away sin; ay, and sometimes helps the sinner,--as in the story
of a nun whose place the Virgin took in the choir, while she herself
was gone to meet her lover.

Up high, and down very low, we see the woman. Beatrice reigns in
heaven among the stars, while John of Meung in the _Romaunt of the
Rose_ is preaching the community of women. Pure or sullied, the woman
is everywhere. We might say of her what Raymond Lulle said of God:
"What part has He in the world? The whole."

But alike in heaven and in poetry the true heroine is not the fruitful
mother decked out with children; but the Virgin, or some barren
Beatrice, who dies young.

A fair English damsel passed over into France, it is said, about the
year 1300, to preach the redemption of women. She looked on herself as
their Messiah.

* * * * *

In its earliest phase the Black Mass seemed to betoken this redemption
of Eve, so long accursed of Christianity. The woman fills every office
in the Sabbath. She is priestess, altar, pledge of holy communion, by
turns. Nay, at bottom, is she not herself as God?

* * * * *

Many popular traits may be found herein, and yet it comes not wholly
from the people. The peasant who honoured strength alone, made small
account of the woman; as we see but too clearly in our old laws and
customs. From him the woman would not have received the high place she
holds here. It is by her own self the place is won.

I would gladly believe that the Sabbath in its then shape was woman's
work, the work of such a desperate woman as t