authors, who would
make us groan with horror, the main end of the Sabbath, the explicit
doctrine taught by Satan, was incest; and in those great gatherings,
sometimes of two thousand souls, the most startling deeds were done
before the whole world.

This is hard to believe; and the same writers tell of other things
which seem quite opposed to a view so cynical. They say that people
went to those meetings only in pairs, that they sat down to the feast
by twos, that even if one person came alone, she was assigned a young
demon, who took charge of her, and did the honours of the feast. They
say, too, that jealous lovers were not afraid to go thither in company
with the curious fair.

We also find that the most of them came by families, children and all.
The latter were sent off only during the first act, not during the
feast, nor the services, nor yet while this third act was going on; a
fact which proves that some decency was observed. Moreover, the scene
was twofold. The household groups stayed on the moor in a blaze of
light. It was only beyond the fantastic curtain of torch-smoke that
the darker spaces, where people could roam in all directions, began.

The judges, the inquisitors, for all their enmity, are fain to allow
the existence here of a general spirit of peace and mildness. Of the
three things that startle us in the feasts of nobles, there is not one
here; no swords, no duels, no tables reeking blood. No faithless
gallantries here bring dishonour on some intimate friend. Unknown,
unneeded here, for all they say, is the unclean brotherhood of the
Temple; in the Sabbath, woman is everything.

The question of incest needs explaining. All alliances between
kinsfolk, even those most allowable in the present day, were then
regarded as a crime. The modern law, which is charity itself,
understands the heart of man and the well-being of families.[60] It
allows the widower to marry his wife's sister, the best mother his
children could have. Above all, it allows a man to wed his cousin,
whom he knows and may trust fully, whom he has loved perhaps from
childhood, his playfellow of old, regarded by his mother with special
favour as already the adopted of her own heart. In the Middle Ages all
this was incestuous.

[60] Of course the allusion here, as shown in the next
following sentence, is to French law in particular. As for
the marriage of cousins, there is much to say on both sides
of the question.-