degrees, becomes poesy, second-sight, depth of insight,
cunning simplicity of speech, the power especially of believing in
yourself through all your delusions. Of such a gift the man, the
wizard, knows nothing. On his side no beginning would have been made.

From this gift flows that other, the sublime power of _unaided
conception_, that parthenogenesis which our physiologists have come to
recognise, as touching fruitfulness of the body in the females of
several species; and which is not less a truth with regard to the
conceptions of the spirit.

* * * * *

By herself did she conceive and bring forth--what? A second self, who
resembles her in his self-delusions. The son of her hatred, conceived
upon her love; for without love can nothing be created. For all the
alarm this child gave her, she has become so well again, is so happily
engrossed with this new idol, that she places it straightway upon her
altar, to worship it, yield her life up to it, and offer herself up as
a living and perfect sacrifice. Very often she will even say to her
judge, "There is but one thing I fear; that I shall not suffer enough
for him."--(_Lancre._)

Shall I tell you what the child's first effort was? It was a fearful
burst of laughter. Has he not cause for mirth on his broad prairie,
far away from the Spanish dungeons and the "immured" of Toulouse? The
whole world is his _In pace_. He comes, and goes, and walks to and
fro. His is the boundless forest, his the desert with its far
horizons, his the whole earth, in the fulness of its teeming girdle.
The Witch in her tenderness calls him "_Robin mine_," the name of that
bold outlaw, the joyous Robin Hood, who lived under the green bowers.
She delights too in calling him fondly by such names as _Little
Green_, _Pretty-Wood_, _Greenwood_; after the little madcap's
favourite haunts. He had hardly seen a thicket when he took to playing
the truant.[3]

[3] Here, as in some other passages, the play of words in the
original is necessarily lost.--TRANS.

* * * * *

What astounds one most is, that at one stroke the Witch should have
achieved an actual Being. He bears about him every token of reality.
We have heard and seen him; anyone could draw his likeness.

The Saints, those darling sons of the house, with their dreams and
meditations make but little stir; _they look forward waitingly_, as
men assured of their part in Elys