ky. And it took place yet more largely away
from the schools and the men of letters, in the _School of the Bush_,
where Satan had set up a class for the Witch and the shepherd.

Perilous teaching it was, if so it happened; but the very dangers of
it heightened the eager passion, the uncontrollable yearning to see
and to know. Thus began those wicked sciences, physic debarred from
poisoning, and that odious anatomy. There, along with his survey of
the heavens, the shepherd who kept watch upon the stars applied also
his shameful nostrums, made his essays upon the bodies of animals. The
Witch would bring out a corpse stolen from the neighbouring cemetery;
and, for the first time, at risk of being burned, you might gaze upon
that heavenly wonder, "which men"--as M. Serres has well said--"are
foolish enough to bury, instead of trying to understand."

Paracelsus, the only doctor whom Satan admitted there, saw yet a third
worker, who, stealing at times into that dark assembly, displayed
there his surgical art. This was the surgeon of those happy days, the
headsman stout of hand, who could play patly enough with the fire,
could break bones and set them again; who if he killed, would
sometimes save, by hanging one only for a certain time.

By the more sacrilegious of its essays this convict university of
witches, shepherds, and headsmen, emboldened the other, obliged its
rival to study. For everyone wanted to live. The Witch would have got
hold of everything: people would for ever have turned their backs on
the doctor. And so the Church was fain to suffer, to countenance these
crimes. She avowed her belief in _good poisons_ (Grillandus). She
found herself driven and constrained to allow of public dissections.
In 1306 one woman, in 1315 another, was opened and dissected by the
Italian Mondino. Here was a holy revelation, the discovery of a
greater world than that of Christopher Columbus! Fools shuddered or
howled; but wise men fell upon their knees.

* * * * *

With such conquests the Devil was like enough to live on. Never could
the Church alone have put an end to him. The stake itself was useless,
save for some political objects.

Men had presently the wit to cleave Satan's realm in twain. Against
the Witch, his daughter, his bride, they armed his son, the doctor.
Heartily, utterly as the Church loathed the latter, yet to extinguish
the Witch, she established his monopoly nevertheless. In th