e great oak where
they dwell, or to the secret fountain whose mirror, as it multiplies
the flame, may cheer up those sorrowful outlaws.

But if anyone should know of it, good heavens! Her husband is canny
and fears the Church: he would certainly give her a beating. The
priest wages fierce war with the sprites, and hunts them out of every
place. Yet he might leave them their dwelling in the oaks! What harm
can they do in the forest? Alas! no: from council to council they are
hunted down. On set days the priest will go even to the oak, and with
prayers and holy water drive away the spirits.

How would it be if no kind soul took pity on them? This woman,
however, will take them under her care. She is an excellent Christian,
but will keep for them one corner of her heart. To them alone can she
entrust those little natural affairs, which, harmless as they are in a
chaste wife's dwelling, the Church at any rate would count as
blameworthy. They are the confidants, the confessors of these touching
womanly secrets. Of them she thinks, when she puts the holy log on the
fire. It is Christmastide; but also is it the ancient festival of the
Northern spirits, the _Feast of the Longest Night_. So, too, the Eve
of May-day is the _Pervigilium of Maia_, when the tree is planted. So,
too, with the Eve of St. John, the true feast-day of life, of flowers,
and newly-awakened love. She who has no children makes it her especial
duty to cherish these festivals, and to offer them a deep devotion. A
vow to the Virgin would perhaps be of little avail, it being no
concern of Mary's. In a low whisper, she prefers addressing some
ancient _genius_, worshipped in other days as a rustic deity, and
afterwards by the kindness of some local church transformed into a
saint.[22] And thus it happens that the bed, the cradle, all the
sweetest mysteries on which the chaste and loving soul can brood,
belong to the olden gods.

[22] A. Maury, _Magie_, 159.

* * * * *

Nor are the sprites ungrateful. One day she awakes, and without having
stirred a finger, finds all her housekeeping done. In her amazement
she makes the sign of the cross and says nothing. When the good man
goes she questions herself, but in vain. It must have been a spirit.
"What can it be? How came it here? How I should like to see it! But I
am afraid: they say it is death to see a spirit."--Yet the cradle
moves and swings of itself. She is clasped by some