emy wills it! The strong
man becomes a skeleton, and blooming maidens sink into their graves
blighted and bloodless, with white lips and hearts that cease gradually
to beat, men know not why. Neither saint nor sacrament can arrest the
doom of the milk of mercy."

"This vial," continued she, lifting up another from the casket and
replacing the first, licking her thin lips with profound satisfaction
as she did so,--"this contains the acrid venom that grips the heart like
the claws of a tiger, and the man drops down dead at the time appointed.
Fools say he died of the visitation of God. The visitation of God!"
repeated she in an accent of scorn, and the foul witch spat as she
pronounced the sacred name. "Leo in his sign ripens the deadly nuts of
the East, which kill when God will not kill. He who has this vial for
a possession is the lord of life." She replaced it tenderly. It was a
favorite vial of La Corriveau.

"This one," continued she, taking up another, "strikes with the dead
palsy; and this kindles the slow, inextinguishable fires of typhus. Here
is one that dissolves all the juices of the body, and the blood of a
man's veins runs into a lake of dropsy. This," taking up a green vial,
"contains the quintessence of mandrakes distilled in the alembic when
Scorpio rules the hour. Whoever takes this liquid"--La Corriveau shook
it up lovingly--"dies of torments incurable as the foul disease of lust
which it simulates and provokes."

There was one vial which contained a black liquid like oil. "It is a
relic of the past," said she, "an heir-loom from the Untori, the ointers
of Milan. With that oil they spread death through the doomed city,
anointing its doors and thresholds with the plague until the people
died."

The terrible tale of the anointers of Milan has, since the days of La
Corriveau, been written in choice Italian by Manzoni, in whose wonderful
book he that will may read it.

"This vial," continued the witch, "contains innumerable griefs, that
wait upon the pillows of rejected and heartbroken lovers, and the wisest
physician is mocked with lying appearances of disease that defy his
skill and make a fool of his wisdom."

"Oh, say no more!" exclaimed Angelique, shocked and terrified. However
inordinate in her desires, she was dainty in her ways. "It is like a
Sabbat of witches to hear you talk, La Corriveau!" cried she, "I will
have none of those foul things which you propose. My rival shall die
like a lady!