Note 397 — Chapter V · RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE

Witches were the happy possessors of a number of talents: they cured diseases by amulets or charms; they brought hail and rain; their malign power played with the secrets of kings as well as of families. Two young peasants of Nivernais, stalwart striplings and much in love, one day married two sisters. On the evening of the wedding day, strange to say, the newly-married couples, instead of making love, fell to blows. All at once someone remembered that on the previous Palm Sunday one of the young fellows had refused to give a piece of consecrated boxwood to an old witch in that neighbourhood, and that she had simply said: “You will repent this.” Off they went to the hag, brought her back with them, gave her a warm welcome and a good meal; she relented and allowed one of the men to drink from her glass; he recovered immediately and his wife was satisfied. The other, on the contrary, who had not drunk of the same cup, fell ill; soon he seemed in imminent danger; the witch, when summoned, refused to inconvenience herself a second time: all offers and threats were alike unavailing. The family was in despair, the whole village at its wit’s end. The witch locked herself in; a hole was made in the roof, she was dragged out with her husband and carried off. Arrived at the bedside of the sick man, the husband said: “You are not going to die”; but the woman refused to utter a syllable. Then the rage of the bystanders knew no bounds: men who had been in hiding flung themselves on the malevolent hag as soon as she withdrew, seized her, and flung her into the fire. Others, more merciful or more apprehensive, managed to pull her out, her legs horribly burned, carried her home, and tended her. But the wretched woman, stoically wrapping herself in her pain, shut her door, refused to send to Nevers for a doctor, and after three months of agony died in her obstinate solitude.