In reference to her mode of life, she informed her guest that for her sin, or sins, she had subjected herself during many years to severe penance, and that her self-denial had not been without reward. "Vain and false," she declared, "was all the pretended knowledge of the Europeans. Their doctors asserted that the drinking of milk gave yellowness to the complexion; yet milk was her only food, and was not her face white?" Her intellectual abstemiousness was not less severe than her physical self-denial. Upon book or newspaper she never cast a glance, but trusted wholly to the stars for her sublime knowledge. Her nights she usually spent in absorbed communion with these silent but eloquent teachers, and took her rest during the daytime. She spoke contemptuously of the frivolity and benighted ignorance of the modern Europeans, and gave as a proof their ignorance not only of astrology, but of the common and every-day phenomena produced by the magic art. She evidently desired her hearer to believe that she had at her command all the spells which exercise control over the creatures of the unseen world, but refrained from employing them because it would be derogatory to her exalted rank in the heavenly kingdom. She said that the charm by which the face of an absent person is thrown upon a mirror lay within the reach of the humblest magicians, but that the practice of such arts was unholy as well as vulgar. Reference was made to the divining rod or twig (Virgil's "Aurea virga"[23]), by means of which precious metals may be discovered.