"Oh, as to dearly beloved Tita," he said, "she has done exceedingly well. She fairly and boldly encountered and defeated all the old women in black gowns that the university could send against her. She bullied the professors, rated the inquisitor, and nearly scratched the eyes out of the faces of the officers. She told old Martinelli to his beard, that if people had not suspected him of unlawful studies he never would have tried to cast the imputation upon others; and as to her old lord and young lady, they had much less to do with evil spirits than others she could mention, who, people said, kept books written with blood, and used to raise up the image of a child out of a pot of boiling water. The old fool got frightened out of his wits, and made his exit from the house as fast as possible, not knowing what she would charge him with next, and fearing that part of the storm which he had helped to raise might fall upon himself. Every one after was afraid to meddle with bold Tita, and she remained mistress of the field. She is now very comfortably established in a small house by the market-place, and is looked upon with great reverence as one of the heroes of Padua." "It is really strange how men can be so mad and foolish," said the earl. "Spirits must be very weak and powerless to submit themselves to the sway of feeble old men, or half-crazed old women." "Or have a very strange taste in female beauty," rejoined Hume, "to fall in love with wrinkles, gray hair, and more beard than is becoming on a lady's chin; but these events promise to raise a grand scholastic dispute in Padua, for already the parties are arraying themselves for and against the existence of magic at all. Antonelli has announced a lecture on the non-existence of magic, and when one of the doctors hinted that such an opinion was heretical, he turned the tables upon the persecutors, by giving the two parties the names of magicians and anti-magicians, so that Martinelli and his faction are now universally known by the title of the magicians, much to their horror and confusion." "But we have the warrant of Scripture," said Mr. Rhind, gravely, "for asserting that magic has really existed. Balaam, the son of Balak, when he was called to curse the children of Israel, distinctly spoke of it as an art which he himself practised." "Are you sure it was not Balaam's ass?" asked Sir John Hume, laughing; "I am sure no one would practise it in the present day but an ass. I don't know what they did then."