The Devil’s delicate fondling, the lesser Witch, begotten of the Black Mass after the greater one’s disappearance, came and bloomed in all her malignant cat-like grace. This woman is quite the reverse of the other: refined and sidelong in manner, sly and purring demurely, quick also at setting up her back. There is nothing of the Titan about her, to be sure. Far from that, she is naturally base; lewd from her cradle and full of evil daintinesses. Her whole life is the expression of those unclean thoughts which sometimes in a dream by night may assail him who would shrink with horror from any such by day. She who is born with such a secret in her blood, with such instinctive mastery of evil, she who has looked so far and so low down, will have no religion, no respect for anything or person in the world; none even for Satan, since he is a spirit still, while she has a particular relish for all things material. In her childhood she spoiled everything. Tall and pretty she startled all by her slovenly habits. With her Witchcraft becomes a mysterious cooking up of some mysterious chemistry. From an early date she delights to handle repulsive things, to-day a drug, to-morrow an intrigue. Among diseases and love-affairs she is in her element. She will make a clever go-between, a bold and skilful empiric. War will be made against her as a fancied murderer, as a woman who deals in poisons. And yet she has small taste for such things, is far from murderous in her desires. Devoid of goodness, she yet loves life, loves to work cures, to prolong others’ lives. She is dangerous in two ways: on the one hand by selling receipts for barrenness, and even for abortion; while on the other, her headlong libertine fancy leads her to compass a woman’s fall with her cursed potions, to triumph in the wicked deeds of love. Different, indeed, is this one from the other! She is a manufacturer: the other was the ungodly one, the demon, the great rebellion, the wife, we might almost say, the mother of Satan; for out of her and her inward strength he grew up. But this one is the Devil’s daughter notwithstanding. Two things she derives from him, her uncleanness, her love of handling life. These are her allotted walk, in these she is quite an artist; an artist already trading in her lore, and we are admitted into the business. It was said that she would perpetuate herself by the incest from which she sprang. But she has no need of that: numberless little ones will she beget without help from another. In less than fifty years, at the opening of the fifteenth century, under Charles VI., a mighty contagion was spread abroad. Whoever thought he had any secrets or any receipts, whoever fancied himself a seer, whoever dreamed and travelled in his dreams, would call himself a pet of Satan. Every moonstruck woman adopted the awful name of Witch!