"But on what shall I put it?" said Gerard. "Here is no dead face. 'Twas that made it look so dire." The curé groped about the room. "Good: here is an image: 'tis my patron saint." "Heaven forbid! That were profanation." "Pshaw! 'twill rub off, will't not?" "Ay, but it goes against me to take such liberty with a saint," objected the sorcerer. "Fiddlestick!" said the divine. "To be sure my putting it on his holiness will show your reverence it is no Satanic art." "Mayhap 'twas for that I did propose it," said the curé subtly. Thus encouraged Gerard fired the eyes and nostrils of the image and made the curé jump. Then lighted up the hair in patches: and set the whole face shining like a glowworm's. "By'r Lady," shouted the curé, "'tis strange, and small my wonder that they took you for a magician, seeing a dead face thus fired. Now come thy ways with me!" He put on his grey gown and great hat, and in a few minutes they found themselves in presence of the alderman. By his side, poisoning his mind, stood the accuser, a singular figure in red hose and red shoes, a black gown with blue bands, and a cocked hat. After saluting the alderman, the curé turned to this personage and said good-humouredly, "So, Mangis, at thy work again, babbling away honest men's lives! Come, your worship, this is the old tale; two of a trade can ne'er agree. Here is Mangis, who professes sorcery, and would sell himself to Satan to-night, but that Satan is not so weak as to buy what he can have gratis, this Mangis, who would be a sorcerer, but is only a quacksalver, accuses of magic a true lad, who did but use in self-defence a secret of chemistry well known to me and to all churchmen." "But he is no churchman to dabble in such mysteries," objected the alderman. "He is more churchman than layman, being convent bred, and in the lesser orders," said the ready curé. "Therefore, sorcerer, withdraw thy plaint without more words!" "That will I not, your reverence," replied Mangis stoutly. "A sorcerer I am, but a white one, not a black one. I make no pact with Satan, but on the contrary still battle him with lawful and necessary arts. I ne'er profane the sacraments, as do the black sorcerers, nor turn myself into a cat and go sucking infants' blood, nor e'en their breath, nor set dead men o' fire. I but tell the peasants when their cattle and their hens are possessed, and at what time of the moon to plant rye, and what days in each month are lucky for wooing of women and selling of bullocks, and so forth: above all, it is my art and my trade to detect the black magicians, as I did that whole tribe of them who were burnt at Dol but last year." "Ay, Mangis. And what is the upshot of that famous fire thy tongue did kindle?" "Why, their ashes were cast to the wind."