The Druids built no temples but worked the rites of their religion on dolmens and in forests. The mechanical means by which they raised such colossal stones to form their altars is even now a matter of speculation. These erections are still to be seen, dark and mysterious, under the clouded sky of Armorica. The old sanctuaries had secrets which have not come down to us. The Druids taught that the souls of ancestors watched over children; that they were made happy by their glory and suffered in their shame; that protecting genii overshadowed trees and stones of the fatherland; that the warrior who died for his country expiated all his offences, fulfilled his task with dignity, was elevated to the rank of a genius and exercised henceforth the power of the gods. It followed that for the Gauls patriotism itself was a religion; women and even children carried arms, if necessary, to withstand invasion. Joan of Arc and Jeanne Hachette of Beauvais only carried on the traditions of these noble daughters of the Gauls. It is the magic of remembrances which cleaves to the soil of the fatherland. The Druids were priests and physicians, curing by magnetism and charging amulets with their fluidic influence. Their universal remedies were mistletoe and serpents’ eggs, because these substances attract the Astral Light in an especial manner.[156] The solemnity with which mistletoe was cut drew down upon this plant the popular confidence and rendered it powerfully magnetic. It came about in this manner that it worked marvellous cures, above all when it was fortified by the Druids with conjurations and charms. Let us not accuse our forefathers of over great credulity herein; it may be that they knew that which is lost to us. The progress of magnetism will some day reveal to us the absorbing properties of mistletoe; we shall then understand the secret of those spongy growths which draw the unused virtue of plants and become surcharged with tinctures and savours. Mushrooms, truffles, gall on trees and the different kinds of mistletoe will be employed with understanding by a medical science which will be new because it is old. We shall cease to ridicule Paracelsus, who collected moss (_usnea_) from the skulls of hanged men; but one must not move quicker than science, which recedes that it may advance the further. CHAPTER II INFLUENCE OF WOMEN