In imposing upon woman the severe and tender duties of motherhood Providence has entitled her to the protection and respect of man. Made subject by Nature itself to the consequence of affections which are her life, she leads her masters by the chains which love provides, and the more fully that she is in conformity with the laws which constitute and also defend her honour the greater is her sway, and the deeper that respect which belongs to her in the sanctuary of the family. To revolt is for her to abdicate, and to tempt her by a pretended emancipation is to recommend her divorce by condemning her beforehand to sterility and disdain. Christianity alone has the power to emancipate woman by calling her to virginity and the glory of sacrifice. Numa foresaw this mystery when he instituted the vestals; but the Druids forestalled Christianity by giving ear to the inspirations of virgins and paying almost divine honours to the priestesses of the island of Sayne. In Gaul women did not prevail by their coquetry and their vices, but they ruled by their counsels; apart from their concurrence, neither peace nor war were made; the interests of the hearth and family were thus pleaded by mothers and the national pride shone in the light of justice when it was tempered by the maternal love of country. Chateaubriand calumniated Velleda by representing her as yielding to the love of Eudorus; she lived and died a virgin. When the Romans invaded Gaul, she was already advanced in years and was a species of _Pythia_ who prophesied amidst great solemnities and whose oracles were preserved with veneration. She was clothed in a long black vestment, having no sleeves; her head was covered by a white veil, which came down to her feet; she wore a vervain crown, and a sickle was placed in her girdle; her sceptre was in the form of a distaff; her right foot was shod with a sandal and her left foot wore a kind of _chaussure à poulaine_. At a later period the statues of Velleda were taken for those of Berthe _au grand pied_. The High Priestess bore, as a fact, the insignia of the protecting divinity of the female Druids; she was Hertha, or Wertha, the youthful Gaulish Isis, the Queen of Heaven, the virgin who must bring forth a child. She was depicted with one foot on the earth and the other on the water, because she was queen of initiation and presided over universal science. The foot set upon the water was usually supported by a ship, analogous to the bark or conch of the ancient Isis. She held the distaff of the Fates wound about with a thread, part black, part white, because she presided over all forms and symbols, and it was she who wove the vestment of ideas. She was also given the allegorical form of the syrens, half woman and half fish, or the torso of a beautiful girl whose legs were serpents, signifying the flux of things and the analogical alliance of opposites in the manifestation of all occult forces of Nature. Under this last