In Alsace Wednesday and Friday are unlucky days, and the former is never chosen for a wedding or baptism. But of the two, Friday is the more undesirable, and no business of importance is done thereon, nor any journey undertaken. It is foremost among witch days, for evil spirits are then abroad, and their activity on a Friday is proverbial. These sentiments prevail in other German districts, and are entertained by people of cultivation and learning. Indeed, it may be affirmed truly that the possession of intellectual force is by no means incompatible with a superstitious belief in the luck or misfortune of particular days. The credulousness of the great Napoleon in this regard is well known. Bismarck is said to have once written to his wife from Letzlingen, a village of Prussian Saxony: “I have not had such good luck in hunting to-day as I had three years ago; but then—it is a Friday.”[453] The French statesman, Gambetta, is reported to have arranged his journeyings and business affairs with reference to auspicious hours, as determined by a professional reader of cards; and President Felix Faure, we are told, is similarly credulous. Indeed, so prevalent are notions of this kind in the French capital that tastefully ornamented cards with a list of “hours to be avoided” find a ready sale in the streets.[454] Among the Slavonians St. Prascovia, the modern successor of Venus and Freyja, is believed to visit the peasants’ houses every Friday, and woe to the luckless woman whom she then finds engaged in certain occupations. Local tradition says that sewing, spinning, and weaving on that day are sinful, and are especially distasteful to St. Prascovia, familiarly known as “Mother Friday,” because the dust so produced gets into her eyes. She is very apt to take revenge by inflicting upon the offenders divers physical ailments, such as sore eyes, whitlows, or hang-nails. In some districts the peasants retire earlier than usual on Friday evenings, under the impression that Mother Friday will punish those whom she may find awake when she makes her evening visits. These popular beliefs are exemplified in the following tradition:— There was once a certain woman who did not pay due reverence to Mother Friday, but set to work on a distaff full of flax, combing it and whirling it. She spun away until dinner-time, then sleep fell upon her. Suddenly the door opened, and in came Mother Friday, before the eyes of all who were there, clad in a white dress, and in such a rage! And she went straight up to the woman who had been spinning, and scooped up from the floor a handful of the dust that had fallen out of the flax, and began stuffing and stuffing that woman’s eyes full of it! After she had stuffed them full, she went off in a rage,—disappeared without saying a word.