“That is quite possible,” said my good master, “and Nature is more diverse and varied in her productions than we commonly believe. There are oddities of every sort in the generating of animals, and one sees in natural-history collections far stranger monsters than a red egg.” “For instance, they keep a calf with five feet, and a child with two heads, in the King’s collection,” said Monsieur Nicolas Cerise. “They can better that at Auneau, near Chartres,” said my mother, putting on the table, as she spoke, a dozen strings of sausages and cabbage, whence a pleasing odour rose up to the joists of the ceiling. “I saw there, gentlemen, a new-born infant with goosefeet and a serpent’s head. The midwife who received it got such a shock that she threw it in the fire.” “Be careful,” said Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard, “be careful, for man is born of woman to serve God, and it is unimaginable that he could serve Him with a serpent’s head, and it follows therefore that there are no children of the kind, and that your midwife was dreaming or making fun of you.” “Monsieur l’Abbé,” said Monsieur Nicolas Cerise, with a slight smile. “You have seen as I have, in the King’s collection, a bi-sexual fœtus with four legs, preserved in a jar filled with spirits of wine, and in another jar, a child without a head and with an eye over the navel. Could these monsters serve God any better than the child with the serpent’s head our hostess speaks of? And what is one to say of those who have two heads, so that one does not know whether they have two souls? Acknowledge, Monsieur l’Abbé, that nature, while amusing herself with such cruel sport, puzzles the theologian no little?” My good master had already opened his mouth to speak, and doubtless he would have entirely demolished the objection of Monsieur Nicolas Cerise, had not my mother, whom nothing could stop when she wanted to speak anticipated him by saying very loudly that the child at Auneau was no human creature, and it was the devil himself who had fathered it on a baker’s wife. “And the proof is,” she added, “that no one thought of having it baptized, and that it was buried in a napkin at the bottom of the enclosed garden. If it had been a human being it would have been buried in consecrated ground. When the devil fathers a child it takes the shape of an animal.” “My good woman,” replied Monsieur l’Abbé Coignard, “it is marvellous that a villager should know more of the devil than a Doctor of Divinity. I admire the way you interest yourself in the matron of Auneau, to the extent of knowing if such fruit of a woman is one with mankind, redeemed by the blood of God. Believe me, these devilries are but unclean fancies which you should purge from your mind. It is not written in the Fathers that the devil fathers children on poor girls. All these tales of satanic fornication are disgusting imaginings, and it is a disgrace that the Jesuits and Dominicans have written treatises on them.”