jealousy offering out of the woman’s hand, and shall wave the offering before the Lord, and offer it upon the altar: and the priest shall take an handful of the offering, even the memorial thereof, and burn it upon the altar, and afterward shall cause the woman to drink the water. And when he hath made her to drink the water, then it shall come to pass, that, if she be defiled, and have done trespass against her husband, that the water that causeth the curse shall enter into her, and become bitter, and her belly shall swell, and her thigh shall rot: and the woman shall be a curse among her people. And if the woman be not defiled, but be clean; then she shall be free, and shall conceive seed. This is the law of jealousies, when a wife goeth aside to another instead of her husband, and is defiled; or when the spirit of jealousy cometh upon him, and he be jealous over his wife, and shall set the woman before the Lord, and the priest shall execute upon her all this law. Then shall the man be guiltless from iniquity, and this woman shall bear her iniquity.” This is quite evidently taken from the customs of African tribes. As the Egyptians gave the Jews their knowledge of the medical arts, and as this knowledge was doubtless largely intermingled with African ideas, it is easy to see how the ordeal of the bitter curse-water found its way into the Mosaic ritual. Of scripts as amulets we find that anything written in a character which nobody could read was worn as an amulet against disease or danger. Thus the Anglo-Saxon MS., known as the Vercelli MS., by some means found its way to a place near Milan, where no one could decipher it. When that discovery was made, the next step was to cut up its precious pages for amulets, and so many of its leaves have perished. After the death of Pascal, the philosopher, a writing was found sewn into his doublet. This was a “profession of faith” which he wore as a sort of amulet or charm, and his servants believed that he always had it stitched into a new garment when he discarded the old one.[601] “Mais ce qui montre que ce n’est par un simple engagement tel qu’on en peut prendre avec soi-même, c’est la forme étrange que Pascal lui a donnée. Pour quiconque a vu les écrits de ce genre de la part d’hallucinés, le premier coup d’œil montre que l’écrit de Pascal appartient à cette catégorie. D’ailleurs, il porte l’énonciation manifeste d’une vision en ces termes: ‘Depuis environ dix heures et demie du soir jusque environ minuit et demi, feu.’ Ainsi, ce jour-là, le lundi 23 Novembre, 1654, pendant environ deux heures, Pascal eut la vision d’un feu qu’il prit pour une apparition surnaturelle, et sa conviction fut si forte qu’elle le détermina à entrer plus avant qu’il n’avait fait jusqu’alors dans les voies de la dévotion et du rigorisme janséniste.”[602] CHARACTS.