Not one better than another. Satan's mark is upon all of us!" La
Corriveau looked an incarnation of Hecate as she uttered this
calumny upon her sex.
"Ay, I have his mark on my knee, Dame Dodier," replied the crone.
"See here! It was pricked once in the high court of Arras, but the
fool judge decided that it was a mole, and not a witch-mark! I
escaped a red gown that time, however. I laughed at his stupidity,
and bewitched him for it in earnest. I was young and pretty then!
He died in a year, and Satan sat on his grave in the shape of a
black cat until his friends set a cross over it. I like to be a
woman, I do, it is so easy to be wicked, and so nice! I always tell
the girls that, and they give me twice as much as if I had told them
to be good and nice, as they call it! Pshaw! Nice! If only men
knew us as we really are!"
"Well, I do not like women, Mere Malheur," replied La Corriveau;
"they sneer at you and me and call us witch and sorceress, and they
will lie, steal, kill, and do worse themselves for the sake of one
man to-day, and cast him off for sake of another to-morrow! Wise
Solomon found only one good woman in a thousand; the wisest man now
finds not one in a worldful! It were better all of us were dead,
Mere Malheur; but pour me out a glass of wine, for I am tired of
tramping in the dark to the house of that gay lady I told you of.
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