I will now relate to you one of his marvellous tales. I know that there
are a great many wise people who copy in the courts, and can even read
civil documents, who, if you were to put into their hand a simple
prayer-book, could not make out the first letter in it, and would show
all their teeth in derision--which is wisdom. These people laugh at
everything you tell them. Such incredulity has spread abroad in the
world! What then? (Why, may God and the Holy Virgin cease to love me if
it is not possible that even you will not believe me!) Once he said
something about witches; . . . What then? Along comes one of these head-
breakers,--and doesn't believe in witches! Yes, glory to God that I have
lived so long in the world! I have seen heretics, to whom it would be
easier to lie in confession than it would to our brothers and equals to
take snuff, and those people would deny the existence of witches! But
let them just dream about something, and they won't even tell what it
was! There's no use in talking about them!
* * * *
ST. JOHN'S EVE.
No one could have recognized this village of ours a little over a
hundred years ago: a hamlet it was, the poorest kind of a hamlet.
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