Once, in a school for girls only ten miles away, the teachers found that the back of one of the girls was all red and inflamed, and they were greatly frightened, believing it to be the Devil's marks.The girl was scared, and begged them not to denounce her, and said it was only fleas;but of course it would not do to let the matter rest there.All the girls were examined, and eleven out of the fifty were badly marked, the rest less so.A commission was appointed, but the eleven only cried for their mothers and would not confess.Then they were shut up, each by herself, in the dark, and put on black bread and water for ten days and nights; and by that time they were haggard and wild, and their eyes were dry and they did not cry any more, but only sat and mumbled, and would not take the food.Then one of them confessed, and said they had often ridden through the air on broomsticks to the witches' Sabbath, and in a bleak place high up in the mountains had danced and drunk and caroused with several hundred other witches and the Evil One, and all had conducted themselves in a scandalous way and had reviled the priests and blasphemed God.That is what she said--not in narrative form, for she was not able to remember any of the details without having them called to her mind one after the other; but the commission did that, for they knew just what questions to ask, they being all written down for the use of witch-commissioners two centuries before.They asked, "Did you do so and so?" and she always said yes, and looked weary and tired, and took no interest in it.And so when the other ten heard that this one confessed, they confessed, too, and answered yes to the questions.Then they were burned at the stake all together, which was just and right; and everybody went from all the countryside to see it.I went, too; but when I saw that one of them was a bonny, sweet girl I used to play with, and looked so pitiful there chained to the stake, and her mother crying over her and devouring her with kisses and clinging around her neck, and saying, "Oh, my God! oh, my God!" it was too dreadful, and I went away.
It was bitter cold weather when Gottfried's grandmother was burned.It was charged that she had cured bad headaches by kneading the person's head and neck with her fingers--as she said--but really by the Devil's help, as everybody knew.They were going to examine her, but she stopped them, and confessed straight off that her power was from the Devil.So they appointed to burn her next morning, early, in our market-square.
The officer who was to prepare the fire was there first, and prepared it.
She was there next--brought by the constables, who left her and went to fetch another witch.Her family did not come with her.They might be reviled, maybe stoned, if the people were excited.I came, and gave her an apple.She was squatting at the fire, warming herself and waiting;and her old lips and hands were blue with the cold.A stranger came next.He was a traveler, passing through; and he spoke to her gently, and, seeing nobody but me there to hear, said he was sorry for her.And he asked if what she confessed was true, and she said no.He looked surprised and still more sorry then, and asked her:
"Then why did you confess?"
"I am old and very poor," she said, "and I work for my living.There was no way but to confess.If I hadn't they might have set me free.That would ruin me, for no one would forget that I had been suspected of being a witch, and so I would get no more work, and wherever I went they would set the dogs on me.In a little while I would starve.The fire is best;it is soon over.You have been good to me, you two, and I thank you."She snuggled closer to the fire, and put out her hands to warm them, the snow-flakes descending soft and still on her old gray head and making it white and whiter.The crowd was gathering now, and an egg came flying and struck her in the eye, and broke and ran down her face.There was a laugh at that.
I told Satan all about the eleven girls and the old woman, once, but it did not affect him.He only said it was the human race, and what the human race did was of no consequence.And he said he had seen it made;and it was not made of clay; it was made of mud--part of it was, anyway.
I knew what he meant by that--the Moral Sense.He saw the thought in my head, and it tickled him and made him laugh.Then he called a bullock out of a pasture and petted it and talked with it, and said:
"There--he wouldn't drive children mad with hunger and fright and loneliness, and then burn them for confessing to things invented for them which had never happened.And neither would he break the hearts of innocent, poor old women and make them afraid to trust themselves among their own race; and he would not insult them in their death-agony.For he is not besmirched with the Moral Sense, but is as the angels are, and knows no wrong, and never does it."Lovely as he was, Satan could be cruelly offensive when he chose; and he always chose when the human race was brought to his attention.He always turned up his nose at it, and never had a kind word for it.
Well, as I was saying, we boys doubted if it was a good time for Ursula to be hiring a member of the Narr family.We were right.When the people found it out they were naturally indignant.And, moreover, since Marget and Ursula hadn't enough to eat themselves, where was the money coming from to feed another mouth? That is what they wanted to know; and in order to find out they stopped avoiding Gottfried and began to seek his society and have sociable conversations with him.He was pleased--not thinking any harm and not seeing the trap--and so he talked innocently along, and was no discreeter than a cow.
"Money!" he said; "they've got plenty of it.They pay me two groschen a week, besides my keep.And they live on the fat of the land, I can tell you; the prince himself can't beat their table."This astonishing statement was conveyed by the astrologer to Father Adolf on a Sunday morning when he was returning from mass.He was deeply moved, and said:
"This must be looked into."