"Why did you sell yourself to the Devil?"
"There is no Devil," said the old woman indifferently.
"No Devil?" cried out the priest. "You ought best to know that one exists, you who have so often attended the fearful revels on the Kreuzweg."
"For thirty years have I sat on the Holtermann and by the Linsenteich, and crept at midnight into the Jettenhöhle, and have muttered all the incantations taught me by my parents, but all remained still. Lately I thought to see him, but it was only the miller's boy at his tricks."
"And you never went out there, to drink and to dance with the fiends, and to whore with the Devil?"
"If I could do that would I be lying here?" said the old witch in a tone of contempt. "I spake all the curses that are known. 'Here I stand on the dung and deny Jesus Christ.' I sang his own song: 'Come, Come, Satan, jump here, jump there, hop here, hop there, play here, play there,' or 'Come out, come on, touch nowhere on, Hie up and out.' But none availed. I have prayed to the Devil, and enticed the elves, but nothing moved; it is all nonsense."
"Why did you not rather pray to God?"
"There is no God," said the old woman in the same apathetic tone.
"You blaspheme," said Paul angrily. "You will soon see, when they stretch the fair Lydia out here, and scourge her with ropes, and burn her with sulphur, whether He helps. And Erastus, and Xylander, and the daughter of Pithopöus, and Probus' wife, and Probus himself."
"What! have you named them all?"