Then musingly, she turned to me with her rare smile. “Once, I also doubted. I was then of few years, and the questionings which belong to the changing part of me were many. I was in Benares, and I said to a holy man there, who is of one fellowship with me: ‘This thing—cursing—is of the evil one. Do not practise it. Besides I do not believe you can curse. I believe it is only magic, like the gypsy folk do use. And he: ‘Nay, Mother, I do it in the name of the Writings—try me.’ And I wished to test this thing, but because I had said it was wrong, I could not then consent. Yet on the third day I said: ‘Well, if you can work a curse in a good cause.... I will be witness.’
“The Gods sent the occasion. A poor man, threader of flowers for the neck of a sacred bull in a rich man’s temple, came to me the next day. He and his family were starving. The rich man had out of caprice dismissed them. My holy man turned to me.
“‘This is the occasion of your seeking, Mother,’ he said. ‘That rich man is known to me. I will hurt him—but not much—for this poor man’s sake.’”
She smiled again whimsically. “I was in the body—what would you? It was wrong: but I consented.
“So the holy man sent for a little dust from off the feet of the rich man, and with the help of this, and some earth and flour, he made an image, saying mantras the while; but the most powerful mantras said he over five nails lying in the bottom of a pot.
“‘Now,’ he said, ‘the curse is ready; but first go and see the rich man. Is he well? bring me news.’
“So I went, even as I was bid, and I sat in the courtyard and saw for mine own self that he was well, and vaunting himself in his health and riches.
“It was dusk when I returned and made my report. ‘Then here begins the magic,’ said the holy man; and taking one of the nails he had cursed, he drove it with many more curses into the knee of the image.
“‘A little curse,’ he said, ‘only a little curse in a good cause: but he shall feel it.’
“And I ran back to the great house and found all in confusion—servants running for doctors, Priests reciting prayers.... ‘The Master was sick unto death,’ they told me. We waited that night; and in the dawn hour, I, being holy myself and privileged, went to the rich man and told him as he lay in agony, that to my mind, not the doctor, but expiation would cure him.