And the girl's eyes sparkled hungrily. The beldame surveyed her curiously; then her blue and withered lips parted in a smile which displayed her one tusk-like yellow tooth, and her face lit up with a hideous joy.
'Ah, you wish it? Very much, do you? You have caught the taste? Was there ever such a girl? For my part, I am ready to fly every night. But see you here, Cassandra, you take the sin on your own soul. To-night I wasn't even thinking of it. I'll do it only for your sake, out of my too great goodness of heart.'
Without haste the old woman went about the room, shut the shutters, stuffed rags into the chinks, locked all doors, poured water on the fire, lighted a black candle endued with magical properties, and from an iron locker took an earthen vessel containing a pungent ointment. She made show of being deliberate and sensible, but her hands shook as though she were drunk, her sunken eyes were at times turbid, at times they sparkled like coals. Cassandra had dragged the two great troughs used for the kneading of dough into the centre of the room.
Now Monna Sidonia stripped herself, and sitting astride of a broomstick on one of the troughs, she smeared herself with the ointment which she had taken from the locker. A hideous odour filled the room; the medicament, infallible for making witches fly, was composed of poisonous lettuce, hemlock, nightshade, mandragora, poppy, henbane, serpent's blood, and the fat of unchristened children.
Cassandra could not look at the hag's deformity. At the eleventh hour she recoiled.
'What are you about?' grumbled the crone; 'are you going to leave me to fly alone? Come—make haste. Take your clothes off.'
'All right. But, Monna Sidonia, put the light out. I can't do it in the light.'
'Bah! what modesty! Never mind, there'll be no modesty on the mountain.'
She blew out the candle, making the sign of the cross with the left hand for the pleasing of the devil, her master.
Then the girl rapidly undressed, knelt in the trough, and smeared herself.