After this, of course, there could be no more doubt about the "black art" of Barbara Roloffin. Lütkens lodged his plaint before the proper tribunal, and the woman was taken into custody. She denied everything obstinately, till she was put to the rack. Upon that, unable to endure the agony, she confessed that she had been in league with the Devil, and had practised magical arts for a very long time. She admitted that she had bewitched poor Frau Lütkens, and foisted off the vile abortion upon her; and that, over and above that, she had in company with two other witches belonging to Blumber killed and boiled several children of Christian parents, with the object of causing a famine in the land.
Accordingly she was sentenced to be burnt alive in the market-place. So when the appointed day arrived old Barbara was conducted there in presence of a great concourse of people, and made to ascend the scaffold which was there erected. When ordered to take off a fur cloak which she was wearing, she would by no means obey, insisting that they should tie her to the stake just as she was. This was done. The pile of wood was already alight, and burning at all four corners, when suddenly the stranger appeared, seemingly grown to gigantic dimensions, and glaring over the heads of the populace at Barbara Roloffin with eyes of flame.
The clouds of black smoke were rolling on high, the crackling flames were catching the woman's dress, she cried out, in a terrible screaming voice, "Satan! Satan! is this how thou holdest the pact thou hast made with me? Help, Satan! Help! my time is not out yet!" and the stranger, it was found, had suddenly vanished. But from the spot where he had been standing an enormous bat went fluttering up, darted into the thick of the flames, and thence rose screaming into the air with the old woman's fur cloak; and the burning pyre went crashing down into extinction.
Horror seized upon all the spectators; every one now saw clearly that the distinguished stranger had been none other than the very Devil in person. He must have had some special grudge against the folks of Berlin, to whom he had so long behaved so smoothly and in such friendly fashion, and with hellish deceit betrayed Councillor Lütkens and many other sapient men and women.
Such is the power of the Evil One; from whom and from all his snares may Heaven in its mercy defend us all.
When Lothair had finished, he looked into Ottmar's face, in utter self-irony, with the peculiar expression of bitter sweetness which he had at his command on such occasions.
"Well," said Theodore, "what think you of Lothair's pretty little specimen of diablerie? One of the best points about it, I think, is that there is not too much of it."
Whilst Lothair had been reading, Ottmar had laughed a great deal, but towards the close he had become grave and silent. "I must admit," he said, "that in this little tale or 'prank'--for I don't know what else to call it--of Lothair's there predominates an attempt, often more or less successful, at a certain sort of amusing naïveté, very appropriate to the character of the German Devil. Also, that when he talks about the Devil's jumping over the streets hand in hand with respectable townfolk and of the 'chestnut brown schismatic,' who might turn out a quaint and ugly savant, though never a nice, natty, spick-and-span Member of Council, we see the curvets and the caprioles of the same little Pegasus which was bestridden by the author of 'Nutcracker.' Still, I think that he ought to have got on the back of a horse of a different colour; and, indeed, I cannot say what the reason exactly is why the pleasantly comic impression which the earlier part of the story produces vanishes away into nothingness; whilst, out of this nothingness, there ultimately develops a certain something which becomes most uncanny and unpleasant; and the concluding words, which are intended to do away with this feeling, do not succeed in doing away with it."
"Oh, thou most sapient of all critics," Lothair cried, "who dost such high honour to this most insignificant thing of all the insignificant things which I have ever written down as to dissect it carefully with magnifying glasses on nose, let me tell you that it served me as an anatomical study long ago. Did I not style it a mere product of a mood of caprice? Have I not anathematized it myself? However, I am glad that I read it to you, because it gives me an opportunity of speaking my mind concerning tales of this kind. And I am sure that my Serapion Brethren will agree with me. In the first place, Ottmar, I should like to trace out for you the germ of that unpleasant--or, better, 'uncanny'--feeling which you were conscious of when you were at first beginning to see what you have called the 'amusing naïveté' of it. Whatever grounds the good old Hafftitz may have had for telling us that the Devil passed a certain time leading the life of a townsman of Berlin, this remains for us a wholly 'fanciful' or 'fantastic' incident. And the quality of the 'supernatural'--the 'spookishness' (to use an expression now not unfamiliar)--which is a leading characteristic of that tremendous 'principle of negation'--that 'spirit which eternally denies and destroys'--is, by reason of the (in a manner) comic contrastedness in which it is presented, calculated to cause in us the strange sensation, compounded of terror and irony, which fetters our attention in a manner the reverse of unpleasant. But the case is quite different as to the terrible witch stories. In them actual life is brought on to the stage with all its reality of horror. When I read about Barbara Roloffin's execution, I felt as though I saw the funeral pyre smoking in the market-place. All the horror of the terrible witchcraft-trials rose to my memory. A pair of sparkling red eyes, and an attenuated weazened body, were enough to cause a poor old creature to be assumed to be a witch, guilty of every description of wicked and unholy arts and practices; to have legal process instituted against her, and to be led to the scaffold. The application of the rack, or other form of torture, confirmed the accusations against her, and decided the case."
"Still," said Theodore, "it is very remarkable that so many of those supposititious witches of their own accord confessed their pact, and other relations, with the Evil One, without any coercion whatever. Two or three years ago it happened that a number of legal documents fell into my hands relating to trials for witchcraft; and I could scarce believe my eyes when I read in them confessions of things which made my flesh creep. They told of ointments, the use of which turned human beings into various animals; they spoke of riding on broomsticks, and, in fact, of all the devilish practices which we read of in old legends. Bat, first and foremost, and invariably, those supposititious witches always openly and shamelessly avowed, and boasted--usually of their own accord--as to their unchaste relations with the unclean and diabolical 'gallant' (as their term for him was). Now, how could such things be possible?"