“That is, I thought it was a petticoat, but when I caught up with the wagon on that spent mud turtle of mine (my gee-gee went by that poetic name) I found it was only a piece of burlap displayed for art’s sake.”
“Did I curse ART?” demanded Mark, looking around the circle.
MARK SHEDS LIGHT ON ENGLISH HISTORY
We had set out to look at the rich collections of jewels, curiosities and “other loot” (Mark’s description) hoarded by the (late) Hapsburgs in the immense pile called Hofburg, when the author of “Joan of Arc,” then in the making, switched me off to another room.
“Let’s go and dig out the Witch Hammer,” he said. “Wonder whether they have a new edition at the Imperial Library.”
I forget now which edition of that murderous book we examined, but I do remember some of the figures we jotted down at the librarian’s suggestion. The Witch Hammer, that is, a voluminous “treatise for discovering, torturing, maiming and burning witches,” was first published, we learned, in 1487, and twenty-eight editions were put through the press during the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Later Mark listened to my reading from the Latin text with so stern a mien I suggested that he looked like a Grand Inquisitor.
“I pity your ignorance,” he drawled, “Torquemada and the rest didn’t think of being unhappy re those auto-da-fes, for every witch-fire lit by their orders meant a warm jingle in their own pockets. When they tortured an accused person, the cost of the proceedings was collected by the sheriff, ditto when they burned some old lady, or a child maybe—it was all grist to their mill, for the Grand Inquisitor got a rake-off on all prosecutions, and in those good old days it cost more to break a human being on the wheel than to feed him and care for him in jail. The great Napoleon, you once told me, found some three hundred crowned leeches infesting Germany when he started to break up their little game. What do you suppose they lived on, those kinglets, princes, graves and dukes—on the dog tax? No, most of them lived on the interest of the fortunes their ancestors had accumulated by prosecuting and burning witches.”
Some years later Mark related the story of our search for the Witch Hammer before a motley crowd of litterateurs at Brown’s Hotel, London. “Fine,” said Bram Stoker, “tell us some more; I have a short story on witchcraft in hand.”
“In that case,” said Mark, “don’t forget Henry VIII, Elizabeth and the first James. Wife-killing Henry started the witch-burning business in ‘merry’ England, Elizabeth revived the sport, and the son of Mary Stuart, whose Bible lies on every drawing-room table at home, used both pen and axe to exterminate witches and ‘demons.’ I read up closely on the subject when I got down to Joan of Arc’s trial.”