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“On the morrow, about the hour of eight, the knight had risen and was dressed; on leaving his apartment, he went to a window which looked into the court of the castle. Casting his eyes about, the first thing he observed was an immensely large sow, but she was so poor, she seemed only skin and bone, with long hanging ears all spotted, and a sharp-pointed, lean snout. The Lord de Coarraze was disgusted at such a sight, and, calling to his servants, said, ‘Let the dogs loose quickly, for I will have that sow killed and devoured.’ The servants hastened to open the kennel, and to set the hounds on the sow, who uttered a loud cry and looked up at the Lord de Coarraze, leaning on the balcony of his window, and was never seen afterwards; for she vanished, and no one ever knew what became of her.
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“The knight returned quite pensive to his chamber, for he then recollected what Orthon had told him, and said: ‘I believe I have seen my messenger Orthon, and repent having set my hounds on him, for perhaps I may never see him more: he frequently told me, that if I ever angered him, I should lose him.’ He kept his word; for never did he return to the hôtel de Coarraze, and the knight died the following year.” This Orthon, the familiar spirits, queen Mab, are the poor little popular gods, children of the pool and the oak, engendered by the melancholy and awe-struck reveries of the spinning maiden and the peasant. A great state religion then overshadowed all thoughts; doctrine ready-made was imposed upon them; men could no longer, as in Greece or Scandinavia, build the great poem which suited their manners and mind. They received it from above, and repeated the litany with docility, yet not very well understanding it. Their invention produced only legends of saints or churchyard superstitions. Since they could not reach God, they struck out for themselves goblins, hermits, and gnomes, and by these simple and fantastic figures they expressed their rustic life or their vague terrors. This Orthon, who storms at the door in the night and breaks the dishes, is he anything more than the night-mare of a half-wakened man, anxiously listening to the rustling of the wind that fumbles at the doors, and the sudden noises of the night magnified by silence! The child in his bed suffers similar fears when he covers eyes and ears that he may not see the strange shadow of the wardrobe, or hear the stifled cries of the thatch on the roof. The two straws that play convulsively on the floor, twined together like twins, and shine with mysterious brilliancy in the pale sunlight, leave a vague uneasiness in the disordered brain.