Even if she hesitated from regard for her marriage-vow, certain it is that life in a space so narrow, where they were always in each other’s sight, so near and yet so far, became a downright torment. And even when she had once shown her weakness, still before her husband and others equally jealous the moments of happiness would assuredly be rare. Hence sprang many a foolish outbreak of unsatisfied desire. The less they came together, the more deeply they longed to do so. A disordered fancy sought to attain that end by means grotesque, unnatural, utterly senseless. So by way of establishing a means of secret correspondence between the two, the Witch had the letters of the alphabet pricked on both their arms. If one of them wanted to send a thought to the other, he brightened and brought out by sucking the blood-red letters of the wished-for word. Immediately, so it is said, the corresponding letters bled on the other’s arm.
Sometimes in these mad fits they would drink each of the other’s blood, so as to mingle their souls, it was said, in close communion. The devouring of Coucy’s heart, which the lady “found so good that she never ate again,” is the most tragical instance of these monstrous vows of loving cannibalism. But when the absent one did not die, but only the love within him, then the lady would seek counsel of the Witch, begging of her the means of holding him, of bringing him back.
The incantations used by the sorceress of Theocritus and Virgil, though employed also in the Middle Ages, were seldom of much avail. An attempt was made to win back the lover by a spell seemingly copied from antiquity, by means of a cake, of a confarreatio[49] like that which, both in Asia and Europe, had always been the holiest pledge of love. But in this case it is not the soul only, it is the flesh also they seek to bind; there must be so true an identity established between the two, that, dead to all other women, he shall live only for her. It was a cruel ceremony on the woman’s side. “No haggling, madam,” says the Witch. Suddenly the proud dame grows obedient, even to letting herself be stripped bare: for thus indeed it must be.
What a triumph for the Witch! And if this lady were the same as she who had once made her “run the gauntlet,” how meet the vengeance, how dread the requital now! But it is not enough to have stripped her thus naked. About her loins is fastened a little shelf, on which a small oven is set for the cooking of the cake. “Oh, my dear, I cannot bear it longer! Make haste, and relieve me.”
“You must bear it, madam; you must feel the heat. When the cake is done, he will be warmed by you, by your flame.”
It is over; and now we have the cake of antiquity, of the Indian and the Roman marriage, but spiced and warmed up by the lecherous spirit of the Devil. She does not say with Virgil’s wizard,[50]
“Ducite ab urbe domum, mea carmina, ducite Daphnin!”
But she takes him the cake, steeped, as it were, in the other’s suffering, and kept warm by her love. He has hardly bitten it when he is overtaken by an odd emotion, by a feeling of dizziness. Then as the blood rushes up to his heart he turns red and hot. Passion fastens anew on him, and inextinguishable desire.[51]