‘She grew very thin, and her smooth satin hair turned white on top, just where the Devil had laid his hand; so she wore a veil, even in the house, and she hid her eyes as if she was afraid, and she prayed day and night. Nobody knew what she prayed, because she did not dare to tell even her husband.
‘Bye and bye she grew so afraid and sad, because Seraphita somehow didn’t seem to her any more like her own child; she was like a beautiful wax doll; but she was not wax, and she looked just like herself to everybody else; only to her mother she seemed strange, and she could not get the warm love back into her heart, even though she pressed Seraphita to her bosom night and day.
‘The little baby grew in spite of that, and she grew prettier and prettier all the time. Everybody loved her except her mother, and that was just what the Devil wanted.
‘The day Seraphita was one year old her mother could not bear it any longer, and she went to her priest and confessed to him all about it; and then very soon she died, because she had kept her secret so long it had just burned her heart out.
‘After that—no one knew how it happened—but pretty soon everybody began to whisper and look queerly at Seraphita when the nurse carried her into the street; and her father seemed troubled, and he talked with the priest and wanted to pay some more money to the Church; but they wouldn’t have any more ceremonies for Seraphita, and the priests tried to make the people stop talking; what they said was “nonsense.” But it was not nonsense, and so they went on talking among themselves; and they would take their own children out of the way when Seraphita was old enough to play about.
‘So she grew up all alone except for her father and her nurse and the priest who went to live in the house—which showed that the Church thought there was something in it, else why should a priest go and live in the house?
‘One day, when Seraphita was out walking, she came across some little boys who were stoning a black kitten to kill it—for everybody knows that black cats belong to the Devil. And Seraphita ran right in among the flying stones, and not one of them hit her, for the Devil held his hand between her and the stones, and she caught up the Devil’s kitten and hugged it tight, while the stones fell at her feet, and the boys cried out, “Devil’s brat! Devil’s cat!”’
‘Pepita,’ said I, ‘she seems to me to have been a very nice, soft-hearted little girl.’
‘Oh, no! Señora Maria Madalena, you see black cats belong to the Devil, and if she had had any soul she couldn’t have taken one in her arms.
‘She carried it home, and she used to feed it, and she had to hide it away, because, of course, nobody wanted to have a Devil’s cat around, and the cat would run and jump into Seraphita’s arms whenever she came near; but it would fly like mad, and its hair would all stand on end, when anyone else came around, which shows—does it not?—that something was wrong. And another thing showed that all was not right with Seraphita: the priest began to teach her, and she learned faster than any child should. There was an evil spirit that whispered the words into her ear, so that she did not have to study.