After the body had been taken away, and as I sat waiting for McCann to return, I tried to orient myself
to this phantasmagoria through which, it seemed to me, I had been moving for endless time. I tried to
divest my mind of all prejudice, all preconceived ideas of what could and could not be. I began by
conceding that this Madame Mandilip might possess some wisdom of which modern science is ignorant. I
refused to call it witchcraft or sorcery. The words mean nothing, since they have been applied through the
ages to entirely natural phenomena whose causes were not understood by the laity. Not so long ago, for
example, the lighting of a match was "witchcraft" to many savage tribes.
No, Madame Mandilip was no "witch," as Ricori thought her. She was mistress of some unknown
science-that was all.
And being a science, it must be governed by fixed laws-unknown though those laws might be to me. If