“Take off the object of devotion and touch them, or do something to them so that they would die,” was the reply. “A child that has been touched by a witch pines away to a skeleton, and dies, without any one being able to find out what ails it. I believe, and I do not believe,” she said with a shrug. “Who knows? The Scriptures tell of evil spirits having power. Who knows how it may be? My sister, however, lived and died persuaded that her only child was touched by a witch, though it was not on St John’s eve. She had been getting her baby to sleep one day, when a neighbor came and called her to the door for some reason. She went out, leaving the door open and the baby in its cradle. When she returned, there was an old woman bending over the cradle and talking to the child—an ugly, dirty old creature, that she had never seen before. My sister took fright at once, and called out to her to go away. 'I saw the door open and heard the baby crying, and I came in to soothe it,’ the old woman said. My sister told her she had no right to come in, and chased her away. On the threshold the woman turned and shook her finger. 'You will repent this,’ she said. In fact, the babe, which had been healthy, and was just dropping peacefully asleep, began to moan and cry, and nothing could pacify it. My sister examined and found that the little devotion it wore had been taken away. From that day the child pined. She got nurses for it, she tried everything possible, but nothing helped it. Finally, she carried it to the church of St. Theodore, in the Roman Forum, where all the mothers carry their sick babies. The priest blessed it, but told her that it was too late: the child would die. And it did die. She tried then one proof more. She took all its clothes that it died in, and that it had on when the witch touched it, put them in a grate, and kindled a fire under them. They burned as if there had been gunpowder among them. That was a sure proof, they said. But for me,” continued the story-teller, with another shrug, “I believe, and I don’t believe. Chi lo sa?”
It is curious to find how this witch-idea is embodied in every nation, and always with very nearly the same features: old, ugly, child-hating, powerful for petty malice, but a slave to the most trivial spells, repelling, disgusting—a fair representation of the utter despicableness and feebleness of evil.
At the first soft fall of twilight the family of Casa Ottant’Otto stepped into a carriage and drove out to the Lateran by the roundabout way of the Roman Forum. From the Colosseum up to the church, all about the church and palace, in a part of the piazza, and the ends of the streets leading to it, every nook and door-way and every rod of ground had its table or booth, some lighted by a soft olive-oil lamp, others clear and bright with petroleum, others flaring with the red light of a torch. Piles of cakes of every shape and size, wine in bottles, flasks, and jars, cones of the delicious Roman lemons, that are so juicy and fragrant, trinkets, scarfs, knick-knacks of various sorts, covered the tables and counters. Here and there a more ambitious salesman, probably a Jew, had erected a little shop. Everywhere were pinks and lavender. Each table and counter held sprigs and bunches, and men, women, and children went about with their arms full of it. A little crowd of these noisy venders surrounded the carriage the moment it stopped, and the ladies supplied themselves with lavender for their drawers, and bought large bunches of red pinks, and each of them a St. John’s bouquet. This bouquet consists of a little white flower surrounded by pinks, and outside four sprigs of lavender. The lavender for drawers is ingeniously done up. A bunch is gathered with long stems to the sweet gray seeds and blue flowers, and a string is tied close under their little chins. The stems are then turned back to make a cage for the cluster, and tied again at the other end; and yet again turned back and tied a third time, so that only glimpses can be had of the caged bloom; and all is lavender.
“We should have come to first Vespers, if we wished to think of the austere St. John,” the Signora said. “The scene is simply picturesque and beautiful at this hour, and will be bacchanalian later. The world doesn’t begin to come till twelve o’clock, and at that time it will be almost impossible to move for the crowd, which does not disappear entirely till daylight.”
They drove off toward Santa Croce, and, turning there, stayed awhile under the soft dusk of the trees, looking back on the twinkling lights and crowding figures, and talking a little. The fiery half-ring of the three days’ moon touched the tip of a pine-tree in the west and kindled it; the stars overhead seemed to be melting out of their orbits in a glowing rain; the air was full of a sweet fragrance and delicately fresh. Sounds of laughter and mingled voices reached them now and then. But all—the wafts of air, the sounds, the radiating lights, the motions—were so soft that the whole might be a great picture which they half imagined to be alive.
The Signora leaned back in her seat and gave herself up to the scene, mingling with it the ever-present thought: What should she do with this man who sat opposite her? His face was turned to look back, so that she saw the profile, a fine one. She felt very feminine and weak just then—not at all like taking care of herself all her life long, being both mistress and master of her house, and her own adviser and support. The spirit of strength, of an enthusiastic liberty of effort and labor, faded and fainted within her. They could not live in such a scene. She wanted to be taken care of. All the insidious arguments of the sluggard began to whisper themselves to her. Of what use was this constant toil and strain, which was but a daily rolling up hill of a burden that every night rolled down again? Of what use the study, the thought, the self-denial? All had seemed pleasant; but, come to think of it, where had been the repose? Had she ever looked at a flower without, after the first glance, studying how she should present its beauties in words to other eyes? Had she ever drunk a sunset with all its color down into her own soul, and left its glory there, but speedily her pen must dip the light of it up to shine on a page for others to see? Whither had fled the long, tranquil sleep, the calm folding of the hands, the deep and steady thought for thought’s sake? There was no one in the world, it seemed to her, who thought so much of others as she did. She analyzed her pains, her religious emotions, her very temptations, for them, and studied her own breathing that she should be able to tell them how they breathed. And what was the return? Bread, and not too much of that. She had studied her art as the painter, the sculptor, and the musician study, making a science of it, and not one in a hundred looked on it as any more than an idle and facile play. She had felt her way, by a natural gift and an acquired power, into the depths of souls, and had led them out alive into the light; yet how many an ignorant critic and shallow moralist had set up his wooden or card-paper model for her to follow!
How odd she had not known before how tiresome it was! She had at times felt tired, but to know that all was tiresome, and vanity of vanities—that had but just broken on her. This soft and joyous scene, usurping the hours of sleep, making the work of the day to follow an impossible thing to be done, and finding its playground under the stars—this was what had opened her eyes. A careless laugh had done it. She looked at Mr. Vane and thought: “I hope he won’t ask me to-night, for if he should I shall certainly promise to marry him; and I do not like cutting Gordian knots with sudden resolutions. I would rather untie this a little more leisurely,” she considered, still looking at him. “If I want honors and favors, I could win more by giving good dinners than by writing good books. A dinner is more powerful than an epic; for anybody can take in a dinner, but everybody cannot take in an epic. If I want friends and the reputation of being amiable, the good-natured complacency of prosperous ease will go a great deal further than the somewhat over-earnestness of a serious life.”
She snatched her eyes and her thoughts quickly away from the subjects that occupied both, and began to talk; for Mr. Vane turned, as if aware of being observed, and looked at her.
“I must have a little longer to think,” she said to herself, with a fluttering heart. “It will never do to decide to-night.”
“If we are going to keep up our character of a sober and orderly household, we must soon be on our way home,” she said. “The witches are certainly abroad—I almost see them—and we have no spell to prevent their getting into our carriage.”