Poverty and wealth are comparative terms. Gilliatt had some fields and a house, his own property; compared with those who had nothing, he was not poor. One day, to test this, and perhaps, also as a step towards a correspondence—for there are base women who would marry a demon for the sake of riches—a young girl of the neighbourhood said to Gilliatt, “When are you going to take a wife, neighbour?” He answered, “I will take a wife when the Roque qui Chante takes a husband.”
This Roque qui Chante is a great stone, standing in a field near Mons. Lemézurier de Fry’s. It is a stone of a highly suspicious character. No one knows what deeds are done around it. At times you may hear there a cock crowing, when no cock is near—an extremely disagreeable circumstance. Then it is commonly asserted that this stone was originally placed in the field by the elfin people known as Sarregousets, who are the same as the Sins.
At night, when it thunders, if you should happen to see men flying in the lurid light of the clouds, or on the rolling waves of the air, these are no other than the Sarregousets. A woman who lives at the Grand Mielles knows them well. One evening, when some Sarregousets happened to be assembled at a crossroad, this woman cried out to a man with a cart, who did not know which route to take, “Ask them your way. They are civil folks, and always ready to direct a stranger.” There can be little doubt that this woman was a sorceress.
The learned and judicious King James I. had women of this kind boiled, and then tasting the water of the cauldron, was able to say from its flavour, “That was a sorceress;” or “That was not one.”
It is to be regretted that the kings of these latter days no longer possess a talent which placed in so strong a light the utility of monarchical institutions.
It was not without substantial grounds that Gilliatt lived in this odour of sorcery. One midnight, during a storm, Gilliatt being at sea alone in a bark, on the coast by La Sommeilleuse, he was heard to ask—
“Is there a passage sufficient for me?”
And a voice cried from the heights above:
“Passage enough: steer boldly.”
To whom could he have been speaking, if not to those who replied to him? This seems something like evidence.