not saying a word, until suddenly I understood and cried out:
“You speak of the Devil, Renata!”
And Renata replied to me:
“Yes!”
Then there ensued a discussion between us. However I may have been enmeshed by my passion for this woman, however ready I may have been to obey her least sign, to do what was pleasing to her, yet such an unheard of request stirred my whole soul to its very depths. I said first of all that it was hardly possible the Lord God would not know how to distinguish the really guilty one, and that even if I were to lose my soul by having recourse to the help of the Enemy of Man, she would no less lose hers for sending me to do this work, for the murderer is ever less guilty than he who bribes him; further—that it was doubtful whether the Ruler of Hell himself could render any assistance in such an undertaking, for he is busy catching human souls, and not in taking poll-lists of the population, where who lives, and especially was it unlikely that he would know about Count Heinrich, for he by Renata’s own description, was a saint, and certainly not subject to the rule of the subterranean powers, being able to blind and divert the eyes of the servants of Beelzebub at his will; lastly, that most decidedly I did not know the roads leading to the Realms of Tartary, that much of the stories of pacts and contracts with the Devil were mere grandmother’s tales, that perhaps magic itself was but deceit and misapprehension, and that in any case we should not find it easy to hire a guide capable of directing us in good faith straight to Satan.
Thus I spoke with irritation, at times myself not believing my own words, and now for the first time allowing myself to be rude and even mocking in my treatment of Renata, but she, opposing me weakly, invited me to watch what she was about to do. From the small bag she had brought, she took out a few sprigs of herb: heather, verbena, wolf’s bane, orache, and yet another herb with white flowers, the name of which I do not know. With her left hand Renata plucked the leaves from the herbs and threw them over her head on to the floor, but then she gathered them again and placed them on the table in a circle. Next she plunged a knife into the table surface in the middle of the circle, tied its handle round with string, passed the end of the string to me and said, looking at me attentively:
“Command it thrice to milk, in the name of Him .” Silently watching all this bedevilment, I involuntarily pronounced thrice:
“In the name of the Devil, milk!”
Immediately from under the knife poured a few drops of milk, and Renata joyfully clapped her hands, embraced my shoulders and kept on exclaiming:
“Rupprecht! Dearest Rupprecht! You can! You have the power!”
I, quite angry by this time, demanded that she should cease to fool me with her tricks, but Renata, changing her joyful tone to a caressing one, began to persuade me, pressing against me as against a lover and looking into my face:
“Rupprecht! What matters the salvation of your soul if you but love me? Must not love be above all, and must not all be sacrificed to it, even the Bliss of Paradise? Do what I desire, for my sake, and after Heinrich you shall be the first for me in the whole world. And who knows, perhaps the Righteous Judge will not condemn you for that you have loved so much, and will not sentence you to the Burning Gehenna, but only to the temporary tortures of Purgatory. And I with my Madiël—I swear to you by the Virginity of the Mother of God—we will not forget to send prayers after you even from the Gardens of Paradise!”
I might say that I yielded to the temptation of a woman, as Samson to that of Delilah, or Hercules to that of Omphala, but, not wishing to lie, I must confess that two considerations quickly flashed through my mind. The first—that truly a sin committed for another weighs only half-weight on the scales of justice, and two—that perhaps I should be guilty of no
“You speak of the Devil, Renata!”
And Renata replied to me:
“Yes!”
Then there ensued a discussion between us. However I may have been enmeshed by my passion for this woman, however ready I may have been to obey her least sign, to do what was pleasing to her, yet such an unheard of request stirred my whole soul to its very depths. I said first of all that it was hardly possible the Lord God would not know how to distinguish the really guilty one, and that even if I were to lose my soul by having recourse to the help of the Enemy of Man, she would no less lose hers for sending me to do this work, for the murderer is ever less guilty than he who bribes him; further—that it was doubtful whether the Ruler of Hell himself could render any assistance in such an undertaking, for he is busy catching human souls, and not in taking poll-lists of the population, where who lives, and especially was it unlikely that he would know about Count Heinrich, for he by Renata’s own description, was a saint, and certainly not subject to the rule of the subterranean powers, being able to blind and divert the eyes of the servants of Beelzebub at his will; lastly, that most decidedly I did not know the roads leading to the Realms of Tartary, that much of the stories of pacts and contracts with the Devil were mere grandmother’s tales, that perhaps magic itself was but deceit and misapprehension, and that in any case we should not find it easy to hire a guide capable of directing us in good faith straight to Satan.
Thus I spoke with irritation, at times myself not believing my own words, and now for the first time allowing myself to be rude and even mocking in my treatment of Renata, but she, opposing me weakly, invited me to watch what she was about to do. From the small bag she had brought, she took out a few sprigs of herb: heather, verbena, wolf’s bane, orache, and yet another herb with white flowers, the name of which I do not know. With her left hand Renata plucked the leaves from the herbs and threw them over her head on to the floor, but then she gathered them again and placed them on the table in a circle. Next she plunged a knife into the table surface in the middle of the circle, tied its handle round with string, passed the end of the string to me and said, looking at me attentively:
“Command it thrice to milk, in the name of Him .” Silently watching all this bedevilment, I involuntarily pronounced thrice:
“In the name of the Devil, milk!”
Immediately from under the knife poured a few drops of milk, and Renata joyfully clapped her hands, embraced my shoulders and kept on exclaiming:
“Rupprecht! Dearest Rupprecht! You can! You have the power!”
I, quite angry by this time, demanded that she should cease to fool me with her tricks, but Renata, changing her joyful tone to a caressing one, began to persuade me, pressing against me as against a lover and looking into my face:
“Rupprecht! What matters the salvation of your soul if you but love me? Must not love be above all, and must not all be sacrificed to it, even the Bliss of Paradise? Do what I desire, for my sake, and after Heinrich you shall be the first for me in the whole world. And who knows, perhaps the Righteous Judge will not condemn you for that you have loved so much, and will not sentence you to the Burning Gehenna, but only to the temporary tortures of Purgatory. And I with my Madiël—I swear to you by the Virginity of the Mother of God—we will not forget to send prayers after you even from the Gardens of Paradise!”
I might say that I yielded to the temptation of a woman, as Samson to that of Delilah, or Hercules to that of Omphala, but, not wishing to lie, I must confess that two considerations quickly flashed through my mind. The first—that truly a sin committed for another weighs only half-weight on the scales of justice, and two—that perhaps I should be guilty of no
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