Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 046.djvu/260

252 and unmolested, the strange-visaged monsters move about on all sides. Man alone is foolish enough, and base enough to make a mockery of his fellow-creatures."

"And yet," said the old woman, "wherein does all the mighty difference between one man and another consist! I never yet saw a nose an ell long. It is but an inch, or at the most two, which makes the whole difference between beauty and deformity in this feature. And as for a hump-back, if it were not so confoundedly inconvenient in bed, I know not that I should not prefer it to a straight one, in which none of the beautiful bends and flourishes of nature are to be seen."

"You're right there," replied the drunken dwarf, nodding to his drunken companion; "I know not what nature means by throwing off so many straight people from her potter's wheel. Surely it is a great waste of labour, for they are not in general worth their clay. But, mother, we who have been more highly favoured, must not be too vain of our superior charms. We must remember that we did not make ourselves."

"Well, then," answered the old woman, "let us change the subject. Come, tell me what trade you are now driving, and where you live."

"To tell the truth," replied Berecynth, "I have been leading a sort of vagabond life—at one time here—at another there. But now I am determined to settle down; for, hearing that I had a near relation alive, I resolved to search her out; you are she, and with you I shall henceforth live. In my early youth I was an apothecary's apprentice in Calabria; but my master drove me from his shop, because it was alleged that I compounded love-potions. Ah, happy days! I still look back upon them with delight. I then became a tailor, but was found to cabbage too much cloth; and next a pastry-cook, but had soon to give that up—the outcry against me being, that my mutton-pies were made of the flesh of dogs and cats. I then became a monk, but no monastery would admit me. Having passed doctor, I narrowly escaped being: burned for witchcraft. I devoted myself to study—wrot poetry and so forth—but my effusions fell into discredit, the people having taken it into their heads that they glanced sarcastically at Christianity. After many years I fell in with the illustrious Pietro d'Abano, and became his famulus. I afterwards was a hermit, and many other things besides; but the best of it is, that, in whatsoever situation I was thrown, there I was sure to accumulate money, so that I am under no fear of spending my old age in poverty and need. And now my good aunt, tell me your history."

"My history," answered she, "is not unlike your own. Innocence is every where alike persecuted. I have stood in the pillory—I have been banished my native land—I have been within an ace of being burned alive. It was alleged that I practised sorcery, stole children, bewitched the people, and brewed poison."

"And was there not a spice of truth in all these allegations?" asked Berecynth with a chuckle. "I can answer for myself at least—and I believe it runs in the family—that I do not stand quite clear of such practices. Believe me, my fair friend, he or she who has once dabbled in witchcraft retains a liquorish liking for the same as long as life lasts. Sorcery in this resembles dram-drinking; once fairly wet your tooth with either, and tongue, throat, palate, liver, lights, and the whole alimentary canal, are filled day and night, with clamorous cravings for the stimulating enjoyment."

"You know mankind well," said the hag, laughing. "No doubt, innocent people like us are permitted to practise a little murder, witchcraft, stealing and poisoning. There is no great harm in all that; but what are we to think of the ingratitude of our own children! There is my daughter, or at least she whom I have brought up as such—have I not pinched myself in all manner of ways to put decent clothes on her back, and to get her handsomely married? Did I not throw her in the way of Ildefons and Andrea, and other men, any one of whom would have made her a husband ten times better than she deserved? but the ungrateful monkey would have nothing to say to them, on the ground, forsooth, that they were robbers and murderers; and now she has fled from her own home to a nunnery, and I cannot get her back. That is the way in which parents are treated now-a-days."