Page:Eothen, or, Traces of travel brought home from the East by Kinglake, Alexander William.djvu/89

 ended in a great feast prepared to do honor to the heroine, and from hat time her power over the minds of the people grew rapidly. Lady Hester related this story with great spirit, and I recollect that she put up her yashmack for a moment, in order to give a better idea of the effect which she produced by suddenly revealing the awfulness of her countenance.

With respect to her then present mode of life, Lady Hester informed me, that for her sin, she had subjected herself during many years to serve penance, and that her self-denial had not been without its reward. "Vain and false," said she, "is all the pretended knowledge of the Europeans—their Doctors will tell you that the drinking of milk gives yellowness to the complexion; milk is my only food, and you see if my face be not white." Her abstinence from food intellectual, was carried as far as her physical fasting; she never, she said, looked upon a book nor a newspaper, but trusted alone to the stars for her sublime knowledge; she usually passed the night in communing with these heavenly teachers, and lay at rest during the daytime. She spoke with great contempt of the frivolity, and benighted ignorance of the modern Europeans, and mentioned in proof of this, that they were not only untaught in astrology, but were unacquainted with the common and every day phenomena produced by magic art; she spoke as if she would make me understand that all sorcerous spells were completely at her command, but that the exercise of such powers would be derogatory to her high rank in the heavenly kingdom. She said, that the spell by which the face of an absent person is thrown upon a mirror, was within the reach of the humblest and most contemptible magicians, but that the practice of such like arts was unholy, as well as vulgar.

We spoke of the bending twig by which it is said that precious metals may be discovered. In relation to this, the Prophetess told me a story rather against herself, and inconsistent with the notion of her being perfect in her science, but I think that she mentioned the facts as having happened before the time at which she attained to the great spiritual authority which she now arrogated; she told me that vast treasures were known to exist in a situation which she mentioned, if I rightly remember,