Page:Man Who Laughs (Estes and Lauriat 1869) v2.djvu/28

8 no doubt you share, poor ignorant folks that you are, and from which I wish to free you. Dioscorides believed that there was a god in henbane; Chrysippus in cynopaste; Josephus in the root bauras; Homer in the plant moly. They were all wrong. The spirits in herbs are not gods but devils. I have tested this fact. It is not true that the serpent which tempted Eve had a human face, as Cadmus relates. Garcias de Horto, Cadamosto, and John Hugo, Archbishop of Trèves, deny that it is sufficient to cut down a tree to catch an elephant. I incline to their opinion. Citizens, the efforts of Lucifer are the cause of all false impressions. Under the reign of such a prince it is natural that meteors of error and of perdition should appear. My friends, Claudius Pulcher did not die because the fowls refused to come out of the fowl house. The fact is, that Lucifer, having foreseen the death of Claudius Pulcher, took care to prevent the birds feeding. That Beelzebub gave the Emperor Vespasian the virtue of curing the lame and giving sight to the blind, by his touch, was an act praiseworthy in itself, but the motive was culpable. Gentlemen, distrust those false doctors who sell the root of the briony and the white snake, and who make washes with honey and the blood of a cock. When Saint George killed the dragon he had not the daughter of a saint standing by his side. Saint Jerome had not a clock on the chimney-piece of his study; first, because, living in a cave, he had no study; secondly, because he had no chimney-piece; thirdly, because clocks were not yet invented. Let us put these things straight. O gentlefolks who listen to me, if any one tells you that a lizard will be born in your head if you smell the herb valerian; that the rotting carcass of the ox changes into bees, and that of the horse into hornets; that a man weighs more when dead than when alive; that the blood