Page:Ossendowski - The Shadow of the Gloomy East.djvu/174

158 regarded as the servant of Satan, whom it is praising on its birth. In the province of Olonetz several sentences were pronounced on parents who had killed their children by pouring boiling water over them in vapour baths.

A double-headed calf, a calf with five legs, the strangely twisted horns of a cow or a goat, entangled or disjoined branches of some trees, acquire a peculiar significance, and cause in diseased, hypnotised brains strange imaginings in a certain definite direction.

Wild beasts, birds, fishes, and insects, reptiles and spiders in particular, furnish numerous proofs of the existence of the Evil One; often the searcliers after Antichrist decipher the mysterious syllables of his name from the trail of a snake creeping over sand, or from the artistic web of a spider.

The unexpected cracking of a pot or mirror, the crack of unseasoned wooden furniture, inexplicable voices resounding in the dead of night all of this stimulates imagination, causing stray guessing or definite assertions.

People remember the words uttered in the distant past by various "men of God," beggars, tramps, idiots, epileptics, "klikushas," village prophets, hysteriomaniacs, and even unknown passers-by, all of whom acquired under the influence of the universal mania a certain seal of mystery. All ancient legends, stories, tales, prophecies, visions, even those existing for ages,