La Sorcière: The Witch of the Middle Ages - Jules Michelet

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copying the great lady up there who, in the face of her husband, has her court of lovers and her page. Let us own, however, that to that point the goblin has already smoothed the way. One could not have a more perilous page than he who hides himself under a rose; and, moreover, he smacks of the lover. More intrusive than anyone else, he is so tiny that he can creep anywhere.

      He glides even into the husband’s heart, paying him court and winning his good graces. He looks after his tools, works in his garden, and of an evening, by way of reward, curls himself up in the chimney, behind the babe and the cat. They hear his small voice, just like a cricket’s; but they never see much of him, save when a faint glimmer lights a certain cranny in which he loves to stay. Then they see, or think they see, a thin little face; and cry out, “Ah! little one, we have seen you at last!”

      In church they are told to mistrust the spirits, for even one that seems innocent, and glides about like a light breeze, may after all be a devil. They take good care not to believe it. His size begets a belief in his innocence. Whilst he is there, they thrive. The husband holds to him as much as the wife, and perhaps more. He sees that the tricksy little elf makes the fortune of the house.

      FOOTNOTES:

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      “Trois pas du côté du banc,

       Et trois pas du côté du lit;

       Trois pas du côté du coffre,

       Et trois pas—— Revenez ici.”

       (Old Song of the Dancing Master.)

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      I have kept this picture clear of those dreadful shadows of the hour by which it would have been sadly overdarkened. I refer especially to the uncertainty attending the lot of these rural households, to their constant fear and foreboding of some casual outrage which might at any moment descend on them from the castle.

      There were just two things which made the feudal rule a hell: on one hand, its exceeding steadfastness, man being nailed, as it were, to the ground, and emigration made impossible; on the other, a very great degree of uncertainty about his lot.

      The optimist historians who say so much about fixed rents, charters, buying of immunities, forget how slightly all this was guaranteed. So much you were bound to pay the lord, but all the rest he could take if he chose; and this was very fitly called the right of seizure. You may work and work away, my good fellow! But while you are in the fields, yon dreaded band from the castle will fall upon your house and carry off whatever they please “for their lord’s service.”

      Look again at that man standing with his head bowed gloomily over the furrow! And thus he is always found, his face clouded, his heart oppressed, as if he were expecting some evil news. Is he meditating some wrongful deed? No; but there are two ideas haunting him, two daggers piercing him in turn. The one is, “In what state shall I find my house this evening?” The other, “Would that the turning up of this sod might bring some treasure to light! O that the good spirit would help to buy us free!”

      We are assured that, after the fashion of the Etruscan spirit which one day started up from under the ploughshare in the form of a child, a dwarf or gnome of the tiniest stature would sometimes on such an appeal come forth from the ground, and, setting itself on the furrow, would say, “What wantest thou?” But in his amazement the poor man would ask for nothing; he would turn pale, cross himself, and presently go quite away.

      Did he never feel sorry afterwards? Said he never to himself, “Fool that you are, you will always be unlucky?” I readily believe he did; but I also think that a barrier of dread invincible stopped him short. I cannot believe with the monks who have told us all things concerning witchcraft, that the treaty with Satan was the light invention of a miser or a man in love. On the contrary, nature and good sense alike inform us that it was only the last resource of an overwhelming despair, under the weight of dreadful outrages and dreadful sufferings.

      But those great sufferings, we are told, must have been greatly lightened about the time of St. Louis, who forbade private wars among the nobles. My own opinion is quite the reverse. During the fourscore or hundred years that elapsed between his prohibition and the wars with England (1240–1340), the great lords being debarred from the accustomed sport of burning and plundering their neighbours’ lands, became a terror to their own vassals. For the latter such a peace was simply war.

      The spiritual, the monkish lords, and others, as shown in the Journal of Eudes Rigault, lately published, make one shudder. It is a repulsive picture of profligacy at once savage and uncontrolled. The monkish lords especially assail the nunneries. The austere Rigault, Archbishop of Rouen, confessor of the holy king, conducts a personal inquiry into the state of Normandy. Every evening he comes to a monastery. In all of them he finds the monks leading the life of great feudal lords, wearing arms, getting drunk, fighting duels, keen huntsmen over all the cultivated land; the nuns living among them in wild confusion, and betraying everywhere the fruits of their shameless deeds.

      If things are so in the Church, what must the lay lords have been? What like was the inside of those dark towers which the folk below regarded with so much horror? Two tales, undoubtedly historical, namely, Blue-Beard and Griselda, tell us something thereanent. To his vassals, his serfs, what indeed must have been this devotee of torture who treated his own family in such a way? He is known to us through the only man who was brought to trial for such deeds; and that not earlier than the fifteenth century—Gilles de Retz, who kidnapped children.

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