The Witch-Woman Trilogy

  The Abbot beat and tore at her white tender flesh, but only with his hands, until she confessed that nowhere in Paradise had she found any joys more dear to her than those they were sharing. Nevertheless, upon reflection, he fairmindedly admitted the logic of his celestial bedfellow’s argument.

  Therefore, an hour or two before dawn, he coursed abroad, toward the home of old Gui de Puysange, at Ranee, in the appearance of a stout and reddish-colored animal. There was a quite serviceable moon. The blessed Odo met, at first, no living creature save a real wolf, a virgin female, who accepted him as one of her own kind. Presently they coursed together and the grateful Abbot snarled and yelped his praise of the kindly Heaven, which enabled him, over and yet over again, but without any sinfulness, to enjoy the most profound and soul-stirring delights. He exulted, as a zealous Churchman, thus to attest the strength and shrewdness of Heaven, which could outwit so cunningly their infernal adversaries.

6. OF HIS CONTINUED ZEAL AND EFFICACY

  The next day a mangled baby was found in the back garden of Messire de Puysange, and the evidence against him was so made legally complete. Old Gui de Puysange was tried that month, with the white-robed Abbot of St. Hoprig sitting as president of the court; and the accused man was duly condemned to be burned as a werewolf.

  Messire de Puysange did not complain. He knew that this was the appointed ninth year for the sacrifice, and that he himself had incited this inevitable sacrifice through the illusions which he had sent to amuse the sleeping of Odo.

  “I had vaingloriously designed great things for you, my Prettyman,” this dark and withered sorcerer said at the last, in the market-place, when they were heaping up the faggots about him. “But my arts end with me. There will be no more saints to counsel and to cherish you, as my vicars. Never any more, so long as you wear mortal flesh, will there be any pretty Sendings, my Prettyman, now that the Prince of this world receives his sacrifice.”

  The Abbot was troubled; for he now knew that all the consolations of his piety had been the vicars of this persistent sorcerer. The Abbot’s hand went to his chin, and he hiccoughed slightly, but he did not say anything.

  Then dark old Gui de Puysange, looking up toward the Abbot Odo, with patient and adoring brown eyes, said fondly:

  “Yet there will be one more Sending to convey you home. Meanwhile you, my dear, in your white robe—which once was but the clothing of a witless sheep,—have not any need of my aid, to go further than I might fare in the service to which we are both enlisted.”

  And again, a terrible, a treacherous and a damnable sort of yearning and tenderness was troubling the white-robed Abbot, as he looked, now for the last time, upon the fettered wretch who once had so ignobly deceived an innocent boy by pretending to be the all-powerful Master of Evil, and who now had deceived a well-thought-of clergyman with illusive Sendings in the appearance of saints. But decorum has to be preserved in the pursuit of every profession.

  So the enthroned and white-robed Abbot, it is recorded, only frowned a little at this unseemly interruption of the impressive ceremony which so many of the faithful had assembled to witness. After that, he gave the signal to the torch-bearers. He settled back in his tall cushioned chair of carved teak-wood and Yemen leather, under the blue and yellow canopy which this unpleasantly warm day necessitated; and he watched pensively the ending of the one person whom he had loved with an entire heart.

7. OF THE SALUTARY POWER OF HIS PREACHING

  Thereafter the Abbot found that Messire de Puysange had indeed spoken the truth. Abbot Odo was denied the consolations of religion. No more visions came to him from out of Paradise. He was counselled and instructed by no more saints.

  He understood that all these had been vicarious illusions provided by the loving arts of dark and withered Gui de Puysange. The Abbot comprehended that he was not immortal; that there was no Heaven and no Hell; that there would be no auditing of human accounts; and that he travelled, instead, toward annihilation. His biliousness left him, his digestion became perfect, now that he perceived men perish as the beasts perish, and now that he knew every form of religion was a cordial which sustained people through the tedium and discomfort of their stay upon earth.