Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 22 (US).djvu/87

she holds aloft spasmodically pressed together, as if she were calling with prayers her guardian angel, to deliver her from the monsters of the Pit, which in obedience to this potent spell are forthwith to appear! There kneels she, motionless as a figure of marble. Over against her sits cowering on the ground, a long, shrivelled, copper-yellow crone, with peaked hawk-nose, and glistering cat-eyes; from the black cloak, which is huddled round her, stick forth her naked skinny arms; stirring the Hell-broth, she laughs and cries with creaking voice, through the raging bellowing storm. I can well believe that in thee too, favourable reader, though otherwise unacquainted with fear and dread, there might have arisen at the aspect of this Rembrandt or Höllenbreughel picture, here standing forth alive, some unearthly feelings; nay, that for very horror the hairs of thy head might have risen on end. But thy eye could not turn away from the gentle maiden, entangled in these infernal doings; and the electric stroke, that quivered through all thy nerves and fibres, kindled in thee with the speed of lightning the courageous thought of defying the mysterious powers of the fire-circle; and in this thought, thy horror disappeared; nay, the thought itself sprang up from that very horror as its product. Thy heart felt as if thou thyself wert one of those guardian angels, to whom the maiden, terrified to death, was praying; nay, as if thou must instantly lug forth thy pocket-pistol, and without more ceremony blow the hag's brains out. But while thou wert thinking of all this most vividly, thou criedst aloud "Holla!" or "What's the matter here?" or "What's adoing there?" The postillion blew a clanging blast on his horn; the witch ladled about in her brewage, and in a trice the whole had vanished in thick smoke. Whether thou wouldst then have found the maiden, whom with most heartfelt longing thou wert groping for in the darkness, I cannot say: but the spell of the witch thou hadst of a surety destroyed, and undone the magic circle into which Veronica had thoughtlessly entered.