You ask me how poor Dionea is getting on. Not as your Excellency and I
ought to have expected when we placed her with the good Sisters of the
Stigmata: although I wager that, fantastic and capricious as you are,
you would be better pleased (hiding it carefully from that grave side
of you which bestows devout little books and carbolic acid upon the
indigent) that your _protegee_ should be a witch than a
serving-maid, a maker of philters rather than a knitter of stockings
and sewer of shirts.

A maker of philters. Roughly speaking, that is Dionea's profession. She
lives upon the money which I dole out to her (with many useless
objurgations) on behalf of your Excellency, and her ostensible
employment is mending nets, collecting olives, carrying bricks, and
other miscellaneous jobs; but her real status is that of village
sorceress. You think our peasants are skeptical? Perhaps they do not
believe in thought-reading, mesmerism, and ghosts, like you, dear Lady
Evelyn. But they believe very firmly in the evil eye, in magic, and in
love-potions. Every one has his little story of this or that which
happened to his brother or cousin or neighbor. My stable-boy and male
factotum's brother-in-law, living some years ago in Corsica, was seized
with a longing for a dance with his beloved at one of those balls which
our peasants give in the winter, when the snow makes leisure in the
mountains. A wizard anointed him for money, and straightway he turned
into a black cat, and in three bounds was over the seas, at the door of
his uncle's cottage, and among the dancers. He caught his beloved by
the skirt to draw her attention; but she replied with a kick which sent
him squealing back to Corsica. When he returned in summer he refused to
marry the lady, and carried his left arm in a sling. "You broke it when
I came to the Veglia!" he said, and all seemed explained. Another lad,
returning from working in the vineyards near Marseilles, was walking up