Sometimes it happened that he caught only his
shadow, and in that case the man who had been nimble enough to do what
Goethe pronounces impossible, became the most profound magician of his
year. Hence our proverb of _the Devil take the hindmost_, and Chamisso's
story of Peter Schlemihl.
There is no end of such stories. They were repeated and believed by the
gravest and wisest men down to the end of the sixteenth century; they
were received undoubtingly by the great majority down to the end of the
seventeenth. The Devil was an easy way of accounting for what was beyond
men's comprehension. He was the simple and satisfactory answer to all the
conundrums of Nature. And what the Devil had not time to bestow his
personal attention upon, the witch was always ready to do for him. Was a
doctor at a loss about a case? How could he save his credit more cheaply
than by pronouncing it witchcraft, and turning it over to the parson to
be exorcised? Did a man's cow die suddenly, or his horse fall lame?
Witchcraft! Did one of those writers of controversial quartos, heavy as
the stone of Diomed, feel a pain in the small of his back? Witchcraft!
Unhappily there were always ugly old women; and if you crossed them in
any way, or did them a wrong, they were given to scolding and banning.
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