The peasant, fumbling in his bosom with a trembling hand, produced a small box, bearing some Hebrew characters on the lid, which was, with most of the audience, a sure proof that the devil had stood apothecary. Beaumanoir, after crossing himself, took the box into his hand, and, learned in most of the Eastern tongues, read with ease the motto on the lid,—The lion of the tribe of Judah hath conquered. "Strange powers of Sathanas," said he, "which can convert Scripture into blasphemy, mingling poison with our necessary food!—Is there no leech here who can tell us the ingredients of this mystic unguent?"
Two mediciners, as they called themselves, the one a monk, the other a barber, appeared and avouched they knew nothing of the materials, excepting that they savoured of myrrh and camphire, which they took to be oriental herbs. But with the true professional hatred to a successful practitioner of their art, they insinuated that, since the medicine was beyond their own knowledge, it must necessarily have been compounded from an unlawful and. magical pharmacopeia; since they themselves, though no conjurers, fully un-
