Sorceress she may have
been; in those days sorcery was attributed to many who had obtained a
knowledge of laws of nature, then considered occult, now recognized
among the guiding principles from which scientific deductions are drawn.
She believed in the power of magic, which she was universally understood
to possess; but she was no vulgar witch: rather was she a worthy
priestess of her not ignoble deities. The effect upon Hilda's mind of
the teachings of such a woman is easy to conceive. She had been allowed
to know little of the wild orgies of the barbaric feasts offered to the
Gods by her countrymen, of their brutal excesses, of their human
sacrifices: from this knowledge she had been as far as possible
shielded: she knew only of the dim mystic beings, half men, half Gods,
from whose wrath she shrank with terror. To a mind so constituted and
trained the revelation of the story of the infant Christ was a
passionate pleasure. She never tired of listening to the tale of the
birth in the stable of Bethlehem; but she loved not to dwell on the
history of the passion and death, which was at that time beyond her
understanding.
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