CHAPTER XXIV
"Let me tell you about the witches!" she began.
"For generations we had fared constantly worse. It was not too well with us on the eve of the French Revolution; when the industrial revolution got its stride we perished as men perished in the Black Plague. Some of us fled to Africa; a few held on in Ireland and in the mountains of Norway; more flew across the ocean to join the men and women who were widening the American frontiers.
"But the greatest number magically killed themselves. What else was there for them to do? Men paid less and less attention to us, and we live by human attention.
"The idea that two and two make four, and even the later idea that two and two unless, traveling parallel and at the same speed, make only approximately four, worked havoc with us. Electric lighting dispelled dark corners. The noisy suburbs spread over lonely fields and dark woods. But the chief cause of our débâcle was the growth of the belief that the 'universe is not many things, but an absolute One, of infinite aspects, but fundamentally, eternally the same'—the monstrous, paralyzing magic of this drove the witches from the earth.
"I did not know that I was alone until the middle of the last century. I wept for years.
"Hope was born when I felt I had the concentrated power of the Magical Black Hundreds who perished. Perhaps I could reshape the hateful, new world—or smash it!
"Instead of weeping I read science and philosophy. I realized I was not only magically stronger than ever before, but that in my spirit might reside the Essential Fallacy! Do you understand that?" asked the old witch, and I said Yes, I understood, but I didn't.