"Sprinkle her with holy water?" laughed the Duchessa. "Have a
care. If she should turn into a black cat, and fly away on a
broomstick, you'd never forgive yourself."
Wherewith she swept on to her carriage, followed by her young
companion.
The sprightly French bays tossed their heads, making the
harness tinkle. The footman mounted the box. The carriage
rolled away.
But Peter remained for quite a minute motionless on the
door-step, gazing, bemused, down the long, straight, improbable
village street, with its poplars, its bridge, its ancient stone
cross, its irregular pink and yellow houses--as improbable as a
street in opera-bouffe. A thin cloud of dust floated after the
carriage, a thin screen of white dust, which, in the sun,
looked like a fume of silver.
"I think I could put my finger on a witch worth two of
Marietta," he said, in the end." And thus we see," he added,
struck by something perhaps not altogether novel in his own
reflection, "how the primary emotions, being perennial, tend to
express themselves in perennial formulae."