Pearl, whose activity of spirit never flagged, had been at no loss for amusement while her mother talked with the old gatherer of
herbs. At first, as already told, she had flirted fancifully with her own image in a pool of water, beckoning the phantom forth, and -- as it declined to venture -- seeking a passage for herself into its sphere of impalpable earth and unattainable sky.
"Oh, Agafea Mihalovna," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, kissing the tips of his plump fingers, "what salt goose, what
herb brandy!...What do yo think, isn't it time to start, Kostya?" he added.
She will mix a mess for you to drink, and she will drug the meal with which she makes it, but she will not be able to charm you, for the virtue of the herb that I shall give you will prevent her spells from working.
"As he spoke he pulled the herb out of the ground and shewed me what it was like.
She went round the farm- garden, nibbling off snippets of all the different sorts of herbs that are used for stuffing roast duck.
She was rather burdened with bunches of herbs and two onions in a bag.
He had inherited from his mother some acquaintance with medicinal
herbs and their preparation--a little store of wisdom which she had imparted to him as a solemn bequest--but of late years he had had doubts about the lawfulness of applying this knowledge, believing that
herbs could have no efficacy without prayer, and that prayer might suffice without
herbs; so that the inherited delight he had in wandering in the fields in search of foxglove and dandelion and coltsfoot, began to wear to him the character of a temptation.
Be that as it may, a change in his position making him conscious of a bar of light across his face, he looked up; and when he saw the glass his face flushed, and his right hand pushed the
herbs away.
"I do not say, Sancho," replied Don Quixote, "that it is imperative on knights-errant not to eat anything else but the fruits thou speakest of; only that their more usual diet must be those, and certain
herbs they found in the fields which they knew and I know too."
He was very learned in all languages, and knew a great deal about
herbs and medicines.
A man's nature, runs either to
herbs or weeds; therefore let him seasonably water the one, and destroy the other.
`Forthwith Medea made Aeson a sweet young boy and stripped his old age from him by her cunning skill, when she had made a brew of many
herbs in her golden cauldrons.'