No sooner had the Empress declared her mind, but the spirits immediately disappeared out of her sight; which startled the Empress so much, that she fell into a trance, wherein she lay for some while; at last being come to herself again, she grew very studious, and considering with herself what might be the cause of this strange disaster, conceived at first, that perhaps the spirits were tired with hearing and giving answers to her questions; but thinking by herself, that spirits could not be tired, she imagined that this was not the true cause of their disappearing, till, after divers debates with her own thoughts, she did verily believe that the spirits had committed some fault in their answers, and that for their punishment they were condemned to the lowest and darkest vehicles. This belief was so fixed in her mind, that it put her into a very melancholic humour; and then she sent both for her Fly- and Worm-men, and declared to them the cause of her sadness. ’Tis not so much, said she, the vanishing of those spirits that makes me melancholic, but that I should be the cause of their miserable condition, and that those harmless spirits should, for my sake, sink down into the black and dark abyss of the earth.
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