Edvard Munch The Scream painting

Edvard Munch The Scream paintingGustav Klimt Mother and Child detail from The Three Ages of Woman paintingGuido Reni The Archangel Michael painting
said that the stench grew daily worse. At last Agrippina herself became aware of it. It seemed to be in every room. She burned incense to cleanse the air but the smell persisted. The household grew alarmed and whispered that witches were at work.
Gennanicus had always been extremely superstitious like every member of our family but myself: I am only somewhat superstitious. Gennanicus not only believed in the luckiness or unluckiness of certain days or omens, but had bound himself in a whole network of superstitions of his own. The number twenty-five and the midnight crowing of cocks were the two things which distressed him most. He took it as a most unlucky sign that, having been able to recover the lost eagles of the Nineteenth and Twenty Sixth Regiments, he had been recalled from Germany before he could recover that of the Twenty-Fifth. And he was terrified of black magic of the sort that Thessalian witches use, and always slept with a talisman under his pillow which was proof