d satisfaction."

Thus wrote Flaxius.

* * * * *

Since I penned the foregoing from memory, I have found the Italian text
or original, which had been mislaid for years. In it the tale is
succinctly told within the compass of forty lines, and ends with these
words:

"'Take the treasure, and give me the rose!'

"And so the spirit gave him the treasure and took the rose, and the
poor man went home enriched, and the priest to sleep in peace--_fra
gli eterni_--among the eternals."

I ought, of course, to have given scientifically only the text word for
word, but _litera scripta manet_--what is written remains, and Flaxius is
an old friend of mine, and I greatly desired to introduce him to my
readers. And I doubt not that the reviewers will tell me if I have
sinned!

"Do a good deed, or aught that's fit,
You never again may hear of it;
But make a slip, all will detect it,
And every friend at once correct it!"

THE GHOST OF MICHEL ANGELO

"If I believed that spirits ne'er
Return to earth once more,
And that there's naught unto them dear
In the life they loved before;
Then truly it would seem to me,
However fate has sped,
For souls there's no eternity,
And they and all are dead."

It must have struck every one who has read the life of Michel Angelo,
that he was, like King James the First of England, "nae great gillravager
after the girls," or was far from being susceptible to love--in which he
formed a great contrast to Raphael, and indeed to most of the Men of his
Time--or any other. This appears to have impressed the people of Italy
as something even more singular than his works, for which reason he
appears in popular tradition as a good enough goblin, not without
cheerfulness and song, but as one given to tormenting enamoured couples
and teasing lady artists, whom he subsequently compliments with a gift.
The legend is as follows:

LO SPIRITO DI MICHELE ANGIOLO BUONAROTTI.

"The spirit of Michel Angelo is seen mostly by night, in woods or groves.
The good man appears as he did in life, _come era prima_, ever walking
among trees singing poetry. He amuses himself very much by teasing
lovers--_a dare noia agli amoretti_--and when he finds a pair who have
hidden themselves under leaves and boughs to make love, he waits till
they think they are well concealed, and then begins to sing. And