oughly
acquainted with a few "classic" writers, be they Latin, French, or
Italian, and that it is almost a crime to read anything which does not
directly serve as a model or a copy whereby to "refine our style." As
regards which the whole world is now entering on a new renaissance, the
conflict between the stylists and the more liberally enlightened having
already begun.

But Orpheus, with the ecclesiastical witch-doctors, was soon turned into
a diabolical sorcerer; and Leloyer writes of him: "He was the greatest
wizard who ever lived, and his writings boil over with praises of devils
and filthy loves of gods and mortals, . . . who were all only devils and
witches."

That Eve brought death and sin into the world by eating one apple, or a
fig, or orange, or Chinese nectarine, or the fruit of the banana tree, or
a pear, a peach, or everything pomological, if we are to believe all
translators of the Bible, coincides strongly with the fact that Eurydice
was lost for tasting a pomegranate. "Of the precise graft of the
espalier of Eden," says the author of the 'Ingoldsby Legends,'
"Sanchoniathon, Manetho, and Berosus are undecided; the best informed
Talmudists have, however . . . pronounced it a Ribstone pippin," Eve
being a rib. The ancients were happy in being certain that their apple
was one of Granada.

"_Haec fabula docet_," writes our Flaxius, "that mysteries abound in
every myth. Now, whether Orpheus was literally the first man who
ever went to hell for a woman I know not, but well I ween that he was
not the last, as the majority of French novelists of the present day
are chiefly busy in proving, very little, as it seems to me, either
to the credit of their country or of themselves. But there are
others who read in this tale a dark and mysterious forewarning to the
effect that ladies _a la mode_ who fall in love with Italian
musicians or music-masters, and especially those who let themselves
and their fortunes be _sifflees_ (especially the fortunes), should
not be astonished when the fate of Eurydice befalls them. Pass on,
beloved, to another tale!

"'Walk on, amid these mysteries strange and old,
The strangest of them all is yet to come!'"

INTIALO
THE SPIRIT OF THE HAUNTING SHADOW

"O ombra che dalla luce siei uscita,
Misuri il passo al Sole, all'uom la vita."

"Umbram suam metuere."

"Badate.
La vost