* * * * *

The authenticity of this legend, is more than doubtful, because it exists
elsewhere, as I have read it, being unable to give my authority; but
unless my memory deceives me, it goes back to classic times, and may be
found in some such work as that of Philostratus _de Vita Apollonii_ or
Grosius. Neither am I well assured, to judge from the source whence I
had it, that it is current among the people, though no great measure of
credulity is here required, since it may be laid down as a rule, with
rarest exception, that there is no old Roman tale of the kind which may
not be unearthed with pains and patience among old Tuscan peasant women.
However, the _shield_ is still on the corner of the Via Calzaioli, albeit
one of the nymphs on it has been knocked or worn away. Thus even _fates_
must yield in time to fate.

I have in a note to another legend spoken of the instinct which seems to
lead children or grown people to associate wells with indwelling fairies,
to hear a voice in the echo, and see a face in the reflection in the
still water. Keats has beautifully expressed it in "Endymion":

"Some mouldered steps lead into this cool cell
Far as the slabbed margin of a well,
Whose patient level peeps its crystal eye
Right upward through the bushes to the sky. . . .
Upon a day when thus I watched . . . behold!
A wonder fair as any I have told--
The same bright face I tasted in my sleep
Smiling in the clear well. My heart did leap
Through the cool depth. . . .
Or 'tis the cell of Echo, where she sits
And babbles thorough silence till her wits
Are gone in tender madness, and anon
Faints into sleep, with many a dying tone."

"In which tale," writes the immortal Flaxius, "there is a pretty
allegory. Few there are who know why truth is said to be at the bottom
of a well; but this I can indeed declare to you. For as a mirror was
above all things an emblem of truth, because it shows all things exactly
as they are, so the water in a well was, as many traditions prove,
considered as a mirror, because looking into it we see our face, which we
of course most commonly see in a glass, and this disk of shining water
resembles in every way a hand-mirror. And for this reason a mirror was
also regarded as expressing life itself, for which reason people so
greatly fear to break them. So in the Latin, _Velut in speculo_, and in
the Italian, _