cue the unhappy, and she wishes with all her heart
that deliverance may come to her. Suddenly a shadow comes across the
window, and into her chamber there flies a falcon, which forthwith
changes into a knight. As soon as the lady has recovered from her
surprise, the knight tells her that he has long loved her, but could
not come until she wished for him. Here we have an incident, borrowed
direct from Oriental magic, in which a modern believer in psychical
phenomena might find an element of telepathy. The will, as in all
magic, is the motive power which acts sympathetically on the object of
desire, that object being in a receptive condition. Quickly we turn
from magic, and the story goes on to tell that the lady, before
accepting the knight as her lover, makes it a condition that he
believes in God, and the knight offers to prove his belief by taking
the Sacrament. This demand is evidently in the nature of a protective
test. It was very usual to try some means of discovering whether a
person was in league with the powers of evil or not; for if any one
unworthy touched holy things, retribution came at once, either by
death or some dire visitation. But how is the priest to administer the
Sacrament without seeing the knight? The latter tells her that he will
make himself like her in appearance; in other words, that he will
hypnotise the priest, and make him see what he, the knight, wishes him
to. The ruse succeeds, and for a time all goes well; then comes
discovery, despair, and death. The whole story is a most extraordinary
medley of fairy-lore, religion, and magic, and most characteristic of
the mediaeval mind.

The lay of "Eliduc," the last in the manuscript, is also the longest
and most elaborate. Marie unfolds her story with so certain yet so
subtle a hand, that the reading of it is like the unwinding of some
finely illuminated parchment-roll where miniature follows miniature,
each perfect in itself, yet all needful to the whole. To the charm of
its pictures of mediaeval life, with the fine scene between the two
women, and their final reunion in the same convent, there is added an
incident which gives special interest and importance to the story,
since it brings us into touch with one of the oldest and most
widespread of traditions--the restoration to life, from apparent
death, by means of a flower. There are few pursuits more fascinating
than the tracing of traditions, except, it may be, that of symbols,
with which t