been known in Auxerre, seeds of marvellous
new flowers, creatures wild and tame, new pottery painted in raw gaudy
tints, the skins of animals, meats fried with unheard-of condiments.
His stall formed a strange, unwonted patch of colour, found suddenly
displayed in the hot morning.

The artists were more delighted than ever, and frequented his company
in the little manorial habitation, deserted long since by its owners
and haunted, so that the eyes of many looked evil upon it, where he had
taken up his abode, attracted, in the first instance, by its rich
though neglected garden, a tangle of every kind of creeping, vine-like
plant. Here, surrounded in abundance by the pleasant materials of his
trade, the vine-dresser as it were turned pedant and kept school for
the various artists, who learned here an art supplementary to their
own,--that gay magic, namely (art or trick) of his existence, till they
found themselves grown into a kind of aristocracy, like veritable gens
fleur-de-lises, as they worked together for the decoration of the great
church and a hundred other places beside. And yet a darkness had grown
upon him. The kind creature had lost something of his gentleness.
Strange motiveless misdeeds had happened; and, at a loss for other
causes, not the envious only would fain have traced the blame to Denys.
He was making the younger world mad. Would he make himself Count of
Auxerre? The lady Ariane, deserted by her former lover, had looked
kindly upon him; was ready to make him son-in-law to the old count her
father, old and not long for this world. The wise monk Hermes bethought
him of certain old readings in which the Wine-god, whose part Denys had
played so well, had his contrast, his dark or antipathetic side; was
like a double creature, of two natures, difficult or impossible to
harmonise. And in truth the much-prized wine of Auxerre has itself but
a fugitive charm, being apt to sicken and turn gross long before the
bottle is empty, however carefully sealed; as it goes indeed, at its
best, by hard names, among those who grow it, such as Chainette and
Migraine.

A kind of degeneration, of coarseness--the coarseness of satiety, and
shapeless, battered-out appetite--with an almost savage taste for
carnivorous diet, had come over the company. A rumour went abroad of
certain women who had drowned, in mere wantonness, their newborn babes.
A girl with child was found hanged by her own act in a dark cellar. Ah!
if Denys