. In reality they suffer the penalties of age, and verge, as the
centuries go by, towards irreparable decay. Nymphs grow old as well as
women. No rose but turns into an arid hip at last; no Nymph but ends as
an ugly Witchwife. Watching as you did the frolic of my little
household, you saw how the memory of their bygone youth yet beautifies
the Nymphs and Fauns in the moment of their loves, and how their ardour,
reanimated an instant, can reanimate their charms. But the ruin of
centuries shows again directly after. Alas! alas! the race of the Nymphs
is old, very old and decrepit."

Fra Mino asked yet another question:

"Old man! if what you say is true, and you have won to blessedness by
mysterious ways, if it is true--however absurd--that you are a Saint,
how comes it you house in your tomb with these phantoms which know not
to praise God, and which pollute with their indecencies the temple of
the Lord? Answer me, old man!"

But the goat-footed Saint, without a word of answer, vanished softly
away into thin air.

Seated on a mossy stone beside the spring, Fra Mino pondered the
discourse he had just listened to, and found it contained, along with
some passages impenetrably obscure, others that were full of clearness
and enlightenment.

"This Satyr Saint," he reflected, "maybe likened to the Sibyl, who in
the pantheon of the false gods, proclaimed the coming Redeemer to the
Nations. The mire of old-world falsehoods yet clings about the hoofs of
his feet, but his forehead is uplifted to the light, and his lips
confess the truth."

As the shadow of the beeches was lengthening along the grassy hill-side,
the Monk rose up from his stone and began to descend the narrow path
that led to the House of the Sons of St. Francis. But he dared not let
his eyes rest on the flowers sleeping on the surface of the pools, for
he saw in them the likeness of the wanton nymphs. He got back to his
cell at the moment when the bells were sounding the _Ave Maria_. It was
a small, white chamber, furnished simply with a bed, a stool, and one of
the high desks writers use. On the wall a mendicant friar had painted
years ago, in the manner of Giotto, a representation of the holy Marys
at the foot of the Cross. Below this painting, a shelf of wood, as black
and polished as the beams of an ancient oil-press, was covered with
books. Of these, some were sacred, others profane, for Fra Mino was a
student of the classic poets, to the end he might pr