essed Jesus Christ; secondly, that God had
communicated to the Pagans certain glimmerings of light, to the end they
might be saved. Likewise the Sibyls, for instance the Cumaean, the
Egyptian and the Delphic, did these not foreshadow, amid the darkness of
the Gentiles, the Holy Cradle, the Rods, the Reed, the Crown of Thorns
and the Cross itself? For which reason St. Augustine admitted the
Erythraean Sibyl into the City of God. Fra Mino gave thanks to God for
having taught him so much learning; and a great joy flooded his heart to
think Virgil was among the elect. And he wrote gleefully at the bottom
of the last leaf:

"_Here endeth the Apocalypse of Brother Mino, the poor man of Jesus
Christ. I have seen the aureole of the blessed Saints crowning the
horned forehead of the Satyr, in token that Jesus Christ hath redeemed
from the shades of limbo the sages and poets of Antiquity._"

The night was already far spent when, having finished his task, Fra Mino
stretched himself upon his bed to snatch a little repose. Just as he was
dropping asleep, an old woman came in at the window, riding on a
moonbeam. He recognized her instantly for the ugliest of the witches he
had seen in the Chapel of San Michele.

"My sweet," she said, addressing him, "what have you been doing this
day? Yet we warned you, I and my pretty sisters, you must not reveal our
secrets. For if you betrayed us, we told you we should kill you. And
sorry I should be, for indeed I love you tenderly."

She clipped him in her arms, called him her heavenly Adonis, her
darling, her little white ass, and lavished a thousand ardent caresses
on him.

Anon, when he repulsed her with a spasm of disgust,

"Child, child!" she said to him, "you scorn me, because my eyes are
rimmed with red, my nostrils rotted with the acrid, fetid humour they
distil, and my gums adorned with a single tooth, and that black and
extravagantly long. Such is your Neaera to-day, it is too true. But if
you love me, I shall once more become, by you and for you, what I was in
the golden days of Saturn, when my youth was in blossom amid the
blossoms of the young, flower-decked world. 'Tis love, oh! my young god,
that makes the beauty of things. To restore my beauty, all that is
needed is a little courage. Up, Mino, be bold and show your mettle!"

At these words, which were accompanied by appropriate gestures, Fra
Mino, shuddering with fear and horror, felt himself swoon away, and
slipped from h