me Philemon aforesaid, a very
marvellous painting, wherein was limned a young Faun in act to filch
away with a craftie hand a light cloth did cover the belly of a sleeping
Nymph. 'T was plain to see he was full fain of his freak and seemed to
be saying: The body of this young goddess is so sweet and refreshing
as that the fountaine springing in the shade of the woods is not more
delightsome. How I do love to look upon you, soft sweet lap, and prettie
white thighs, and shady cavern at once terrifying and entrancing! And
over the heads of the twain did hover winged Cupids and watched them
laughingly, whiles fair dames and their gallants, their brows wreathen
with flowers, footed it on the lush grass.

And he had, the aforesaid Philemon, yet other limnings of cunning
craftsmanship in his closet. And he did prize very high the portraiture
of a good doctor a-sitting in his cabinet writing at a table by
candle-light. The said cabinet was fully furnished with globes, gnomons,
and astrolabes, proper for meting the movements of the orbs of heaven,
the which is a right praiseworthy task and one that doth lift the spirit
to sublime thoughts and the exceeding pure love of Venus Urania.

And there was hanging from the joists of the said cabinet a great
serpent and crocodile, forasmuch as they be rarities and very needful
for the due understanding of anatomy. And he had likewise, the
said doctor, amid his belongings, the books of the most excellent
philosophers of Antiquity and eke the treatises of Hippocrates. And he
was an ensample to young men which should be fain, by hard swinking, to
stuff their pates with as much high learning and occult lore as he had
under his own bonnet.

And he had, the aforesaid Philemon, painted on a panel that shined like
a polished mirror a portraiture of Homer in the guise of an old blind
man, his beard white as the flowers of the hawthorn and his temples
bound about with the fillets sacred to the god Apollo, which had loved
him above all other men. And, to look at that good old man, you deemed
verily his lips were presently to ope and break into words of melodie.

MADEMOISELLE DE DOUCINE'S NEW YEAR'S PRESENT

[Illustration: 124]

ON January 1st, in the forenoon, the good M. Chanterelle sallied out on
foot from his hotel in the Faubourg Saint-Marcel. He felt the cold and
was a poor walker; so it was a real penance to him to face the chilly
air and the bleak streets which were full of half-m