d cruel, and we rebel, we ask for
pledges; we hesitate to begin our task, we want to be paid in advance,
and our distrust makes us vile!--O Lord, give us grace to pray, and
never dream of demanding an earnest of Thy favours! Give us grace to
obey and be silent!

"And I may add," said Durtal to himself as he smiled on Madame Mesurat,
who opened the door in answer to his ring, "Grant me, Lord, the grace
not to be too much irritated by the buzzing of this great fly, the
inexhaustible flow of this good woman's tongue!"

CHAPTER XIV.

"What a fearful muddle, what a sea of ink is this menagerie of good and
evil emblems!" exclaimed Durtal, laying down his pen.

He had harnessed himself that morning to the task of investigating the
symbolical fauna of the Middle Ages. At first sight the subject had
struck him as newer and less arduous, and certainly as less lengthy,
than the article he had thought of writing on the Primitive German
Painters. But he now sat dismayed before his books and notes, seeking a
clue to guide him through the mass of contradictory evidence that lay
before him.

"I must take things in their order," said he to himself, "if indeed any
principle of selection is possible in such confusion."

The Beast-books of Mediaeval times knew all the monsters of
paganism--Satyrs, Fauns, Sphinxes, Harpies, Centaurs, Hydras, Pygmies,
and Sirens; these were all regarded as various aspects of the Evil
Spirit, so no research is needed as to their meaning; they are but a
residuum of Antiquity. The true source of mystic zoology is not in
mythology, but in the Bible, which classifies beasts as clean and
unclean, makes them symbolize virtues and vices, some species being
allegorical of heavenly personages, and other embodying the Devil.

Starting from this base, it may be observed that the liturgical
interpreters of the animal world distinguished beasts from animals,
including under the former head wild and untamable creatures, and under
the second gentle and timid creatures and domestic animals.

The ornithologists of the Church, furthermore, represent birds as being
the righteous, while Boetius, on the other hand, often quoted by
Mediaeval writers, credited them with inconstancy, and Melito compares
them in turn to Christ, to the Devil, and to the Jewish nation. It may
be added that Richard of Saint Victor, disregarding these views, sees in
winged fowl a symbol of the life of the soul, as in the four-footed
bea