ave to find a place for all these documents in my article,"
sighed Durtal, placing these notes in a separate wrapper.

Now for the chimerical fauna introduced from the East, imported into
Europe by the Crusaders, and travestied by the illuminators of missals
and by image-makers.

Foremost, the dragon, which we already find rampant and busy in
mythology and in the Bible.

Durtal rose and went into his library to find a book, "Traditions
teratologiques," by Berger de Xivrey. It contained long extracts from
the "Romance of Alexander," which was the delight of the grown-up
children of the Middle Ages.

"Dragons," says this narrative, "are larger than all other serpents, and
longer.... They fly through the air, which is darkened by the disgorging
of their stench and venom ... This venom is so deadly that if a man
should be touched by it or come nigh it, it would seem to him a burning
fire, and would raise his skin in great blisters, as though he had been
scalded." And the author adds: "The sea is swollen up by their venom."

Dragons have a crest, sharp talons, and a hissing throat, and are almost
unconquerable. Albertus Magnus tells us, however, that magicians, when
they wish to subdue them, beat as loudly as they can on drums, and that
the dragon, imagining that it is the roll of thunder, which they greatly
dread, let themselves be handled quietly and are taken.

The enemy of this winged reptile is the elephant, which sometimes
succeeds in crushing it by falling on it with all its weight; but most
times it is killed by the dragon, which feeds on its blood, of which the
freshness allays the intolerable burning caused by its own venom.

Next to this monster comes the gryphon, a combination of the quadruped
and the bird, for it has the body of the lion and the head and talons of
the eagle. Then the basilisk, regarded as the king of serpents; it is
four feet long, and has a tail as thick as a tree, and spotted with
white. Its head bears a tuft in shape like a crown; it has a strident
voice, and its eye is murderous, "A look," says the "Romance of
Alexander," "so piercing, that it is pestilential and deadly to all
beasts, whether venomous or no." Its breath is no less fetid, nor less
dangerous, for, "by its breath are all things infected, and when it is
dying it is fain to disgorge it; it stinks so that all other beasts flee
from it."

Its most formidable foe is the weasel, which bites its throat, "though
it be a beast