, with the face of a man, the tawny eyes and crimson
mane of a lion, a scorpion's tail, and the flight of an eagle; this sort
is insatiable by human flesh. The leoncerote, offspring of the male
hyena and the lioness, having the body of an ass, the legs of a deer,
the breast of a wild beast, a camel's head, and armed with terrible
fangs; the tharanda, which, according to Hugh of Saint Victor, has the
shape of the ox, the profile of the stag, the fur of the bear, and which
changes colour like the cameleon; finally, the sea-monk, the most
puzzling of all, since Vincent of Beauvais describes it as having its
body covered with scales, and it is furnished, in lieu of arms, with
fins all over claws, besides having a monk's shaven head ending in the
snout of a carp.

Others were also invented, as for instance the gargoyles, hybrid
monsters, signifying the vomiting forth of sin ejected from the
sanctuary; reminding the passer-by who sees them pouring forth the water
from the gutter, that when seen outside the church, they are the
voidance of the spirit, the cloaca of the soul!

"But," said Durtal to himself, "that seems to me enough of the matter.
From the point of view of symbolism this menagerie is not particularly
interesting since these monsters--the wyvern, the manicoris, the
leoncerote, the tharanda and sea-monk--all mean the same thing, and all
embody the Spirit of Evil."

He took out his watch.

"Come," said he, "I have still time enough before dinner to go through
the list of real animals."

And he turned over his notes on birds.

"The cock," said he, "is prayer, watchfulness, the preacher, the
Resurrection, since it is the first to wake at daybreak; the peacock,
that has, as an old writer says, "the voice of a devil and the feathers
of an angel," is a mass of contradictory symbols: it typifies pride,
and, according to Saint Antony of Padua, immortality, as well as
vigilance by reason of the eyes in its tail. The pelican is the image of
contemplation and of charity; of love, too, according to Saint Madalene
of Pazzi; the sparrow symbolizes penitential solitude; the swallow, sin;
the swan, pride, according to Raban Maur; diligence and solicitude
according to Thomas de Catimpre; the nightingale is mentioned by Saint
Mechtildis as meaning the tender soul; and the same saint compares the
lark to persons who do good works with cheerfulness; it is to be noted
too that in the windows of Bourges the lark means charity to