e
descendants of one that offended him? that certain thieves, having
stolen the convent ram, and denying it, St. Pol de Leon bade the ram
bear witness, and straight the mutton bleated in the thief's belly?
Would you have me give up the skilful figments of antiquity for such old
wives' fables as these? The ancients lied about animals, too; but then
they lied logically; we unreasonably. Do but compare Ephis and his
lion, or, better still, Androcles and his lion, with Anthony and his two
lions. Both the Pagan lions do what lions never did' but at the least
they act in character. A lion with a bone in his throat, or a thorn
in his foot, could not do better than be civil to a man. But Anthony's
lions are asses in a lion's skin. What leonine motive could they have in
turning sextons? A lion's business is to make corpses, not inter them."
He added, with a sigh, "Our lies are as inferior to the lies of the
ancients as our statues, and for the same reason; we do not study nature
as they did. We are imitatores, servum pecus. Believe you 'the lives of
the saints;' that Paul the Theban was the first hermit, and Anthony the
first Caenobite? Why, Pythagoras was an Eremite, and under ground for
seven years; and his daughter was an abbess. Monks and hermits were in
the East long before Moses, and neither old Greece nor Rome was ever
without them. As for St. Francis and his snowballs, he did but mimic
Diogenes, who, naked, embraced statues on which snow had fallen. The
folly without the poetry. Ape of an ape--for Diogenes was but a mimic
therein of the Brahmins and Indian gymnosophists. Natheless, the
children of this Francis bid fair to pelt us out of the Church with
their snowballs. Tell me now, Clement, what habit is lovelier than
the vestments of our priests? Well, we owe them all to Numa Pompilius,
except the girdle and the stole, which are judaical. As for the amice
and the albe, they retain the very names they bore in Numa's day. The
'pelt' worn by the canons comes from primeval Paganism. 'Tis a relic
of those rude times when the sacrificing priest wore the skins of the
beasts with the fur outward. Strip off thy black gown, Jerome, thy
girdle and cowl, for they come to us all three from the Pagan ladies.
Let thy hair grow like Absolom's, Jerome! for the tonsure is as Pagan as
the Muses."

"Take care what thou sayest," said Jerome sternly. "We know the very
year in which the Church did first ordain it."

"But not invent it, Jero