an upper window, with a rope in his
hand. He fastened an end somehow, and holding the other, descended
as swift and smooth as an oiled thunderbolt in a groove, and lighted
astride his high horse as unperceived by that animal as a fly settling
on him.

The official lifted his hands to heaven in mawkish admiration. "I have
gotten a pearl," thought he, "and wow but this will be a good day's work
for me."

"Come, father, come, mother, buss me, and bless me, and off I go."

Eli gave him his blessing, and bade him be honest and true, and a credit
to his folk. Catherine could not speak, but clung to him with many sobs
and embraces; and even through the mist of tears her eye detected in a
moment the little rent in his sleeve he had made getting out of window,
and she whipped out her needle and mended it then and there, and her
tears fell on his arm the while, unheeded--except by those unfleshly
eyes, with which they say the very air is thronged.

And so the dwarf mounted the high horse, and rode away complacent with
the old hand laying the court butter on his back with a trowel.

Little recked Perpusillus of two poor silly females that sat by the
bereaved hearth, rocking themselves, and weeping, and discussing all his
virtues, and how his mind had opened lately, and blind as two beetles to
his faults, who rode away from them, jocund and bold.

Ingentes animos angusto pectore versans.

Arrived at court he speedily became a great favourite.

One strange propensity of his electrified the palace; but on account
of his small size, and for variety's sake, and as a monster, he was
indulged on it. In a word, he was let speak the truth.

It is an unpopular thing.

He made it an intolerable one.

Bawled it.

CHAPTER LIX

Happy the man who has two chain-cables: Merit, and Women.

Oh, that I, like Gerard, had a 'chaine des dames' to pull up by.

I would be prose laureat, or professor of the spasmodic, or something,
in no time. En attendant, I will sketch the Fra Colonna.

The true revivers of ancient learning and philosophy were two writers of
fiction--Petrarch and Boccaccio.

Their labours were not crowned with great, public, and immediate
success; but they sowed the good seed; and it never perished, but
quickened in the soil, awaiting sunshine.

From their day Italy was never without a native scholar or two,
versed in Greek; and each learned Greek who landed there was received
fraternally. The fourteenth centur