people, and every day young mothers came to present their nurslings to
me, lifting the naked babes in their arms. When the sons of St. Francis
settled in the land and built a monastery on the hill-side, they craved
the Bishop's leave to transfer my monument to their Church and there
keep it as a sacred thing. The favour was granted, and I was borne in
great pomp to the Chapel of San Michele, where I repose to this day. My
rustic family was carried thither along with me. It was a signal honour;
but I confess I regretted the broad highway, where I could watch at dawn
the peasant women carrying on their heads their basketfuls of grapes and
figs and red aubergines. Time has hardly softened my regret, and I would
I were still beneath the plane-tree on the Sacred Way.

"Such is my life," ended the old Satyr. "It flows on pleasantly, gentle
and unobtrusive, down all the ages of the world. If a touch of sadness
mingles with the joy of it, 'tis because the gods have willed it so. Oh!
my son, let us praise the gods, masters of the universe!"

Fra Mino stood thinking a while. Then he said:

"I understand now the meaning of what I saw, during that evil night, in
the Chapel of San Michele. Still one point remains dark to my mind. Tell
me why, old man, the Nymphs who, dwell with you, and couple with the
fauns, changed into old women of squalid ugliness when they came nigh
me."

"Alas! my son," answered the Saint, "time spares neither men nor gods.
These last are immortal only in the imagination of the short-lived race
of men. In reality they suffer the penalties of age, and verge, as the
centuries go by, towards irreparable decay. Nymphs grow old as well as
women. No rose but turns into an arid hip at last; no Nymph but ends as