an ugly Witchwife. Watching as you did the frolic of my little
household, you saw how the memory of their bygone youth yet beautifies
the Nymphs and Fauns in the moment of their loves, and how their ardour,
reanimated an instant, can reanimate their charms. But the ruin of
centuries shows again directly after. Alas! alas! the race of the Nymphs
is old, very old and decrepit."

Fra Mino asked yet another question:

"Old man! if what you say is true, and you have won to blessedness by
mysterious ways, if it is true--however absurd--that you are a Saint,
how comes it you house in your tomb with these phantoms which know not
to praise God, and which pollute with their indecencies the temple of
the Lord? Answer me, old man!"

But the goat-footed Saint, without a word of answer, vanished softly
away into thin air.

Seated on a mossy stone beside the spring, Fra Mino pondered the
discourse he had just listened to, and found it contained, along with
some passages impenetrably obscure, others that were full of clearness
and enlightenment.

"This Satyr Saint," he reflected, "maybe likened to the Sibyl, who in
the pantheon of the false gods, proclaimed the coming Redeemer to the
Nations. The mire of old-world falsehoods yet clings about the hoofs of
his feet, but his forehead is uplifted to the light, and his lips
confess the truth."

As the shadow of the beeches was lengthening along the grassy hill-side,