took so much care of them that I was regarded, not altogether wrongly, as a

good veterinary surgeon. I am told that the people of thy sect claim an
immortal soul for themselves, but refuse one to the animals. That is a piece

of nonsense that makes me doubt their judgment. Perhaps I love the flocks and
the shepherds a little too much. That would not seem right amongst you. There

is a maxim to which I endeavour to conform my actions, "Nothing too much."
More even than my feeble health my philosophy teaches me to use things with

measure. I am sober; a lettuce and some olives with a drop of Falernian wine
form all my meals. I have, indeed, to some extent gone with strange women, but

I have not delayed over long in taverns to watch the young Syrians dance to
the sound of the crotalum.* But if I have restrained my desires it was for my

own satisfaction and for the sake of good discipline. To fear pleasure and to
fly from joy appears to me the worst insult that one can offer to nature. I am

assured that during their lives certain of the elect of thy god abstained from
food and avoided women through love of asceticism, and voluntarily exposed

themselves to useless sufferings. I should be afraid of meeting those,
criminals whose frenzy horrifies me. A poet must not be asked to attach

himself too strictly to any scientific or moral doctrine. Moreover, I am a
Roman, and the Romans, unlike the Greeks, are unable to pursueprofound

speculations in a subtle manner. If they adopt a philosophy it is above all in
order to derive some practical advantages from it. Siro, who enjoyed great

renown among us, taught me the system of Epicurus and thus freed me from vain
terrors and turned me aside from the cruelties to which religion persuades

ignorant men. I have embraced the views of Pythagoras concerning the souls of
men and animals, both of which are of divineessence; this invites us to look

upon ourselves without pride and without shame. I have learnt from the
Alexandrines how the earth, at first soft and without form, hardened in

proportion as Nereus withdrew himself from it to dig his humid dwellings; I
have learned how things were formed insensibly; in what manner the rains,

falling from the burdened clouds, nourished the silent forests, and by what
progress a few animals at last began to wander over the nameless mountains. I

could not accustom myself to your cosmogony either, for it seems to me fitter
for a camel-driver on the Syrian sands than for a disciple of Aristarchus of

Samos. And what would become of me in the abode of your beatitude if I did not
find there my friends, my ancestors, my masters, and my gods, and if it is not

given to me to see Rhea's noble son, or Venus, mother of Aeneas, with her
winning smile, or Pan, or the young Dryads, or the Sylvans, or old Silenus,

with his face stained by Aegle's purple mulberries.' These are the reasons
which I begged that simple man to plead before the successor of Jupiter."

* This phrase seems to indicate that, if one is to believe Macrobius, the
"Copa" is by Virgil.

"And since then, O great shade, thou hast received no other messages?"
"I have received none."

"To console themselves for thy absence, O Virgil, they have three poets,
Commodianus, Prudentius, and Fortunatus, who were all three born in those dark

plays when neither prosody nor grammar were known. But tell me, O Mantuan,
hast thou never received other intelligence of the God whose company thou

didst so deliberately refuse?"
"Never that I remember."

"Hast thou not told me that I am not the first who descended alive into these
abodes and presented himself before thee?"

"Thou dost remind me of it. A century and a half ago, or so it seems to me (it
is difficult to reckon days and years amid the shades), my profound peace was

intruded upon by a strange visitor. As I was wandering beneath the gloomy
foliage that borders the Styx, I saw rising before me a human form more opaque

and darker than that of the inhabitants of these shores. I recognised a living
person. He was of high stature, thin, with an aquiline nose, sharp chin, and

hollow cheeks. His dark eyes shot forth fire; a red hood girt with a crown of
laurels bound his lean brows. His bones pierced through the tight brown cloak

that descended to his heels. He saluted me with deference, tempered by a sort
of fierce pride, and addressed me in a speech more obscure and incorrect than

that of those Gauls with whom the divine Julius filled both his legions and
the Curia. At last I understood that he had been born near Fiesole, in an

ancient Etruscan colony that Sulla had founded on the banks of the Arno, and
which had prospered; that he had obtained municipal honours, but that he had

thrown himself vehemently into the sanguinary quarrels which arose between the
senate, the knights, and the people, that he had been defeated and banished,

and now he wandered in exile throughout the world. He described Italy to me as
distracted by more wars and discords than in the time of my youth, and as

sighing anew for a second Augustus. I pitied his misfortune, remembering what
I myself had formerly endured.

"An audacious spirit unceasingly disquieted him, and his mind harboured great
thoughts, but alas! his rudeness and ignorance displayed the triumph of

barbarism. He knew neither poetry, nor science, nor even the tongue of the
Greeks, and he was ignorant, too, of the ancient traditions concerning the

origin of the world and the nature of the gods. He bravelyrepeated fables
which in my time would have brought smiles to the little children who were not

yet old enough to pay for admission at the baths. The vulgar easily believe in
monsters. The Etruscans especially peopled hell with demons, hideous as a sick

man's dreams. That they have not abandoned their childish imaginings after so
many centuries is explained by the continuation and progress of ignorance and

misery, but that one of their magistrates whose mind is raised above the
common level should share these popular illusions and should be frightened by

the hideous demons that the inhabitants of that country painted on the walls
of their tombs in the time of Porsena--that is something which might sadden

even a sage. My Etruscan visitorrepeated verses to me which he had composed
in a new dialect, called by him the vulgar tongue, the sense of which I could

not understand. My ears were more surprised than charmed as I heard him repeat
the same sound three or four times at regular intervals in his efforts to mark

the rhythm. That artifice did not seem ingenious to me; but it is not for the
dead to judge of novelties.

"But I do not reproach this colonist of Sulla, born in an unhappy time, for
making inharmonious verses or for being, if it be possible, as bad a poet as

Bavius or Maevius. I have grievances against him which touch me more closely.
The thing is monstrous and scarcely credible, but when this man returned to

earth he disseminated the most odious lies about me. He affirmed in several
passages of his barbarous poems that I had served him as a guide in the modern

Tartarus, a place I know nothing of. He insolently proclaimed that I had
spoken of the gods of Rome as false and lying gods, and that I held as the

true God the present successor of Jupiter. Friend, when thou art restored to
the kindly light of day and beholdest again thy native land, contradict those

abominable falsehoods. Say to thy people that the singer of the pious Aeneas
has never worshipped the god of the Jews. I am assured that his power is

declining and that his approaching fall is manifested by undoubted
indications. This news would give me some pleasure if one could rejoice in

these abodes. where we feel neither fears nor desires."
He spoke, and with a gesture of farewell he went away. I beheld his. shade

gliding over the asphodels without bending their stalks. I saw that it became
fainter and vaguer as it receded farther from me, and it vanished before it

reached the wood of evergreen laurels. Then I understood the meaning of the
words, "The dead have no life, but that which the living lend them," and I

walked slowly through the pale meadow to the gate of horn.
I affirm that all in this writing is true.*

* There is in Marbodius's narrative a passage very worthy of notice, viz.,
that in which the monk of Corrigan describes Dante Alighieri such as we

picture him to ourselves to-day. The miniatures in a very old manuscript of
the "Divine Comedy," the "Codex Venetianus," represent the poet as a little

fat man clad in a short tunic, the skirts of which fall above his knees. As
for Virgil, he still wears the philosophical beard, in the wood-engravings of

the sixteenth century.
One would not have thought either that Marbodius, or even Virgil, could have

known the Etruscan tombs of Chiusi and Corneto, where, in fact, there are
horrible and burlesque devils closely resembling those of Orcagna.

Nevertheless, the authenticity of the "Descent of Marbodius into Hell" is
indisputable. M. du Clos des Lunes has firmly established it. To doubt it

would be to doubt palaeography itself.
VII. SIGNS IN THE MOON

At that time, whilst Penguinia was still plunged in ignorance and barbarism,
Giles Bird-catcher, a Franciscan monk, known by his writings under the name

Aegidius Aucupis, devoted himself with indefatigable zeal to the study of
letters and the sciences. He gave his nights to mathematics and music, which

he called the two adorable sisters, the harmonious daughters of Number and
Imagination. He was versed in medicine and astrology. He was suspected of

practising magic, and it seemed true that he wroughtmetamorphoses and
discovered hidden things.

The monks of his convent, finding in his cell Greek books which they could not
read, imagined them to be conjuring-books, and denounced their too learned

brother as a wizard. Aegidius Aucupis fled, and reached the island of Ireland,
where he lived for thirty studious years. He went from monastery to monastery,

searching for and copying the Greek and Latin manuscripts which they
contained. He also studied physics and alchemy. He acquired a universal

knowledge and discovered notable secrets concerning animals, plants, and
stones. He was found one day in the company of a very beautiful woman who sang

to her own accompaniment on the lute, and who was afterwards discovered to be
a machine which he had himself constructed.

He often crossed the Irish Sea to go into the land of Wales and to visit the
libraries of the monasteries there. During one of these crossings, as he