Already Milan sweetens in the sun. We curb all licence, yield heat to reason, clean out many vanities; have our choirs of pure maidens in place of the Bacchidæ—hymns, too, meet to woo Pan to Christ, of which I could serve thee an example.... All in all, we prepare for a great Feast of the Purification which, at the New Year’s beginning, is to symbolise our re-conversion to Nature’s straight religion. Then will be a rare market in doves—let us pray there be at least—which all, conscious of the true virgin heart, are to bring. Doves! Alack! which of us would not wish to be worthy to carry one that we know?’ So wrote the Duchess of Milan to the Abbot of San Zeno, and he answered:— ’Cherish my lamb. The fold yearns for him. He would leave it, despite us all. My daughter, be gracious to our little dreamer, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.’ For years after it was become the dimmest of odd memories, men and women would recall, between laughter and tears, the strange little moral fantasia which, during a month or two of that glowing autumn of 1476, all Milan had been tickled into dancing to the pipe of a small shepherd of a New Arcadia. The measure had certainly seemed inspiring enough at the time—potential, original, weaving an earnest purpose with joy, revealing novel raptures of sensation in the seemliness of postures, which claimed to interpret Nature out of the very centre of her spiritual heart. David dancing before the ark must have exhibited just such an orderly abandonment as was displayed by these sober-rollicking Pantheists of the new cult. Crossness with them was sunk to an impossible discount. There was no market for gallantry, _épanchements_, or any billing and cooing whatever but of doves. Instead, there came into vogue intercourses between Dioneus and Flammetta of sweet unbashful reasonableness; high-junkettings on chestnut-meal and honey; the most engaging attentions, in the matter of grapes and sweet biscuits and infinite bon-bons, towards the little furred and feathered innocents of the countryside. That temperance really was, according to the angelic propagandist, the true epicurism, experience no less astonishing than agreeable came to prove. Then was the festival of beans and bacon instituted by some jaded palates. Charity and consideration rose on all sides in a night, like edible and nutritious funguses. From Hallowmas to Christmas there was scarce a sword whipped from its scabbard but reflection returned it. It was no longer, with Gregory and Balthazar, ’Sir, do you bite your thumb at me? Sir, the wall to you,’ but ’Sir, I see your jostling of me was unavoidable; Sir, your courtesy turns my asps to roses.’ Nature and the natural decencies were on all tongues; the licences of eye and ear and lip were rejected for abominations unpalatable to any taste more refined than yesterday’s. Modesty ruled the fashions and made of Imola an Ippolita, and of Aurelio an Augustine.