Both creatures are represented accurately in the mediaeval traditional form, the cockatrice half dragon, half cock; the deaf adder laying one ear against the ground and stopping the other with her tail. The first represents the infidelity of Pride. The cockatrice--king serpent or highest serpent--saying that he _is_ God, and _will be_ God. The second, the infidelity of Death. The adder (nieder or nether snake) saying that he _is_ mud, and _will be_ mud. 34. Lastly, and above all, set under the feet of the statue of Christ Himself, are the lion and dragon; the images of Carnal sin, or _Human sin_, as distinguished from the Spiritual and Intellectual sin of Pride, by which the angels also fell. To desire kingship rather than servantship--the Cockatrice's sin, or deaf Death rather than hearkening Life--the Adder's sin,--these are both possible to all the intelligences of the universe. But the distinctively Human sins, anger and lust, seeds in our race of their perpetual sorrow--Christ in His own humanity, conquered; and conquers in His disciples. Therefore His foot is on the heads of these; and the prophecy, "Inculcabis super Leonem et Aspidem," is recognized always as fulfilled in Him, and in all His true servants, according to the height of their authority, and the truth of their power. 35. In this mystic sense, Alexander III. used the words, in restoring peace to Italy, and giving forgiveness to her deadliest enemy, under the porch of St. Mark's.[56] But the meaning of every act, as of every art, of the Christian ages, lost now for three hundred years, cannot but be in our own times read reversed, if at all, through the counter-spirit which we now have reached; glorifying Pride and Avarice as the virtues by which all things move and have their being--walking after our own lusts as our sole guides to salvation, and foaming out our own shame for the sole earthly product of our hands and lips. [Footnote 56: See my abstract of the history of Barbarossa and Alexander, in 'Fiction, Fair and Foul,' '_Nineteenth Century_,' November, 1880, pp. 752 _seq._] 36. Of the statue of Christ, itself, I will not speak here at any length, as no sculpture would satisfy, or ought to satisfy, the hope of any loving soul that has learned to trust in Him; but at the time, it was beyond what till then had been reached in sculptured tenderness; and was known far and near as the "Beau Dieu d'Amiens."[57] Yet understood, observe, just as clearly to be no more than a symbol of the Heavenly Presence, as the poor coiling worms below were no more than symbols of the demoniac ones. No _idol_, in our sense of the word--only a letter, or sign of the Living Spirit,--which, however, was indeed conceived by every worshipper as here meeting him at the temple gate: the Word of Life, the King of Glory, and the Lord of Hosts. [Footnote 57: See account, and careful drawing of it, in Viollet le Duc--article "Christ," Dict. of Architecture, iii. 245.]