"Turning to the eagle, it is, as we have seen, the Messiah pouncing on souls to catch them; but other meanings are ascribed to it by Saint Isidor and by Vincent of Beauvais. If we believe them, the eagle that desires to test the prowess of his eaglets takes them in his talons and carries them out into the sun, compelling them to look with their eyes as they begin to open, on the blazing orb. The eagle which is dazzled by the fire is dropped and cast away by the parent bird. Thus doth God reject the soul which cannot gaze on him with the contemplative eye of love! "The eagle, again, is typical of the Resurrection; Saint Epiphanius and Saint Isidor explain it thus: The eagle in old age flies up so near to the sun that its feathers catch fire; revived by the flames, it drops into the nearest spring, bathes in it three times and comes out regenerate: is not this indeed the paraphrase of the Psalmist's verse, "Thy youth shall be renewed as the eagle's"? Saint Madalene of Pazzi, however, regards it differently, and takes it to typify faith leaning on charity. "I shall have to find a place for all these documents in my article," sighed Durtal, placing these notes in a separate wrapper. Now for the chimerical fauna introduced from the East, imported into Europe by the Crusaders, and travestied by the illuminators of missals and by image-makers. Foremost, the dragon, which we already find rampant and busy in mythology and in the Bible. Durtal rose and went into his library to find a book, "Traditions teratologiques," by Berger de Xivrey. It contained long extracts from the "Romance of Alexander," which was the delight of the grown-up children of the Middle Ages. "Dragons," says this narrative, "are larger than all other serpents, and longer.... They fly through the air, which is darkened by the disgorging of their stench and venom ... This venom is so deadly that if a man should be touched by it or come nigh it, it would seem to him a burning fire, and would raise his skin in great blisters, as though he had been scalded." And the author adds: "The sea is swollen up by their venom." Dragons have a crest, sharp talons, and a hissing throat, and are almost unconquerable. Albertus Magnus tells us, however, that magicians, when they wish to subdue them, beat as loudly as they can on drums, and that the dragon, imagining that it is the roll of thunder, which they greatly dread, let themselves be handled quietly and are taken. The enemy of this winged reptile is the elephant, which sometimes succeeds in crushing it by falling on it with all its weight; but most times it is killed by the dragon, which feeds on its blood, of which the freshness allays the intolerable burning caused by its own venom.