"English!" cried Fra Palamone, slapping his forehead. "Now I know with whom I am dealing. Who else commends his enemy to God and hopes that the devil will step in?" He looked me up and down triumphantly, grating his upper lip with that fierce tusk of his. "If I were in the humour, boy," he said, "which you may thank Madonna I am not, I could have you on your back in two ticks, and your hands tied behind you. I could take every paul off you--ah, and every stitch down to your shirt. But no! you are a gentleman. I prefer to take your hand, being confident that we shall meet again in a few days' time from now. Hold your way to Pistoja, since so you will have it. I am never deceived in my man. I know you and all your concerns as well as if you were my own son--and better, a deal. You have your troubles before you, brought upon you by your own headiness-- your own insufferable piety and crass conceit. And I, young sir, and I am one of them. That you will find out." "I bid you farewell, sir," says I very stiff. "But I say, To our next meeting!" he cried, and plunged down the hillside. I heard him for a long time shouting songs at the top of his voice. Resting no more on the road, I pressed my way southward, descending through chestnut woods to the olives, the garlanded vines, the wonderful husbandry of a generous land, amazed and enchanted by the profusion I beheld. The earth seemed to well forth rich blood at the mere tread of a foot. Boys and girls, young men and women, half naked but glowing with beauty and vigour, watched their beasts on the woody slopes or drove the plough through the deep soil, following after great oxen, singing as they toiled. The ground sent up heat intoxicating to the blood of a northern wanderer. It was the Land of Promise indeed, flowing with milk and honey, a pastoral land of easy love and laughter, where man clove to woman and she yielded to him at the flutter of desire, yet all was sanctioned by the Providence which fashioned the elements and taught the very ivy how to cling. Was there not deep-seated truth, methought, in those old fables which told of the Loves of the Nymphs, the Loves of the Fauns? Was there not some vital well-spring within our natures, some conduit of the heart which throbbed yet at the call of such instincts? I was more sure of it than I had ever been before. The Loves of the Nymphs--the clinging ivy, the yielding reed! The Loves of the Fauns-- buffeting wind and kissing rain! These shy brown girls who peered at me from between the trees; these musing shepherd lads calling them upon oaten pipes--"Panaque, Silvanumque senem, nymphasque sorores." I saw them, I saw them! I walked fast! my feet raced with my thoughts. My heart was beating, my blood was hot, my inclinations were pastoral, but enthusiastic. I was disposed to admire, and prepared to prove that I admired. I could have embraced a sapling and swooned as I called upon Dryas or Syrinx. Then, by-and-by, in the fulness of the time I saw a