42 EMBLEMATIC TEACHING. 



" Father " said he, " what would have become of all these 

 flying creatures, if when, as you tell me, they were crawling 

 caterpiUars, they had not ate their fill ? Methinks their bravery 

 would have been finely clipped. See, some of them are bigger 

 than the others, those, I warrant, who had a place nearest to 

 the cabbage heart. If your comparison held good, the more 

 a man indulged his carnal appetites, the better angel he would 

 make." 



" Satan, avaunt ! ' inwardly exclaimed the holy man, 

 shocked at the irreverent idea instilled into a yet darkened 

 mind from, he believed, a darker source. " Saint Dominick, 

 save us ! ' he presently returned, and somewhat pettishly 

 "thou speakest as if the carnal man were in reality a cater- 

 pillar, with no better teaching than his own craving appetites 

 -the immortal spirit really a short-lived Butterfly. Did I 

 not explain how those are only emblems? But, even thus con- 

 -idered, thy objection is but vain. Perhaps thou knowest not 

 (and here my teaching was in fault) that no Butterfly ever yet 

 issued from a caterpillar's skin no crawling worm ever yet 

 changed, at once, into a glorious flutterer. The greedy cater- 

 pillar must put off, first, his gross and grovelling nature ; his 

 sensual delights of cabbage or of nettle must become to him as 

 nothing." 



" Look here," he continued, plucking from off an angle of 

 the castle wall a suspended chrysalis "look at this seemingly 

 lifeless creature this aurclia, shut up in its gilded skin, and 



