THE BARON AND THE BUTTERFLY. 145 



issued from perhaps a horse-pond, where it dwelt an hour ago 

 a miniature monster of the mimic deep. 



Thus by plain and pleasant symbols is Nature for ever teach- 

 ing us entreating us to come out and sit with her at the feet 

 of her Great Author. Her " tongues in the running brooks " 

 are always tuneful ; her " sermons in stones " never rugged ; 

 her " good in everything" is always easy of extraction ; and her 

 moralities are not adorned merely but wholly conveyed by 

 picture and parabolic story. The French Fabulist observes 

 with truth, that 



" La morale nue apporte de 1'ennui, 

 La conte fait passer le precepte avec lui." 



But though Nature deals with us, her children, on this very 

 principle, we turn a deaf ear to " the voice of the charmer," 

 and while the Thousand and One Nights of the far-famed 

 Scherezade are in everybody's memory, the 365 days of the 

 year, each with its tale within tale of wonders ever new, go 

 round unheeded or unheard. 



THE BARON AND THE BUTTERFLY. 



A TALE. 



,HERE lived, in the feudal times, a powerful baron, 

 who wasted his patrimony and stripped his wretched 

 serfs to feed his appetites. He was like a great cater- 

 pillar, turning green leaves into brown skeletons in order to 

 fill his ravenous maw. 



Like most great caterpillars, and most great men, he was 

 infested by greedy parasites ; yet amongst the members of his 

 household there happened, by a strange accident, to be one 

 honest dependant, who, by a stranger still, was a priest the 

 baron's chaplain and ghostly adviser. 



The mere sight of him was enough to remind people of their 



