25* 



POPULAR BELIEFS. 



the theme of the most wonderful travellers' tales, and is to be found from 

 one end to the other of science, poetry, and art. 



It is the serpent, or, to speak more accurately, the devil, to whom is 

 attributed the birth of the grotesque and hideous monsters which descended 

 in a natural order of succession from the giants, pigmies, Cyclops, satyrs, 

 centaurs, harpies, tritons, and sirens of mythology (Fig. 191). The fathers 

 of the Church did not venture to call into question the existence of these 

 monsters, whom Pliny and the ancient naturalists complacently admitted into 

 the hierarchy of living things ; and the people were all the more ready to 



Fig. 183. The Gargouille. From the Stained-glass Window representing the " Life of 

 St. Remain," in the St. Romain Chapel, Rouen Cathedral. 



accept them as realities, because they attributed their existence to the power 

 of the demon. 



It is astonishing that none of those who lived in the Middle Ages, with 

 the exception of a few heroes of legends, claimed to have discovered the 

 earthly Paradise, though learned writers tried hard to define its precise 

 geographical position. If some one of the travellers of the twelfth or of the 

 thirteenth century, such as Benjamin de Tudele, Jean Piano Carpini, or 

 Marco Polo, had put forward such a claim, it would assuredly have been 

 admitted, inasmuch as many of the Christians of that period, so fertile in 



