36 



THE BAKON AND ^THE BUTTEKFLY. 



A TALE. 



" Non v'accorgete voi che noi siam vermi 

 Nati a formare 1' angelica Forfalla ?" 



THERE lived, in the feudal times, a bulky baron, who wasted 

 his patrimony and stripped his wretched serfs to feed his ap- 

 petites. He was like a great caterpillar, 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. As a mere man, there 

 was, of course, something of the caterpillar's nature about the 

 servant of the Church, as well as about the servant of sen- 

 suality ; but we know of no caterpillar to which, in outward 

 seeming, the former could be likened, except to one of those 

 dry attenuated insect spectres known as " walking branches."* 

 As the baron seemed nearly all body, so Father Ambrose 

 seemed nearly all soul, and like a house in progress, discernible 

 through a scaffold, the monk's inner man (in, progress also) 



* Vignette to ' Eesemblance and Eelatiou.' 



