SACRED LEGENDS AND POETRY OF THE DEER. 213 
The legend relates that the flames which jetted from this lu- 
minous apparatus were so dazzling that the dogs which hunted the 
animal took fright and renounced the deer hunt for the rest of 
their lives. The master did better. AVarned by this brilliant as- 
surance that the Lord approved but moderately of his habitual oc- 
cupations, he bid adieu to his dogs and withdrew to the quiet of a 
hermitage, where he edified his brothers in Jesus by the practice 
of all Christian virtues, dividing his time between bird-catching, 
prayer, and the preparation of his remedies against hydrophobia. 
Who nursed the son of Genevieve of Brabant with the milk of 
her breast ? A doe . . . Who was in the desert the consoler and 
friend of that innocent, unfortunate woman, persecuted by a bar- 
barous, suspicious, and indelicate tyrant ? A doe. 
The English poet Wordsworth has consecrated to the doe one 
of his finest inspirations in the ‘‘White Doe of Rylstone.’’ 
A contract of alliance and friendship between man and the stag 
was signed long ago. 
Pheedrus speaks of it in his fables ; but if the stag has always 
scrupulously respected it, it must be confessed that man has given 
it many a scratch with his knife. 
How often have I not seen, and no later than the last year, an 
unfortunate stag at the end of his speed and his cunning, misled 
to seek a refuge in the abode of man, and the latter plunge a knife 
into his throat, flay him, and salt him afterward ! Thus the vic- 
torious English one day requited the confidence of the magnani- 
mous emperor, who asked of them a refuge, and confined him on 
a desert rock in the midst of the Atlantic, to perish there of con- 
sumption and weariness. The stag has been gifted by the Su- 
preme Ordainer with the sad faculty of tears. 
The stag symbolizes the just man ; the laborer, persecuted by 
the selfishness of great lords, and given up to the exploitation of 
all the parasitical agents of the administration (running dogs). And 
this laborer is not an ordinary workman — a simple operator, pos- 
sessing his hands for all his capital. 
The stag works with its head. It is one of the inveterate stu- 
dents whom science rewards with thorns, and who perish miserably, 
like Solomon de Gauss, for having anticipated the ideas of their age. 
