“Dragons,” says this narrative, “are larger than all other serpents, and longer....  They fly through the air, which is darkened by the disgorging of their stench and venom ...  This venom is so deadly that if a man should be touched by it or come nigh it, it would seem to him a burning fire, and would raise his skin in great blisters, as though he had been scalded.”  And the author adds:  “The sea is swollen up by their venom.”

Dragons have a crest, sharp talons, and a hissing throat, and are almost unconquerable.  Albertus Magnus tells us, however, that magicians, when they wish to subdue them, beat as loudly as they can on drums, and that the dragon, imagining that it is the roll of thunder, which they greatly dread, let themselves be handled quietly and are taken.

The enemy of this winged reptile is the elephant, which sometimes succeeds in crushing it by falling on it with all its weight; but most times it is killed by the dragon, which feeds on its blood, of which the freshness allays the intolerable burning caused by its own venom.

Next to this monster comes the gryphon, a combination of the quadruped and the bird, for it has the body of the lion and the head and talons of the eagle.  Then the basilisk, regarded as the king of serpents; it is four feet long, and has a tail as thick as a tree, and spotted with white.  Its head bears a tuft in shape like a crown; it has a strident voice, and its eye is murderous, “A look,” says the “Romance of Alexander,” “so piercing, that it is pestilential and deadly to all beasts, whether venomous or no.”  Its breath is no less fetid, nor less dangerous, for, “by its breath are all things infected, and when it is dying it is fain to disgorge it; it stinks so that all other beasts flee from it.”

Its most formidable foe is the weasel, which bites its throat, “though it be a beast no bigger than a rat,” for “God hath made nothing without reason and remedy,” the pious Mediaeval writer concludes.

Why the weasel?  There is nothing to show; nor was this little creature, who did such good service, honoured by our forefathers as having a favourable meaning.

It is symbolical of dissimulation and depravity, and taken to typify the degrading life of the mountebank.  It may also be remembered that this carnivorous beast, which was supposed to carry its young in the mouth and give birth to them through the ear, is numbered among the unclean animals in the Bible.

“This zoological homoeopathy is rather inconsistent,” observed Durtal, “unless the similar interpretation given to these two creatures, hating each other, may signify that the Devil devours himself.”

Next we have the phoenix, “a bird of very fine plumage resembling the peacock; it is very solitary, and feeds on the seeds of the ash;” its colour, moreover, is of purple overshot with gold; and because it is said to rise again from its ashes, it is always typical of the Resurrection of Christ.