“But I do not reproach this colonist of Sulla, born in an unhappy time, for making inharmonious verses or for being, if it be possible, as bad a poet as Bavius or Maevius.  I have grievances against him which touch me more closely.  The thing is monstrous and scarcely credible, but when this man returned to earth he disseminated the most odious lies about me.  He affirmed in several passages of his barbarous poems that I had served him as a guide in the modern Tartarus, a place I know nothing of.  He insolently proclaimed that I had spoken of the gods of Rome as false and lying gods, and that I held as the true God the present successor of Jupiter.  Friend, when thou art restored to the kindly light of day and beholdest again thy native land, contradict those abominable falsehoods.  Say to thy people that the singer of the pious Aeneas has never worshipped the god of the Jews.  I am assured that his power is declining and that his approaching fall is manifested by undoubted indications.  This news would give me some pleasure if one could rejoice in these abodes where we feel neither fears nor desires.”

He spoke, and with a gesture of farewell he went away.  I beheld his. shade gliding over the asphodels without bending their stalks.  I saw that it became fainter and vaguer as it receded farther from me, and it vanished before it reached the wood of evergreen laurels.  Then I understood the meaning of the words, “The dead have no life, but that which the living lend them,” and I walked slowly through the pale meadow to the gate of horn.

I affirm that all in this writing is true.*

* There is in Marbodius’s narrative a passage very worthy of notice, viz., that in which the monk of Corrigan describes Dante Alighieri such as we picture him to ourselves to-day.  The miniatures in a very old manuscript of the “Divine Comedy,” the “Codex Venetianus,” represent the poet as a little fat man clad in a short tunic, the skirts of which fall above his knees.  As for Virgil, he still wears the philosophical beard, in the wood-engravings of the sixteenth century.

One would not have thought either that Marbodius, or even Virgil, could have known the Etruscan tombs of Chiusi and Corneto, where, in fact, there are horrible and burlesque devils closely resembling those of Orcagna.  Nevertheless, the authenticity of the “Descent of Marbodius into Hell” is indisputable.  M. du Clos des Lunes has firmly established it.  To doubt it would be to doubt palaeography itself.

VII.  SIGNS IN THE MOON

At that time, whilst Penguinia was still plunged in ignorance and barbarism, Giles Bird-catcher, a Franciscan monk, known by his writings under the name Aegidius Aucupis, devoted himself with indefatigable zeal to the study of letters and the sciences.  He gave his nights to mathematics and music, which he called the two adorable sisters, the harmonious daughters of Number and Imagination.  He was versed in medicine and astrology.  He was suspected of practising magic, and it seemed true that he wrought metamorphoses and discovered hidden things.