“Likewise the illuminated manuscripts of those ages have something of this power of making the dead Past a living Present in my mind.  What curious figures are emblazoned on the creaking parchment, making its yellow leaves laugh with gay colors!  You seem to come upon them unawares.  Their faces have an expression of wonder.  They seem all to be just startled from their sleep by the sound you made when you unloosed the brazen clasps, and opened the curiously-carved oaken covers, that turn on hinges, like the great gates of a city.  To the building of that city some diligent monk gave the whole of a long life.  With what strange denizens he peopled it!  Adam and Eve standing under a tree, she, with the apple in her hand;—­the patriarch Abraham, with a tree growing out of his body, and his descendants sitting owl-like upon its branches;—­ladies with flowing locks of gold; knights in armour, with most fantastic, long-toed shoes; jousts and tournaments; and Minnesingers, and lovers, whose heads reach to the towers, where their ladies sit;—­and all so angular, so simple, so childlike,—­all in such simple attitudes, with such great eyes, and holding up such long, lank fingers!—­These things are characteristic of the Middle Ages, and persuade me of the truth of history.”

At this moment Berkley entered, with a Swiss cottage, which he had just bought as a present for somebody’s child in England; and a cane with a chamois-horn on the end of it, which he had just bought for himself.  This was the first time, that Flemming had been sorry to see the good-natured man.  His presence interrupted the delightful conversation he was carrying on “under four eyes,” with Mary Ashburton.  He reallythought Berkley a bore, and wondered it had never occurred to him before.  Mrs. Ashburton, too, must needs lay down her book; and the conversation became general.  Strange to say, the Swiss dinner-hour of one o’clock, did not come a moment too soon for Flemming.  It did not even occur to him that it was early; for he was seated beside Mary Ashburton, and at dinner one can say so much, without being overheard.

CHAPTER VI.  AFTER DINNER, AND AFTER THE MANNER OF THE BEST CRITICS.

When the learned Thomas Diafoirus wooed the fair Angelique, he drew from his pocket a medical thesis, and presented it to her, as the first-fruits of his genius; and at the same time, invited her, with her father’s permission, to attend the dissection of a woman, upon whom he was to lecture.  Paul Flemming did nearly the same thing; and so often, that it had become a habit.  He was continually drawing, from his pocket or his memory, some scrap of song or story; and inviting some fair Angelique, either with her father’s permission or without, to attend the dissection of anauthor, upon whom he was to discourse.  He soon gave proofs of this to Mary Ashburton.