Thus, at a sudden sound we stood aghast; As lo! two wretches from the left there drove, - PARSONS. A black dog frightened the witches at Salem in 1691; and a black dog in Goethe's Faust is only the prowler Mephistopheles. Faust. Siehst du den schwarzen Hund durch Saat und Stoppel streifen? Wagner. Ich sah ihn lange schon, nicht wichtig schien er mir. Faust. Betracht' ihn recht. Für was hältst du das Thier? Wagner. Für einen Pudel, der auf seine Weise Faust. Sich auf der Spur des Herren plagt. Und irr' ich nicht, so zieht ein Feuerstrudel Since hell, after all, is no more nor less than the awfullest nightmare of mankind, these black bitches that pursue Lano differ in no wise from those that Count Ugolino saw in his dream, those lean, eager bitches that followed the wolf and his cubs to the mountain of San Giuliano.1 And, as they overtake the werewolf Ugolino, so the veltro, the magic hound, shall drive the gaunt she-wolf back into hell. On many tombs of the Middle Ages are to be seen the lord and his lady graven in marble above their handful of dust, and at their feet is often stretched a hound. As he shares their aristocratic tomb, so in life he lay at their feet and shared their castle. He is thus almost an emblem of the prince; and, if the prince be just, how could the swiftness of his stroke for justice be signified better than in his hound, who becomes himself an avenging Messiah, full of wisdom, love, and virtue? The hound is now by dualistic allegory transformed into a man, or, rather, into a spirit of Good, powerful enough to drive envious Greed out of all Italy.2 1 Inf. XXXIII, 31-36. See chapter on 'The Wolf,' p. 111. CHAPTER XII THE FOX Se vedi volpe correre, Non dimandar la traccia. -JACOPONE DA TODI. THAT shrewd and pretty little creature, the fox, from antiquity down through the Middle Ages was an object of fear and pious scorn. He is the wiliest, the most fraudulent, of all the beasts. He is the foe, not only of laymen, but of clerics and friars, of popes and saints. He is the symbol of heresy,1 the embodiment of the Devil.2 Not only has the fox all these characteristics, he is also the arch foe of other beasts, and a whole epic 3 is written to tell how by countless wiles he hoodwinks Bernard the Ass, outwits Noble the Lion, blots the honour of Bruin the Bear, and escapes the gibbet after a life of malice and shame. His intelligence, like that of the Fiend, is Rabanus 1 St. Augustine in Ps. lxxx, cited by Scartazzini. Maurus (De Univ. lib. VIII, cap. 1) declares that 'the fox signifies mystically the wily devil, or the sly heretic, or a sinner, and elsewhere, saith St. Matthew (viii), "the foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests," signifying in the foxes heretics, and in the birds of the air evil spirits,' etc. The opinion is perhaps borrowed from St. Ambrose (Expos. in Lucam, lib. VII). 2 HUGO OF ST. VICTOR, De Bestiis, II, 5. 3 Le Roman de Renard. In Flemish, Reinaert de Vos, later embodied in Goethe's poem. * Cf. GASTON PARIS, Littérature française au moyen âge, §§ 82-84. 6 bent only on wickedness. 'The tricky fox,' declares Alexander Neckam, is armed with frauds inborn. Even having been caught, he resorts to exquisite wiles. With so great versatility is he endowed as to seem sometimes to elude the mind of man.' And Hugo of St. Victor avers that the fox is called vulpes because he is volupes (slippery). 'For he is slippery-footed, and never follows a straight road, but runs crookedly here and there. Fraudulent and sly, he gives his image to the Devil.'2 St. Augustine sees in him one who signifies tricksters, and especially heretics full of guile.3 Dante indicts him, too, and vents upon him his wrath at the contemptible wickedness of certain men. In one of those wholesale condemnations of which he alone is capable, the poet describes how the Arno, having passed the curs of Arezzo and the wolves of Florence, flows (accursed and unhappy ditch!) by the Pisan foxes, worst of all: Vassi cadendo, e quanto ella più ingrossa, La maladetta e sventurata fossa. 2 Loc. cit. = 1 Wright's ed., p. 204. 8 Loc. cit. 4 Purg. XIV, 49-54. Though I have used Longfellow's translation for lack of a better, it seems to me that the word ingegno: here old French engin, English 'gin,' and that occupi means 'to catch.' Cf. Petrarch (Tratt. ben. viv. 9), 'Sono ingegni del diavolo,' etc. Boccaccio (nov. 98, 36), 'Non dimeno dovete sapere che io non cercai nè con ingegno nè con fraude d' imporre alcuna macula all' onestà ed alla chiarezza del vostro sangue.' For occupare, 'to It goes on falling, and the more it grows, They fear no cunning that may master them. And into the mouth of Guido da Montefeltro, who had taught the papal trickster, Boniface, how to be still trickier, Dante puts these words (Guido speaks in Hell): 1 Io fui uom d'arme, e poi fui cordelliero, E certo il creder mio veniva intero, Se non fosse il gran Prete, a cui mal prenda, E come e quare voglio che m' intenda. Che la madre mi diè, l' opere mie I was a soldier, then a corded friar ; So girdled, thinking meet amends to make; catch,' cf. Boccaccio (nov. 27, 19), ‘Quale col giacchio il pescatore nel fiume molti pesci ad un tratto,' etc. It seems to me the line, 'Che non temono ingegno che le occupi’· - either was meant to have a twofold significance, or should be translated, Which fear not that any gin may catch them. 1 Inf. XXVII, 67-78. 2 CICERO, De Officiis, I, 13, 41, 'fraus quasi vulpeculae, vis leonis videtur.' K |