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d satisfaction." Thus wrote Flaxius. * * * * * Since I penned the foregoing from memory, I have found the Italian text or original, which had been mislaid for years. In it the tale is succinctly told within the compass of forty lines, and ends with these words: "'Take the treasure, and give me the rose!' "And so the spirit gave him the treasure and took the rose, and the poor man went home enriched, and the priest to sleep in peace--_fra gli eterni_--among the eternals." I ought, of course, to have given scientifically only the text word for word, but _litera scripta manet_--what is written remains, and Flaxius is an old friend of mine, and I greatly desired to introduce him to my readers. And I doubt not that the reviewers will tell me if I have sinned! "Do a good deed, or aught that's fit, You never again may hear of it; But make a slip, all will detect it, And every friend at once correct it!" THE GHOST OF MICHEL ANGELO "If I believed that spirits ne'er Return to earth once more, And that there's naught unto them dear In the life they loved before; Then truly it would seem to me, However fate has sped, For souls there's no eternity, And they and all are dead." It must have struck every one who has read the life of Michel Angelo, that he was, like King James the First of England, "nae great gillravager after the girls," or was far from being susceptible to love--in which he formed a great contrast to Raphael, and indeed to most of the Men of his Time--or any other. This appears to have impressed the people of Italy as something even more singular than his works, for which reason he appears in popular tradition as a good enough goblin, not without cheerfulness and song, but as one given to tormenting enamoured couples and teasing lady artists, whom he subsequently compliments with a gift. The legend is as follows: LO SPIRITO DI MICHELE ANGIOLO BUONAROTTI. "The spirit of Michel Angelo is seen mostly by night, in woods or groves. The good man appears as he did in life, _come era prima_, ever walking among trees singing poetry. He amuses himself very much by teasing lovers--_a dare noia agli amoretti_--and when he finds a pair who have hidden themselves under leaves and boughs to make love, he waits till they think they are well concealed, and then begins to sing. And
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