ess?
Is it her destiny there to await forever the mind, the liberator, the
immense rider of Pegasi and hippo-griffs, the combatant of heroes of
the dawn who shall descend from the azure between two wings, the radiant
knight of the future? Will she forever summon in vain to her assistance
the lance of light of the ideal? Is she condemned to hear the fearful
approach of Evil through the density of the gulf, and to catch glimpses,
nearer and nearer at hand, beneath the hideous water of that dragon's
head, that maw streaked with foam, and that writhing undulation of
claws, swellings, and rings? Must it remain there, without a gleam
of light, without hope, given over to that terrible approach, vaguely
scented out by the monster, shuddering, dishevelled, wringing its arms,
forever chained to the rock of night, a sombre Andromeda white and naked
amid the shadows!

CHAPTER III--SLANG WHICH WEEPS AND SLANG WHICH LAUGHS

As the reader perceives, slang in its entirety, slang of four hundred
years ago, like the slang of to-day, is permeated with that sombre,
symbolical spirit which gives to all words a mien which is now mournful,
now menacing. One feels in it the wild and ancient sadness of those
vagrants of the Court of Miracles who played at cards with packs of
their own, some of which have come down to us. The eight of clubs, for
instance, represented a huge tree bearing eight enormous trefoil leaves,
a sort of fantastic personification of the forest. At the foot of this
tree a fire was burning, over which three hares were roasting a huntsman
on a spit, and behind him, on another fire, hung a steaming pot, whence
emerged the head of a dog. Nothing can be more melancholy than these
reprisals in painting, by a pack of cards, in the presence of stakes
for the roasting of smugglers and of the cauldron for the boiling of
counterfeiters. The diverse forms assumed by thought in the realm
of slang, even song, even raillery, even menace, all partook of this
powerless and dejected character. All the songs, the melodies of some
of which have been collected, were humble and lamentable to the point of
evoking tears. The pegre is always the poor pegre, and he is always
the hare in hiding, the fugitive mouse, the flying bird. He hardly
complains, he contents himself with sighing; one of his moans has come
down to us: "I do not understand how God, the father of men, can torture
his children and his grandchildren and hear them cry, withou