He looks around for applause, and he sees with affright,
The original standing behind.

"Fool! idiot!" old Beelzebub grinned as he spoke,
And stamp'd on the scaffold in ire;
The painter grew pale, for he knew it no joke,
'Twas a terrible height, and the scaffolding broke;
And the devil could wish it no higher.

"Help! help me, O Mary," he cried in alarm,
As the scaffold sank under his feet,
From the canvas the Virgin extended her arm,
She caught the good painter, she saved him from harm,
There were thousands who saw in the street.

The old dragon fled when the wonder he spied,
And curs'd his own fruitless endeavor:
While the Painter called after, his rage to deride,
Shook his palette and brushes in triumph, and cried,
"Now I'll paint thee more ugly than ever!"

LEGEND OF THE PAINTER-FRIAR, THE DEVIL AND THE VIRGIN.

Don Jose de Valdivielso, one of the chaplains of the gay Cardinal Infant
Ferdinand of Austria, relates the following legend in his paper on the
Tax on Pictures, appended to Carducho's Dialogos de la Pintura. A
certain young friar was famous amongst his order, for his skill in
painting; and he took peculiar delight in drawing the Virgin and the
Devil. To heighten the divine beauty of the one, and to devise new and
extravagant forms of ugliness for the other, were the chief recreations
for his leisure hours. Vexed at last by the variety and vigor of his
sketches, Beelzebub, to be revenged, assumed the form of a lovely
maiden, and crossed under this guise the path of the friar, who being of
an amorous disposition, fell at once into the trap. The seeming damsel
smiled on her shaven wooer, but though nothing loth to be won, would not
surrender her charms at a less price than certain reliquaries and jewels
in the convent treasury--a price which the friar in an evil hour
consented to pay. He admitted her at midnight within the convent walls,
and leading her to the sacristy, took from its antique cabinet the
things for which she had asked. Then came the moment of vengeance.
Passing in their return through the moonlit cloister as the friar stole
along, embracing the booty with one arm, and his false Duessa with the
other, the demon-lady suddenly cried out "Thieves!" with diabolical
energy, and instantly vanished. The snoring monks rushed disordered from
their cells and detected their unlucky brother making off with their
plate. Excuse bein