Gesta Romanorum Vol. II (1871)/Of the Soul's wounds
TALE LIX.
OF THE SOUL'S WOUNDS.
Alexander the Great was lord of the whole world. He once collected a large army, and besieged a certain city, around which many knights and others were killed without any visible wound. Much surprised at this, he called together his philosophers, and said, "My masters, how is this? My soldiers die, and there is no apparent wound!" "No wonder," replied they; "under the walls of the city is a basilisk, (36) whose look infects your soldiers, and they die of the pestilence it creates." "And what remedy is there for this?" said the king.
"Place a glass in an elevated situation between the army and the wall under which the basilisk cowers; and no sooner shall he behold it, than his own figure, reflected in the mirror, shall return the poison upon himself, and kill him." Alexander took their advice, and thus saved his followers. (37)
APPLICATION.
My beloved, look into the glass of reflection, and by remembrance of human frailty, destroy the vices which time elicits.
Note 36.Page 205.
"Next unto which I may mention the Cockatrice, or Basilisk; now this is the king of serpents, not for his magnitude or greatness, but for his stately pace and magnanimous mind; for the head and half part of his body he always carries upright, and hath a kind of crest like a crown upon his head. This creature is in thicknesse as big as a man's wrist, and of length proportionable to that thickness: his eyes are red in a kind of cloudy blackness, as if fire were mixed with smoke. His poison is a very hot and venomous poison, drying up and scorching the grass as if it were burned, infecting the air round about him so as no other creature can live near him: in which he is like to the Gorgon, whom last of all I mentioned.
"And amongst all living creatures, there is none that perisheth sooner by the poison of the Cockatrice than man; for with his sight he killeth him: which is, because the beams of the Cockatrice's eyes do corrupt the visible spirit of a man; as is affirmed: which being corrupted, all the other spirits of life, coming from the heart and brain, are thereby corrupted also; and so the man dieth. His hissing, likewise, is said to be as bad, in regard that it blasteth trees, killeth birds, &c. by poisoning the air. If any thing be slain by it, the same also proveth venomous to such as touch it: only a weasel kills it.
"That they be bred out of an egg laid by an old cock, is scarce credible; howbeit some affirm with great confidence, that when the cock waxeth old . . . there groweth in him, of his corrupted seed, a little egg with a thin film instead of a shell, and this being hatched by the toad, or some such like creature, bringeth forth a venomous worm, although not this basilisk, that king of serpents." Swan's Speculum Mundi. Chap. ix. p. 486.—1635.
Note 37.Page 206.
"Œlian, in his 'Various History,' mentions a serpent, which appearing from the mouth of a cavern, stopped the march of Alexander's army through a spacious desert. The wild beasts, serpents, and birds, which Alexander encountered in marching through India, were most extravagantly imagined by the oriental fabulists, and form the chief wonders of that monarch's romance."—Warton.
Amongst the fabulous monsters of old romance, the Grippe (distinguished from the Griffin, or Gryphon), seems to be pre-eminent. In an old and very rare French romance there is a curious description of this creature, which the reader may be pleased to see. "To give you an idea of the nature of this kind of monstrous serpent, know, that its body is as strong as an enraged bull. He has a human face; but instead of a nose he has the beak of an eagle. He possesses a goose's eyes, an ass's ears, and the teeth of a dog. His tongue is long and venomous; with which, when he is chafed, he darts a prodigious number of firebrands united with a smoke so fetid, that it is enough to infect a whole city. He has the legs, feet, and claws of a lion; a dragon's tail, which is as long as a lance. His back is armed with a scale so hard, that no steel, however excellently tempered, is able to penetrate. Moreover, the shoulders are ornamented with the strong wings of a Griffin, which enable him to cleave the air even more rapidly than was possible to the cunning Dædalus, or to the horse of Pacolet[1]." fol. x.
- ↑ The full title of this very curious and entertaining work is as follows. "Le premier liure de l'histoire et ancienne cronique de Gerard d'Euphrate, DVC de Bourgongue: traitant, pour la plus part, son origine, ieunesse, amours et cheualereux faitz d'armes: auec rencontres, et auantures merueilleuses, de plusieurs Cheualiers, et grans seigneurs de son temps: Mis de nouueau en nostre vulgaire Francoys." Paris, 1549. But the Colophon speaks of twelve books, and we have here the first only. It is in Sion College library.