Page:Balkan Short Stories.djvu/16

4 by Callot to the modern world through the pen of Hoffman, that unjustly forgotten poet, and dreamer of golden vessels and magic draughts.

On one of these pictures, among the many shapeless and nameless monsters that surrounded the poor and holy hermit, moving in a hideously merry dance, there was in one corner of the canvas a great green frog with a bird-shaped beak, and a hugely swollen white goiter. Behind this frog dwelled Satan, and unobserved, through the eyes of the frog he watched—not holy Saint Anthony kneeling in prayer, but the living body of the Prior and his priestly comrades.

I am obliged to confess that for sometime Satan had been terribly bored in his quiet corner. The Prior was a pious man, and the monks hymned sleepily their breviaries. To tease them by means of sensual dreams was something altogether too commonplace, indeed Satan himself would be ashamed to do it, and at the same time he wished to amuse himself. Sometimes he closed the prayer book of the Prior ten times right before his nose, but with stoic calm, the Prior would open the book for the eleventh time and find the place of Scripture he was reading, and put in a book mark.