Page:The Bible of Amiens.djvu/74

44, bareheaded—such as you may see running wild and innocent, less cared for now than their sheep, over many a hillside of France and Italy. Tiny enough;—seven years old, all told, when first one hears of her: "Seven times one are seven, (I am old, you may trust me, linnet, linnet )," and all around her—fierce as the Furies, and wild as the winds of heaven—the thunder of the Gothic armies reverberated over the ruins of the world.

5. Two leagues from Paris, {Roman Paris, soon to pass away with Rome herself,) the little thing keeps her flock, not even her own, nor her father's flock, like David; she is the hired servant of a richer farmer of Nanterre. Who can tell me anything about Nanterre?—which of our pilgrims of this omni-speculant, omni-nescient age has thought of visiting what shrine may be there? I don't know even on what side of Paris it lies, nor under which heap of railway cinders and iron one is to conceive the sheep-walks and blossomed fields of fairy Saint Phyllis. There were such left, even in my time, between Paris and St. Denis, (see the prettiest chapter in all the "Mysteries of Paris," where Fleur de Marie runs wild in them for the first time), but now, I suppose, Saint Phyllis's native earth is all