Page:The whole familiar colloquies of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam.djvu/253

 When this hysteroprotos saw me so religiously transported with that small present, thinking I deserved to have things of greater moment imparted to me, he asked me if I had seen the Virgin’s secrets. That word startled me a little, but I durst not ask him what he meant by the Virgin’s secrets, for in matters so sacred there is danger in a slip of the tongue. I told him I had not seen them, but I had a very great desire to see them. Then I am conducted in as one in an ecstacy. A wax taper or two was lighted, and a little image was shewn me that made no extraordinary figure, neither for magnitude, matter, nor work manship, but of extraordinary virtue. Me. Bulk has no great matter in it as to the doing of miracles. I have seen St. Christopher at Paris, not him of a cartload or of the size of a colossus, but rather of a large mountain; but I never heard he was famous for doing miracles. Og. At the feet of the Virgin there is a jewel that neither the Latins nor Greeks have yet given a name to. The French have given it a name from a toad, because it has the resemblance of a toad in it so lively that no art can match it. And that which is the more miraculous is that it is a very small stone, and the image does not stand out of it, bxit is included in the very body of the stone, and may be seen through it.

Me. Perhaps they may fancy they see the likeness of a toad cut in it, as some fancy they see that of an eagle in the stalk of a brake or fern; and as boys, who see everything in the clouds, as dragons breathing out fire, burning mountains, and armed men fighting. Og. Nay, that you may be thoroughly satisfied in the matter, no living toad ever shewed itself more plainly than that is expressed there. Me. I have been hearing your stories all this while, but I would have you find out somebody else to give credit to yoxir story of the toad. Og. I do not at all wonder, Menedemus, that you are so incredulous; I should not have believed it myself if the whole tribe of divines had asserted it, unless I had seen it with these eyes I say beheld it with these very eyes, and had experienced the truth of it. But methinks you seem not to be curious enough upon these natural rarities. Me. Why so? what, because I will not believe that asses fly. Og. But do you not observe ho.w nature sports herself in imitating the shapes and colours of everything in other things, but especially in precious stones? And also what admirable virtues it has planted in them, which are altogether incredible if common experience did not force us to a belief of them? Prithee, tell me, would you ever have believed without seeing it with your eyes that steel could have been drawn by the loadstone without touching it, or be driven away from it without being touched by it? Me. No, indeed, I never should, although ten Aristotles had taken their oaths of the truth of it.

Og. Well, then, do not say everything is a fable that has not fallen within the compass of your experience. We find the figure of a bolt in a thunder-stone, fire in the carbuncle, the figure of hail and the coldness of it in the hailstone, nay, even though you throw it into the midst of the fire; the deep and transparent waves of the sea in the emerald; the carcinias imitates the figure of a sea-crab, the echites of a viper, the scarites of a gilt head, the theracites of a hawk, the gera nites shews you the figured n,eck of a crane, the segophthalmus shews, the eye of a goat, and some shew that of a hog, and another three human eyes together; the lycophthalmus paints you out the eye of a