--Christmas-eve arrived, and the canon was still in his
cell: Christmas-night came, and still he did not stir. At length,
when the mass was actually begun, his brethren, more uneasy than
himself, reproached him with his delay; upon which he muttered his
spell, called up a spirit, mounted him, reached Rome in the twinkling
of an eye, performed his task, and, the service being ended, he
stormed the archives of the Vatican, where he burned the compulsory
act, and then returned by the same conveyance to Bayeux, which he
reached before the mass was completed, and, to the unspeakable joy of
the chapter, announced the happy tidings of their deliverance.
So idle and unmeaning is the tale, that I should scarcely have thought
it worth while to have repeated it, but for the Latin distich, which, as
the story goes, was extemporized by the demon, at the moment when they
were flying over the Tuscan sea, and by which he sought to mislead his
rider, and to cause him to end his journey beneath the deep.--The sense
of the verses is not very perspicuous, but they are remarkable for
reading forwards and backwards the same; and though to you they may
appear a childish waste of intellect, you will, I am sure, admit them to
be ingenious, and they may amuse some of the younger members of your
family:--
"Signa te, signa, temere me tangis et angis;
Roma tibi subito motibus ibit amor.
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