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There be fools, both male and female, who will rise up to exclaim that this is false; but that it is Gospel truth is proven every day in the year in every community on the American continent. Men with reputations for licentiousness that would shame old Silenus are cordially received in the most exclusive society.
At the corner of the next street, he met two litters, carried with difficulty through the crowd by their bearers. In the first sat Keraunus, whose saffron-colored cloak was conspicuous from afar, as fat as Silenus the companion of Dionysus, but looking very sullen. In the second sat Arsinoe, looking gaily about her, and so fresh and pretty that the Roman's easily-stirred pulses beat more rapidly.
By Phoebus' golden torch, By Luna's pallid light, Around her temple's porch Crept the unhappy sharp-eared wight; And warbled many a lay, Her beauty's praise to sing, And fiercely scraped away On his discordant fiddle-string. With tears, too, swelled his eyes, As large as nuts, or larger; He gasped forth heavy sighs, Like music from Silenus' charger.
Too good for banning, and too bad for blessing, it reminds us of a tradition of the pagan mythology, in any attempt to settle its character. 'I overheard Jove, one day, said Silenus, 'talking of destroying the earth; he said it had failed; they were all rogues and vixens, who went from bad to worse, as fast as the days succeeded each other.
Many had been the speculations of the Vévaisans touching the individuals who had been selected to perform these grave and important characters which, for fidelity of representation, were to outdo that of Silenus himself; but so much care had been taken by the agents of the abbaye to conceal the names of those they had selected, that, until this moment, when disguise was no longer possible, the public was completely in the dark on the interesting point.
He was attended by an old fat man, named Silenus, and by creatures, called Fauns and Satyrs, like men with goats’ ears and legs; his crown was of ivy, and his chariot was drawn by leopards, and he was at last raised to Olympus.
Some are leaning against a vine-wreathed tub; a satyr, with acanthus-leaves growing wondrously out of him, half man, half plant, is emptying a cup; a heavy Silenus is prone upon the ground; a faun, seated upon the vat, is supporting in his arms a beautiful sinking youth; another youth, grand, muscular, and grave as a statue, stands on the further side. Is this really a bacchanal?
We went underground through a plastered vault, on which was coarsely painted a dance of women and satyrs waiting on old Silenus, who was grinning o' horseback on his ass. This made me say to Pantagruel, that this entry put me in mind of the painted cellar in the oldest city in the world, where such paintings are to be seen, and in as cool a place.
And moreover I shall not hold it any dishonour to be so mounted, for I remember having read how the good old Silenus, the tutor and instructor of the gay god of laughter, when he entered the city of the hundred gates, went very contentedly mounted on a handsome ass."
But I observed that after the disposal of that bumper she worshipped the rosy god in theory only, and therefore saw no occasion to interfere. "Come, Bacchus," she said, "and come, Silenus, if thou wilt; I know that ye are hovering round the graves of your departed favourites. And ye, too, nymphs of Egeria," and she pointed to the classic grove which was all but close to us as we sat there.
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