200
OF VIGILANCE.
seven times the cabalistic sound. But being too much occupied with the charm to mind his footing, he stepped through the window into the house; and in the fall dislocated his leg and arm, and lay half dead upon the floor. The owner of the mansion, hearing the noise, and well knowing the reason, though he pretended ignorance, asked, "What was the matter?" "Oh!" groaned the suffering thief, "False words have deceived me[1]." In the morning he was taken before the judge, and afterwards suspended on a cross[2].
APPLICATION.
My beloved, the thief is the devil; the house is the human heart. The man is a good prelate, and his wife is the church.
- ↑ A play upon words seems to have been intended here; and may remind the classical reader of the stratagem of Ulysses, in the cave of the Cyclops; but a designed imitation is hardly probable.
- ↑ Something like this story is in the Directorium Humanæ Vitæ, i.e. the Latin Version from the Hebrew of Pilpay. See also Le Grand, Fabl. 3. 288.
