A Question Book

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Only a short time ago she was obliged to give her hand to lanky Iphis, because Phaon came forward too slowly. He was sleepy, a foolish dreamer, and she would tell him it would be better for him to stretch himself comfortably on his couch and continue to practise silence, rather than woo foreign maidens and riot all night with dissipated companions. CHAPTER III. LYSANDER. As Xanthe approached her father's house, Semestre's call and the gay notes of a mo- naulus greeted her. A conjurer had obtained admittance, and was showing his laughing audience the tricks of his trained cocks and hens. He was a dwarfish, bow-legged little man, with a short neck, on which rested a big head with a very prominent forehead, that , A musical instrument, played like our flageolet or clarinet. shaded his small piercing eyes like a balcony. The feathered actors lived in a two- wheeled cart, drawn from village to village, and city to city, by a tiny, gayly-decked donkey. Three cocks and four hens were now standing on the roof of the cart, looking very comical, for their clever owner, who doubtless knew what pleases the eyes of children and peasants, had colored their white feathers, here and there, with brilliant red and glaring yellow. Beside the cart stood a pale, sorrowful- looking boy, playing a merry tune on the monaulus. Lysander, Xanthe's father, had been helped out of the house into the sunlight, and, seated in his arm-chair of polished olive-wood, was gazing at the show. As soon as he saw his daughter, he beckoned to her, and stroking her hair, while she pressed her lips to his forehead, said: "An amusing sight! The two hens obey the little man as if they were dutiful children.I'm glad he came, for a person like me, forbidden by fate to enjoy the comical thing...Read More