Under the Rose

The clatter and din awoke Rabelais, who drowsily regarded the combatants with lack-luster gaze and undoubtedly thought himself once more amid the fanciful conflicts of fearful giants.

"Fall to, Pantagruel, my merry Paladin!" he exclaimed bombastically. "Cut, slash, stab, fence and justle!" And himself, reaching for an imaginary sword, encountered the tankard which he would have raised to his lips but that his shaggy head fell again to the board before his willing arm had obeyed the passing impulse of his sluggish brain.

"Fence!--justle!" he murmured, and slept once more.

But the parrot, again disturbed, could not so easily compose itself to slumber. Whipping its head from its downy nest, it outspread its gray wings gloriously and screamed and shouted, as though venting all the thunders of the Vatican upon the offendin