"There are in the Boboli Gardens two statues of two imprisoned kings, and
it is said that every night a beautiful fairy of the grotto clad in white
rises from the water, emerging perfectly dry, and converses with the
captive kings for one hour, going alternately from one to the other, as
if bearing mutual messages, and then returns to the grotto, gliding over
the ground without touching the grass with her feet, and after this
vanishes in the water."
"This tale is, as I conceive," writes the observant Flaxius, "an
allegory, or, as Petrus Berchorius would have called it, a
_moralisation_, the marrow whereof is as follows: The two captive kings
are Labour and Capital, who have, indeed, been long enchained, evil
tongues telling each that the other was his deadly foe, while the fairy
is Wise Reform, who passes her time in consoling and reconciling them.
And it shall come to pass that when the go-betweens or brokering
mischief-makers are silenced, then the kings will be free and allied."
"Then indeed, as you may see,
All the world will happy be!"
_Vivat Sequenz_! Now for the next story.