Autol´ycos, the craftiest of thieves. He stole the flocks of his neighbors, and changed their marks. Sis´yphos outwitted him by marking his sheep under their feet.
Autol´ycus, a peddler and witty rogue, in The Winter's Tale, by Shakespeare (1604).
Avare (L'). The plot of this comedy is as follows: Harpagon the miser and his son Cléante (2 syl.) both want to marry Mariane (3 syl.), daughter of Anselme, alias don Thomas d'Alburci, of Naples. Cléante gets possession of a casket of gold belonging to the miser, and hidden in the garden. When Harpagon discovers his loss he raves like a madman, and Cléante gives him the choice of Mariane or the casket. The miser chooses the casket, and leaves the young lady to his son. The second plot is connected with Elise (2 syl.), the miser's daughter, promised in marriage by the father to his friend Anselme (2 syl.); but Elise is herself in love with Valère, who, however, turns out to be the son of Anselme. As soon as Anselme discovers that Valère is his son, who he thought had been lost at sea, he resigns to him Elise, and so in both instances the young folks marry together, and the old ones give up their unnatural rivalry.—Molière, L'Avare (1667).
Ave´nel (2 syl.), Julian, the usurper of Avenel Castle.
Lady Alice, widow of sir Walter.
Mary, daughter of Lady Alice. She marries Halbert Glendinning.—Sir W. Scott, The Monastery (date 1559).
Ave´nel (Sir Halbert Glendinning, knight of), same as the bridegroom in The Monastery.
The lady Mary of Avenel, same as the bride in The Monastery.—Sir W. Scott, The Abbot (time, Elizabeth).
The White Lady of Avenel, a spirit mysteriously connected with the Avenel family, as the Irish banshee is with true Mile´sian families. She announces good or ill fortune, and manifests a general interest in the family to which she is attached, but to others she acts with considerable caprice; thus she shows unmitigated malignity to the sacristan and the robber. Any truly virtuous mortal has commanding power over her.
Noon gleams on the lake,