AUSTRIA AND THE LION’S HIDE.  There is an old tale that the arch-duke of Austria killed Richard I., and wore as a spoil the lion’s hide which belonged to our English monarch.  Hence Faulconbridge (the natural son of Richard) says jeeringly to the arch-duke: 

  Thou wear a lion’s hide! doff it for shame,
  And hang a calf-skin on those recreant limbs. 
  Shakespeare, King John, act iii. sc. 1 (1596).

(The point is better understood when it is borne in mind that fools and jesters were dressed in calf-skins.)

AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, a mythical personage who indites Oliver Wendell Holmes’s breakfast-table conversations.

AUTOLYCOS, the craftiest of thieves.  He stole the flocks of his neighbors, and changed their marks.  Sisyphos outwitted him by marking his sheep under their feet.

AUTOLYCUS, 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 Cleante (2 syl.) both want to marry Mariane (3 syl.), daughter of Anselme, alias don Thomas d’Alburci, of Naples.  Cleante 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 Cleante 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 Valere, who, however, turns out to be the son of Anselme.  As soon as Anselme discovers that Valere 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.—­Moliere, L’Avare (1667).

AVENEL (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).

Avenel (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 Milesian 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,
  Noon glows on the fell;
  Awake thee, awake,
  White maid of Avenel!