Leaving my wife to run the gauntlet of the gamins of Beaune, while she sketched the starry hood and the porch of Notre Dame, we fared forth on our bicycles, towards the ancient village of Bouilland, fifteen kilometres away, to which I received my first call when I happened upon the legend of its Abbey.

Bouilland lies beyond Savigny, in the heart of the valley of the Bouxaise, a tributary of the SaÔne, by a road so lonely that, between Savigny and our destination we met only one individual—and he was sitting in a cart, so fast asleep that, though we longed to do so, we had not the heart to wake him.

Saint Marguerite lies high up in a hollow of the rocky hills, on the edge of the ForÊt au Maitre—one of the most deserted spots in all Christendom. What was once a glorious building, with a Romanesque nave and a lovely, late thirteenth-century transept and apse, lightened with carved foliage, capitals, and graceful, slender shafts, is now a roofless ruin. Wild fruit trees grow in the transepts; the floor of the nave is paved with a litter of mossy stones, beneath which the ivy and the brambles take root; cowslips and purple violets jewel the apse with delights beyond the art of even Gothic sculptors; through the roofless arches you look up at the whispering forest-pines. Westward of the Abbey, beside the deserted adjunct buildings, is a grassy terrace, stone-walled, shaded by blossoming fruit trees. From this fresh, green garden you can look, beyond the darkness of the ancient gateway, into the flaming yellow of a field of "Mustard," the symbol of a living world beyond. Sit beside me on the old stone wall, and hear the legend of Saint Marguerite.

In days of yore, there lived in the Castle of Vergy, a maiden, beautiful and pure as an angel; she was named Marguerite.

Many young suitors of noble birth desired her hand: one, in particular, was more handsome than all the others; but his conversation was unchaste, and treachery lurked in his glance and in his smile.

Marguerite would never listen to his profane addresses; she repulsed him, saying: "Speak not to me of earthly love; to me, who have chosen, for all eternity, Jesus, the most loving and tender of husbands."

At the name of Jesus, the face of the handsome youth grew pale; and he turned away.

The holy maid, sometimes followed by one of her companions, went to speak of God and of heavenly things, with an old hermit, who lived in the depths of a neighbouring forest.

One evening, when she was returning from one of these visits, and, mounted on her mule, was crossing the great wood, she perceived the page awaiting her at a bend of the path. Swiftly she turned the animal, and, in her hasty flight, left her veil hanging on the branches of a hawthorn bush.

Her steed moved swiftly; but swifter still follows the treacherous youth; he is lighter than the wind; scarcely do the grasses bend beneath his feet.

But—crowning misfortune—the poor girl, instead of following the broad valley way, as her companion has done, turns into a side path that is soon barred by a great rampart of rocks.

All is over; she must fall a victim to her pursuer.... Already he stretches out his arms to seize her. As his hands, quivering with passion, touch the young girl, he breaks into a peal of infernal laughter that resounds through the whole valley.

Then Marguerite remembers her betrothed in Heaven. She calls upon Him for aid; she murmurs His name, and arms herself with His sign.

At the name of Jesus, spoken with that faith which removes mountains, the rock opens before her, and the mule carries the Christian maid to safety.

But the false page, a demon in disguise, fell down into a fiery gulf that opened suddenly beneath his feet. Afterwards, when the earth had closed again over the spot, the peasants found, lying upon the wayside grass, a girdle of white silk, the symbol of Marguerite's purity and innocence.

The maid of Vergy reined in her mule before a fountain, a few paces from the parted rock. She dismounted, and, prostrating herself, she consecrated to the Lord her virginity that had been so miraculously preserved.

In a later year, with the dowry left her by her father, she built, on this spot, a monastery, to which she gave the name of Ste. Marguerite, her patron saint, as a song of thanksgiving in praise of her Heavenly Spouse.

Philippe Pot being a name to conjure with in Burgundy, we took the first opportunity to make acquaintance with his eagle's nest, the Roche-Pot. The road from Beaune skirts the CÔte d'Or, as far as Pommard, and climbs, between the vineyards, into the hills. These vineyards, in which are produced some of the choicest vines of the district, are surrounded each with a stone wall and gateway, with the name of the clos written on it—"Clos des ChÊnes," "Clos des Antres," etc. As you rise, there opens out a lovely view over the fruitful plain of Burgundy, a golden sea of vines. Below us, ahead, the dark roofs and spires of Meursault rise from the trees, and beyond them, shining in a blue mist, the widening southern hills of the CÔte d'Or.

About half a mile from Meursault, the road, turning due west, plunges down into the valley of the Clous, between the hills, rock-clad at their summits, vine-clad below. Thence the way undulates past Auxey-le-Grand and Melin, until suddenly you sight, above the trees, the towers of Rochepot perched upon its crag. Leaving my wife to sketch, I made my way up through the dilapidated village, and soon found myself crossing the drawbridge of a mediÆval castle, glowing as brightly with gold and colour, and with blazoned coats of arms, as on the day when it was first built. Here were round towers, machicolated battlements, a pepper-pot roof, with not a stone or tile of them disordered. I had expected a ruin—a lizards' playground; yet here before my eyes was Philippe Pot's own legend, "TANT L VAUT," as fresh as painter and gilder could make it.

"Whose is this castle?" I asked of the harmless, necessary guide, who by now had put in an appearance, and was assuring some gaping visitors that Philippe was called Pot because he always carried a pot about with him—a paint pot, judging by the condition of his castle.

"This is M. Carnot's castle, Monsieur, the eldest son of the late President. He has already spent millions in restoration, and he is about to convert into a terrace the remains of the 11th century ChÂteau, up there." He pointed to a fine, rounded-headed window, of two lights, high above us on the rock. While we were being hurried round this fortress of all the centuries, I fell to thinking of Philippe Pot, of his home, and his legend.

Begun in the thirteenth century, by Alexandre de Bourgogne, Prince de MorÉe, the castle was fortified in the early fifteenth by RenÉ Pot,[181] whose son Philippe[182] was the only man of them all to leave it a popular name.

In the middle of the fifteenth century, the Ottoman Sultan, Mahomet II., was threatening Constantinople, then in the hands of Constantine, Emperor of Byzantium, who appealed to Pope Nicholas V. for help against the Islamite invasion. To young Philippe Pot, nearly twenty-five years of age, the bravest, most handsome, and most eloquent chevalier of his day, and a poet withal—a crusade was as the candle to the moth. Never might come such another opportunity to win his spurs away from home. So he wrote to his fiancÉe, the richest and loveliest heiress of all Burgundy, Jeanne, daughter of Pierre de Baufremont, Comte de Charny, great chamberlain of Philippe le Bon.

"Gentille Damoiselle, I am setting forth to Constantinople; I wish before our bridal to render myself worthy of you and of your valiant father." Before dawn, on an August morning, in the year 1452, he left Rochepot, and rode to Notre Dame de Dijon, where he met four hundred other young knights sworn to follow his lead. There they heard Mass before the altar of the Virgin, and bespoke her blessing on their banner, that bore her picture, and the device: "Notre Dame de Bon Espoir, soyez-nous en aide." Then they rode eastward through the streets of Dijon. "Honneur aux preux!" shouted the crowds; "Honneur aux chevaliers de Notre Dame!"[183]

We have no time to follow all the adventures of our chevalier in the land of Islam—how with his own hand, he slew and slew, until the bravest of the Saracens learned to fear the prowess of the "Chevalier de la Mort"; how, at last, he was captured by the Turks, before Constantinople, imprisoned, flogged, almost to death, because he would not become the Sultan's man, nor bow to the name of the Prophet—how he consoled himself in prison by writing verses to the Lady Virgin to whom he was vowed.

His prayer was answered. For, before long, the Sultan, wishing to make an end of his prisoner, brought him one day into the arena, and caused to be handed to him, for his only weapon, a light scimitar, that was but a toy compared with the young chevalier's mighty sword, beneath whose deadly strokes so many Turks had already fallen. Then was loosed upon him, thus armed, a magnificent lion, that had already been the death of many prisoner knights.

"This is no combat," murmured the assembled thousands, one to another, "'Tis an execution—already the old lion has slain his hundreds—and he has eaten nothing these three days," Meanwhile the adversaries stood face to face. With two great bounds the lion is upon his man; but, as he crouches for the third spring, the hero makes a swift movement; the scimitar flashes, falls upon the animal's front paws. Roaring with pain and fury, the beast rolls upon his back, and licks the stumps of his wounded legs. Again, like lightning, the scimitar plays. In a moment the lion's tongue is lying at the feet of the Sultan. With a last effort the wounded beast rises, open-mouthed. Philippe, seizing his opportunity, plunges the blade down the ravening throat. The great lion falls dead. Loud rings the applause of the crowd, as the hero, waving aloft his smoking weapon, cries, "Gloire À Notre Dame. Tant elle vaut!"

The Sultan, who loved courage first and last, descended into the arena, hung a rich chain about his prisoner's neck, and said: "Such valour deserves freedom. Return to your lady, and to your home."

So the victorious Philippe reached France again, and, in poor man's guise, begging his bread by the way, came to Rochepot, on the day following the FÊte des TrÉpassÉs, the great Autumn festival that the Catholic church has appointed in celebration of the dead. There he found the castle all hung with black, and a great company mourning a living man's death. So he made himself known, and sorrow changed into exceeding great joy.

On the 11th November, 1453, through the fresh warm air of a St. Martin's summer, a brilliant cortÈge issues from the Ducal Palace at Dijon, and turns towards the church of Notre Dame. At their head rides Philippe le Bon, crowned with the crown of Burgundy, and wearing, about his neck and breast, the collar of the Golden Fleece, and a purple mantle, lined with ermine. He is leading by the arm a slim girl, veiled, and clothed in white. Behind them follows a young chevalier, in shining armour, with a lion's skin clasped upon his shoulder. 'Tis Philippe Pot; his feet still bleeding from the stones of the pilgrim way. In one hand he carries a candle, the other arm supports the Duchess of Burgundy, splendid in a robe of cloth of gold. Beside them walk two heralds-at-arms, one bearing a scimitar, the other a veiled picture. From balcony and window the people acclaim their passage: "Noel! Noel!"

They enter Notre Dame—its walls splendid with tapestries of Arras—and kneel in the chapel of Notre Dame de Bon-Espoir. Philippe lights his candle, and places it upon the altar. The picture is uncovered, and hung before the black virgin. It shows the knight, under his Lady's protection, slaying the lion in the arena. Below are written the words—

Having accomplished his vow, the knight puts on his spurs. The Duke of Burgundy approaches, embraces him, gives him the collar and mantle of the Toison d'Or. The fiancÉe is led forward. Lover and lady join hands, and—the due ceremonies accomplished—Philippe and his bride leave the church.

"Noel! Noel!" shout the people. "Honneur au chevalier de Notre Dame!"

Now you know why you may read, in letters of gold, upon the walls and windows of Philippe's castles—at Rochepot, at ChÂteau-neuf, and at others—that device—TANT L VAUT.[186]

On our way home from Rochepot, we halted for a rest at Auxey le Grand, and dropped into an inn, where we found two workmen hobnobbing over a bottle of red wine. One of them—the listener—was just an ordinary workman; common, base, and popular, as Pistol would have said. His companion, however, was a man of mark—a handsome, bronzed rascal, whose fiercely curled moustache and Paderewski hair, well set off by enormously baggy corduroys, a scarlet belt, and a blue shirt, suggested the merry bandit of an Elizabethan drama. Our curiosity being aroused, we addressed the brigand, who was not slow to reveal his identity. He was one FranÇois Paulin, a vine-dresser, and no brigand, as he proved by the production of a greasy document, stating that "The administrative council of the SociÉtÉ Vigneronne of the arrondissement of Beaune certifies that Monsieur Paulin (FranÇois) successfully passed the examinations of March 24th, 1889, and is skilled in pruning (apte À greffer) the vine, and in teaching that operation." Vines and vineyards naturally became our topic.

"Ah!" said the brigand; "What a season we have had. Nothing but rain and cold, cold and rain! It is just ruin for us poor workmen." He drained his glass, and put it down, with a tense Gallic movement of the arm. He failed, somehow, to convey the idea that he was ruined. Such are the triumphs of personality.

"Did the crop fail utterly hereabouts?" I asked.

"Utterly, Monsieur," said Mathilde Duhesme, the innkeeper's daughter, as she brought us our coffee. "Not a bunch of grapes."

Mathilde was a perfectly charming French girl, of the type that you will come upon, here and there, even in the remotest part of that country. England breeds few such women, in her station of life. That easy, graceful manner, and natural amiability and dignity are found here—when they are found at all—only among the educated or the high-born.

"Yes, yes; mon Dieu, you have come in the wrong year for the vines," said the brigand, thumping the table. "You should have chosen a good season. Then lots of visitors come. They come in carts, full of belles anges with gentlemen standing behind in top-hats. And they all take photographs. This very day we ought to have been in full vendange."

His pride would have been solely hurt, had he guessed how little his description allured us.

"Let's drink to a full vendange," said I. Mathilde ran off for another bottle.

"What do you earn, you vignerons, in a good year?"

"Four francs, and a litre of wine, per man, per day. And it is worth it; for we make good stuff here on the hillside, though this village of Auxey is the end of it. Yes, good wines!"

"Tell me more about them," I said.

"The best wines of all are called Aligote, and the second-best—still very good—are called Pinot. The boite ordinaire that grows away there in the plain, is called Gamay. When the Gamay is not red enough, we put it into some Otellot; that's as black as your hat, and colours the rest up beautifully. Do you drink much wine in your country, Monsieur?"

"No, only the rich drink wine in our country. The poor never taste it. They drink mostly beer!"

"Sapristi!"

It was now our turn to be questioned. Mathilde, in particular, was very much interested in my wife's appearance and clothes. Were we married? Were we married in church? Why were we travelling? Were the English peasantry poor, and were they provident?

"More poor than provident," we said.

"Ah! now; the French poor are provident. They kill one pig a year, and lose not a hair of it. First comes the bacon; the fat is used for preparing meat; the blood for pudding; the entrails for sausages. It lasts from winter to winter—ah, Madame is making a picture!"

Madame was sketching the brigand.

"I shall put you into our book," said she. The brigand beamed approval. Five minutes later my wife thoughtlessly gave him the sketch. He tried not to look hurt—he was not, then, to go into the book, after all. Her woman's readiness saved the situation.

"I never forget what I have once drawn," she said.

"Vous y serez quand mÊme." He was quite pacified.

Then we left the men over their wine, while Mathilde took us the round of the church and village. She certainly was a charming person. I am not so sure that we shall live at Beaune after all.

Lest we should entirely forget the Roman occupation that was so much in our minds at Autun, we decided to make a pilgrimage to Cussy, a village due west of Beaune, where the Romans have set up a column, in memory of an event, or of a person, unknown. If a motor car be not available, you can best get there by taking the steam tramway, between Beaune and Arnay-le-Duc, as far as Lusigny; thence by bicycle, or as you will. The journey is worth making, for the sake of the climb you get through the gorge of Nantoux, and up the valley of Mavilly, where the train mounts, by a series of steep zig-zags, into the heart of the CÔte d'Or. The view that opens out is quite Swiss in quality and magnificence. You look from the summit of a gigantic devil's cauldron, down rocky steeps, shaped like cathedral organ-pipes, whose eerie mountain music cheers the vignerons at their work below. All this great expanse of brown, cliff-bound upland, dappled in spring-time with blossoming fruit trees, is curiously chequered by dark hedges and white serpentine roads. Stage by stage the land falls away from you, until all detail is lost, and far away, over range after range of shining hills, the boundless plains of lower Burgundy merge imperceptibly into the sky.

So the train puffs up to the col, then rattles down into the quaint village of Lusigny. The road to Cussy climbs the opposite hill for two kilometres or so, before switchbacking through the village of Montceau to this lovely spot that the Romans, or Gallo-Romans, have so chosen to honour.

Not a human being could we discover in all Cussy. Some destroying angel, I thought, must have passed over, leaving only chickens alive, and, by oversight, one old woman, of whose close-fitting, white cap we caught a glimpse through an open window.

But my wife would not accept that solution.

"No; there has been no destroying angel here. There has just been a most wicked old witch, who, in revenge for some insult, has changed all the villagers into ducks and hens. Let's speak to them. I'm sure they'll answer."

She addressed a lanky, yellow hen, that had left scratching, to watch us. Poised on one leg it stood, with its head bent inquiringly.

"Please, Mrs. Hen; can you tell me the way to the colonne?"—only, of course, it being a French hen—if it was really a hen at all—she spoke to it in French. The hen moved its head to the other side.

"La colonne, Madame, est lÀ bas, dans la prairie."

My wife danced for joy. It was a talking hen. The people were really bewitched! "How lovely!" But I knew all the time that she was wrong. The hen had not spoken—not a word. No such luck. It was that dark girl, who had been watching us from the shed by the house. So we just thanked her, for politeness sake, and walked sadly down the hill towards the Colonne. I looked round. The hen was scratching again.

We found the Colonne at last—a fine one, of the composite Corinthian style, its shaft beautifully ornamented with the favourite Roman leaf pattern. Round the base are eight statues in relief. Every antiquary in the kingdom has puzzled his brains over the motif of this column; and, except CourtepÉe, who says that "selon toute apparence c'est un monument sÉpulcral,"[187] and Lempereur and MontfauÇon, who respectively believed it to be a Gaulish tomb, and a religious monument, all agree that it is in memory of a great victory.

But what victory? One has said that it commemorates the triumph of CÆsar over the Helvetii b.c. 58; another that it was raised by the Emperor Claude, conqueror of the Goths; others believe it to have been erected by the Aedui to Maximian Hercules, after his victory over the Bagaudes in 286 a.d.; finally the Burgundian, Girault, maintains that the monument remembers the victory of Silius over Sacrovir in 22 a.d.[188]

Beyond expressing a doubt whether the column is of later date than 100 a.d., and my conviction that it is triumphal not monumental, I venture no opinion upon any of these interesting theories. The antiquarians must settle that among themselves.

Meanwhile, let me inform the visitor who may find himself there in the autumn, that blackberries of a very choice quality grow in those prairies of the Colonne. I devoured them steadily, while the cows chewed their cud, and my wife sketched. She sketched; but she was not happy, as she usually is when thus occupied. A cruel wind came out of the north, and chilled her to the bone. She shivered; almost she wept. I, too, in spite of blackberries, was all comfortless within, and felt an uncanny sensation in the small of my back.

"Come along, Marjorie; you were quite right. It was the hen who spoke. This place is bewitched." She cheered up.

"How lovely! I was so afraid witches had quite died out."

Then we went home in the gloaming, by the same plucky, cheerful, little train that puffed up the hills, and chattered tumbling down them. Opposite to us, in the dimly-lit, bare apartment, a fat farmer and a slim little sister of mercy slept, nodding in time to the jerks and vibrations that shook them from head to foot.

At the first station a wrinkled old woman, leaning out of the window, held so animated a debate with another on the platform, concerning peaches, that the company were constrained to chip in, as one may do in democratic France. Across the compartment came the laconic tones of an unseen listener.

"Twenty sous the livre, for peaches! eh! ma foi!"

The train started, snorting violently; the old lady sat, firm-lipped, vigilantly on guard among her baskets of fruit. There arose around her a running commentary concerning peaches, and the ethics of trade therein.

"Moi, je vous dis"—"Eh bien moi je vous dis...."

"And half of them were rotten—the robber!" "Et quand mÊme!" The old lady defended herself warmly.

"Rattle, rattle, rattle," commented the train, as it plunged downhill into the pitchy darkness of the valley of Nantoux. Still the passengers babbled. I grew weary of it, and my dreams went back to St. Martin, and the Christianity he planted there. Were they really honest, these chattering peasants? I thought of all the bad money palmed off on us in Burgundy—the Italian, Spanish, Belgian rubbish; any coin at all that your carelessness or trustfulness will accept. I thought of the lumps of lead unblushingly handed to me in the dark by a Paris cabman, on the steps of St. Lazare. I thought ... I yawned ... I joined the fat farmer and the slim nun in dreamland.

"Beaune Ville!" said the guard. And the drowsy company searched vacantly—every man for his pack.

During a hunt for Burgundian lore and legend among the libraries of Beaune, we found ourselves in conversation with a very entertaining bookseller, who described to us his boyhood holidays in the valley of Nantoux, and the legendary haunts of St. Martin.

"Many a summer afternoon," he said, "we spent climbing the valley hills, and playing upon the rock in which is St. Martin's well; and never once, not even in the hottest summers—and some were very hot—did we find the well dry. Always there was water in it. I cannot tell why. But it was so."

Next morning I mounted my bicycle, and went to see for myself, whether, after a week of cloudless October skies, I should find water in St. Martin's well.

Following the valley road as far as Pommard—every name hereabouts is borrowed unblushingly from a wine-list—you turn northward, and, always following the railway, come to the little, grey village of Nantoux, where the valley narrows, until you see, on your right, almost overhanging the road, a ridge of jagged, grey rock, crossing the sparsely-wooded hill. Just before it, on the Nantoux side, at a rather lower elevation, projects another shoulder of the rock. There is the Puits de St. Martin.

If you call a passer-by, or one of the workmen in the roadside quarries, he will show you the way, or take you up. It is not very easy to find without help. You pass the overhanging cliff, and take a narrow path, at the first bend of the road; not the wider one at the top of the slight ascent. I enlisted the services of a brawny, good-tempered, blue-trousered young quarryman, who landed me in a trice upon the terrace of weather-worn rock, known locally as the Saut (leap) de St. Martin. As I stood facing the gorge, my guide pointed to an oval-shaped, red-edged basin, not a foot in diameter, filled, to within a few inches of the surface, with clear water.

"That is St. Martin's Well, Monsieur; it is never empty. And see, here beside it is the mark of his horse's hoofs clear-cut in the rock. Those long marks there were made by the lash of his whip. There are more hoof-prints nearer the edge. He jumped clean across, in one bound. Ma foi! it needed jarrets!"

We looked down at the rough-hewn gashes in the limestone. Gold-green mosses, ivy, and warm, red rock plants were creeping out from every cranny of the terrace, where of old the people beset St. Martin. Elderberry bushes trembled in the breeze.

"Now look down the valley, Monsieur! There is Nantoux, towards the midi where the rains come from. No rain while the sky is clear there. Come now, and see the view up the valley."

Climbing to the topmost northward ridge, we found ourselves standing before a majestic amphitheatre of dusky, brown hills of the CÔte d'Or, whose threatening, almost terrible, aspect suggested rather the wicked brew of a devil's cauldron, than the juice of the merry vines over which black spider workmen were bending. Threatening clouds, driven before a rising wind, darkened with flying shadows the narrow roads that serpented up to the lofty, lonely villages of Mavilly and Mandelot. A rumbling sound broke the silence. Below us we saw, writhing and snorting up the hill, like a legendary, fire-breathing demon, a black train, fouling with wreaths of purple smoke the lovely valley of Nantoux.

We returned to the Puits de St. Martin. Sitting on the very edge of the cliff, we looked across at the wooded hill where the Saint alit, and down the road, over the scrub, the vines, and the red quarries, still echoing the sound of the pick; over the winding row of silvery willows and dark alders that mark the valley stream bubbling towards the welcoming roofs of Beaune.

There, in the very spot where it happened, the young quarryman told me the story of St. Martin's Well. But I shall tell it you in my words, not his—for story-telling was not his forte.

In the second century of the Christian era, Saint BÉnigne and his companions, coming from Asia, brought the Gospel of Christ into Burgundy. The good news spread rapidly through the towns, but gained only a slow hearing in the villages and the hamlets. Idol worship, driven from the cities, found refuge among the remote hills and valleys of the land.

Mavilly, which, for centuries past, had possessed a college of Druids, remained faithful to its gods, its priests, and its temple. Vauchignon, too, whose hills, rocks, and woods, full of murmuring sounds and mysterious terrors, was one of those natural sanctuaries dear to the heart of the Gaul, still practised the heathen cult.[189]

It is a warm autumn day; the holy missionary, Saint Martin, whose good horse has borne him over the rugged mountain which rises between Mavilly and the plain, has passed, one by one, through the villages of the CÔte d'Or. At a crossing of the ways, in the midst of a great wood, he meets a little, ragged, red-haired man, with fiery eyes and an anxious countenance. The bishop offers him alms.

"Keep your silver piece," replies the stranger, "for I am more rich than you."

Saint Martin, taking him for a herdsman of the country, asks him the way to Mavilly.

"I know your object," replies the unknown man, laying hold upon the horse's bridle, "and I will be your guide."

They go on in silence, and come, at length, to the slope of a vine-covered hill where peasants are busy at the vintage. Martin, like Boaz of old in the fields, salutes them:—"The Lord be with you!"

"Vintagers!" cries the guide, "Come hither in haste; I bring you the great enemy of the gods. This man, on his way, destroys their statues and breaks down their altars; he is come to destroy the temple that is the glory and safety of your country. Rise and defend your gods!"

The angry peasants come running towards the speaker. They surround the Saint and threaten him with the billhooks with which they are cutting the grapes. Serenely the aged bishop looks round upon them; his calmness disarms their anger. He is about to speak to them, but the red man knows well that his cause is lost, if once the missionary obtains a hearing.

"Let us shut his impious mouth!" he cries to the vintagers. "His blasphemies will bring down upon us the wrath of heaven. Cry aloud, 'Death! death to the denouncer of the gods!' Away with him to the edge of the cliff, and hurl him down into the torrent!"

Loud rise the angry shouts of the crowd, as the guide leads away the horse. Already they have reached the brink of the abyss. All is over; the saint must die. Hemmed about on all sides, Martin cries:

"Come to my aid, O my God! make haste to help me!"

He signs himself with the cross, strikes, with his whip, the rock and the flanks of his horse. The animal, with one mighty bound, clears the valley, and alights upon the opposite peak. Immediately, around the spot which he has just left, the earth trembles with an awful rending sound; a rock is torn from the flank of the hill, and plunges into the torrent beneath, bearing with it the false prophet, whose fall is marked by a flash of sulphurous lightning. The troubled waters boil and bubble, as they close over his body.

At the sight of such wonders, the vintagers stand dumb with astonishment. Imprinted upon the granite rock they see the stroke of the rider's whip, and the hoof-print of his horse, from which, already, a stream of limpid water is flowing.

The old man, calm and majestic as before, standing motionless upon the opposite peak, casts upon the peasants a compassionate glance. Terror-stricken, they acclaim him a divine being. Then, swarming down the mountain path to the valley, they climb the opposite peak, and again surround him. But, this time, they lie prostrate at his feet, and, with prayers for pardon, are about to adore him.

"Rise," says the bishop; "I am but a mortal, a vintager of Christ; and your souls are the grapes I have come to gather in His name."

He bids them sit down upon the hill side, and there, before the temple of the false gods, on the brink of the abyss into which Satan fell lightning-struck, he speaks to them of the emptiness of their past worship, and reveals the power, the beauty, and the tenderness of the God of the Gospel. The peasants, won at last from Paganism, descend to the temple, overthrow the images, and bury them in many a deep trench.[190] They would destroy the temple itself, but the pontiff restrains them.

"Not so; let us offer it to the true God, as a trophy won from the powers of darkness; let Jesus be adored upon the altar whence Jupiter has fallen; and let the Virgin Immaculate stand in the place of Venus."

"Be it so," replies the crowd, with one voice; "Let Christ reign and rule, here where He has overthrown the Devil."