thed triumphantly with flowers like a
floating garden, which were then bringing down the vintage from the
country; but generally the people believed their strange enemy now at
last departed for ever. Denys in truth was at work again in peace at
the cloister, upon his house of reeds and pipes. At times his fits came
upon him again; and when they came, for his cure he would dig eagerly,
turned sexton now, digging, by choice, graves for the dead in the
various churchyards of the town. There were those who had seen him thus
employed (that form seeming still to carry something of real sun-gold
upon it) peering into the darkness, while his tears fell sometimes
among the grim relics his mattock had disturbed.

In fact, from the day of the exhumation of the body of the Saint in the
great church, he had had a wonderful curiosity for such objects, and
one wintry day bethought him of removing the body of his mother from
the unconsecrated ground in which it lay, that he might bury it in the
cloister, near the spot where he was now used to work. At twilight he
came over the frozen snow. As he passed through the stony barriers of
the place the world around seemed curdled to the centre--all but
himself, fighting his way across it, turning now and then right-about
from the persistent wind, which dealt so roughly with his blond hair
and the purple mantle whirled about him. The bones, hastily gathered,
he placed, awefully but without ceremony, in a hollow space prepared
secretly within the grave of another.

Meantime the winds of his organ were ready to blow; and with difficulty
he obtained grace from the Chapter for a trial of its powers on a
notable public occasion, as follows. A singular guest was expected at
Auxerre. In recompense for some service rendered to the Chapter in
times gone by, the Sire de Chastellux had the hereditary dignity of a
canon of the church. On the day of his reception he presented himself
at the entrance of the choir in surplice and amice, worn over the
military habit. The old count of Chastellux was lately dead, and the
heir had announced his coming, according to custom, to claim his
ecclesiastical privilege. There had been long feud between the houses
of Chastellux and Auxerre; but on this happy occasion an offer of peace
came with a proposal for the hand of the Lady Ariane.

The goodly young man arrived, and, duly arrayed, was received into his
stall at vespers, the bishop assisting. It was then that the p