he invading
Teutons was never really checked, save by the priest and the monk who
worshipped over the bones of some old saint or martyr, whose name the
Teutons had never heard.

Then, as the wild King, Earl, or Comes, with his wild reiters at his
heels, galloped through the land, fighting indiscriminately his Roman
enemies, and his Teutonic rivals--harrying, slaughtering, burning by
field and wild--he was aware at last of something which made him pause.
Some little walled town, built on the ruins of a great Roman city, with
its Byzantine minster towering over the thatched roofs, sheltering them
as the oak shelters the last night's fungus at its base. More than once
in the last century or two, has that same town been sacked. More than
once has the surviving priest crawled out of his hiding-place when the
sound of war was past, called the surviving poor around him, dug the dead
out of the burning ruins for Christian burial, built up a few sheds, fed
a few widows and orphans, organized some form of orderly life out of the
chaos of blood and ashes, in the name of God and St. Quemdeusvult whose
bones he guards; and so he has established a temporary theocracy, and
become a sort of tribune of the people, magistrate and father--the only
one they have. And now he will try the might of St. Quemdeusvult against
the wild king, and see if he can save the town from being sacked once
more. So out he comes--a bishop perhaps, with priests, monks,
crucifixes, banners, litanies. The wild king must come no further. That
land belongs to no mortal man, but to St. Quemdeusvult, martyred here by
the heathen five hundred years ago. Some old Kaiser of Rome, or it may
be some former Gothic king, gave that place to the saint for ever, and
the saint will avenge his rights. He is very merciful to those who duly
honour him: but very terrible in his wrath if he be aroused. Has not the
king heard how the Count of such a place, only forty years before, would
have carried off a maiden from St. Quemdeusvult's town; and when the
bishop withstood him, he answered that he cared no more for the relics of
the saint than for the relics of a dead ass, and so took the maiden and
went? But within a year and a day, he fell down dead in his drink, and
when they came to lay out the corpse, behold the devils had carried it
away, and put a dead ass in its place.

All which the bishop would fully believe. Why not? He had no physical
science to tell him that