ter
how marvellous. It is written out, broidered with his dull rhetoric,
and spoilt a little. But now it has come forth, confirmed and
consecrated, to be read in the refectory, ere long in the church.
Copied, loaded and overloaded with ornaments chiefly grotesque, it
will go on from age to age, until at last it comes to take high rank
in the Golden Legend.

* * * * *

When those fair stories are read again to us in these days, even as we
listen to the simple, grave, artless airs into which those rural
peoples threw all their young heart, we cannot help marking a great
inspiration; and we are moved to pity as we reflect upon their fate.

They had taken literally the touching advice of the Church: "Be ye as
newborn babes." But they gave to it a meaning, the very last that one
would dream of finding in the original thought. As much as
Christianity feared and hated Nature, even so much did these others
cherish her, deeming her all guileless, hallowing her even in the
legends wherewith they mingled her up.

Those _hairy_ animals, as the Bible sharply calls them, animals
mistrusted by the monks who fear to find devils among them, enter in
the most touching way into these beautiful stories; as the hind, for
instance, who refreshes and comforts Genevieve of Brabant.

Even outside the life of legends, in the common everyday world, the
humble friends of his hearth, the bold helpmates of his work, rise
again in man's esteem. They have their own laws,[9] their own
festivals. If in God's unbounded goodness there is room for the
smallest creatures, if He seems to show them a pitying preference,
"Wherefore," says the countryman, "should my ass not have entered the
church? Doubtless, he has his faults, wherein he only resembles me the
more. He is a rough worker, but has a hard head; is intractable,
stubborn, headstrong; in short, just like myself."

[9] See J. Grimm, _Rechts Alterthuemer_, and my _Origines du
Droit_.

Thence come those wonderful feasts, the fairest of the Middle Ages;
feasts of _Innocents_, of _Fools_, of the _Ass_. It is the people
itself, moreover, which, in the shape of an ass, draws about its own
image, presents itself before the altar, ugly, comical, abased.
Verily, a touching sight! Led by Balaam, he enters solemnly between
Virgil and the Sibyl;[10] enters that he may bear witness. If he
kicked of yore against Balaam, it was that before him he beheld the
sword of t