; but generally the people [74] 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 [75] 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 people
heard the music of the organ, rolling over them for the first time,
with various feeli