Project Gutenberg's The Miracle Of The Great St. Nicolas, by Anatole France

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Title: The Miracle Of The Great St. Nicolas
1920

Author: Anatole France

Editor: James Lewis May And Bernard Miall

Translator: D. B. Stewart

Release Date: May 9, 2008 [EBook #25410]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT ST. NICOLAS ***

Produced by David Widger

THE MIRACLE OF THE GREAT ST. NICOLAS

From "The Seven Wives Of Bluebeard & Other Marvellous Tales"

By Anatole France

Translated by D. B. Stewart

Edited By James Lewis May And Bernard Miall

John Lane Company MCMXX

ST. NICOLAS, Bishop of Myra in Lycia, lived in the time of Constantine
the Great. The most ancient and weighty of those authors who have
mentioned him celebrate his virtues, his labours, and his worth: they
give abundant proofs of his sanctity; but none of them records the
miracle of the salting-tub. Nor is it mentioned in the Golden Legend.
This silence is important: still one does not willingly consent to throw
doubt upon a fact so widely known, which is attested by the ballad which
all the world knows:

"There were three little children
In the fields they went to glean."

This famous text expressly states that a cruel pork-butcher put
the innocents "like pigs into the salting-vat." That is to say, he
apparently preserved them, cut into pieces, in a bath of brine. This is,
to be sure, how pork is cured: but one is surprised to read further on
that the three little children remained seven years in pickle, whereas
it is usual to begin withdrawing the pieces of flesh from the tub, with
a wooden fork, at the end of about six weeks. The text is explicit:
according to the elegy, it was seven years after the crime that St.
Nicolas entered the accursed hostelry. He asked for supper. The landlord
offered him a piece of ham:

"'Wilt eat of ham? Tis dainty food.'
'I'll have no ham: it is not good.
'Wilt cat a piece of tender veal?
'I will not make of that my meal.
Young salted flesh I want, and that
Has lain seven years within the vat.
Wheras the butcher heard this said