also had not felt himself mad! But when the guilt of a murder,
committed with a great vine-axe far out among the vineyards, was
attributed vaguely to him, he could but wonder whether it had been
indeed thus, and the shadow of a fancied crime abode with him. People
turned against their favourite, whose former charms must now be counted
only as the fascinations of witchcraft. It was as if the wine poured
out for them had soured in the cup. The golden age had indeed come back
for a while:--golden was it, or gilded only, after all? and they were
too sick, or at least too serious, to carry through their parts in it.
The monk Hermes was whimsically reminded of that after-thought in pagan
poetry, of a Wine-god who had been in hell. Denys certainly, with all
his flaxen fairness about him, was manifestly a sufferer. At first he
thought of departing secretly to some other place. Alas! his wits were
too far gone for certainty of success in the attempt. He feared to be
brought back a prisoner. Those fat years were over. It was a time of
scarcity. The working people might not eat and drink of the good things
they had helped to store away. Tears rose in the eyes of needy
children, of old or weak people like children, as they woke up again
and again to sunless, frost-bound, ruinous mornings; and the little
hungry creatures went prowling after scattered hedge-nuts or dried
vine-tendrils. Mysterious, dark rains prevailed throughout the summer.
The great offices of Saint John were fumbled through in a sudden
darkness of unseasonable storm, which greatly damaged the carved
ornaments of the church, the bishop reading his mid-day Mass by the
light of the little candle at his book. And then, one night, the night
which seemed literally to have swallowed up the shortest day in the
year, a plot was contrived by certain persons to take Denys as he went
and kill him privately for a sorcerer. He could hardly tell how he
escaped, and found himself safe in his earliest home, the cottage in
the cliff-side, with such a big fire as he delighted in burning upon
the hearth. They made a little feast as well as they could for the
beautiful hunted creature, with abundance of waxlights.

And at last the clergy bethought themselves of a remedy for this evil
time. The body of one of the patron saints had lain neglected somewhere
under the flagstones of the sanctuary. This must be piously exhumed,
and provided with a shrine worthy of it. The goldsmiths, the jew