ellers
and lapidaries, set diligently to work, and no long time after, the
shrine, like a little cathedral with portals and tower complete, stood
ready, its chiselled gold framing panels of rock crystal, on the great
altar. Many bishops arrived, with King Lewis the Saint himself
accompanied by his mother, to assist at the search for and disinterment
of the sacred relics. In their presence, the Bishop of Auxerre, with
vestments of deep red in honour of the relics, blessed the new shrine,
according to the office De benedictione capsarum pro reliquiis. The
pavement of the choir, removed amid a surging sea of lugubrious chants,
all persons fasting, discovered as if it had been a battlefield of
mouldering human remains. Their odour rose plainly above the plentiful
clouds of incense, such as was used in the king's private chapel. The
search for the Saint himself continued in vain all day and far into the
night. At last from a little narrow chest, into which the remains had
been almost crushed together, the bishop's red-gloved hands drew the
dwindled body, shrunken inconceivably, but still with every feature of
the face traceable in a sudden oblique ray of ghastly dawn.

That shocking sight, after a sharp fit as though a demon were going out
of him, as he rolled on the turf of the cloister to which he had fled
alone from the suffocating church, where the crowd still awaited the
Procession of the relics and the Mass De reliquiis quae continentur in
Ecclesiis, seemed indeed to have cured the madness of Denys, but
certainly did not restore his gaiety. He was left a subdued, silent,
melancholy creature. Turning now, with an odd revulsion of feeling, to
gloomy objects, he picked out a ghastly shred from the common bones on
the pavement to wear about his neck, and in a little while found his
way to the monks of Saint Germain, who gladly received him into their
workshop, though secretly, in fear of his foes.

The busy tribe of variously gifted artists, labouring rapidly at the
many works on hand for the final embellishment of the cathedral of St.
Etienne, made those conventual buildings just then cheerful enough to
lighten a melancholy, heavy even as that of our friend Denys. He took
his place among the workmen, a conventual novice; a novice also as to
whatever concerns any actual handicraft. He could but compound sweet
incense for the sanctuary. And yet, again by merely visible presence,
he made himself felt in all the varied exerc