some grain of fact
(sprouting a hundred-fold) cast on good ground by a visible and
unforgettable piece of St. Martin's actual behaviour in high company;
while, as a myth, it is every whit and for ever valuable and
comprehensive.

St. Martin, then, as the tale will have it, was dining one day at the
highest of tables in the terrestrial globe--namely, with the Emperor and
Empress of Germany! You need not inquire what Emperor, or which of the
Emperor's wives! The Emperor of Germany is, in all early myths, the
expression for the highest sacred power of the State, as the Pope is the
highest sacred power of the Church. St. Martin was dining then, as
aforesaid, with the Emperor, of course sitting next him on his
left--Empress opposite on his right: everything orthodox. St. Martin
much enjoying his dinner, and making himself generally agreeable to the
company: not in the least a John Baptist sort of a saint. You are aware
also that in Royal feasts in those days persons of much inferior rank in
society were allowed in the hall: got behind people's chairs, and saw
and heard what was going on, while they unobtrusively picked up crumbs,
and licked trenchers.

When the dinner was a little forward, and time for wine came, the
Emperor fills his own cup--fills the Empress's--fills St.
Martin's,--affectionately hobnobs with St. Martin. The equally loving,
and yet more truly believing, Empress, looks across the table, humbly,
but also royally, expecting St. Martin, of course, next to hobnob with
_her_. St. Martin looks round, first, deliberately; becomes aware of a
tatterdemalion and thirsty-looking soul of a beggar at his chair side,
who has managed to get _his_ cup filled somehow, also--by a charitable
lacquey.

St. Martin turns his back on the Empress, and hobnobs with _him_!

For which charity--mythic if you like, but evermore exemplary--he
remains, as aforesaid, the patron of good-Christian topers to this
hour.

As gathering years told upon him, he seems to have felt that he had
carried weight of crozier long enough--that busy Tours must now find a
busier Bishop--that, for himself, he might innocently henceforward take
his pleasure and his rest where the vine grew and the lark sang. For his
episcopal palace, he takes a little cave in the chalk cliffs of the
up-country river: arranges all matters therein, for bed and board, at
small cost. Night by night the stream murmurs to him, day by day the
vine-leaves give their shade; an