table, he
would seat himself on the ground in the midst of them, and read to them
the lives of the saints. God bestowed on him a divine light, by which he
often told others their secret thoughts. The author of his life gives a
long history of miracles which he wrought. But the conversions of many
obstinate sinners were still more miraculous: it seemed as if no heart
could resist the grace which accompanied his words.

Two cardinals coming into France, as legates to the king from the pope,
one of whom was afterwards pope Innocent II., paid the saint a visit to
his desert. They asked him whether he was a canon, a monk, or a hermit.
He said he was none of those. Being pressed to declare what he was: "We
are sinners," said he, "whom the mercy of God hath conducted into this
wilderness to do penance. The pope himself hath imposed on us these
exercises, at our request, for our sins. Our imperfection and frailty
deprive us of courage to imitate the fervor of those holy hermits who
lived in divine contemplation almost without any thought for their
bodies. You see that we neither wear the habit of monks nor of canons.
We are still further from usurping those names, which we respect and
honor at a distance in the persons of the priests, and in the sanctity
of the monks. We are poor, wretched sinners, who, terrified at the rigor
of the divine justice, still hope, with trembling, by this means, to
find mercy from our Lord Jesus Christ in the day of his judgment." The
legates departed exceedingly edified at what they saw and heard. Eight
days after the saint was admonished by God of the end of his mortal
course, after which he most earnestly sighed. He redoubled his fervor in
all his exercises, and falling sick soon after, gave his disciples his
last instructions, and exhorted them to a lively confidence in God, to
whom he recommended them by a humble prayer. His exhortation was so
moving and strong that it dispelled their fears in losing him, and they
seemed to enter into his own sentiments. He caused himself to be carried
into the chapel, where he heard mass, received extreme unction and the
viaticum: and on the 8th day of February, 1124, being fourscore years
old, expired in peace, repeating those words: "_Lord, into thy hands I
commend my spirit_." He had passed in his desert fifty years, bating two
months. His disciples buried him privately, to prevent the crowds of
people breaking in. But the news of his death drew incredible n