addressed them in words so soft and sweet, so affable and ingratiating,
so gentle and courteous, it seemed rather the music of the spheres than
human speech.

"Oh, little angels!" sighed the good old man. "Oh, my dear little
angels! Oh, my pretty gold sheep, with the fine, precious fleece!"

And taking the pieces between his fingers with as much reverence as it
had been the body of Our Lord, he put them in the balance and made sure
they were of the full weight,--or very near, albeit a trifle clipped
already by the Lombards and the Jews, through whose hands they had
passed. After which he spoke to them yet more graciously than before:

"Oh, my pretty sheep, my sweet, pretty lambs, there, let me shear you!
'T will do you no hurt at all."

Then, seizing his great scissors, he clipped off shreds of gold here and
there, as he was used to clip every piece of money before parting with
it. And he gathered the clippings carefully in a wooden bowl that was
already half full of bits of gold. He was ready to give twelve angels
to the Holy Virgin; but he felt no way bound to depart from his use and
wont. This done, he went to the aumry where his pledges lay, and drew
out a little blue purse, broidered with silver, which a dame of the
petty trading sort had left with him in her distress. He remembered that
blue and white are Our Lady's colours.

That day and the next he did nothing further. But in the night, betwixt
Monday and Tuesday, he had cramps, and dreamt the devils were pulling
him by the feet. This he took for a warning of God and our Blessed Lady,
tarried within doors pondering the matter all the day, and then toward
evening went to lay his offering at the feet of the Black Virgin.

III

[Illustration: 051]

THAT same day, as night was closing in, Florent Guillaume thought
ruefully of returning to his airy bedchamber. He had fasted the livelong
day, sore against the grain, holding that a good Christian ought not to
fast in the glorious Resurrection week. Before mounting to his bed in
the steeple, he went to offer a pious prayer to the Lady of Le Puy. She
was still there in the midst of the Church at the spot where she had
offered herself on the Grand Friday to the veneration of the Faithful.
Small and black, crowned with jewels, in a mantle blazing with gold and
precious stones and pearls, she held on her knees the Child Jesus, who
was as black as his mother and passed his head through a slit in her
cloak. It