of
a goatskin that hung in a tavern. During the night the leather bottle,
full of wine, capered through the town up to the witch's door. This fact
is undoubted. And in sacraments as in enchantments it is the form which
operates. The effect of a divine formula cannot be less in power and
extent than the effect of an infernal formula."

Having spoken in this fashion the great St. Augustine sat down amidst
applause.

One of the blessed, of an advanced age and having a melancholy
appearance, asked permission to speak. No one knew him. His name was
Probus, and he was not enrolled in the canon of the saints.

"I beg the company's pardon," said he, "I have no halo, and I gained
eternal blessedness without any eminent distinction. But after what the
great St. Augustine has just told you I believe it right to impart a
cruel experience, which I had, relative to the conditions necessary for
the validity of a sacrament. The bishop of Hippo is indeed right in what
he said. A sacrament depends on the form; its virtue is in its form;
its vice is in its form. Listen, confessors and pontiffs, to my woeful
story. I was a priest in Rome under the rule of the Emperor Gordianus.
Without desiring to recommend myself to you for any special merit, I may
say that I exercised my priesthood with piety and zeal. For forty years
I served the church of St. Modestus-beyond-the-Walls. My habits were
regular. Every Saturday I went to a tavern-keeper called Barjas, who
dwelt with his wine-jars under the Porta Capena, and from him I bought
the wine that I consecrated daily throughout the week. During that long
space of time I never failed for a single morning to consecrate the holy
sacrifice of the mass. However, I had no joy, and it was with a heart
oppressed by sorrow that, on the steps of the altar I used to ask, 'Why
art thou so heavy, O my soul, and why art thou so disquieted within
me?' The faithful whom I invited to the holy table gave me cause for
affliction, for having, so to speak, the Host that I administered still
upon their tongues, they fell again into sin just as if the sacrament
had been without power or efficacy. At last I reached the end of my
earthly trials, and failing asleep in the Lord, I awoke in this abode
of the elect. I learned then from the mouth of the angel who brought me
here, that Barjas, the tavern-keeper of the Porta Capena, had sold for
wine a decoction of roots and barks in which there was not a single drop
of the ju