words on his tombstone, written thus, 'S. Viar,' prove him no saint,
but a good old nameless heathen, and 'praefectus Viarum,' or overseer
of roads (would he were back to earth, and paganizing of our Christian
roads!), or as our St. Veronica of Benasco, which Veronica is a
dunce-like corruption of the 'Vera icon,' which this saint brought
into the church. I wish it may not be as unreal as the donor, Or as the
eleven thousand virgins of Cologne, who were but a couple."

Clement interrupted him to inquire what he meant. "I have spoken with
those have seen their bones."

"What, of eleven thousand virgins all collected in one place and at one
time? Do but bethink thee, Clement. Not one of the great Eastern cities
of antiquity could collect eleven thousand Pagan virgins at one time,
far less a puny Western city. Eleven thousand Christian virgins in a
little, wee, Paynim city!

'Quod cunque ostendis mihi sic incredulus odi.'

The simple sooth is this. The martyrs were two: the Breton princess
herself, falsely called British, and her maid, Onesimilla, which is
a Greek name, Onesima, diminished. This some fool did mis-pronounce
undecim mille, eleven thousand: loose tongue found credulous ears, and
so one fool made many; eleven thousand of them, an' you will. And you
charge me with credulity, Jerome? and bid me read the Lives of the
Saints. Well, I have read them, and many a dear old Pagan acquaintance
I found there. The best fictions in the book are Oriental, and are known
to have been current in Persia and Arabia eight hundred years and more
before the dates the Church assigns to them as facts. As for the true
Western figments, they lack the Oriental plausibility. Think you I am
credulous enough to believe that St. Ida joined a decapitated head to
its body? that Cuthbert's carcass directed his bearers where to go, and
where to stop; that a city was eaten up of rats to punish one Hatto
for comparing the poor to mice; that angels have a little horn in
their foreheads, and that this was seen and recorded at the time by
St. Veronica of Benasco, who never existed, and hath left us this
information and a miraculous handkercher? For my part, I think the
holiest woman the world ere saw must have an existence ere she can have
a handkercher or an eye to take unicorns for angels. Think you I believe
that a brace of lions turned sextons and helped Anthony bury Paul of
Thebes? that Patrick, a Scotch saint, stuck a goat's beard on all th