mit's rule was more strict or more ancient
than this. And here his self-imposed penance embarrassed him, for
what work could he do, without being seen, that should benefit his
neighbours? for the hermit was to labour for himself in those cases only
where his subsistence depended on it. Now Clement's modest needs were
amply supplied by the villagers.

On moonlight nights he would steal out like a thief, and dig some
poor man's garden on the outskirts of the village. He made baskets and
dropped them slily at humble doors.

And since he could do nothing for the bodies of those who passed by his
cell in daytime, he went out in the dead of the night with his hammer
and his chisel, and carved moral and religious sentences all down the
road upon the sandstone rocks. "Who knows?" said he, "often a chance
shaft strikes home."

Oh, sore heart, comfort thou the poor and bereaved with holy words of
solace in their native tongue; for he said "well, 'tis 'clavis ad corda
plebis.'" Also he remembered the learned Colonna had told him of
the written mountains in the east, where kings had inscribed their
victories, "What," said Clement, "are they so wise, those Eastern
monarchs, to engrave their war-like glory upon the rock, making a blood
bubble endure so long as earth; and shall I leave the rocks about me
silent on the King of Glory, at whose word they were, and at whose
breath they shall be dust? Nay, but these stones shall speak to weary
wayfarers of eternal peace, and of the Lamb, whose frail and afflicted
yet happy servant worketh them among."

Now at this time the inspired words that have consoled the poor and the
afflicted for so many ages were not yet printed in Dutch, so that these
sentences of gold from the holy evangelists came like fresh oracles
from heaven, or like the dew on parched flowers; and the poor hermit's
written rocks softened a heart Or two, and sent the heavy laden singing
on their way(1).

These holy oracles that seemed to spring up around him like magic; his
prudent answers through his window to such as sought ghostly counsel;
and above all, his invisibility, soon gained him a prodigious
reputation, This was not diminished by the medical advice they now and
then extorted from him sore against his will, by tears and entreaties;
for if the patients got well they gave the holy hermit the credit, and
if not they laid all the blame on the devil. "I think he killed nobody,
for his remedies were womanish and we