ak." Sage and wormwood, sion,
hyssop, borage, spikenard, dog's-tongue, our Lady's mantle, feverfew,
and Faith, and all in small quantities except the last.

Then his abstinence, sure sign of a saint. The eggs and milk they
brought him at first he refused with horror. Know ye not the hermit's
rule is bread, or herbs, and water? Eggs, they are birds in disguise;
for when the bird dieth, then the egg rotteth. As for milk, it is little
better than white blood. And when they brought him too much bread he
refused it. Then they used to press it on him. "Nay, holy father; give
the overplus to the poor."

"You who go among the poor can do that better. Is bread a thing to fling
haphazard from an hermit's window?" And to those who persisted after
this: "To live on charity, yet play Sir Bountiful, is to lie with the
right hand. Giving another's to the poor, I should beguile them of their
thanks, and cheat thee the true giver. Thus do thieves, whose boast it
is they bleed the rich into the lap of the poor. Occasio avaritiae nomen
pauperum."

When nothing else would convince the good souls, this piece of Latin
always brought them round. So would a line of Virgil's Aeneid.

This great reputation of sanctity was all external. Inside the cell was
a man who held the hermit of Gouda as cheap as dirt.

"Ah!" said he, "I cannot deceive myself; I cannot deceive God's animals.
See the little birds, how coy they be; I feed and feed them, and long
for their friendship, yet will they never come within, nor take my hand,
by lighting on't. For why? No Paul, no Benedict, no Hugh of Lincoln, no
Columba, no Guthlac bides in this cell. Hunted doe flieth not hither,
for here is no Fructuosus, nor Aventine, nor Albert of Suabia; nor e'en
a pretty squirrel cometh from the wood hard by for the acorns I have
hoarded; for here abideth no Columban. The very owl that was here hath
fled. They are not to be deceived; I have a Pope's word for that; Heaven
rest his soul."

Clement had one advantage over her whose image in his heart he was bent
on destroying.

He had suffered and survived the pang of bereavement, and the mind
cannot quite repeat such anguish. Then he had built up a habit of
looking on her as dead. After that strange scene in the church and
churchyard of St. Laurens, that habit might be compared to a structure
riven by a thunderbolt. It was shattered, but stones enough stood to
found a similar habit on; to look on her as dead to him.

And