proffering pardon of all sins to such as would add to
the Ave Mary this clause: "and blessed be thy Mother Anna, from whom,
without blot of sin, proceeded thy virgin flesh."

Gerard, in common with many of the northern clergy, held this sentence
to be flat heresy. He not only refused to utter it in his church, but
warned his parishioners against using it in private; and he refused to
celebrate the new feast the Pope invented at the same time, viz., "the
feast of the miraculous conception of the Virgin."

But this drew upon him the bitter enmity of the Franciscans, and they
were strong enough to put him into more than one serious difficulty, and
inflict many a little mortification on him. In emergencies he consulted
Margaret, and she always did one of two things, either she said, "I do
not see my way," and refused to guess; or else she gave him advice that
proved wonderfully sagacious. He had genius, but she had marvellous
tact.

And where affection came in and annihilated the woman's judgment, he
stepped in his turn to her aid. Thus though she knew she was spoiling
little Gerard, and Catherine was ruining him for life, she would not
part with him, but kept him at home, and his abilities uncultivated. And
there was a shrewd boy of nine years, instead of learning to work
and obey, playing about and learning selfishness from their infinite
unselfishness, and tyrannizing with a rod of iron over two women, both
of them sagacious and spirited, but reduced by their fondness for him to
the exact level of idiots.

Gerard saw this with pain, and interfered with mild but firm
remonstrance; and after a considerable struggle prevailed, and got
little Gerard sent to the best school in Europe, kept by one Haaghe at
Deventer: this was in 1477. Many tears were shed, but the great progress
the boy made at that famous school reconciled Margaret in some degree,
and the fidelity of Reicht Heynes, now her partner in business, enabled
her to spend weeks at a time hovering over her boy at Deventer.

And so the years glided; and these two persons, subjected to as strong
and constant a temptation as can well be conceived, were each other's
guardian angels, and not each other's tempters.

To be sure the well-greased morality of the next century, which taught
that solemn vows to God are sacred in proportion as they are reasonable,
had at that time entered no single mind; and the alternative to these
two minds was self-denial or sacrilege.