the
legend "_Emporte par Miracle_." It is said, too, that in former times
the prints of his hands on the stone window-sill, and of his naked feet
on the rock below, were both plainly visible. Eight hundred years
later the good Father Pierre Verre celebrated mass in the old room in
which Bernard was confined; and he reports at that time there was both
on the window-sill and on the rock below only the merest trace of the
imprints left by Bernard. One could not then "even be sure that they
were made by hand or foot." But the chronicle wisely says: "Time, in
effacing these marks and rendering them doubtful, has never effaced the
tradition of the fact among the people of Annecy."

In the morning, consternation reigned within the castle. The Lord of
Menthon was filled with disgust, shame, and confusion. The Lord of
Miolans thought that he and his daughter were the victims of a trick,
and he would take no explanation or excuse. Only the sword might
efface the stain upon his honor. The marriage feast would have ended
in a scene of blood were it not, according to the chronicle, that "God,
always admirable in His saints," sent as an angel of peace the very
person who had been most cruelly wronged. The Lady of Miolans,
"_sponsa pulchra_" beyond a doubt, took up the cause of her delinquent
bridegroom, whom God had called, she said, to take some nobler part.
When peace had been made, she followed his example, taking the veil in
a neighboring convent, where, after many years of virtuous living, she
died, full of days and full of merits. "_Sponsa ipsius_," so the
record says, "_in qua sancte et religiose dies suos clausit_"; a bride
who in sanctity and religious days closed her life.

Meanwhile, beyond the Graian Alps and beyond the reach of his father's
information, Bernard was safe. In Aosta he was kindly received by
Pierre, the Archdeacon. He entered into the service of the church, and
there, in spite of his humility and his self-abasement, he won the
favor of all with whom he had to deal. "God wills," the chronicle
says, "that His ministers should shine by their sanctity and their
science." "Saint Paul commends prudence, gravity, modesty,
unselfishness, and hospitality," and to these precepts Bernard was ever
faithful. He lived in the simplest way, like a hermit in his personal
relations, but never out of the life of the world. He was not a man
eager to save his own soul only, but the bodies and souls of his
nei