f the thoroughness with which Bernard performed his work,
it is told that a spiritualist who took pleasure in tipping tables came
through the pass in 1857. The monks were incredulous of his powers,
and he wished to convince them by an actual experience. His efforts
were all in vain. The tables, the record tells us, were quiet as the
rocks. The traveler, astonished, said: "This is the first time they
have failed to obey me." And thus, says the record, the pledge of
Saint Nicholas was accomplished. The enemy had never more an entrance
into the mountain.

When Bernard and his followers reached Mont Joux, they found the
mountain filled with fog and storm, but his heart was undaunted.
Passing boldly between the guards of the temple, he flung, so the story
says, his blessed stole over the neck of the statue of Jupiter. It
changed at once into an iron chain, against which the statue, now
become a huge demon-monster, struggled in vain. The good man
overturned it and flung it at his feet. With the same chain he bound
the high priest who guarded the demon. The struggle was short, but
decisive. In a few minutes, so the chronicle says, Bernard had
banished the demon of Mont Joux and his accomplices to eternal snow and
ice to the end of time, and had commanded them to cease forever their
evil doings on the mountain.

An old painting in the Hospice shows this scene in vivid portrait.
Bernard stands erect and fearless, his fine face lit up by celestial
zeal, his bare head surrounded by a halo, a pilgrim's staff in his
right hand, the stole, now become a chain, in his left, while one foot
is on the breast of the demon, which gasps helpless at his feet. The
demon has the body of a man, covered with a wolf's rough, shaggy hair,
his fingers and toes ending in sharp claws, a long tail, rough and
scaly, like the tail of a rat, coiled snake-like above his legs, the
head and ears of a wolf, the horns of a goat, and on his back an
indefinable outgrowth, perhaps the framework of a horrible pair of
wings, its long tongue thrust out from between its bloody teeth. He
was certainly a gruesome creature.

[Illustration: Saint Bernard and the demon.]

And thus it came to pass in the year 970, in the place of the temple of
Jupiter Pen, but at the other end of the lake, and in the very summit
of the pass, was built the Hospice of the Great Saint Bernard. From
that day to this, almost a thousand years, the work of doing good to
men has