ically, and they told him the story of their lost son.
Bernard spoke to them tenderly of the work to which God must have
called him. He told them they should rejoice that their child had been
found worthy of his purposes, and after a time they seemed to become
reconciled, and felt that He doeth all things well. Then Bernard told
them who he was, and when after many days they went away from the
Hospice, they left the money to build in each of them a chapel.

Bernard died in the year 1007, at the age of eighty-three. His last
words were these: "O Lord, I give my soul into thy hands." The words,
"The saint is dead," passed on from mouth to mouth throughout these
Alpine regions. The peasants had canonized him already a hundred years
before the sanctity of his work was officially recognized at Rome.

The story of his burial is again marked by miracles. Rich men vied
with each other in making funeral offerings. One gave him a
magnificent stone coffin, but this man had been a usurer. Usury was a
sin abhorred by Saint Bernard, and the people found that no force or
persuasion could place his body within this coffin. So another tomb,
less pretentious, but more worthy, was found. At the end Bernard's
remains were divided among the churches, each of whom claimed him as
its own. To the Hospice fell his ring and his cup, a tooth, and a few
finger-bones, and, most important of all, his name--the "Great Saint
Bernard."

The chronicles give a long list of miracles which since then have been
wrought in his name. These are for the most part wonderful healings,
the stilling of storms, the bringing of rain, the driving away of
grasshoppers. However, men are prone always to look for the miracle in
the things that are of least moment. The life and work of the man was
the real miracle, not the flight of grasshoppers. The miracle of all
time is the power of humanity when it works in harmony with the laws
and purposes of God. Consecrated to God's work, and by the work's own
severity protected through the centuries from corruption and
temptation, the work of the monk of Aosta has outlasted palaces and
thrones. Through the influence of charity, and piety, and truth, the
demon has been driven from these mountains. When the love of man joins
to the love of God, all spirits of evil vanish as mist before the
morning sun.

[1] St. Bernard de Menthon must not be confounded with Bernard de
Clairvaux, born in 1091, the preacher o