and these were rarely the well-to-do people of the siecle, but more commonly the helpless.  Every saint performed miracles, and these are standard, not peculiar to any one intermediator; and every saint protected his own friends; but beyond these exhibitions of power, which are more or less common to the whole hierarchy below the Trinity, Mary was the mother of pity and the only hope of despair.  One might go on for a volume, studying the character of Mary and the changes that time made in it, from the earliest Byzantine legends down to the daily recorded miracles at Lourdes; no character in history has had so long or varied a development, and none so sympathetic; but the greatest poets long ago plundered that mine of rich motives, and have stolen what was most dramatic for popular use.  The Virgin’s most famous early miracle seems to have been that of the monk Theophilus, which was what one might call her salvation of Faust.  Another Byzantine miracle was an original version of Shylock.  Shakespeare and his fellow dramatists plundered the Church legends as freely as their masters plundered the Church treasuries, yet left a mass of dramatic material untouched.  Let us pray the Virgin that it may remain untouched, for, although a good miracle was in its day worth much money—­so much that the rival shrines stole each other’s miracles without decency—­one does not care to see one’s Virgin put to money-making for Jew theatre-managers.  One’s two-hundred and fifty million arithmetical ancestors shrink.

For mere amusement, too, the miracle is worth reading of the little Jew child who ignorantly joined in the Christian communion, and was thrown into a furnace by his father in consequence; but when the furnace was opened, the Virgin appeared seated in the midst of the flames, with the little child unharmed in her lap.  Better is that called the “Tombeor de Notre Dame,” only recently printed; told by some unknown poet of the thirteenth century, and told as well as any of Gaultier de Coincy’s.  Indeed the “Tombeor de Notre Dame” has had more success in our time than it ever had in its own, as far as one knows, for it appeals to a quiet sense of humour that pleases modern French taste as much as it pleased the Virgin.  One fears only to spoil it by translation, but if a translation be merely used as a glossary or footnote, it need not do fatal harm.

The story is that of a tumbler—­tombeor, street-acrobat—­who was disgusted with the world, as his class has had a reputation for becoming, and who was fortunate enough to obtain admission into the famous monastery of Clairvaux, where Saint Bernard may have formerly been blessed by the Virgin’s presence.  Ignorant at best, and especially ignorant of letters, music, and the offices of a religious society, he found himself unable to join in the services:—­

Car n’ot vescu fors de tumer
 Et d’espringier et de baler. 
 Treper, saillir, ice savoit;
 Ne d’autre rien il ne savoit;
 Car ne savoit autre lecon
 Ne “pater noster” ne chancon
 Ne le “credo” ne le salu
 Ne rien qui fust a son salu.