Back went Saint Fiacre to his forest clearing, to his friends the birds, his bubbling wells, his aisles of trees, his garden, now well grown, and, breaking a stick he marked out far and wide the space of land he needed, more than any man could in one day enclose with any spade. And after that into the little oratory he went and prayed for help.
You may be sure every movement of this was carefully observed. A woman envied him and spied on these proceedings. I take it she was some woman to whom, before the Saint grew famous, the peasants came for spells and simples, a wise woman, a witch, whose reputation was at stake.
The Saint’s prayer was answered. The woman, evil report on her tongue, made her journey to the Bishop of Meaux, and accused Fiacre of magic, of dealings with the Devil. Roused by the report, the Bishop came to see the Saint and saw all that had happened. In one day all the wide space Fiacre had marked out had been enclosed. After that the oratory was denied to all women. Even as late as 1641, nearly a thousand years after his death, when Anne of Austria visited his shrine in the Cathedral of Meaux she did not enter the Chapel but remained outside the grating. It was the legend, handed down all that time, that any woman who entered there would go blind or mad.
Where the Saint had dug his solitary garden, and on the site of his cell a great Benedictine Priory was built in after years, where his body was kept and did many wonders of healing, especially in the cure of a certain fleshy tumour, which they called “le fie de St. Fiacre.” After many years, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, his body was removed to the Cathedral at Meaux.
So it may be seen for how good a cause he became known as Patron of Gardeners, and it must now be shown why he is called the Patron of Cab Drivers. In 1640 a man of the name of Sauvage started an establishment in Paris from which he let out carriages for hire. He took a house for this business in the Rue St. Martin, and the house was known as the Hotel de St. Fiacre, and there was a figure of the Saint over the doorway.
All the coaches plying from here began to be called, for short, fiacres, and the drivers placed images of the Saint on their carriages, and claimed him as their patron.
There is a Pardon of St. Fiacre in Brittany; and there are churches and altars to him all over France.
III
EVELYN’S “SYLVA”
On my table, as I write, is the copy of “Sylva” that John Evelyn himself gave to Sir Robert Morray, and in which he wrote in ink that is now faded and brown, as are his own autograph corrections in the text,