“A heathen land!” exclaimed the monk, with some agitation. “How come you then to be Christians?”
For he had seen them make the sign of the Cross, and make it in the orthodox Latin way. The sign of the Cross had significance in more than one way, then, as the sound of church bells and many other symbols.
They told him about Patrick, and by degrees a light came into his face. He had heard a rumour of some new mission in that wild, far-off island, and also a rumour that the missionary bishop was in some way connected with their own sainted bishop, Martin of Tours. This he told them, and also that it was by the tomb of St. Martin they were standing. Both of their faces grew radiant at this new link with Patrick and home. Ethne knelt down again beside the tomb, and pressed her lips to the cold marble as if it had been a mother’s hand.
The monk questioned them about themselves, and listened with tender interest and strong indignation to their story.
“Kidnapped by Christians, and sold to a Jew!” he exclaimed, in a climax of horror. “In our Martin’s time we would have ransomed you at once at any price, if we had had to sell the vessels of the altar for it, as the blessed old man did himself when his young deacon moved too slowly to fulfil his bidding; in his impetuous eagerness taking off his own sacerdotal robe when he was about to celebrate Mass, and throwing it around a wretched, naked beggar! Just as in his eager youth, when he was a soldier, he had cut his military cloak in two to give it to a beggar at Amiens!”
They listened eagerly. That was indeed a saint worth hearing about.
The old monk was launched on an endless subject when he began with St. Martin.
“But, alas!” he sighed in conclusion, “times are changed. The ravages of the barbarians and the exactions of the Romans have impoverished us all; and now the frightful hordes of these savage Huns may be on us any day. Perhaps also we are poorer in ourselves; we care more for the splendour of our churches than for the poverty of our brothers. We want Martin’s poverty of spirit to make us rich as Martin to help and save. We want his love and faith before we can see the visions he saw. Have you ever heard of them? of how, in the night, he saw our Lord among His angels, clothed in the garment he had given the beggar, and heard Him say to them, ‘Know ye who has thus arrayed Me? My servant Martin!’” Then seeing the intense interest in their eyes, the old monk said—“Would you come and see the hovel where Martin lived?”
They followed him eagerly to a collection of huts and cells between the river and the cliffs, where, like the monks in Egypt and the East, he and many of his brethren still lived in community, but in separate caves and cells. And there he showed them Martin’s wooden hut, still carefully preserved.