“‘Well, what next,’ cried the master blacksmith, ‘that is a little too much! And how can one shoe a horse, in your country, without holding the hoof?’
“‘But faith, nothing is easier, as you shall see.’
“And so saying, the young man seized a knife, went up to the horse, and crack! cut off the hoof. He carried it into the smithy, fastened it in the vice, carefully heated the hoof, fastened on the new shoe that he had just made; with the shoeing hammer he knocked in the nails, then loosening the vice, returned the foot to the horse, spat on it and fitted it, saying, as he made the sign of the Cross, ‘May God grant that the blood dries up,’ and there was the foot finished, shod and healed as no one had ever seen before and as no one will ever see again.
“The first apprentice opened his eyes wide as the palm of your hand, while Master Eloi’s assistants began to perspire.
“‘Ho,’ said Eloi at last, ‘my faith, but I will do it like that—do it just as well.’
“He sets himself to the task. Knife in hand he approaches the horse, and crack! he cuts off the foot, carries it into the smithy, fastens it into the vice, and shoes it at his ease, just like the young apprentice.
“But then came the hitch, he must put it back in place. He approaches the horse, spits on the shoe, applies it to the fetlock as best he can. Alas! the salve does not stick, the blood flows, and the foot falls! Then was the proud soul of Master Eloi illuminated: and he went back into the smithy there to prostrate himself at the feet of the young apprentice. But Jesus had disappeared, and also the horse and the cavalier. Tears gushed from the eyes of Master Eloi; he recognised, poor man, that there was a master above him, and above all. Throwing aside his apron he left the forge and went out into the world to teach the word of the Lord Jesus.”
Great applause followed the conclusion of this legend, applause both for Saint-Eloi and for Jean Roussière.
Before I leave the worthy Jean I must mention that it was he who sang to me the popular air to which I put the serenade of Magali, an air so sweet, so melodious, that many regretted not finding it in Gounod’s opera of Mireille. The only person in all the world that I ever heard sing that particular air was Jean Roussière, who was apparently the last to retain it. It was a strange coincidence that he should come, by chance as it were, and sing it to me, at the moment when I was looking for the Provençal note of my love-song, and thus enable me to save it just at the moment when, like so many other things, it was about to be relegated to oblivion.
The name of Magali, an abbreviation of Marguerite, I heard one day as I was returning home from Saint-Rémy. A young shepherdess was tending a flock of sheep along the Grande Roubine. “Oh! Magali, art not coming yet?” cried a boy to her as he passed by. The limpid name struck me as so pretty that at once I sang: