The story is this. As the Eastern bishops were travelling to the second Council of Nicea, the more worldly of them (these were the greater part) were very much disgusted to meet one particularly good bishop who had been bred a shepherd. He was poor. His manners were bad. He did not shave regularly. He was badly dressed. He was what they call in Birmingham "no class."
They jeered at him a little, but more than their jeering was their fear lest they should lost caste by entering the Imperial City in such company. So after this saintly man had made himself quite intolerable at dinner, they cast up a plot against him.
He had come with only one deacon, sitting each of them upon a mule, the one a brown mule, the other mottled. The mules were stabled in the great inn of the village where all were assembled. When the saintly, but not smart, bishop had gone to his rest, the smart bishops secretly sent a bravo into the stable to cut off the heads of the two mules. "In this way," said these wicked, worldly bishops, "we shall be spared the humiliating presence of the boor when we enter the imperial town; nor will men ever know that we kept such low company."
Long before it was dawn the poor Bishop's deacon, like a good deacon, a good rustic deacon, shook himself out of sleep. He went down to the stable with a lantern to get ready the beasts against the morning journey. With what horror did he not see there two heads lying upon the ground! The one was of his own mottled mule, the other of his master's brown mule. The mottled head lay severed upon the straw beside the brown head, the headless trunks leaning all collapsed against the stall sides.
The deacon, rushing up to his master, banged at the door, saying, "My Lord! My Lord! Evil men have cut off our mules' heads!" The Right Reverend, only half awake, said, "Sew them on again! When I wake I will attend to it."
The deacon went down to the stable. With many tears he sewed on the two heads of the dead mules. The Bishop, when he had risen from sleep, said his prayers, came down into the stable, where, he having blessed the two mules, they came to life again in the most natural manner in the world. When he had breakfasted, he rejoined his deacon. Mounting the two beasts, they rode out into the break of the day. But, the light broadening as they approached the city gate, the crowd saw with astonishment a brown mule with a mottled head abreast of a mottled mule with a brown head, for the deacon, confused in the half darkness of the morning, had sewed the wrong heads to the wrong bodies.
Note the effect—as the veracious chronicler gives it. "Thus by that very action whereby these evil men had hoped to bring their companion to shame they did but the rather thrust him into glory; for their cruelty to the dumb beasts did but serve to heighten his holiness, making proof of God's power through him who could bring the dead to life."
Many are the morals of this tale, one of which is that it is silly to take more trouble than is necessary. For if the wicked Bishops had only drugged the mules instead of cutting their heads right off there would have been no miracle, nor glory to their despised colleague. Another is that if a thing is true you must believe it, however astonishing and unlikely it may sound in the ear of the unbeliever. Another is that a bishop has the right to get up rather later than the lower branches of the hierarchy. There are many other morals; but I will end. For if I go on I shall certainly bring "and" into my own sentences, which up to this point I have managed to avoid. "And" is not really necessary at all.