The sacristan was hoeing among his cabbages in the little garden behind his house, surrounded with clipt yew, and damp from the deep shade of the cathedral, that overshadowed it.
He ran out at his mother's call, hoe in hand, himself an old man, though stout and strong.
The well in the wall was his especial charge and pride; immeasurable sanctity attached to it.
According to tradition, the water had spouted from the stone itself, at the touch of a branch of blossoming pear, held in the hand of St. Jerome, who had returned to earth in the middle of the fourteenth century, and dwelt for awhile near the cathedral, working at the honorable trade of a cordwainer, and accomplishing mighty miracles throughout the district.
It was said that some of his miraculous power still remained in the fountain, and that even yet, those who drank on St. Jerome's day in full faith and with believing hearts, were, oftentimes, cleansed of sin, and purified of bodily disease. Wherefore on that day, throngs of peasantry flocked in from all sides, and crowded round it, and drank; to the benefit of the sacristan in charge, if not to that of their souls and bodies.
Summoned by his mother, he flew to the rescue of the sanctified spring.
"Get you gone!" he shouted. "Get you gone, you child of hell! How durst you touch the blessed basin? Do you think that God struck water from the stone for such as you?"
Folle-Farine lifted her head and looked him in the face with her audacious eyes and laughed; then tossed her head again and plunged it into the bright living water, till her lips, and her cheeks, and all the rippling hair about her temples sparkled with its silvery drops.
The sacristan, infuriated at once by the impiety and the defiance, shrieked aloud:
"Insolent animal! Daughter of Satan! I will teach you to taint the gift of God with lips of the devil!"