CHAPTER LXXXIV.
The Prayers of the Saint confer Beauty on an Ugly Man.
And among the chief men of Hibernia was one named Eugenius, who had long resisted the preaching of the saint, but, being at length compelled by the argument of the living Word, and convinced by indisputable miracles, he at length believed, and, by the water of the holy font, was renewed in Christ. And this man was rich and powerful, but in his countenance and his person he was more deformed than all his people. And after complaining of his deformity unto the saint, he besought him to banish by the sending up of his prayers the hideous ugliness of his face, and thereby show the omnipotence of his God, on whom all the people believed. At length the saint, being moved with the entreaties of the man thus ashamed of himself, asked to whose form he would desire to be likened. Then he, regarding the people placed around him, preferred the form of Roichus, an ecclesiastic, the keeper of Saint Patrick's books; and this man was by birth a Briton, by degree a deacon, a kinsman of the holy prelate, and beautiful in his form above all men in those countries dwelling. Nevertheless was he a man of most holy life, so that he might say with the Psalmist, "Lord, by thy will thou hast added righteousness to my beauty!" But the saint caused them to sleep in one bed and under one covering; and, standing over them, he lifted his pure hands in prayer. Wonderful and unwonted event! When they awaked and arose, not any difference appeared in their countenance; the tonsure alone distinguished the one from the other. And all who beheld admired; but more exceedingly joyful was he who experienced in himself this miracle.
CHAPTER LXXXV.
The Stature of the same Man is increased unto a sufficient Height.
And since the saint had gratified Eugenius by his form being thus improved, he, confiding in his prayers, added another entreaty. For he was of very low stature; and therefore he besought the holy prelate that, as man can nothing prevail by his own merits, he would, in the name of his God, add to his stature one cubit. Then Patrick bade him to show the height which he desired; and he raised himself on tiptoe, leaning on his erected spear, and stretched the ends of his fingers as far upward as he could, and desired that his stature might reach unto the measure of that height; and behold, at the prayers of the saint, the man, erewhile a dwarf, increased thereto; and, lest the miracle should be deemed the work of magic or of falsehood, in that stature and in that form did he continue unto his life's end.