"Bless my soul, bless my soul!" cried the owner, "but my wheat is still all green, and so if you cut it now it will be lost."
"No, no," said Saint Hervé, "it shall not be so, for as much wheat as I cut now so much will I render to you ripe and in the sack at harvest time."
To this he agreed, and commenced to cut down the wheat, which he tied in bundles and sheafs and laid apart; and God so favored them, that at the time of the harvest, these sheafs which had been cut all green, not only became ripe, but had blossomed and so multiplied that where there had been one there were now two. The owner of the field seeing this, gave thanks to God, who had sent these holy men to him, and gave the whole field to the saint. [Footnote 193]
[Footnote 193: Albert le Grand.]
Thus the toil and intelligence of the monks made the earth render double the ordinary crops, and, conquered by such miracles, the barbarians, who, moreover, did not lose anything, gave willingly all that was asked of them.
The good religious from whom I have borrowed the translation of the preceding narrative even assures us that the proprietor went so far as to promise Hervé to build him a beautiful church at his own expense. This new miracle, however, was only half carried out; for we see Hervé, once the land had been conceded to him, going to work with his disciples to procure the wood necessary for the construction of his church and convent. He made a collection for this end, not only in the country of Léon, but even in the mountains of Aiez, and in Cornwall, visiting the manors of the chiefs and the richest monasteries.
Everywhere, it is said, he was well received, thanks to the benefits that he spread along his passage, and all the nobles to whom he applied caused as many oaks to be cut down for him in their forests, as he desired. It is, however, probable, notwithstanding the assertions of the legendaries, that he found many but little disposed to aid in the building of a Christian church, and that all those whom he visited did not show themselves very eager to cut down the trees, so venerated in Armorica; for in the following century, a council held at Nantes near the year 658, attests that no one dared break a branch or offshoot of one. The legend itself allows us to see imperfectly some stumbling-blocks which the holy architect found in his way; they must have torn his feet as cruelly as those which we have seen him punish by hardening them, in the days when he was a public singer. At first there was a rude chief who passed near him with a great train of men, dogs, and horses, without saluting him, even without looking at him; again there was another who did not believe in his miracles, and said so out loud at supper before a large company, and in the face of the saint. At that same banquet, at the commencement of the repast, while Hervé was singing with the harp to bless the table, a new kind of adversary, the frogs, commenced also to sing, to defy him, to sing their vespers, as a Breton poet explains it, provoking the laughter of the guests. At another banquet, a cup-bearer who was a demon in disguise, one of those who excited to intemperance, to gluttony, to idleness and noise, to discord and quarrels, wishing to kill him, served him, together with the other guests, a beverage the effect of which was to make them cut each other's throats.
This evil spirit followed the holy architect even to the midst of a monastery, with the intention of deceiving him more surely. Taking the form of a monk, he offered his services to help him in building his church.
"What is thy name?" Hervé asked of him.