"Miserable sinners! Adore your holy bishop who redescends from heaven upon the wings of the Lord's archangels!"
"A miracle!" again cried the crowd with even intenser unction, and smiting their chests with redoubled fervor. "A miracle!"
"Holy Bishop Cautin, who descends from heaven--protect us!"
"Is it your voice I hear, holy father?" queried Neroweg in a subdued voice without daring to raise his face from the ground or looking up. "Is it your own voice, holy bishop, or is it a snare that Satan spreads for us?"
"It is myself--your bishop--to doubt it is sacrilege!"
"I descend from heaven. After the sack of the episcopal villa, and seeing me carried away a captive by the Vagres--be they forever accursed!--the Lord sent His exterminating angels to my aid. They were clad in armor of hyacinthe, and armed with flaming swords. They snatched me from the hands of the Philistines, took me on their azure wings, and carried me to heaven--"
"A miracle!" cried the entranced crowd in chorus. "A miracle!"
"Our holy bishop has seen the face of the Lord! Hosanna!"
"St. Cautin," cried up Neroweg, "you will protect me, dear patron saint, my dear father in Christ! Will you not bless your son?"
"Yes, I will bless you--provided always you prostrate yourself before the bishop of the Lord, and you enrich the Church!"
"I shall have a chapel built in your honor on this very spot, holy bishop, in order to glorify this miracle--"
"That is far from enough--no, that is not enough. Listen, count, listen attentively:
"Neroweg and his leudes fled like cowards from the episcopal villa when it was attacked by the Vagres.
"I order that the count relinquish one quarter of his goods to me, the bishop of Clermont; I order that he rebuild the episcopal villa, which he allowed the Vagres to set on fire, and that he richly ornament it.
"I furthermore order that Count Neroweg pursue the Vagres without let, that he capture and put them to death--all of them, but especially their chief and a relapsed hermit, a renegade, an idolater who accompanies the accursed men.
"Finally, I order that the count burn to death, over a slow fire, a certain Moabite woman, a witch, an infernal wench, who once was bound to me by the bonds of holy matrimony.