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A fierce blast came howling off the fen, screeched through the minster towers, swept along the dark aisles; and then, so say the chroniclers, caught up the pall from off the tomb, and hurled it far away into a corner. "A miracle!" cried all the monks at once; and honestly enough, like true Englishmen as they were. "The Holy heart refuses the gift, Countess," said old Ulfketyl in a voice of awe.
A Saracen, however, who was an expert swimmer, vowed not to be baffled, and performed an exploit, which Arabian chroniclers, while omitting much more important events, have carefully recorded. It seems that this Saracen, having determined to carry a Christian as captive to Fakreddin's tent, and claim the reward, fell upon a somewhat whimsical plan for accomplishing his object.
For the history, he naturally found above all else the Memoirs of Philip de Comines "the very key of the period," though it need not be said that the lesser chroniclers received due attention.
They brought, besides many new settlers, an abundance of chroniclers and historians and writers of hectic fiction or supposed fact. A multitude of books came out at this time of our history, most of which were accepted as truth.
And must it be written by the chroniclers thereafter, ‘About this time Themistocles, son of Neocles, aroused the Athenians to hopeless resistance and drew on them utter destruction’? O Father Zeus, must men say that? Am I a fool or crazed for wishing to save my land from the fate of Media, Lydia, Babylonia, Egypt, Ionia? Has dark Atropos decreed that the Persians should conquer forever?
Chroniclers intimate with the inner history of those infamous days have told us how the chief agent of the Committee of General Security gave orders one hour after midnight that hot soup, white bread and wine be served to the prisoner, who for close on fourteen days previously had been kept on short rations of black bread and water; the sergeant in charge of the guard-room watch for the night also received strict orders that that same prisoner was on no account to be disturbed until the hour of six in the morning, when he was to be served with anything in the way of breakfast that he might fancy.
And he sent forth a herald to proclaim that he would do this. And the herald went about the country making his desire known, blowing a great tin horn and riding a noble steed that pranced and gambolled; and the villagers gazed upon him and said: "Lo, that is one of them tin horn gamblers concerning which the chroniclers have told us."
The next remarkable characteristic of these tumults was the almost entire abstinence of the rioters from personal outrage and from pillage. The testimony of a very bitter, but honest Catholic at Valenciennes, is remarkable upon this point. "Certain chroniclers," said he, "have greatly mistaken the character of this image-breaking.
They illustrate another fact: favors conferred in distress were seldom forgotten, and the chroniclers frequently explain the rise of some obscure individual by the recollection of a handsome thing done to the ruler in his unfortunate days.
Those delightful chroniclers of the old religions provided themselves with a dozen different Loves. Study the fathers and the attributes of these Loves, and you will discover a complete social nomenclature, and yet we fancy that we originate things!
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