Legend Of Saint Julian Hospitator
by Gustave Flaubert

I

Julian's father and mother lived in a castle in the midst of woods on the slope of a hill.

Its four corner-towers had pointed roofs covered with scales of lead, and the base of the walls rested on masses of rock which went down abruptly right to the bottom of the moat.

The pavements of the court were as clean as the flagged floor of a church. Long gutters, shaped like dragons with down-drooped jaws, vomited the rain-water into the cistern; and on the window-ledges at every storey, in a pot of painted earthenware, a plant of basil or heliotrope opened to the sun.

A second line of defence, formed of stakes, enclosed first an orchard of fruit-trees, then a parterre, where the combinations of the flowers formed patterns, and next a trellis with bowers in which to take the air, and a mall which served to amuse the pages. On the other side were the kennel, the stables, the bakery, the wine-press and the barns. A meadow of green grass extended all around, itself enclosed by a strong hedge of thorns.

They had lived in peace so long that the portcullis was never let down; the moats were full of water; the swallows made their nests in the openings of the battlements; and the archer who walked up and down upon the walls all day long retired into his turret as soon as the sun shone too strongly, and slept there like a monk.

Indoors, the ironwork shone everywhere; tapestries in the rooms gave protection from the cold; and the presses were crammed with linen; the wine-tuns were piled up in the cellars, the oaken coffers groaned with the weight of bags of silver.

In the great hall arms of every age and every nation were to be seen among banners and heads of wild beasts, from the slings of the Amalekites and the javelins of the Garamantes to the scimitars of the Saracens and the chain-coats of the Normans.

The great spit in the kitchen could turn an ox; the chapel was as sumptuous as the oratory of a king. There was even, in a retired corner, a vapour-bath in the Roman fashion; but the good lord of the castle abstained from it, deeming that it was an idolatrous custom.

Always wrapped in a fox pelisse, he walked about his house, did justice among his vassals, and appeased the quarrels of his neighbours. In winter he watched the snow-flakes fall, or had histories read to him. As soon as the good weather came, he went out on his mule along the lanes, amongst the green cornfields, and talked with the rustics, to whom he gave advice. After many adventures, he had taken to wife a damsel of high degree.

She was very fair, somewhat proud and serious. The horns of her head-dress brushed against the lintel of the doors; the train of her cloth gown trailed three paces behind her. Her household was ruled like the interior of a monastery; every morning she gave out their work to her servants, saw to the comfits and unguents, span on her distaff, or embroidered altar-cloths. In answer to her prayers God granted her a son.

Then there were great rejoicings, and a feast which lasted three days and four nights, amid the illumination of torches, to the sound of harps, on floors strawed with leafage. At it they ate the rarest spices, with fowls as big as sheep; as a diversion, a dwarf came out of a pasty; and when the bowls gave out, for the crowd was ever increasing, they were obliged to drink from the horns and helmets.

The young mother was not present at those festivities. She stayed in her bed and kept quiet. One evening she woke and saw, by a moonbeam that shone in at the window, something like a shadow that moved. It was an ancient in a frock of coarse stuff, with a chaplet at his side, a wallet on his shoulder, with all the appearance of a hermit. He came up to her pillow and said without opening his lips:

"Rejoice, O mother! Thy son will be a saint!"

She was about to cry out; but gliding upon the moon-ray he rose gently into the air, then disappeared. The songs of the banquet sounded more loudly than ever. She heard the voices of angels; and her head sank back upon the pillow, which was surmounted by the bone of a martyr in a frame of carbuncles.

Next day all the servants, when questioned, declared that they had not seen any hermit. Dream or reality, this must have been a communication from Heaven; but she was careful to say nothing about it, lest she should be charged with pride.

The revellers departed at break of day; and Julian's father was outside the postern, where he had been seeing the last of them off, when all at once a mendicant rose up before him in the mist. He was a gipsy with plaited beard, silver rings on both his arms, and sparkling eyeballs. With an inspired air he stammered these inconsequent words:

"Ah! ah! your son!... much blood!... much glory!... always fortunate! An Emperor's family."

And, stooping to pick up his alms, he disappeared in the grass and vanished.

The good castellan looked right and left and called his loudest. Not a soul! The wind blew, the morning mists cleared away.

He attributed this vision to lightheadedness from want of sleep. "If I talk about it," he said to himself, "they will laugh at me." However, the splendours destined for his son dazzled him, although the promise of them was by no means clear, and he even doubted whether he had heard it.

The spouses kept their secrets from each other. But both cherished the child with equal love; and, respecting him as one marked out by God, they bestowed an infinity of care upon his person. His cradle was stuffed with the finest down; a lamp in the shape of a dove burned over it continually; three nurses lulled him to rest; and, well wrapped in his swaddling-bands, his face rosy, and his eyes blue, with his brocade cloak and his cap trimmed with pearls, he looked like a little Jesus. His teeth came without his uttering a single moan.

When he was seven, his mother taught him to sing. To make him brave, his father hoisted him on to a great horse. The child smiled with satisfaction, and was not long in learning everything about chargers.

A very learned old monk instructed him in the Holy Scriptures, Arabic cyphering, Latin letters, and the art of drawing dainty pictures on vellum. They worked together away up at the top of a tower, out of the noise.

The lesson finished, they went down to the garden, where, walking about side by side, they studied the flowers.

Sometimes they would see a string of pack-animals making their way along the bottom of the vale conducted by a man on foot in Oriental garb. The castellan, who had recognized him for a merchant, would send a servant to him. The stranger, taking confidence, turned out of his way, and, taken into the parlour, he brought out of his coffers pieces of velvet and silk, jewellery, aromatics, strange things of which the use was unknown; in the end the honest man went away with great gain, without having suffered any violence. At other times a group of pilgrims would knock at the door. Their wet garments smoked before the fire; and when they were fed they told their travels: the wanderings of barks on the foaming sea, marches on foot through the burning sands, the ferocity of the Paynims, the caverns of Syria, the Cradle and the Sepulchre. Then they gave the young lord cockle-shells from their mantles.

Often the castellan feasted his old companions-in-arms. As they drank, they recalled their wars, the assaults on fortresses with battering of engines and prodigious wounds. Julian, who was listening, uttered shouts at what he heard; thereupon his father had no doubt that he would some day be a conqueror. But in the evening, when the angelus sounded, as he passed between the bowing poor, he put his hand in his purse with such modesty and such a noble air that his mother was certain he would be an archbishop in course of time.

His place in chapel was beside his parents; and however long the offices might be he remained on his knees at his faldstool, his bonnet on the ground and his hands clasped.

One day during Mass, on raising his head, he noticed a little white mouse which came out of a hole in the wall. It ran on to the first step of the altar, and, after two or three turns to right and left, made off the same way. Next Sunday the thought that he might see it again troubled him. It came back; and each Sunday he waited for it, was annoyed by it, and was seized by hatred of it, and resolved to make away with it.

So, having shut the door and scattered some crumbs of cake on the steps, he stationed himself before the hole with a switch in his hand.

After a very long time a pink muzzle appeared, then all the mouse. He struck a light blow and remained stupefied before the tiny body that no longer moved. A drop of blood stained the pavement. He wiped it off hastily with his sleeve, threw the mouse outside, and said nothing about it to any one.

All sorts of small birds picked at the seeds in the garden. He took it into his head to put peas into a hollow reed. When he heard a twittering in the garden, he approached softly, then raised his tube, puffed his cheeks, and the little creatures rained upon his shoulders so abundantly that he could not keep from laughing, overjoyed at his mischief.

One morning, as he was returning along the wall, he caught sight of a big pigeon on top of the rampart, pouting in the sun. Julian stopped to look at it; there was a gap in the wall just there, a splinter of stone came to his hand. He bent his arm, and the stone knocked down the bird, which fell in a heap into the moat.

He hurried down, tearing himself on the bushes, searching everywhere, more active than a young dog.

The pigeon was quivering with broken wings, hanging in the branches of a privet-bush.

Its persistence in life irritated the child. He set about wringing its neck, and the bird's convulsions made his heart beat, and filled it with a savage and tumultuous pleasure. When it at last stiffened, he felt himself fainting.

That evening, at supper, his father declared that a boy of his age ought to learn venery; and he went to look for an old manuscript containing all the pastime of the chase in question and answer. In it a master showed his pupil the art of entering dogs and manning hawks, of setting snares, how to recognize the stag by his fumets, the fox by his footprints, the wolf by his pads; the best way to discover their tracks, how they are started, and where their refuges usually are; what are the most favourable winds, with an enumeration of the calls and rules of the quarry.

When Julian could repeat all those things by heart, his father made up a pack of hounds for him.

First were to be seen four and twenty Barbary greyhounds, faster than gazelles, but apt to get out of hand; then seventeen couples of Breton dogs, spotted with white on a red ground, unfaltering in their obedience to command, strong-chested and deep-throated. For the attack of the wild boar and perilous lairs, there were forty griffons, hairy as bears. Mastiffs from Tartary, almost as tall as asses, flame-coloured, broad-backed and straight-legged, were meant to pursue the aurochs. The black coat of the spaniels gleamed like satin; the yelping of the talbots rivalled the music of the beagles. In a separate yard, rattling their chains and rolling their eyes, growled eight Alan bulldogs, formidable brutes, which would spring at a horseman's belly and were not afraid of lions.

They all were fed on wheaten bread, drank from stone troughs, and bore sonorous names.

The falconry, perhaps, even excelled the kennel. The good lord, by dint of money, had procured tercels from the Caucasus, sakers from Babylon, gerfalcons from Germany, and peregrine falcons captured on the cliffs by the shores of frozen seas in distant lands. They were lodged in a shed covered with thatch, and, fastened in order of their size on the perch, had a sod of turf before them, on which they were set from time to time to keep them limber.

Purse-nets, hooks, spring-traps, all sorts of gins, were constructed.

Often they took out to the fields spaniels, which very soon stood. Then the huntsmen, advancing step by step, cautiously spread an immense net over their motionless bodies. A word made them bark; quails started up; and the ladies of the neighbourhood, who had been invited with their husbands, the children and the waiting-women, all threw themselves upon them and caught them easily.

At other times, a drum was beaten to start the hares; foxes fell into trenches, or else a spring opened and caught a wolf by the foot.

But Julian despised those easy artifices; he preferred to hunt far away from other people, with his horse and his hawk. It was almost always a great tartaret from Scythia, white as snow. Its leather hood was surmounted by a plume, golden bells trembled on its blue feet; and it sat fast on its master's wrist while his horse galloped and the plains unrolled beneath them. Julian, unfastening its leashes, loosed it all at once; the brave bird mounted straight into the air like an arrow; and two unequal specks could be seen twisting, meeting, then disappearing in the heights of the azure. The falcon was not long in descending, tearing some bird in pieces, and came to resume its place on its master's gauntlet, its two wings trembling.

In this fashion Julian flew the heron, the kite, the crow, and the vulture.

He loved, sounding his horn, to follow his dogs as they ran along the hill-sides, leapt the brooks, climbed up to the woods; and when the stag began to sigh under their bites he struck it down swiftly, then took pleasure in the fury of the mastiffs as they devoured it, cut in pieces upon its reeking hide.

On misty days, he hid himself in a marsh to watch for geese, otters and wild duck.

Three squires waited for him at break of day at the foot of the porch, and the old monk, leaning out of his attic window, made signs to him in vain. Julian did not turn back, he went his way in the heat of the sun, in the rain, in storm, drank water from the springs in his hand, ate wild apples as he trotted; if he was tired, he rested beneath an oak; and he came home at midnight covered with blood and mire, with thorns in his hair and smelling of wild beasts. He became like them. When his mother embraced him, he submitted coldly to her clasp, and appeared to be dreaming of something deep.

He slew bears with blows of his hunting-knife, bulls with the axe, wild boars with the spear; and once, even, without so much as a stick, he defended himself against wolves which were gnawing some corpses beneath a gallows.

One winter morning, he set out before daylight, well equipped, a cross-bow on his shoulder and a quiverful of bolts at his saddle-bow.

His Danish jennet, followed by two basset-hounds, made the ground ring as it walked with even pace. Drops of sleet clung to his mantle, a strong breeze was blowing. One side of the horizon cleared; and in the paleness of the twilight he saw some rabbits running about at the mouth of their burrows. The two basset-hounds suddenly dashed upon them, and with a quick shake to this side and that broke their necks.

Soon he entered a wood. On the end of a branch a capercaillie benumbed with cold was sleeping with its head under its wing. Julian sliced off both its feet with a backhanded stroke of his sword, and went on his way without picking it up.

Three hours later he found himself on the peak of a mountain so high that the sky seemed almost black. Before him a rock like a long wall sloped down and overhung a precipice; and at its end two wild goats looked down into the abyss. As he had not his bolts, for he had left his horse behind, he determined to climb down to them; crouching, bare-footed, he at last reached the first of the goats and plunged a poniard between its ribs. The second, seized with terror, leapt into space. Julian darted forward to strike it, and, his right foot slipping, he fell across the carcase of the other, his face over the abyss and his arms out-stretched.

Having got down to the plain again, he followed the willows that fringed a stream. Cranes, flying very low, passed over his head from time to time. Julian felled them with his whip and never missed one.

Meanwhile the warmer air had melted the rime, great mists floated about and the sun appeared. He saw shining far away a frozen lake, which looked like lead. In the middle of the lake was a beast which Julian did not know, a beaver with its black muzzle. In spite of the distance, a bolt brought it down; and he was vexed not to be able to carry away its skin.

Then he went on through an avenue of great trees which formed a sort of triumphal arch with their crowns at the edge of a forest. A roe-deer sprang out of a thicket, a fallow-deer appeared in a cross-way, a badger came out of a hole, a peacock on the grass displayed its tail; - and, when he had killed them all, more roe-deer presented themselves, more fallow-deer, more badgers, more peacocks, and blackbirds, jays, polecats, foxes, hedgehogs, lynxes, an infinity of beasts, more numerous at every step. They played about him, trembling, with sweet and supplicating looks. But Julian never grew tired of killing them, now winding his cross-bow, now unsheathing his sword, now thrusting with his cutlass, without a thought in his mind, without recollection of anything whatsoever. He was hunting in some country somewhere, from a time unknown, simply because he was there, everything done with the ease experienced in dreams. An extraordinary spectacle arrested him. Stags filled a valley shaped like a circus; and huddled one against the other they warmed themselves with their breaths, which could be seen reeking in the mist.

The prospect of such carnage choked him with delight for some minutes. Then he dismounted, turned up his sleeves, and began to shoot.

At the whistling of the first bolt, all the stags turned round their heads at once. Gaps showed in their mass; plaintive voices sounded, and a great commotion agitated the herd.

The sides of the valley were too high for them to clear. They sprang about in the enclosure, seeking to escape. Julian aimed, let go, and his arrows fell like the rainstreaks in a storm-shower. The maddened stags fought, reared, climbed upon one another; and their bodies locked by their antlers made a great hillock which crumbled away as it moved.

At last they were dead, lying on the sand, the foam at their nostrils, their entrails protruding, the heaving of their flanks subsiding by degrees. Then all was still.

Night was about to fall; and behind the wood, between the branches, the sky was like a lake of blood.

Julian leant his back against a tree. With listless eye he contemplated the enormity of the massacre, not understanding how he had been able to do it.

On the other side of the valley, at the edge of the forest, he saw a stag, a hind and her fawn.

The stag, which was black and of monstrous size, had sixteen points and a white beard. The hind, light as withered leaves in colour, was browsing on the grass; and the dappled fawn sucked at her dug without hindering her progress.

The cross-bow snored once again. The fawn, that same instant, was killed. Then its dam, looking to the sky, brayed in a voice deep, heart-rending, human. With a shot full in the breast the exasperated Julian stretched her on the earth.

The great stag had seen him, and gave a spring. Julian discharged his last bolt at him. It struck his forehead and remained fixed there.

The great stag did not seem to feel it; striding over the dead he kept advancing, was about to charge down upon him and disembowel him; and Julian drew back in unspeakable terror. The prodigious animal halted; and with flaming eyes, solemn as a patriarch or a justiciary, while a bell tolled in the distance, it thrice repeated:

"Accursed! Accursed! Accursed! Some day, ferocious heart, thou wilt murder thy father and mother!"

It bent its knees, closed its eyelids gently, and died.

Julian was stupefied, then overcome by sudden fatigue; and an immense disgust, an immense sadness, took possession of him. With his head in both his hands, he wept a long time.

His horse was lost; his dogs had left him; the solitude which enfolded him seemed all menacing with vague perils. Then, seized with fright, he took a way across country, chose a path at hazard, and found himself almost immediately at the castle-gate.

That night he did not sleep. Under the swaying of the hanging lamp he continually saw the great black stag. Its prediction obsessed him; he fought against it. "No, no, no! I cannot kill them!" Then he thought, "But what if I wished it?" And he was in dread lest the Devil should inspire him with the desire.

For three long months, his mother prayed in anguish at his pillow, and his father walked continually up and down the corridors in anguish, groaning. He summoned the most famous master-leeches, who ordered quantities of drugs. Julian's malady, they said, was caused by some noxious wind or some amorous desire. But to all questions the young man shook his head.

His strength came back to him; and they walked him out in the courtyard, the old monk and the good lord each supporting him by an arm.

When he was completely restored, he refrained obstinately from the chase.

His father, wishing to cheer him, made him a present of a great Saracen sword.

It was at the top of a pillar, in a trophy. To reach it a ladder was required. Julian climbed it. The heavy sword slipped through his fingers, and grazed the good lord so closely, as it fell, that his gown was cut by it; Julian thought he had killed his father, and fainted.

Thenceforth he had a dread of weapons. The sight of a naked blade made him blench. This weakness caused great distress to his family.

At length the old monk commanded him in the name of God and for the honour of his ancestors to resume the exercises of a gentleman.

The squires amused themselves every day with throwing the javelin. In this Julian very soon excelled. He sent his into bottle-mouths, broke the teeth of the weather-vanes, hit the nails-studs of the doors at a hundred paces.

One summer evening, at the hour when the mist renders things indistinct, he was under the trellis in the garden and saw down at the end two white wings that fluttered at the height of the fence. He never doubted but it was a stork; and he darted his javelin.

A piercing cry resounded.

It was his mother, whose head-dress with its long lappets remained pinned to the wall.

Julian fled from the castle, and was never seen there again.

II

He joined himself to a band of adventurers who were passing.

He learned to know hunger, thirst, fevers, and vermin. He became accustomed to the din of mellays and the sight of the dying. The wind tanned his skin. His limbs became calloused by contact with his armour; and since he was very strong, courageous, temperate, and of good counsel, he had no trouble in obtaining the command of a company.

At the beginning of a battle he roused his soldiers with a great wave of his sword. With a knotted rope he climbed the walls of citadels at night, swayed about by the hurricane, while the drops of Greek fire stuck to his cuirass, and the boiling pitch and melted lead streamed down from the battlements. Often the hurtling of a stone shivered his buckler. Bridges overloaded with men collapsed beneath him. With a sweep of his mace he rid himself of fourteen horsemen. In the lists he defeated all who came forward. More than a score of times he was taken for dead.

Thanks to divine favour he always escaped; for he protected churchmen, orphans, widows, and especially aged men. When he saw one of these last walking in front of him, he called to him, in order to see his face, as if he were afraid of killing him by mistake.

Fugitive slaves, revolted peasants, portionless bastards, all sorts of desperate men flocked to his banner, and he gathered an army of his own.

It increased. He became famous. He was sought after.

He aided in turn the Dauphin of France and the King of England, the Templars of Jerusalem, the Surenas of the Parthians, the Negus of Abyssinia, and the Emperor of Calicut. He fought Scandinavians covered with fish-scales, negroes furnished with targets of hippopotamus hide and mounted on red asses, golden-skinned Indians, brandishing above their diadems broad sabres brighter than mirrors. He vanquished the Troglodytes and the Anthropophagi. He traversed regions so torrid that under the burning heat of the sun the hair of men's heads took fire of itself like torches; and others so icy that men's arms came away from their bodies and fell to the ground; and countries where there were so many fogs that they marched surrounded by phantoms.

States in difficulty consulted him. He obtained unhoped-for terms in interviews with ambassadors. If a monarch governed ill, he arrived suddenly and remonstrated with him. He set peoples free. He delivered queens shut up in towers. It was he, and no other, who smote the great serpent of Milan and the dragon of Oberbirbach.

Now, the Emperor of Occitania, having triumphed over the Spanish Mussulmans, had united in concubinage with the sister of the Caliph of Cordova, and had a daughter by her, whom he had brought up as a Christian. But the Caliph, making as if he wished to be converted, came to him on a visit accompanied by a numerous escort, massacred all his garrison and plunged him into a dungeon-pit, where he treated him most harshly, in order to extract treasure from him.

Julian hastened to his aid, destroyed the army of the infidels, laid siege to the town, slew the Caliph, cut off his head, and threw it like a ball over the ramparts. Then he took the Emperor from his prison and caused him to remount his throne in presence of all his court.

As the price of such a service, the Emperor presented him with much silver in baskets; Julian would have none of it. Believing that he desired more, he offered him three-quarters of his wealth; another refusal. Then to share his kingdom; Julian thanked him and declined. And the Emperor wept for vexation, not knowing how to testify his gratitude, when he struck his forehead, said a word into the ear of a courtier, the curtains of a tapestry were raised, and a young girl appeared.

Her great black eyes shone like two soft lamps. A charming smile parted her lips. The ringlets of her hair were caught in the jewels on her open dress; and under the transparence of her tunic her youthful form was half-revealed. She was all dainty and plump, with a slender waist.

Julian was dazzled with love, the more so as he had so far led a life of extreme chastity.

So he received the Emperor's daughter in marriage, with a castle which she held of her mother; and, the nuptials ended, they parted with no end of compliments on either side.

The palace was of white marble, built in the Moresque style, on a headland, in a grove of orange-trees. Terraces of flowers stretched down to the border of a bay, where pink shells crunched under the feet. Behind the castle extended a forest in the shape of a fan. The sky was always blue, and the trees bent now beneath the sea-breeze, now beneath the wind from the mountains that framed the distant horizon.

The rooms, full of twilight, were illumined by the incrustations upon the walls. Tall columns, slender as reeds, supported the vaulting of the cupolas, which were decorated with reliefs in imitation of the stalactites of grottoes.

There were fountains in the halls, mosaics in the courtyards, festooned partition-walls, a thousand refinements of architecture and everywhere such silence that one could hear the rustling of a scarf or the echo of a sigh.

Julian made war no longer. He rested, surrounded by a people at peace; and each day a crowd passed before him with genuflexions and hand-kissing in the Oriental fashion.

Clad in purple he leaned on his elbows in a window-recess and recalled his hunts of bygone days; and he could have wished to be coursing over the desert after the gazelles and the ostriches, to be hiding in the bamboos on the watch for leopards, to be traversing the forests full of rhinoceroses, climbing to the summit of the most inaccessible mountains to get better aim at the eagles, or fighting the white bears on the icebergs of the sea.

Sometimes in a dream he saw himself like our father Adam in the midst of Paradise among all the beasts; he stretched out his arm and made them die; or else they passed before him two by two in order of their bigness, from the elephants and the lions to the ermines and the ducks, as on the day when they entered Noah's Ark. In the shade of a cavern he darted unerring javelins upon them; others came; there was no end to them; and he woke up rolling his eyes savagely.

Princes of his acquaintance invited him to hunt. He always refused, thinking by this sort of penance to avert his misfortune; for it seemed to him that the fate of his parents depended on the murder of the animals. But he suffered from not seeing them, and his other desire became intolerable.

To divert him his wife sent for jugglers and dancing-girls.

She walked with him, in an open litter, in the country; at other times stretched on the side of a skiff they watched the fish straying in the water clear as the sky. Often she threw flowers in his face; sitting at his feet she drew music from a three-stringed mandoline; then, placing her clasped hands on his shoulder, she would ask in a timid voice, "Why, what ails you, my dear lord?"

He gave no reply, or burst into sobs; at last one day he confessed his horrible thought.

She opposed it with very sound arguments: his father and mother were probably dead; if ever he saw them again, by what chance, with what purpose, would he come to work this abomination? Therefore his fears were groundless, and he ought to take to hunting again.

Julian smiled as he heard her, but he did not decide to satisfy her desire.

One evening in the month of August, when they were in their room, she had just gone to bed, and he was kneeling for his prayers, when he heard the barking of a fox, then light footsteps under the window; and caught sight in the dusk of something that looked like animals. The temptation was too strong. He took his quiver down from the peg.

She seemed surprised.

"It is to obey you!" he said, "I shall be back by sunrise."

For all that, she was apprehensive of some unhappy accident.

He reassured her, then went out, astonished at the inconsequence of her moods.

Soon afterwards a page came to announce that two strangers, in the absence of the lord, asked to see the lady at once.

And soon came into the room an old man and an old woman, bent, dusty, in coarse garments, each leaning on a staff.

They took courage and declared that they brought Julian news of his parents.

She leant forward to listen to them.

Meanwhile, having understood each other by a glance, they asked her if he always loved them still, if he ever spoke about them.

"Oh, yes," she said.

Then they exclaimed:

"Well, we are they!" And they sat down very weary and overcome with fatigue.

Nothing could persuade the young wife that her husband was their son.

They proved it to her by describing certain marks which he had on his body.

She sprang from her couch, called her page, and a repast was set before them.

Although they were very hungry, they could not eat much; and even at a distance she could perceive the trembling of their gnarled hands as they took the goblets.

They had a thousand questions to ask about Julian. She answered them all, but was careful to say nothing about his gloomy notion with regard to them.

When there was no sign of his return, they had left their castle; and they had travelled for several years, following vague indications, without losing hope. They had required so much money for the ferries and in the hostelries, for the rights of princes and the exactions of robbers, that they had come to the bottom of their purse and were now begging. What matter, now that they were soon to embrace their son? They extolled his happiness in having so gracious a wife, and never wearied admiring her and kissing her.

The richness of the apartment astonished them greatly, and the old man, having examined the walls, asked why they bore the blazon of the Emperor of Occitania.

She replied:

"He is my father!"

At that he trembled, recalling the prediction of the gipsy, and the old woman thought of the word of the hermit. Doubtless her son's glory was but the dawn of the splendours of eternity; and the pair remained awestruck in the light of the candelabra which illumined the table.

They must have been very handsome in their youth. The mother still had all her hair, the fine braids of which, like wreaths of snow, hung down to the bottom of her cheeks; and the father, with his tall form and his long beard, was like a church statue.

Julian's wife counselled them not to wait for him. She put them to bed herself in her own room, then closed the casement; they fell asleep. Day was about to appear and outside the window the little birds were beginning to sing.

Julian had crossed the park; and was marching in the forest with vigorous step, rejoicing in the softness of the grass and the sweetness of the air.

The shadows of the trees lay upon the moss. Sometimes the moon made white patches in the glades, and he hesitated to go on, thinking that he saw a sheet of water, or again the surface of calm pools blended with the colour of the herbage. Everywhere was a great silence; and he discovered none of the animals which had been roaming round his castle only a few minutes before.

The wood became thicker, the darkness profound. Puffs of warm wind passed by, full of softening perfumes. He sank in heaps of dead leaves, and leant against an oak to take breath.

All at once, behind him leapt a darker mass, a wild boar. Julian had not time to seize his bow, and grieved at that as if it were a misfortune.

Then, coming out of the wood, he caught sight of a wolf slinking along a hedge.

Julian sent an arrow after it. The wolf halted, turned its head to look at him, and went on its way. It trotted on, always keeping the same distance between them, halted now and then, and, as soon as it was aimed at, took to flight again.

In this manner Julian traversed an interminable plain, then sandhills, and found himself at last on a table-land commanding a great stretch of country. Flat rocks were strewn among caves and ruins. He stumbled over dead men's bones; here and there mouldering crosses leaned over in melancholy fashion. But shapes moved in the uncertain shadow of the tombs, and out of it came hyenas, excited, panting. Their claws clattering on the flagstones, they came up to him, and smelled him with yawns that showed their gums. He unsheathed his sabre. They fled at once in all directions and, continuing their limping and precipitate gallop, were lost in the distance amid a cloud of dust.

An hour later, he met in a ravine a furious bull, his horns levelled, pawing the sand with his hoof. Julian thrust his lance under his dewlap. It shattered as if the animal had been made of brass; he shut his eyes and waited for his death. When he opened them again, the bull had disappeared.

At that his soul was overwhelmed with shame. A superior power was taking away his strength; and he went back to the forest to return home.

It was entangled with creepers; and he was cutting them with his sabre when a polecat suddenly slipped between his legs, a panther made a spring over his shoulder, a serpent climbed in a spiral about an ash-tree.

In its foliage was a monstrous jackdaw, which looked at Julian; and, here and there, a number of great sparks showed among the branches, as if the sky had caused all its stars to rain down on the forest. They were the eyes of animals, wild cats, squirrels, owls, parrots, monkeys.

Julian darted his arrows at them; the arrows with their feathers settled on the leaves like white butterflies. He hurled stones at them; the stones fell back without hitting anything. He cursed himself, could have struck himself, howled imprecations, was like to choke with rage.

And all the animals that he had pursued were represented, forming a circle close about him. Some were squatted on their rumps, the others standing at their full height. He stood in the centre, frozen with terror, incapable of the smallest movement. By a supreme effort of will, he took a step; the animals perched on the trees spread their wings, those which trod the ground moved their limbs; and all accompanied him.

The hyenas marched before him, the wolf and the wild boar behind. The bull at his right hand rocked its head, and at his left the serpent writhed through the plants, while the panther, with arched back, advanced with velvety step in great strides. He moved as gently as possible, not to irritate them, and from the depths of the thickets he saw issuing porcupines, foxes, vipers, jackals and bears.

Julian started to run; they ran too. The serpent hissed, the foul-smelling beasts drooled. The wild boar rubbed his heels with its tusks, the wolf the palms of his hands with its hairy muzzle. The monkeys grimaced as they pinched him, the polecat rolled over his feet. A bear took away his bonnet with a back-stroke of its paw; and the panther scornfully let fall an arrow which it carried in its mouth.

A certain irony was evident in their stealthy proceedings. Looking at him out of the corner of their eyes, they seemed to be meditating a plan of revenge; and, deafened by the humming of insects, beaten by birds' tails, suffocated by breaths, he walked with his arms stretched forward, his eyelids closed, like a blind man, without even the strength to cry "Mercy!"

The crow of a cock vibrated in the air. Others answered it; it was day; and over the orange-trees he recognized the summit of his palace.

Then, at the edge of a field, he saw, three paces off, some red partridges fluttering in the stubble. He undid his cloak and flung it over them like a net. When he uncovered them, he could find only one, and that one long dead and rotten.

This deception exasperated him more than all the others. His thirst for carnage came back to him; failing beasts, he could have massacred men.

He climbed the three terraces, burst in the door with a blow of his fist; but at the foot of the stairs the thought of his dear wife relieved his heart. She was sleeping, no doubt, and he would go and surprise her.

Having drawn off his sandals, he turned the lock gently and entered.

The leaded panes obscured the pale light of the dawn. Julian caught his feet in some garments on the floor; further on, he stumbled against a side-board still covered with dishes. "She must have been eating," he said to himself, and went towards the bed, which was lost in the darkness of the farther side of the room. When he reached the bed-side, in order to embrace his wife, he leant over the pillow where the two heads were reposing side by side. Thereupon he felt the touch of a beard against his mouth.

He recoiled, thinking he was going mad; but he returned to the bed-side, and his fingers, as he felt about, came against hair which was very long. To convince himself of his error, he passed his hand gently over the pillow yet again. It was indeed a beard, this time, and a man! - a man lying with his wife!

Bursting into a wrath beyond measure, he fell upon them with his poniard; and he stamped and foamed, with howls like a savage beast. Then he stopped. The dead, pierced to the heart, had not so much as moved. He listened attentively to the two groanings almost equal, and, as they subsided, another one far away continued them. Indistinct at first, this plaintive, long-drawn voice came nearer, became loud, cruel: and to his terror he recognized it for the belling of the great black stag.

And, as he turned round, he thought he saw in the door-way the phantom of his wife, light in hand.

The din of the murder had brought her. With one staring glance she comprehended all, and, flying in horror, let fall her candle.

He picked it up.

His father and mother lay before him, stretched on their backs, with their bosoms pierced; and their countenances, of a majestic gentleness, were as if they guarded some eternal secret. Smears and clots of blood showed on their white skin, on the sheets, on the floor, upon an ivory crucifix hanging in the alcove. The crimson reflection of the window, touched at that moment by the sun, lit up those crimson stains, and cast yet others all over the apartment. Julian went up to the two bodies saying to himself, trying to persuade himself, that it could not be, that he was mistaken, that there are sometimes extraordinary resemblances. At last he stooped to look more closely at the old man; and he saw between the half-closed eyelids a lifeless eye that burnt him like fire. Then he crossed to the other side of the couch, occupied by the other corpse, the face of which was partially concealed by its white hair. Julian passed his hand under its braids, lifted its head; - and he gazed at it, holding it at the length of his rigid arm, while he lighted himself with the candle in his other hand. Some drops soaking through the mattress fell one by one upon the boards.

At the end of the day he presented himself before his wife; and, in a voice unlike his own, commanded her first, not to answer him, not to come near him, not even to look at him, then to follow, under pain of damnation, all his orders, which were irrevocable.

The obsequies were to be carried out according to the instructions which he had left in writing on a faldstool in the chamber of the dead. He left her his palace, his vassals, all his possessions, not even retaining the clothes on his body, nor his sandals, which they would find at the top of the staircase.

She had obeyed the will of God in being the occasion of his crime, and was to pray for his soul, since thenceforward he should be as one dead.

The dead were magnificently interred in the chapel of a monastery three days' journey from the castle. A monk with his cowl drawn over his head followed the train far apart from the rest, and no one dared to speak to him.

During the Mass he remained flat on his belly in the porch, his arms out-stretched in a cross, and his brow in the dust.

After the burial, they saw him take the road that led to the mountains. He turned round several times, and at last disappeared.

III

He went away, begging his bread through the world.

He held out his hand to horsemen on the highways, approached the harvesters with genuflexions, or remained motionless before the barriers of courts; and his visage was so sad that they never refused him alms.

In his humility he told his story; thereupon all fled from him, crossing themselves. In the villages where he had already passed, as soon as he was recognized, they shut the doors, shouted threats at him, threw stones at him. The more charitable set a dish on their window-sill, then closed the shutter so as not to see him.

Repulsed everywhere, he avoided men; and nourished himself with roots, plants, wild fruits, and shell-fish which he sought along the shores.

Sometimes on turning a hill he would see below him a confusion of crowded roofs, with stone spires, bridges, towers, black streets crossing one another, whence a continual hum rose up to his ears.

The need of mingling with the existence of others would force him to descend to the town. But the brutish air of the faces, the din of occupations, the indifference of their talk, froze his heart. On feast-days, when the great bell of some cathedral filled the whole people with joy from break of day, he watched the inhabitants issuing from their houses, then the dances in the squares, the fountains running ale at the crossings, the damask hangings outside the lodgings of princes, and at evening, through the panes of the ground-floors, the long family tables, where grandparents held little children on their knees; sobs choked him and he turned back to the country.

He contemplated with transports of love the foals in the pastures, the birds in their nests, the insects on the flowers; at his approach all fled farther away, hid themselves in alarm, flew off as fast as they could.

He sought the solitudes again. But the wind brought what seemed groans of death-agony to his ear; the tears of the dew falling to earth recalled other drops of heavier weight to his mind. The sun showed like blood in the clouds every evening; and every night, in a dream, his parricide began anew.

He made himself a haircloth shirt with iron points. He climbed on his two knees up every hill that had a chapel on its summit. But pitiless thought obscured the splendours of the sanctuaries, and tortured him amid the macerations of his penance.

He did not revolt against God who had inflicted this deed upon him, and yet he was in despair to think that he could have wrought it.

His own person caused him such horror that he adventured himself in perils in the hope of delivering himself from it. He saved paralytics from fires, children from the bottom of gulfs. The abyss rejected him, the flames spared him.

Time did not ease his sufferings. They became intolerable. He resolved to die.

And one day that he found himself at the edge of a fountain, as he stooped over it to judge the depth of the water, he saw facing him an old man, all fleshless, with white beard and so lamentable an aspect that he could not restrain his tears. The other wept also. Without recognizing his own reflection, Julian had a confused remembrance of a face that resembled it. He uttered a cry; it was his father; and he had no more thought of killing himself.

So bearing about the burden of his memory he covered many countries; and he arrived beside a river the crossing of which was dangerous because of its violence, and because there was a great stretch of mud on its banks. No one had dared to cross it for a long time.

An old boat, sunk by the stern, reared its prow among the reeds. On examining it, Julian discovered a pair of oars; and the thought struck him to employ his existence in the service of others.

He began by establishing a sort of causeway on the bank, which would permit of descending to the channel; and he broke his nails dislodging enormous stones, thrust his stomach against them to move them, slid in the mud, sunk in it, all but perished several times.

Then he repaired the boat with some wreckage, and built himself a cabin with clay and tree-trunks.

When the ferry became known, travellers presented themselves. They summoned him from the other bank by waving flags; Julian quickly sprang into his boat. It was very heavy; and they overloaded it with all sort of baggage and bundles, not to speak of the beasts of burden, which, plunging with terror, increased the encumbrance. He asked nothing for his trouble; some gave him scraps of victuals that they took from their wallets, or worn-out clothes that they no longer wanted. Rough characters vociferated blasphemies. Julian reproached them gently, and they retorted with insults. He contented himself with blessing them.

A little table, a stool, a bed of dead leaves and three earthenware cups, that was all his furniture. Two holes in the wall served for windows. On one side, as far as the eye could reach, extended sterile plains with pale meres on their surface here and there; and in front of him the great river rolled its greenish waves. In spring the humid earth had an odour of rottenness. Then a wanton wind would raise the dust in clouds. It came in everywhere, muddied the water, crunched under his teeth. A little later, there were clouds of mosquitoes, whose trumpeting and stinging never ceased day or night. Next came cruel frosts, which gave things the rigidity of stone and caused a mad longing to eat flesh.

Months passed without Julian seeing any person. Often he closed his eyes, trying by way of memory to return to his youth; - and a castle yard appeared with greyhounds in a porch, serving-men in the hall, and beneath an arbour of vines a fair-haired youth between an old man in furs and a lady with a great head-dress; all at once the two corpses were there. He threw himself flat on his face upon his bed and weeping repeated:

"Ah, poor father! poor mother! poor mother!" and fell into a swoon in which the doleful visions continued.

One night as he slept he thought he heard some one calling him. He listened intently and could make out nothing but the roaring of the waves. But the same voice repeated:

"Julian!"

It came from the other side, which seemed extraordinary, considering the breadth of the river.

A third time the call came:

"Julian!"

And the loud voice had the tone of a church-bell.

Lighting his lantern he went out of his cabin. A furious hurricane filled the night. The darkness was profound, rent here and there by the whiteness of leaping waves.

After a moment's hesitation, Julian unfastened the moorings. The water immediately became calm, the boat glided upon it and touched the other bank, where a man was waiting.

He was wrapped in a tattered sheet, his face like a plaster mask, and his two eyes redder than coals. On holding his lantern to him, Julian saw that he was covered with a hideous leprosy; yet he had in his bearing a sort of kingly majesty.

As soon as he entered the boat, it sank prodigiously, crushed under his weight; a shock sent it up again, and Julian began to row.

At each stroke of the oar the surge of the waves heaved up the bow. The water, blacker than ink, rushed furiously past either side of the planking. It scooped out abysses, it made mountains, and the skiff now leaped up, now sank back into depths where it spun round, tossed about by the wind.

Julian bent his back, stretched his arms, and taking a purchase with his feet, came back, bending from his waist, in order to get more power. The hail lashed his hands, the rain ran down his back, the violence of the wind choked him, he halted. Then the boat was carried away by the current. But, comprehending that some great thing was afoot, some order which he durst not disobey, he took to his oars again; and the creaking of the tholes broke on the clamour of the tempest.

The little lantern burned in front of him. Birds flying past hid it at intervals. But he saw always the eyes of the Leper, who sat up in the stern immobile as a column.

And this lasted long, very long!

When they arrived in the cabin, Julian shut the door; and he saw him sitting on the stool. The sort of shroud that covered him had fallen to his haunches; and his shoulders, his chest, his meagre arms, were hidden under patches of scaly pustules. Enormous wrinkles furrowed his brow. Like a skeleton, he had a hole in place of a nose; and his bluish lips gave out a breath as thick as a fog and nauseating.

"I'm hungry," he said.

Julian gave him what he had, an old piece of bacon and the crusts of a black loaf.

When he had devoured them, the table, the dish, and the haft of the knife all bore the same marks as were to be seen on his body.

Next he said, "I'm thirsty!"

Julian went to get his pitcher; and as he took it an aroma came from it which made his heart swell and his nostrils dilate, it was wine; what a find! But the Leper put out his arm and emptied the whole pitcher at one draught.

Then he said, "I'm cold!"

With his candle Julian set light to a bundle of fern in the middle of the hut.

The Leper went to it to warm himself; and, squatted on his heels, he trembled in every limb, became weaker; his eyes no longer shone, his sores ran, and in a voice almost inaudible he murmured:

"Your bed!"

Julian aided him gently to drag himself to it, and even spread over him, to cover him, the sail of his boat.

The Leper groaned. The corners of his mouth exposed his teeth, a quicker rattle shook his breast, and at each breath his belly sank in to his backbone.

Then he closed his eyelids.

"My bones are like ice! Come beside me!"

And Julian, lifting up the canvas, lay down on the dead leaves, beside him.

The Leper turned his head.

"Undress yourself, so that I can have the warmth of your body!"

Julian stripped off his garments, then, naked as at the day of his birth, got into bed again, and against his thigh he felt the Leper's skin, colder than a serpent and rough as a file.

He tried to cheer him, and the other answered panting:

"Ah, I am dying!... Come close to me, warm me! No, not with your hands! No, with your whole body!"

Julian stretched himself full length upon him, mouth against mouth and breast against breast.

Then the Leper caught him in his embrace, and his eyes all at once assumed the brightness of stars; his hair lengthened out like sunbeams, the breath of his nostrils had the sweetness of roses; a cloud of incense rose from the hearth; the waves sang. There at a fulness of delight, a joy more than human, descended like a flood upon Julian's fainting soul; and he whose arms clasped him grew greater and greater; till he touched either wall of the hut with his head and feet. The roof flew off, the firmament opened wide, - and Julian mounted up to the azure spaces, face to face with Our Lord Jesus, who bore him away into Heaven.

Such is the story of Saint Julian Hospitator, almost exactly as it is to be seen in a church-window in my native province.

End of Legend Of Saint Julian Hospitator by Gustave Flaubert