seen in it, just in front of the rest of the congregation, with his old-fashioned dress and his long gloves reaching almost to the elbow.  When the Sacrament was about to be administered he withdrew to the end of the choir, unfastened his hair, laid his gloves upon a small stool placed expressly for him near the rood screen, and walked up the aisle unassisted and erect.  No one approached the table until he had returned to his seat and put on his gauntlets.

“He was very poor, but he made a point of concealing it from the public.  These country nobles used to enjoy certain privileges which enabled them to live rather better than the general mass of peasants, but these gradually faded away, and Kermelle was in a very embarrassed condition.  He could not well work in the fields, and he kept in doors all day, having an occupation which could be followed under cover.  When flax has ripened, it is put through a process of decortication, which leaves only the textile fibre, and this was the work which poor old Kermelle thought that he could do without loss of dignity.  No one saw him at it, and thus appearances were saved; but the fact was generally known, and as it was the custom to give every one a nickname he was soon known all the country over as ‘the flax-crusher.’  This sobriquet, as so often happens, gradually took the place of his proper name, and as ‘the flax-crusher’ he was soon generally known.

“He was like a patriarch of old, and you would laugh if I told you how the flax-crusher eked out his subsistence, and added to the scanty wage which he received for this work.  It was supposed that as head of the village he had special gifts of healing, and that by the laying on of his hands, and in other ways, he could cure many complaints.  The popular belief was that this power was only possessed by those who had ever so many quartering, of nobility, and that he alone had the requisite number.  On certain days his house was besieged by people who had come a distance of fifty miles.  If a child was backward in learning to walk or was weak on its legs, the parents brought it to him.  He moistened his fingers in his mouth and traced figures on the child’s loins, the result being that it soon was able to walk.  He was thoroughly in earnest, for these were the days of simple faith.  Upon no account would he have taken any money, and for the matter of that the people who came to consult him were too poor to give him any, but one brought a dozen eggs, another a flitch of bacon, a third a jar of butter, or some fruit.  He made no scruple about accepting these, and though the nobles in the towns ridiculed him, they were very wrong in doing so.  He knew the country very well, and was the very incarnation and embodiment of it.