Chartres collection relates chiefly to the horrible outbreak of what was called leprosy—­the “mal ardent,”—­which ravaged the north of France during the crusades, and added intensity to the feelings which brought all society to the Virgin’s feet.  Recent scholars are cataloguing and classifying the miracles, as far as they survive, and have reduced the number within very moderate limits.  As poetry, Gaultier de Coincy’s are the best.

Of Gaultier de Coincy and his poetry, Gaston Paris has something to say which is worth quoting:—­

It is the most curious, and often the most singular monument of the infantile piety of the Middle Ages.  Devotion to Mary is presented in it as a kind of infallible guarantee not only against every sort of evil, but also against the most legitimate consequences of sin and even of crime.  In these stories which have revolted the most rational piety, as well as the philosophy of modern times, one must still admit a gentle and penetrating charm; a naivete; a tenderness and a simplicity of heart, which touch, while they raise a smile.  There, for instance, one sees a sick monk cured by the milk that Our Lady herself comes to invite him to draw from her “douce mamelle”; a robber who is in the habit of recommending himself to the Virgin whenever he is going to “embler,” is held up by her white hands for three days on the gibbet where he is hung, until the miracle becomes evident, and procures his pardon; an ignorant monk who knows only his Ave Maria, and is despised on that account, when dead reveals his sanctity by five roses which come out of his mouth in honour of the five letters of the name Maria; a nun, who has quitted her convent to lead a life of sin, returns after long years, and finds that the Holy Virgin, to whom, in spite of all, she has never ceased to offer every day her prayer, has, during all this time, filled her place as sacristine, so that no one has perceived her absence.

Gaston Paris inclined to apologize to his “bons bourgeois de Paris” for reintroducing to them a character so doubtful as the Virgin Mary, but, for our studies, the professor’s elementary morality is eloquent.  Clearly, M. Paris, the highest academic authority in the world, thought that the Virgin could hardly, in his time, say the year 1900, be received into good society in the Latin Quarter.  Our own English ancestors, known as Puritans, held the same opinion, and excluded her from their society some four hundred years earlier, for the same reasons which affected M. Gaston Paris.  These reasons were just, and showed the respectability of the citizens who held them.  In no well-regulated community, under a proper system of police, could the Virgin feel at home, and the same thing may be said of most other saints as well as sinners.  Her conduct was at times undignified, as M. Paris complained, She condescended to do domestic service, in order to help her friends, and she would use her needle, if she were in the mood, for the same object.  The “Golden Legend” relates that:—­