A certain priest, who celebrated every day a mass in honour of the Holy Virgin, was brought up before Saint Thomas of Canterbury who suspended him from his charge, judging him to be short-witted and irresponsible.  Now Saint Thomas had occasion to mend his hair-cloth shirt, and while waiting for an opportunity to do so, had hidden it under his bed; so the Virgin appeared to the priest and said to him:  “Go find the archbishop and tell him that she, for love of whom you celebrated masses, has herself mended his shirt for him which is under his bed; and tell him that she sends you to him that he may take off the interdict he has imposed on you.”  And Saint Thomas found that his shirt had in fact been mended.  He relieved the priest, begging him to keep the secret of his wearing a hair-shirt.

Mary did some exceedingly unconventional things, and among them the darning Thomas A’Becket’s hair-shirt, and the supporting a robber on the gibbet, were not the most singular, yet they seem not to have shocked Queen Blanche or Saint Francis or Saint Thomas Aquinas so much as they shocked M. Gaston Paris and M. Prudhomme.  You have still to visit the cathedral at Le Mans for the sake of its twelfth-century glass, and there, in the lower panel of the beautiful, and very early, window of Saint Protais, you will see the full-length figure of a man, lying in bed, under a handsome blanket, watching, with staring eyes, the Virgin, in a green tunic, wearing her royal crown, who is striking him on the head with a heavy hammer and with both hands.  The miracle belongs to local history, and is amusing only to show how little the Virgin cared for criticism of her manners or acts.  She was above criticism.  She made manners.  Her acts were laws.  No one thought of criticizing, in the style of a normal school, the will of such a queen; but one might treat her with a degree of familiarity, under great provocation, which would startle easier critics than the French, Here is an instance:—­

A widow had an only child whom she tenderly loved.  On hearing that this son had been taken by the enemy, chained, and put in prison, she burst into tears, and addressing herself to the Virgin, to whom she was especially devoted, she asked her with obstinacy for the release of her son; but when she saw at last that her prayers remained unanswered, she went to the church where there was a sculptured image of Mary, and there, before the image, she said:  “Holy Virgin, I have begged you to deliver my son, and you have not been willing to help an unhappy mother!  I’ve implored your patronage for my son, and you have refused it!  Very good! just as my son has been taken away from me, so I am going to take away yours, and keep him as a hostage!” Saying this, she approached, took the statue child on the Virgin’s breast, carried it home, wrapped it in spotless linen, and locked it up in a box, happy to have such a hostage for her son’s return.  Now, the following night, the Virgin appeared to the young man, opened his prison doors, and said:  “Tell your mother, my child, to return me my Son now that I have returned hers!” The young man came home to his mother and told her of his miraculous deliverance; and she, overjoyed, hastened to go with the little Jesus to the Virgin, saying to her:  “I thank you, heavenly lady, for restoring me my child, and in return I restore yours!”