People turned against their favourite, whose former
charms must now be counted only as the fascinations of witchcraft.
It was as if the wine poured out for them had soured in the cup. The
golden age had indeed come back for a while:--golden was it, or
gilded only, after all? and they were too sick, or at least too
serious, to carry through their parts in it. The monk Hermes was
whimsically reminded of that after-thought in pagan poetry, of a
Wine-god who had been in hell. Denys certainly, with all his flaxen
fairness about him, was manifestly a sufferer. At first he thought
of departing secretly to some other place. Alas! his wits were too
far gone for certainty of success in the attempt. He feared to be
brought back a prisoner. Those fat years were over. It was a time
of scarcity. The working people might not eat and drink of the good
things they had helped to store away. Tears rose in the eyes of
needy children, of old or weak people like children, as they woke up
again and again to sunless, frost-bound, ruinous mornings; and the
little hungry creatures went prowling after scattered hedge-nuts or
dried vine-tendrils.
[68] Mysterious, dark rains prevailed throughout the summer. The
great offices of Saint John were fumbled through in a sudden darkness
of unseasonable storm, which greatly damaged the carved ornaments of
the church, the bishop reading his mid-day Mass by the light of the
little candle at his book. And then, one night, the night which
seemed literally to have swallowed up the shortest day in the year, a
plot was contrived by certain persons to take Denys as he went and
kill him privately for a sorcerer.
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