Some indeed fancied they had seen him emerge again safely on the deck
of one of the great boats, loaded with grapes and wreathed
triumphantly with flowers like a floating garden, which were then
bringing down the vintage from the country; but generally the people
[74] believed their strange enemy now at last departed for ever.
Denys in truth was at work again in peace at the cloister, upon his
house of reeds and pipes. At times his fits came upon him again; and
when they came, for his cure he would dig eagerly, turned sexton now,
digging, by choice, graves for the dead in the various churchyards of
the town. There were those who had seen him thus employed (that form
seeming still to carry something of real sun-gold upon it) peering
into the darkness, while his tears fell sometimes among the grim
relics his mattock had disturbed.
In fact, from the day of the exhumation of the body of the Saint in
the great church, he had had a wonderful curiosity for such objects,
and one wintry day bethought him of removing the body of his mother
from the unconsecrated ground in which it lay, that he might bury it
in the cloister, near the spot where he was now used to work. At
twilight he came over the frozen snow. As he passed through the
stony barriers of the place the world around seemed curdled to the
centre--all but himself, fighting his way across it, turning now and
then right-about from the persistent wind, which dealt so roughly
with his blond hair and the purple mantle whirled about him.
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