"Surely, Father," replied the Duke, "your advice is sound, and since you give it unfeignedly, be it done, with Christ's aid, as thy goodness bids me do." In the year 909, the 11th year of Charles the Simple, the old Duke, lest, at his last hour, he should deserve the reproach of having thought only of the care of his body, and of the augmentation of his earthly possessions, wrote in his will, as follows:--"I declare that, for the love of God and of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, I give and bequeath to the holy apostles, Peter and Paul, all that I possess at Cluny ... without excepting anything dependent upon my domain of Cluny (Villa), farms, oratories, slaves of both sexes, vines, meadows, fields, water, water-courses, mills, rights of way, lands, cultivated or uncultivated, without any reserve."[70] [Illustration: ·NEAR CLUNY] He gives this, he goes on to say, for the good of soul and body of himself, his wife, his relatives, and dependents, "on condition that a monastery shall be built at Cluny, in honour of the apostles, Peter and Paul, and that there shall gather monks, living according to the rule of St. Benedict[71] to hold and administer for ever the things given, so that this house may become the true house of prayer, that it may be filled for ever with faithful vows and pious supplications, that here shall be desired and besought, with ardent wish and earnest longing, the wonders of communion with Heaven, that prayers and supplications be addressed without ceasing to God, both for me and for those persons of whom I have already made mention." Further:--"By God, in God and all His Saints, and under the fearful menace of the last judgment, I beg, I beseech, that no secular prince, nor count, nor bishop, nor the Pontiff himself of the Roman Church, do invade the possessions of God's servants, nor sell nor diminish, nor give in benefice to whomsoever it may be, anything to them belonging, nor allow any head to be set over them against their will. And that this prohibition may be more strongly binding upon the wicked and the headstrong, I insist and I add, and I conjure you, Oh! Holy Apostles, Peter and Paul, and Thou, Pontiff of the Pontiffs of the apostolic seat, to cut off from communion with the Holy Church and from life eternal, by the canonical authority thou has received of God, all robbers, invaders, or sellers of that which I give, of my full satisfaction and of my evident will." Sometimes, reading the old Duke's powerful anathema, that tells us more of the spirit of the time in which he lived than could any long narration of facts, I wonder, as I think of the after history of Cluny, whether that awful curse may not have alighted, or may not alight hereafter, upon the souls of those who have violated the conditions of its grant, or in blind fury have laid impious hands upon the hallowed stones of its church.