About this time it pleased the Virgin to show conspicuously to the brethren her good pleasure in the life they were leading in her honour. One day, when they were chanting matins, Mary, Queen of Heaven and Earth, resplendent in glory, appeared to them with the first rays of the dawn, and, in a moment, with a touch of her hand, changed the tawny robes of the Cistercians into garments of spotless purity. The vision vanished; but cowl and tunic retained the dazzling brilliancy of snow. Then the pious cenobites understood that they must adopt, henceforth, the white dress, as symbol of her--that flawless lily-of-the-valley--whose servants they were, and towards whose unspotted purity they were ever to strive.[99] In after years, when the black monks reproached the Cistercians with wearing a garment fit only for a time of joy, whilst the monastic state was one of penitence, the white monks would answer, that the religious life was not only one of penitence, but was like that of the angels, and therefore they wore white garments to show the spiritual joy of their hearts.[100] The Cistercian habit bore about it another touch of grace, derived from long and holy association. In the black scapular, worn over the white tunic, broad about the shoulders, then falling in a narrow strip to the feet, they saw the form of the Lord's cross, and thus they loved to bear it about with them, even in their sleep.[101] And notwithstanding their coarser bread, hard beds, and clothing no better than that of the peasantry, there was ever a cheerfulness about the Cistercians that comes always to him whose heart beats in sympathy with the warm heart of mother nature, whose work lay where their days were passed, not in towns, but in sequestered valleys and lonely uplands, among fruitful vineyard, meadow, and cornfield. After a while, upon Citeaux, too, in its turn, came evil days, when one by one the monks fell away and died, until Stephen began to doubt whether the austerities of his rule were not above human strength, and to fear that God had willed the destruction of the new community. One day, when he, with his brothers, was seated at the bed-side of a dying priest, he told the sufferer of his fear, and ordered him, in Christ's Name, to return from among the dead, and reveal to him God's Will concerning the future of the Abbey. The monk promised to do so, in so far as might be permitted him. Then he died. Some days after the passing of that brother, Stephen, at work in the fields, gave the signal for rest. Withdrawing himself from the others, he knelt down to pray, when the dead monk, ashine with heavenly light, and seeming rather to float above the ground than to be standing upon it, appeared to him.