The archbishop began a long discourse, but Nicolas impatiently shook himself free from his guards, and without waiting for the end of it, bounded out of the hall to the head of the steps leading into the street, crying, “Kyrie eleison!” which was responded to by a shout from the boys eagerly awaiting him without. At the head of a swarm of children he rushed madly through and round the city, making the streets resound with his monotonous appeal, and bringing the wondering citizens to their doors and windows. But the blows he had received at Tarentum had done him some serious internal injury, and he now fell sick at Trani. There was hardly an inhabitant of the city who did not visit his sickbed, that he might hear the poor madman howl, “Kyrie eleison!” with his fevered lips, and depart marvelling at his sanctity. The boys who had run after him and partaken of his apples came to see him, and the dying man gave them his cross, and bade them march about the dormitory of the hospital where he lay, bearing the cross, and vociferating, “Kyrie eleison!” Night and day the dormitory was crowded, and the excitement of the fevered man kept constantly stimulated. He died on 2nd June 1094, and till his burial his body attracted ever-increasing crowds. He was buried at Trani with considerable ceremony, for already the notion had spread that the crazy Greek was a great saint, and the infatuated Brother Bartholomew did his utmost to fan the growing popular enthusiasm into a flame. Almost immediately after the burial highly imaginative individuals began to believe they had been miraculously healed of diseases at his tomb. He appeared in visions, cured cripples, uttered forebodings. The Archbishop of Trani made formal investigation into the miracles, after the manner of ecclesiastical investigations, and pronounced them genuine. Trani was without a patron; no blood of martyrs had reddened its soil, no saint had occupied its episcopal throne. It was discreditable to be without a patron, and the good people of Trani were not nice as to whom they had as patron so long as they had one whom they could claim as peculiarly their own. A statement of the virtues, acts, and miracles of Nicolas was forwarded with gravity by the Archbishop of Trani to the Pope and Council at Rome in 1099. Urban II. with equal gravity, by special bull, canonised this pitiable fool, and hoaxed Christendom into worshipping a man in whose career no single spark of godliness appears; a man driven, to all appearance, from his own country for having led astray an innocent girl, whom he persuaded to elope with him from her home, and join him in his vagabond life. III ST. CHRISTINA THE WONDERFUL