His mother, during the time she was pregnant with him, dreamed she had a white dog in her womb, which in all probability was the reason the Cistertian monks dressed in white, in the same manner as Benedict’s raven might have suggested the colour to the vestments of the Benedictines. During his infancy Bernard was much troubled with head-ach; and an old woman having been sent for to cure him, he would not suffer her to come near him, from the belief that she made use of charms. One Christmas-day, when he was at church, during his boyhood, he prayed that the very hour in which Christ was born might be revealed to him; and when that hour came, he saw a new-born infant. What a pity it is that Bernard, who has written so much, did not record that hour, the day, the month, and the year, about which chronologers are still so much divided. During a hard frosty night, Bernard was seized with a violent paroxysm of satyriasis, or strong carnal inclination: he precipitated himself into a pond of water, and remained there until he was almost frozen to death. On another occasion, during the time he was preaching to a very numerous congregation, who were listening to him, a temptation of vain glory invaded him, and he heard a voice within him saying, _see, how all the people do attend unto your words_. He was just going to leave off preaching to mortify this temptation, but perceiving it was the Devil who had addressed him, for the purpose of interrupting his sermon, he turned about his head to the tempter, and thus coolly spoke to him—_As I did not begin this sermon for thee, so neither will I end it for thee_, and so went on preaching as before. He was always very sickly, and not only rejoiced that he was so himself, but he judged it fit that all monks ought to be so: for which reason he built _Claraval_, and all his other monasteries, in low damp places. Bernard laboured hard to bring all his monks to an uninterrupted attention to their devotions; and having one day, as he was riding, been told by a peasant, “_that he found that to be an easy thing_;” he promised him the mule he rode upon, if he would but say the Lord’s prayer without any distraction of thought. The peasant began the prayer, but before he got half through it, he confessed that “it came into his mind, whether with the mule he was to have the saddle and bridle also.”