"If my Damoiselle does not feel that she needs help, perhaps that is the reason why she does not get it." "Ah, but we do get it in the holy mass. Can we receive our Lord, and not receive grace?" "Do we always, and all, receive our Lord?" "Margot! Is not that heresy?" "Ha! I do not know. If it be truth, it can hardly be." "But does not holy Church teach, that whenever we eat the holy bread, the presence of our Lord comes down into our hearts?"[#] [#] Holy Church had gone no further than this in 1183. Bare transubstantiation was not adopted by authority till about thirty years later. "I suppose He will come, if we want Him," said Marguerite thoughtfully. "But scarcely, I should think, if we ate that bread with our hearts set on something else, and not caring whether He came or not." I was rather afraid to pursue the question with Margot, for I keep feeling afraid, every now and then, when she says things of that sort, whether she has not received some strange, heretical notion from that man in sackcloth, who preached at the Cross, at Lusignan. I cannot help fancying that he must be one of those heretics who lately crept into England, and King Henry the father had them whipped and turned out of doors, forbidding any man to receive them or give them aid. It was a very bitter winter, and they soon perished of hunger and cold, as I suppose such caitiffs ought. Yet some of them were women; and I could not but feel pity for the poor innocent babes that one or two had in their arms. And the people who saw them said they never spoke a bitter word, but as soon as they understood their penalty, and the punishment that would follow harbouring them, they begged no more, but wandered up and down the snowy streets in company, singing—only fancy, singing! And first one and then another dropped and died, and the rest heaped snow over them with their hands, which was the only burial they could give; and then they went on, singing,—always singing. I asked Damoiselle Elisinde de Ferrers,—it was she who told me,—what they sang. She said they sang always the holy Psalter, or else the Nativity Song of the angels,—"Glory to God in the highest,—on earth peace towards men of good-will."[#] And at last they were all dead under the snow but one,—one poor old man, who survived last. And he went on alone, singing. He tottered out of the town,—I think it was Lincoln, but I am not sure,—and as far as men’s ears could follow, they caught his thin, quavering voice, still singing,—"Glory to God in the highest!" And the next morning, they found him laid in a ditch, not singing,—dead. But on his face was such a smile as a saint might have worn at his martyrdom, and his eyes gazing straight up into heaven, as if the angels themselves had come down to help him to finish his song.[#] [#] Vulgate version. [#] This is the first persecution on record in England of professing Christians, by professing Christians.