Kneeling down beside her, in a loud voice Injuriosus uttered these words— “I give Thee hearty thanks, Lord Jesus, that Thou hast bestowed upon me strength to preserve Thy treasure uninjured.” Upon these words, she that was dead rose up upon her funeral couch and smiled, and murmured softly— “My friend, why do you declare that which no man has asked of you?” Whereupon she resumed her everlasting rest. Injuriosus soon followed her to the tomb. They buried him not far from her in the basilica of Saint Allire. The first night after he was laid there a miraculous rose tree sprang from the grave of the virgin bride and enwrapped both tombs in its flower-besprent embraces. So that on the morrow the folk beheld them bound fast one to the other by chains of roses. Recognizing by this sign the sanctity of the blessed Injuriosus and the blessed Scholastica, the priests of Auvergne held up these shrines to the veneration of the faithful. But in this province, which had been evangelized by Saints Allire and Nepotian, pagans still dwelt. One of these, by name Sylvanus, still held sacred the springs dedicated to the nymphs, hung votive pictures upon the branches of an ancient oak, and cherished by his fireside little images in clay representing the sun and the goddesses of fruitfulness. Half hidden amid the foliage, the garden god watched over his orchard. Sylvanus passed his declining years in the writing of verse. He composed eclogues and elegies in a style a little stiff perhaps, but not wanting in skill, and into these poems, whenever he could manage to do so, he introduced verses from the bards of old. With the general populace he too visited the spot where the Christian spouses were laid, and the good man marvelled at the rose tree which decked the two tombs. And as, after his fashion, he was pious, he recognized therein a heavenly sign. But he attributed the prodigy to his own gods, and doubted nothing that the rose tree flourished by the will of Eros. Said he: “Now that she is nothing but a vain shadow, the tristful Scholastica regrets the hours when love was timely and the pleasures she renounced. These roses, which come forth from her body and express her thoughts, say to us who still survive: Love while ye may. This prodigy indeed instructs us to taste the joys of life while it is yet time.” Thus reflected this simple pagan. Upon this subject he composed an elegy which by the greatest of chances I unearthed in the public library at Tarascon, on the binding of a Bible of the eleventh century, catalogued Michel Chasles Collection F _n_ 7439, 17^9 _bis._ The precious leaf which had so far escaped the notice of the learned, contains not fewer than eighty-four lines in a fairly legible Merovingian script probably dating from the seventh century. The text begins with these words— >Nunc piget; et quaeris, quod non aut ista volontas Tunc fuit....[1] and finishes in this fashion—