The penance inflicted was this: he was to enter the convent church, and prostrating himself, kiss the lowest step of the altar three times: then kneeling on the floor, to say three paternosters and a credo: "this done come back to me on the instant." Accordingly, his short mortification performed, Gerard returned and found Father Anselm spreading plaster. "After the soul the body," said he; "know that I am the chirurgeon here, for want of a better. This is going on thy leg; to cool it, not to burn it, the saints forbid." During the operation, the monastic leech, who had naturally been interested by the Dusseldorf branch of Gerard's confession, rather sided with Denys upon "bleeding." "We Dominicans seldom let blood now-a-days; the lay leeches say 'tis from timidity and want of skill; but, in sooth, we have long found that simples will cure most of the ills that can be cured at all. Besides they never kill in capable hands; and other remedies slay like thunderbolts. As for the blood, the Vulgate saith expressly it is 'the life of a man.' And in medicine or law, as in divinity, to be wiser than the All-wise is to be a fool. Moreover, simples are mighty. The little four-footed creature that kills the poisonous snake, if bitten herself finds an herb powerful enough to quell that poison, though stronger and of swifter operation than any mortal malady; and we, taught by her wisdom, and our own traditions, still search and try the virtues of those plants the good Goth hath strewed this earth with some to feed men's bodies, some to heal them. Only in desperate ills we mix heavenly with earthly virtue. We steep the hair or the bones of some dead saint in the medicine, and thus work marvellous cures." "Think you, father, it is along of the reliques? for Peter a Floris, a learned leech and no pagan, denies it stoutly."