There is, perhaps, nothing more touching in monastic annals than the picture traced by S. Hilary, one of the most illustrious sons of Lerins, of the paternal tenderness of Honoratus for the numerous family of monks whom he had collected round him. He could reach the depths of their souls to discover all their griefs. He neglected no effort to banish every sadness, every painful recollection of the world. He watched their sleep, their health, their food, their labours, that each might serve God according to the measure of his strength. Thus he inspired them with a love more than filial. "In him," they said, "we find not only a father, but an entire family, a country, the whole world." When he wrote to any of those who were absent, they said, on receiving his letter, written according to the usage of the time, upon tablets of wax, "It is honey which he has poured back into that wax, honey drawn from the inexhaustible sweetness of his heart." In that island paradise, and under the care of such a shepherd, the perfume of life breathed everywhere. These monks, who had sought happiness by renouncing secular life, felt and proclaimed that they had found it; to see their serene and modest joy, their union, their gentleness, and their firm hope, one would have believed one's self, says S. Eucher, in the presence of a battalion of angels at rest.[59] How S. Honoratus converted S. Hilary by his prayers, as told by S. Hilary himself, shall be related when we speak of that Saint. Honoratus was, by compulsion, made to assume the direction of the see of Arles, and was consecrated Bishop in 426. He died in the arms of S. Hilary, who succeeded him in 429. Relics, at S. Honoré, formerly Lerins. In art, he appears expelling serpents from the isle with his staff. S. JAMES, B. OF THE TARANTAISE. (5TH CENT.) [Authority for his life, a fragmentary life of uncertain date, published by Bollandus.] James, of Asiatic origin, and a soldier, was one of the first disciples of S. Honoratus in his monastic settlement at Lerins. When S. Honoratus was appointed Archbishop of Arles, he called James to be the first Bishop of the Tarantaise, the valleys of the Isère and Arc, of which Moutiers is the modern capital, between the Graian and Pennine Alps. S. James made Centronum, or Moutiers, the seat of the bishopric, and there he laboured to convert the people still buried in heathenism. Of him is related a story very similar to that told of other Saints, viz., that as his monks were cutting down trees in the forest, for the construction of his cathedral church, a bear killed one of the oxen which drew the timber. Then the monks fled in consternation to S. James, who went boldly to the bear and said, "I, James, the servant of Christ, command thee, cruel beast, to bow thy stubborn neck to the yoke, in place of the ox thou hast slain." Then the bear was obedient, and drew the timber to the church.