Yet the miracle that is related to-day about St. Romain is so persistent and so widely spread, that it must be told, if only to explain the many allusions contained in picture, in carving, and in song,[8] throughout the tale of Rouen, and in the very stones and windows of her most sacred buildings. The story is but another variant of our own St. George, of St. Martha and the Tarasque in Provence, of many others in almost every country. It is but one more personification of that struggle of Good against Evil, Light against Darkness, Truth against Error, Civilisation against Barbarism, which is as old as the book of Genesis and as the history of the world. It has been represented by Apollo and the python, by Anubis and the serpent, by the Grand'gueule of Poitiers, by the dragons of Louvain and of St. Marcel. The general truth was appropriated by each particular locality until every church and town had its peculiar monster slain by its especial saint. Thus at Bordeaux there was St. Martial, thus Metz had St. Clement, Asti and Venice had their guardian saints, Bayeux had St. Vigor, Rouen had St. Romain. The emblem of eternal strife had become a universal allegory acceptable in every place and in all centuries, and so commonly believed, that until some poignant necessity arose for its assertion, it was never--as we shall see--mentioned even by those historians of the life of St. Romain, who might more especially be expected to know the details of his life. [Footnote 8: He is carved on a facade in the Musee des Antiquites, for instance, and painted in a window of the Church of St. Godard, to take only two examples of his constant occurrence in the civil and religious life of the people.] For St. Romain, so the fable runs, delivered Rouen from an immense and voracious monster, called the "Gargouille," who dwelt in the morasses and reed-beds of the river, and devoured the inhabitants of the town.[9] The wily saint employed a condemned criminal as a bait, lured the dragon from its den, then made the sign of the cross over it, and dragged it, unresisting, by his holy stole into the town, "ou elle fut arse et bruslez." To commemorate this deliverance in 626, continues the legend, the good King Dagobert (or was it Hlothair?) at the saint's request, allowed the Cathedral to release a prisoner every year upon Ascension Day, as the saint had released the prisoner who had assisted in the destruction of the "Gargouille." [Footnote 9: Not only did it eat men, women, and children, say the old chronicles, but "ne pardonnait meme pas aux vaisseaux et navires!"]