remembered. Fine and abundant wine was to be found stored up even in
poor men's cottages; while a new beauty, a gaiety, was abroad, as all
the conjoint arts branched out exuberantly in a reign of quiet,
delighted labour, at the prompting, as it seemed, of the singular
being who came suddenly and oddly to Auxerre to be the centre of so
pleasant a period, though in truth he made but a sad ending.

A peculiar usage long perpetuated itself at Auxerre. On Easter Day
the canons, in the very centre of the great church, played solemnly
at ball. Vespers being sung, instead of conducting the bishop to his
palace, they proceeded in order into the nave, the people standing in
two long rows to watch. Girding up their skirts a little way, the
whole body of clerics awaited their turn in silence, while the
captain of the singing-boys cast the ball into the air, as [58] high
as he might, along the vaulted roof of the central aisle to be caught
by any boy who could, and tossed again with hand or foot till it
passed on to the portly chanters, the chaplains, the canons
themselves, who finally played out the game with all the decorum of
an ecclesiastical ceremony. It was just then, just as the canons
took the ball to themselves so gravely, that Denys--Denys
l'Auxerrois, as he was afterwards called--appeared for the first
time. Leaping in among the timid children, he made the thing really
a game. The boys played like boys, the men almost like madmen, and
all with a delightful glee which became contagious, first in the
clerical body, and then among the spectators. The aged Dean of the
Chapter, Protonotary of his Holiness, held up his purple skirt a
little higher, and stepping from the ranks with an amazing levity, as
if suddenly relieved of his burden of eighty years, tossed the ball
with his foot to the venerable capitular Homilist, equal to the
occasion. And then, unable to stand inactive any longer, the laity