Unholy Relics and Other Uncanny Tales

UNHOLY RELICS

There is hardly a parallel in the British Isles, except possibly the instance of Wales, to the way in which the former old kingdoms and comtes of southern France have kept up their identity and their “nationalism.” To this very day, for instance, the people of Provence, which was only annexed to France in 1480, do not regard themselves as Frenchmen.

The same is the case with that other ancient realm, Languedoc, lying on the west of the Great Plateau, in the valley of the stately Garonne, with the blue-grey Pyrenees ever in sight still further to the west. In this smiling country the tourist, if he has any taste for the mighty past at all, finds himself falling over the subject at every step. There is Narbonne, where yet lingers the shadow of imperial Rome; there is Carcassonne, most perfect medieval city-fortress left in Europe; and there is the kingdom’s ancient capital, Toulouse, which, being generally eclipsed by the other two in tourist interest, has in consequence succeeded in remaining unspoilt.

As the reader may legitimately demand to know what I was doing in Toulouse, I must inflict upon him a little history (which is pardonable) and a little autobiography (which is an offence). It should be explained, then, that I, Gregory Wayne, and my lifelong friend Alan Granville, having grown up together from boyhood with a burning love for the past, going to the same school and university, both sometime Fellows of our College, and both happily endowed with a modest competence that allows us to pursue our historical researches in comfort undisturbed by the worries of routine work, have for years been settled in a placid bachelor existence ensconced in a delightful old Leicestershire Wolds manor-house which we jointly purchased and restored.

Character-study being a boring obsession of modern writers to which we flatly refuse to pander, that is all the reader need bother to know about us. It only remains to mention that our monastic peace is undisturbed by the meddlesome hand of womankind, and that at the time of which I write, our domestic staff consisted of a couple of old ex-army batmen, excellent fellows and brothers, named James and John, wherefore we privately called them (when out of earshot) the Apostles.

A few years ago, then, we were engaged on a critical study of that tragic story of religious intolerance, the Albigensian War, which, early in the thirteenth century, fell with full force upon the city and district of Toulouse—by an irony of history, the very place that had been converted to the Christian faith as early as 250 A.D. by the saintly Semin, or Saturnin, who became its first bishop.

We came upon fresh material casting new light on the story of those unfortunate heretics the Albigenses; so, as Granville’s many accomplishments do not, unfortunately, include a good working knowledge of French (which, being my mother’s tongue, is a second language to me), I left him behind at home working on the Norman and English side of the documents, and travelled to Toulouse to study on the spot its rich archives of the period. My colleague had not by any means uninteresting work for his share, as the father of our own Earl Simon de Montfort looms large in the story, having led the crusade of orthodoxy against the city of Toulouse, which he besieged.

Before I set off, however, we had called for assistance upon a good and learned priest. Father Manson, who has helped us out of many difficulties, by reason of his unrivalled acquaintance with queer byways of church history and law; and the friendship has so ripened with the passing of years that there is now rarely a week passes without his paying a visit (on a particularly loud-voiced and evil-smelling motor-cycle) to our quiet country home. I told him where I was going, in the hope that he might be able to put me into touch with some authorities on the spot to assist my researches—and I was not disappointed.

“It is still a somewhat obscure corner of Europe for the student,” he said, sacrilegiously tipping out a fresh tin of tobacco on to a fifteenth-century charter till Granville stopped him with a yell of anguish and proffered The Times instead, with a cynical remark as to the chief uses of newspapers. “Luckily, though, I do know one man down there who will be able and most willing to help. He is Father Saloux, curé of a little village whose name I can’t remember—it is years since I was down there—not far from Toulouse; but he is well-known throughout south-west France as a scholar, and if you enquire at the Museum of Saint-Raymond you will easily get into touch with him. I will scribble a note to him to introduce you,” he added, seizing paper from among the chaos on the huge study desk.

Father Manson thereupon proceeded to impart a piece of information which my Baedeker (as usual with anything really interesting) omits entirely.

“In the cathedral of St. Sernin,” he said, “there is a most amazing collection of holy relics, and among them, I regret to say, those of two English saints. Both were removed from our soil by Louis the Eighth, who seems to have had a predilection for body-snatching in this direction.

“One is Saint Edmund the King, martyred in 870 A.D. by the Danes, who was at first laid to rest in the place consequently called Bury St. Edmunds, and the other is Saint Gilbert the Abbot, founder of the Gilbertine monastic order.

“As I say, it’s so long since I was there that I have forgotten the details, but there are descriptive cards near the caskets containing the relics, if I remember rightly. It seems a great pity two of our star saints should be exiled from the scene of their labours, and, to tell you the truth, I’ve often wondered if a move could not be made to get their remains restored to England.”

A couple of days later, fortified with the letter to Father Saloux, I set off. What with the difficulties of reaching London from our isolated home in the Wolds, the habitual unpleasantness of the Channel-crossing, and the equally habitual cheerlessness of Calais and its customs-house, I was fairly sick of things by the time I reached Paris. However, the journey down-country amply compensates for these troubles, and when we began to skirt the Central Plateau, a few miles from Limoges, I began to feel glad I had not taken the dull main route across to Bordeaux.

Only one thing marred the pleasure of the journey: the presence in my compartment of one of those infernally sociable, chatty individuals who do their best to drag you into conversation, and whom it is really a kindness to snub. This particular specimen was a tourist, and his only redeeming feature was that he was not quite so blatant as the majority of his tribe. The fellow could see I was attempting to settle to my documents, but still persisted in trying to draw me out. I suppose he had noticed the label on my bag, for he volunteered the information that he also was going to Toulouse. By this time I was really exasperated, and this gave me my opening.

“My dear sir,” I exclaimed sarcastically, “it is not of the slightest interest to me whether you are going to Toulouse or Toulon; but allow me to remark that your tongue is both too loose and too long for the liking of one who is trying to read.”

That shut him up, and he proceeded then to inflict his atrocious French on the only other occupant of the compartment, an artistic-looking young man in slouch hat and flowing bow-tie, who was deep in an unblushing perusal of that frivolous publication, Paris Music-Hall. Only receiving a curt “Je n’ veux pas parler,” from that worthy, however, the voluble tourist at last mercifully relapsed into silence and studied the scenery.

Toulouse at last. Out of the long string of hotels across the quaint Languedoc Canal, facing the station, I at length voted for the comfortable and moderate Hotel Terminus, and having settled my bag there, allowed myself to be led round the city by Baedeker to places of general interest, reserving the Cathedral, museum, and other spots calling for more accurate information, till I should have run Father Saloux to earth.

As anticipated, I found the learned churchman in the ancient library next morning. On reading Father Manson’s letter, he at once declared himself at my service, and began by immediately getting the archivist’s permission for me to inspect any of the records I wished during my stay—an assent given with that ready courtesy common to scholars the world over. Then:

“Monsieur will doubtless wish to visit the headquarters of that curious oligarchy of old Toulouse, the Capitole, which has some fine work of the Henri IV period?”

Monsieur most certainly did—though thinking it a little curious that a father of the Church should not have wanted to haul him off to see the fine cathedral before anything else; but perhaps, I reflected, he is reserving that for the crowning glory.

Father Saloux took my arm and steered me along most charmingly, in his element at finding a fellow-student, and discoursing rapidly on this and that object of interest as we threaded the narrow streets whose every stone breathes history. Totally unlike the popular and inaccurate English idea of a French curé, he was the reverse of portly; of monastic but kindly features, he possessed a spare frame and height which gave him a stride with which I was a little exercised to keep pace.

When we had done justice to the museum and the palace of the Capitouls, those curious magistrates who ruled old Toulouse as the Doges did Venice, my reverend guide piloted me down an amazing tangle of crooked and narrow alleys; to enumerate all the buildings we inspected would make this narration sound too much like a Guide Bleu, and the reader would not thank me for it; but there was one particularly glorious old street which, full as it was from end to end with carved renaissance doorways, will ever remain in my memory, by reason of the events, so soon to happen, connected with one particular house in it.

Before the doorway to the courtyard of this residence, carved with even greater richness of detail than its neighbours, we halted.

“This house,” said Father Saloux, “is one of which the guide books make no mention whatever. It is called hereabouts, La Maison d’Enfer, the House of Hell, and from what I can piece together of the story, that appellation is entirely and grimly justified.

“Documents, including the title-deeds of the property,” he went on, “show it to have been built for, and occupied by, one Amaury de Moissac, who died in 1563, and who apparently took his name from the little town of Moissac in this Département—not more than a few kilometres from our city.

“This individual was no true son of the Church. In addition to what I consider the idiotic and money-wasting pursuit of alchemy, he indulged in the blacker arts, and many queer tales have come down in local legend concerning his doings.

“Of these, his last, which seems to have proved fatal, is the most bizarre of all; I have seen the contemporary relation of it, set down by a Canon of St. Semin (as there was a scandal and a public inquiry) in a manuscript privately-owned, which I hope one day to secure for our archives.”

Father Saloux unearthed from his cassock, and charged up with the evil-smelling caporal of France, a huge Dutch porcelain pipe and gazed meditatively at a grotesque carving over the doorway before proceeding.

“Well,” he said, “according to this document, Amaury de Moissac carried on some of his necrological experiments actually in the crypt of St. Sernin, which you have yet to see, a spot where there is, as you have doubtless read, a great number of holy relics.

“There seems no doubt that the sacristan of the time was as much an apostate as the sorcerer, who, it came out, had at divers times bribed him with considerable sums not only to provide access to the cathedral by night, but also to procure from the churchyard human bones, and even freshly-buried bodies, for these unholy proceedings.

“Amaury is alleged in our manuscript—this being the view of the canons and Capitouls in their joint inquiry when the affair reached its climax—to have actually tried to raise some of the spirits of the saints whose bones repose in the rich caskets you will see around the crypt. Why he should have chosen such difficult subjects to deal with as sanctified souls, instead of those of the criminal and the unshriven, I can’t quite see, unless, indeed, he was attempting to triumph over this barrier.”

The priest looked very grave for a moment, then:

“My friend, if that be so, Amaury is the first sorcerer I ever heard of who attempted it—and I have made a deep study of the abominations performed by men like Gilles de Rais and the Abbé Guibourg.

“Anyhow, whatever the truth of that, we shall never know, because Moissac was found dead in the cathedral crypt next morning, with the beaten-gold lid of one of the reliquaries over his face. It is evident what his purpose had been, for beside him on the floor stood a bowl of pig’s blood, which filthy liquid was a favourite medium of the necromancers for raising the evil elemental spirits.”

“Was, Father?” I put in, my first interruption of his story, “it still is!”

“Well, well, I know nothing of modern practical diabolism,” the priest smiled, “but the present tenant of Amaury de Moissac’s house does not seem to be any better than the original owner. The neighbours allege that he too is given to strange practices, and he is the first person to have stopped in the place for years; no-one could live here owing to the evil influence they said they felt.”

From its external appearance, I thought as we strolled round the sunlit courtyard admiring the delicate carvings (which had only one or two grotesque heads here and there) and the fine coats of arms, one would never have suspected the residence of so unsavoury a reputation.

It was now lunch-time, and my hospitable guide insisted on my joining him in a simple but ample meal which soon dispelled the unhealthy memory of Amaury. After this, we spent the afternoon finishing off the minor ‘sights’ of the city, and about five o’clock, turned our steps in the direction of the Cathedral of St. Saturnin.

Arrived in its square, we spent half an hour book-hunting in that curious market which offers every conceivable object from old spectacles to a bicycle-wheel or a first edition, laid out on the pavement in front of the Porte Miégeville, and I was able to interest my host by describing our English parallels to it, Petticoat Lane and the “Caledonian.”

When at last we did set foot in the cathedral, after successfully negotiating the row of beggars who perpetually line the path to the main entrance all day and night, I realised why Father Saloux had reserved this as the culminating treat, for Saint-Semin is one of the finest Romanesque churches in existence—in fact, the inaugurator of a particular style. The eastern part dates from 1080; it is immeasurably superior to anything of the period in England, and even in northern France, Jumièges (on which a few of our English Norman fanes are modelled) is but a feeble shadow of the Toulouse original.

Luckily, there were hardly any visitors, and almost before we realised it, three hours of this long summer evening had been spent in our enthusiastic examination of the architectural detail. It was the carillon playing the half-hour chime of Ave Maria de Lourdes which, breaking in on our subdued conversation, recalled us to our watches, which registered half-past eight.

This brought the priest back to earth with a slight shock. He regretted having to leave Monsieur Wayne so unceremoniously, but he was in danger of losing the last train to his village, and he must get back there, for he had parish duties of pressing urgency on the morrow. On the day after, however, he would again be at my service at the Library, at ten in the morning.

I thanked the courteous old priest warmly, and stood at the main door watching him vanish across the square in his long, jerky stride, hoping he would not miss his train on my account.

Then I turned back, intending just to complete my inspection of the choir and apse from the point where the carillon had interrupted our tour, and to take another look at the crypt, to which we had paid only small attention an hour or so before, as there had been a number of Provençal pilgrims in it at the time and we had not wished to disturb them at their devotions.

When in England we speak of a crypt, we generally associate the word with a dark, subterranean vault under a church, full of bones, as at Hythe or Rothwell. The crypt of St. Sernin, however, is nothing like that; indeed, it is rather curiously constructed. As in most continental churches—and some English cathedrals—you walk round the back of the choir and high altar, in what is called the ambulatory. At Toulouse, the crypt is built here, half above ground and half below, under the altar, which is considerably raised; thus one can see down into the crypt through iron grilles set like doors at the ground-floor level of the ambulatory.

Between these grilles, one of which serves as the entrance-gate to the short flight of steps down into the crypt, is a series of blank arcades, filled with crude—almost grotesque—figures of saints carved in relief, life-size, dating from the late 12th or very early 13th century. One of them bears in its hand a scroll inscribed Et Clamant SSSSS (“And the saints cry aloud”). You enter the storehouse of holy relics near this figure, and exactly opposite the allegedly-miraculous image of St. Judas Thadeus, which, as I had observed in passing that way before, is an object of considerable veneration.

When I returned after watching the hurried departure of Father Saloux, the electric light, which is switched on by the sacristan at the top of the steps, was on, and I could see a couple of people in the crypt. A grating voice reached me as I started to descend:

“Isn’t this gold box just too wonderful?”

It was our garrulous tourist of the train, who in his wanderings had apparently picked up another of his tribe. He did not see me, thank heaven, and went on making the round of the relics with his companion, continuing to utter a plethora of senseless superlatives.

Recalling the interesting information give me by Father Manson, I began by looking round for the “exiled” remains of the two English saints, and very soon found those of St. Edmund—not a difficult matter, as the relics are in large caskets for the most part, arranged round the crypt in alcoves, each reliquary being fashioned in the model of a church, of exquisite work and gilding. One of the two I sought proved to be in a corner to the right at the foot of the steps, and I found beside it a large framed card, hung on the jamb of the alcove, which I translate:

As these details related to the Albigensian war, the very subject that had brought me down to the city, I took down in my notebook a complete copy of the printed card. “At any rate,” I thought whimsically, “the good saint seems to have repaid amply the hospitality accorded to his tired bones.”

Then I soon came across the casket containing the relics of the other Englishman, Saint Gilbert of Sempringham, which, like the rest of the series, is a masterpiece of medieval craftsmanship. Here the label informed visitors that the good abbot was persecuted by Henry II for taking up the cause of Thomas à Becket, and that his body also was brought to St. Sernin by Louis VIII, to whom Henry “presented” it.

In justice to the memory of that enterprising French prince, I ought to point out that modern English writers deny that he carried off the mortal remains of Edmund, because they were enclosed in a new shrine by Henry III some fifty years after the alleged abduction to France. So one country or the other has some bones not those of the person they purport to be—a sad fact too often encountered in the wanderings of relics! However, I am quite convinced, in the light of what was to happen to me, that France does in this case really possess the genuine article.

By the time I had finished jotting down the information on the tickets, the two tourists had gone, and I was left alone in the atmosphere of sanctified death. I thought I saw the sacristan standing at the top of the steps waiting to put out the light, but on closer inspection it proved to be only a 13th-century vestment, the chasuble of St. Pierre de Vérome (a purely local celebrity,) in excellent preservation; and beside it was framed another, that of St. Hippolyte, martyr.

As I turned back from looking at these, I could not repress a shudder at the thought of old Amaury de Moissac lying there at the foot of the steps with his bowl of blood, nearly four centuries ago; and I fell to musing, as one does in such an atmosphere.

Could so evil an influence still haunt so holy a spot? What had Amaury actually been trying to achieve? What had happened here on that fatal night in 1563?

What would happen to me, for instance, if I attempted to make off with any of these bones, teeth, or shreds of venerated rag-and-bones in general? Though far too sceptical, as a historian, ever to make a good Catholic, I found myself recalling seriously, and without a qualm of shame. Father Manson’s remark so casually and innocently made: “It is a great pity that our two holy men should be exiled from the scene of their labours.”

“Good heavens, what utter nonsense,” I told myself sharply. “You, Gregory Wayne, M.A., F.S.A., ex-Fellow of your College and leading authority on early English history, thinking of stealing bones from a French church to give to an English one. You’re getting morbid or going senile, my boy, that’s what’s the matter with you.”

Shaking off the idea with a laugh which echoed in a nasty, sardonic way that I am sure does not represent my normally pleasant expression of mirth, I crossed the vault to inspect a lovely breviary printed in 1544, and above it a glass case containing a church vestment alleged to have been the property of St. Dominic and, if so, more than 700 years old, since the Dominican founder died in 1221.

I was in the middle of a detailed examination of the fabric, so far as is possible with a reflecting glass case, when suddenly there was a clash of iron grating, and the light went out. It was so unexpected that it took me a few moments to realise what had happened.

The old sacristan, thinking everyone had gone, had locked the gate, then switched off the light. Plunging up against the kneeling-stools and other impedimenta of the place, barking my shins on a bench in my haste, I made a frantic dash for the steps; forgetting for the moment where I was, I yelled in English at the top of my voice; “Hi! Verger! You’ve locked me in!”

Neither that nor any other language was the slightest bit of use. The guardian of the shrine was extremely deaf, old and infirm. By screwing my head round the grille and squinting sideways, I could just see him locking the gates of the ambulatory, level with the choir-aisle, then hobbling off into the fast-gathering gloom of the vast nave. Yell and whistle as I might, he failed to hear.

The full unpleasantness of my position now dawned on me. Here I was, foodless since lunchtime (“tea” being non-existent as a meal in rural France) let in for a night-long vigil and fast in the silent uncheerful company of those who—I then innocently thought—for ever sleep.

Then, nerve-shattering in that grim stillness as of the tomb, there crashed forth the hour from the great tower almost above my head. Clang—clang—clang—ten merciless booms that reverberated through the mighty cathedral, shivered the very stones of it, travelling round the circular wall of my prison and coming to rest in an eerie echo to the accompaniment of vibrating glass frames.

It seemed to last a century, that telling of the clock. I shuddered in sympathy with the loose frames, till there followed an anodyne in the full Ave Maria from the carillon—at least, in other circumstances it would have been a relief, but here it only added to my depression.

A—ve Ma—ri—a gra—ti—a ple—na . . . How slow it was, that carillon! Would the damned noise never cease? Cease at last it did, and when the whispering silence again reigned supreme, I even felt sorry, for it was not Virgil’s “friendly silence of the moon,” but the menacing full silence of deep shades.

After a time I got more used to it, and, groping my way to the bench on which I had barked my shins, sat down to consider what was to be done, thanking my stars it was, at least, not winter. “Stay here all night you cannot,” I told myself firmly, thinking aloud.

“Stay here all night you will,” mocked the echoes of my prison.

Desperately I got up again, determined to make a systematic attempt to find some weakness in part of the grille-work, starting with its gate; the only result of that was that I ruined a good penknife, my sole weapon, since historians do not usually travel round cathedrals burglariously armed. The lock proved unpickable with my knife.

Then to my discomfiture I found that all the grilles were on the level of the top step, which ruled out all save the two either side of the entrance; the rest were inaccessible, with sheer smooth wall below them to the floor of the crypt. Five minutes of tugging at the two I could reach sufficed to make me beat an undignified retreat to my bench and curse the efficiency of the medieval smiths.

Rendered inactive again, musing soon got the upper hand of me. “Well,” I thought, “since you are here for the night, you fool, you must make the best of it.”

I started trying to repeat the stuff in the Ingoldsby Legends about the Jackdaw of Rheims who “at last in the odour of sanctity died,” but it was no use. Again and again, there recurred to my head, with increasing intensity, the insidious thought:

It is a great pity . . . those bodies of Englishmen . . . exiled.

Half-past ten. Half of that infernal Ave Maria was inflicted on me again. I have hated carillons with an inflexible hate ever since.

After all . . . a golden opportunity . . . Who was to know? What would be the loss of a few bones in this charnel-house so richly stored with saintly relics? . . . Slip out when they open up in the early morning . . . Catholic churches are early astir . . . Get taken for one of the pilgrims.

My train of thought grew steadily more and more dishonest and disastrous. My eyes strayed with fatal persistence first to the black handbag containing my notebooks, then to the gloom of the far corner, which I knew held the feretory of St. Edmund.

The bones would easily go in the bag. I could give them to Father Manson, explaining that I had begged them from the Canons through Father Saloux.

The idea grew upon me. I opened my hand-bag. I tiptoed to the top of the steps, with ears strained for any sound of other human presence in the forest of stone around me. None there was; the stillness was only broken by the strange night-noises I associated, in my growing confidence, with owls and bats in the clerestory and tower.

Descending again, I braced myself for what I was about to do, telling myself this was not sacrilege, but restitution; my heart was thudding audibly in the deep silence, but I suddenly cast off all effort to square my conscience, or reason about the matter, and stepped boldly forward to the little shrine in the corner, feeling about until I could trace under my fingers the outline of the beautiful church-shaped reliquary of beaten gold.

It was fastened, but a little gentle straining at the centuries-old locks resulted in the cover coming open. The lid was surprisingly heavy, feeling as if the body of it were made of lead under the gold plates, and I had to get both hands under the join to raise it.

Then the thing happened. The ponderous mass flew suddenly up out of my grasp, the lid crashed back against the wall, gaping full open, and I was blinded by a terrible flash as of blue lightning striking a bright surface.

Before I could recover my balance, something rushed down on me from above, clutching me by the throat with cold, bony fingers, and hurling me with terrific force to the far side of the crypt.

I fetched up with a crash against a heavy glass frame which, I somehow remembered in a flash, was displayed against the wall and contained the vestment of St. Dominic.

It smashed to atoms, falling all over me and cutting me badly about the face . . . and I lay still, numbed with shock, paralysed with fear, for the ancient garment within the frame, musty with the odour of centuries, was wrapping about my face, smothering me.

Desperately I regained the use of my limbs, fought the thing off, and managed to stagger to my feet.

I was not a moment too soon. The vestment was floating about menacingly over my head, assuming the stature of a man, filling out.

The casket, from which some strange force had repulsed me—there it lay, bathed in a faint rosy light, which my confused subconscious mind identified in some bizarre way with the Venusberg. Its lid lay still open, and with a horrible clatter of bone upon bone, a Thing was arising from it.

The air was becoming full of a filthy odour of pig’s blood and human corruption, the red light was swelling, filling the crypt.

A scrabbling, shuffling sound made me take my eyes for a moment off the immediate menace of the dithering vestment above my head, towards the steps. I saw in a frenzy of horror that the chasuble of St. Pierre de Vérome was coming down towards me—and it was clothing a fearful frame, a travesty of rotting human flesh with the bones sticking through.

I could not scream. I crouched down behind the bench, but a blast of icy wind pushed me over on to my back, and within two inches of my mouth there came a cruel laugh from two rows of hideous blackened teeth minus the rest of the skull, floating in mid-air above a row of vertebræ.

By a horrible freak of imagination, I seemed to see the labels attached to the relics: “Teeth of Saint Eutrope, bishop and martyr,” “Vertebræ of Saint Joanna of Toulouse.” I knew without daring to turn round that the jewelled cases behind me, which had contained them, were empty.

Slowly I witnessed this awful resurrection of the Things from the grave. The bones of Edmund were now clambering out of their casket; they shook into life, rattled into place one upon another, clacked and capered round the floor within a foot of me, and entered the prancing gown of St. Dominic.

A heterogeneous skeleton materialised out of the flying fragments of Joanna, Raymond, Hippolyte, and a half-dozen more of the sainted dead.

The lid of St. Gilbert’s depository flew open, and from it issued yet another mockery of the human shape . . . The relics of the bishop Eutrope and the virgin Joanna whirled about in the rose-tinted glow until their bones were covered with the shape of a naked woman, her form one of breath-taking beauty till one saw the maggots falling from her mouth and swarming in both breasts. Round her neck hung the gold chain of St. Orens, and as she minced nearer and nearer, her body gave out an unspeakable stench.

Then arose the most fearful music, surely, that ever fell upon mortal ears, a symposium of a dozen Danses Macabres and Valses Tristes, but more obscene than ever Sibelius or Saint-Saens dared dream, a music composed by Satan himself, that could only have been played by the bony fingers of the damned on violins strung with human gut.

The dreadful concatenation of priestly-robed skeletons, the nude, diseased Joanna-Eutrope in their midst, began a dance unspeakably foul . . . Two of the figures pulled me to my feet and dragged me into that circle of corruption. Wilder and wilder sped the music, now seductive, now a travesty of the holy offices; more and more corybantic waxed the dance; and as it reached its horrible climax, the whole circle of grinning heads began to chant the Te Deum Laudamus to a ribald tune of the old jongleurs, the while some of the fleshless frames accompanied the rhythm with a castanet-like clatter of forearm on rib-bone.

Round and round we went . . . a witches’ sabbath far surpassing anything described by the medieval imagination. The last thing I clearly remember is that as I made one desperate, final effort to ward off the grisly clutch of St. Edmund on my right, and the choking shroud of St. Gilbert that wrapped me fetidly round on the left, I let out a fearful scream and pushed frantically with one hand into the rotting mass of Joanna-Eutrope’s face as it circled nearer and nearer to give me the fatal kiss of Hell. I fainted . . .

I came to my senses with a shiver, to find myself lying on the cold floor of the crypt with a grey-green dawn streaking in from the eastern windows of the ambulatory far above.

With aching head, I tried to recall the events of the nightmare and to persuade myself that it had been a dream—but to no purpose.

Not only did my face feel stiff and sore, and reveal three nasty cuts when I managed to inspect it by using as a mirror what was left of a smashed frame—itself clear evidence—but from one of the cuts I extracted three crawling maggots, and on the floor was a deep stain, still wet, of putrefying animal blood.

More, the ancient vestment was on the floor, on the far side from its broken frame; and my handbag was crammed to the rim with human bones. I looked in a horrified daze across to the feretory of St. Edmund. Its lid lay open back to the wall, and from the edge of the casket protruded grotesquely a thigh-bone, as though the occupant had thrust out a leg to arise.

Slowly, painfully, I got to my feet, and my first act was to replace from my bag the coffer’s relics, reverently closing the lid and fastening the catches in place. Then, realising I must at all costs avoid being found here by the sacristan with the broken frame as the evidence, I adjusted the vestment as well as I could and pushed the smashed glass into a dark corner.

Recollecting that on my entry the previous evening I had noticed a holy-water stoup at the top of the steps, I crawled up them, intending to clean up my face as well as possible with its aid and a handkerchief; but it was empty. Had it not been, I doubt if the terrible events of the night would have happened.

So I used my handkerchief alone, and then hid myself in one of the recesses out of direct range of sight from the door-grille, and waited patiently for my release.

Six o’clock . . . seven o’clock . . . two hours passed by, twice the carillon sang forth in praise of Mary, full of grace. At last, however, a muffled sound of activity above broke in upon my confinement. The early Masses were beginning, and I heard a jingling of keys about the ambulatory and the side-chapels.

At long last fortune favoured me. I think it was about half-past eight when the ancient servant of the cathedral admitted a party of pilgrim peasants to the crypt. Never since have I been so grateful for the sound of key turning in lock. I let the good people get round to the far side of the place, and then, judging that the sacristan would have had time to shuffle away from the entrance, slunk quietly out.

Even at this early hour there were a few visitors, or rather devotees, at the miraculous shrine of St. Judas Thadeus opposite the door. Half-apprehensively, I took a final glance at the crude but saintly sculptures which had so interested me on the previous evening.

Then light dawned upon me, for there, over the round-arched entrance to the crypt steps, was cut in Lombardic lettering something I had not noticed in the dim evening light. It was a Latin legend:

“So that explains it,” I muttered, softly translating to myself the words: Vigilant are they who guard the Place.

Rapidly, with my head lowered to conceal my ravaged features, I strode down the aisle and gained the open square and the healthy sunshine, uttering as I went a prayer for the repose of Amaury de Moissac’s troubled soul.

This by all artistic standards should be the fitting end to an incredible story of the Unknown; but I am a historian, not an artist, and there is a sequel, of profound interest to students of the occult.

I was able of course, to explain away my gashes to the good Father Saloux, saying I had tripped on the rough cobbles; and as there is in Toulouse no screaming Press publicity—or, the cathedral authorities may have known what they possess bottled up in that crypt, and so kept a discreet silence about the damage—I was able to finish my documentary notes in peace.

Now, on my return to England a few day later, I related my terrible experience as nearly as possible to my colleague Granville and Father Manson, concluding (addressing myself mainly to the priest:)

“So in the circumstances, you had better give up all idea of any attempt to get these relics translated to England.”

“Hm!” Granville remarked quietly when I had done, “If I had known you were going to take the Father’s remark so seriously, Gregs, I’d have put you on your guard. Evidently you are woefully deficient in a knowledge of saint-lore.”

He crossed over to a corner where the red covers of Methuen’s “Antiquary’s Books” series stand in noble array, and fished down J. C. Wall’s volume, Shrines of British Saints.

“Listen to this, both of you,” he said, and read: