Part 6 (2/2)
Then his father calls him home; and when he has returned to Annecy, Bernard finds that every preparation has been made for his approaching wedding with the daughter of the great Lord of Miolans. ”_Sponsa pulchra_,” beautiful bride, this young woman was, according to the record, and doubtless this was true. The att.i.tude of Bernard toward this marriage his father and mother could not understand. He held back constantly, and urged all sorts of objections to its immediate consummation, but on no ground which seemed to them reasonable. So the wedding-day was set. The house was full of guests. Every gate and door of the castle was crowded by armed retainers, and there seemed to be no escape. Bernard retired to his own room, and in the oldest ma.n.u.scripts are given the words of his prayer:
”My adorable Creator, Thou who with thy celestial light enlightened those who invoke with faith and confidence, and Thou my Jesus, Divine Redeemer of men and Saviour of souls, lend a favorable ear to my humble prayer; spread on thy servant the treasures of your infinite mercy. I know that Thou never abandonest those who place in you their hope; deliver me, I supplicate Thee, from the snares which the world have offered me. Break these nets in which the world tries to take me; permit not that the enemy prevail over thy servant, that adulation may enfeeble my heart. I abandon myself entirely to Thee. I throw myself into the arms of thy infinite mercy, hoping that Thou wilt save me, and wilt reject not my demand.”
Then to the good Saint Nicholas:
”Amiable shepherd, faithful guide, holy priest, thou who art my protector and my refuge, together with G.o.d, and His holy mother, the happy Virgin Mary, obtain me, I pray thee, by thy merits, the grace of triumph over the obstacles the world opposes to my vow of consecrating myself to G.o.d without reserve--in return for the property, the pleasures, and honors here below, of which I abandon my part, obtain me spiritual good all the course of my life, and eternal happiness after my death.”
Then Bernard retired to sleep, and in a dream Saint Nicholas stood before him and uttered these words:
”Bernard, servant of G.o.d the Lord, who never betrays those who put their confidence in Him, calls thee to follow Him. An immortal crown is reserved for thee. Leave at once thy father's house and go to Aosta. There in the cathedral thou shalt meet an old man called Pierre. He will welcome thee; thou shalt live with him, and he shall teach thee the road thou should traverse. For my part, I shall be thy protector, and will not for an instant abandon thee.”
Then Bernard opened his eyes and the vision had disappeared. He was overcome with joy. His resolution was taken. Though he knew no way out of the castle, nor from the bedroom in the tower, in which he had been locked by his thoughtful father, yet he was ready to go.
Taking up a pen, he wrote to his father this letter:
”Very dear parents, rejoice with me that the Lord calls me to His service. I follow Him to arrive sooner at the port of salvation, the sole object of my vows. Do not worry about me, nor take the trouble to seek me. I renounce the marriage, which was ever against my will. I renounce all that concerns the world. All my desires turn toward heaven, whither I would arrive. I take the road this minute.
”BERNARD DE MENTHON.”
Laying the letter on the table, he soon found himself on the way outside the castle grounds, and along this path he hurried, over the mountain pa.s.ses, toward the city of Aosta. So say the oldest ma.n.u.scripts; but in the later stories the details are more fully described. From these it would appear that Bernard leaped from the window eighteen or twenty feet, his naked feet striking on a bare rock.
On he ran through the night; on over dark and lonely paths in a country still uninhabited; over the stony fields and wild watercourses of the Graian Alps, and when the morning dawned he found himself in the city of Aosta, a hundred miles from Annecy.
In an old painting the manner of his escape is shown in detail. As he drops from the window he is supported by Saint Nicholas on the one side, and an angel on the other, and underneath the painting is the legend ”_Emporte par Miracle_.” It is said, too, that in former times the prints of his hands on the stone window-sill, and of his naked feet on the rock below, were both plainly visible. Eight hundred years later the good Father Pierre Verre celebrated ma.s.s in the old room in which Bernard was confined; and he reports at that time there was both on the window-sill and on the rock below only the merest trace of the imprints left by Bernard. One could not then ”even be sure that they were made by hand or foot.” But the chronicle wisely says: ”Time, in effacing these marks and rendering them doubtful, has never effaced the tradition of the fact among the people of Annecy.”
In the morning, consternation reigned within the castle. The Lord of Menthon was filled with disgust, shame, and confusion. The Lord of Miolans thought that he and his daughter were the victims of a trick, and he would take no explanation or excuse. Only the sword might efface the stain upon his honor. The marriage feast would have ended in a scene of blood were it not, according to the chronicle, that ”G.o.d, always admirable in His saints,” sent as an angel of peace the very person who had been most cruelly wronged. The Lady of Miolans, ”_sponsa pulchra_” beyond a doubt, took up the cause of her delinquent bridegroom, whom G.o.d had called, she said, to take some n.o.bler part.
When peace had been made, she followed his example, taking the veil in a neighboring convent, where, after many years of virtuous living, she died, full of days and full of merits. ”_Sponsa ipsius_,” so the record says, ”_in qua sancte et religiose dies suos clausit_”; a bride who in sanct.i.ty and religious days closed her life.
Meanwhile, beyond the Graian Alps and beyond the reach of his father's information, Bernard was safe. In Aosta he was kindly received by Pierre, the Archdeacon. He entered into the service of the church, and there, in spite of his humility and his self-abas.e.m.e.nt, he won the favor of all with whom he had to deal. ”G.o.d wills,” the chronicle says, ”that His ministers should s.h.i.+ne by their sanct.i.ty and their science.” ”Saint Paul commends prudence, gravity, modesty, unselfishness, and hospitality,” and to these precepts Bernard was ever faithful. He lived in the simplest way, like a hermit in his personal relations, but never out of the life of the world. He was not a man eager to save his own soul only, but the bodies and souls of his neighbors. He dressed in the plainest garb. He drank from a rude wooden cup. Wine he never touched, and water but rarely. The juice of bitter herbs was his beverage, and by every means possible he strove to reduce his body to servitude. When he came, years later, to his deathbed, it was his sole regret that it was a _bed_ where he was to die, instead of the bare boards on which he was wont to sleep.
His fame as a preacher spread far and wide. There are many traditions of his eloquence, and the memory of his words was fondly cherished wherever his sweet, rich voice was heard. ”From the mountains of Savoy to Milan and Turin, and even to the Lake of Geneva,” says the chronicle, ”his memory was dear.” So, in due time, after the death of Pierre, Bernard was made Archdeacon of Aosta.
In these times the high Alps were filled with Saracen brigands and other heathen freebooters, who celebrated in the mountain fastnesses their monstrous rites. In the mountains above Aosta the G.o.d Pen had long been wors.h.i.+ped; the word pen in Celtic meaning the highest.
Later, Julius Caesar conquered these wild tribes, and imposed upon them the religion of the Roman Empire. A statue of Jupiter (”_Jove optimo maximo_”) was set up in the mountain in the place of the idol Pen.
Afterwards, by way of compromise, the Romans permitted the two to become one, and the people wors.h.i.+ped Jovis Pennius (Jupiter Pen), the great G.o.d of the highest mountains. A statue of Jupiter Pen was set up by the side of the lake in the great pa.s.s of the mountain; and from Jupiter Pen these mountains took the name of Pennine Alps, which they bear to this day. The pa.s.s itself was called Mons Jovis, the Mountain of Jove, and this, in due time, became shortened to Mont Joux. Through this pa.s.s of Mont Joux the armies of every nation have marched, the heroes of every age, from Saint Peter, who, the legend says, came over in the year 57, down to Napoleon, who pa.s.sed nearly eighteen centuries later, on a much less worthy errand. The Hotel ”Dejeuner de Napoleon,”
in the little village of ”Bourg Saint Pierre,” recalls in its name the story of both these visits.
In the earliest days a refuge hut was built by the side of the statue of Jupiter Pen. In the early pilgrimages to Rome this became a place of some importance. Later on, marauding armies of Goths, Saracens, and Hungarians, successively pa.s.sing through, destroyed this refuge. In the days of Bernard the pa.s.s was filled with a horde of brigands, French, Italians, Saracens, and Jews, who had cast aside all religious faith of their fathers, and had re-established the wors.h.i.+p of the demon in the temple of Jupiter Pen.
The old ma.n.u.scripts tell us that in the middle of the tenth century the demons were in full sway on these mountains; that through the mouth of the statue of Jupiter the worst of lies and blasphemies were spoken to those who came to consult it. These wors.h.i.+pers of strange old G.o.ds lived by plunder, and exacted toll of all who came through the pa.s.s.
The same conditions existed on the Graian Alps to the southward. On one of these mountain pa.s.ses, some fifty miles from Mont Joux, there lived a rich man named Polycarpe. He, too, did homage to Jupiter, and on the summit of a tall column which he built in the pa.s.s he had placed a splendid diamond, which he called the ”Eye of Jove.” People came from great distances to be healed by its magic glance, and the mountain on which he dwelt was the mountain of the Columna Jovis. This became changed, in time, to Colonne Joux, the Mountain of the Column of Jove.
And the demons of these two heights, the Mountain of Jove and the Column of Jove, sent down their baleful call of defiance to the valley over which Bernard ruled as Archdeacon of Aosta.
It came to pa.s.s that a troop of ten French travelers crossed over the pa.s.s of Mont Joux. In the pa.s.s they were attacked by marauders, and one of their number was carried away captive. When they came down to Aosta, Bernard, the Archdeacon, fearlessly offered to go back with them to attack the giant of the mountain, to rescue their friend, and to replace the standard of the cross over the altar of the demon.
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