Curiosities of Olden Times
ment. One, by order of the hegumen, or abbot, took a stout stick, and ascending to the roof by a spiral staircase, crawled after the boy, reached him, dislodged him, and with furious blows drove him off the roof.[1]
The monks now thought the best thing they could do would be to get summarily rid of the maniac by drowning. Papebroeck, the Bollandist, at this point appends the curious note: "If amongst ourselves, better instructed, it is customary to suffocate those who have been bitten by a mad dog—an atrocious custom—lest they should bite and hurt others, and this is regarded as a rough sort of mercy, is it any wonder that these rude monks should have supposed it proper to make away with a madman upon whom exorcism had failed to produce any effect?"
The monks accordingly tied the hands and feet of Nicolas, drew him down to the shore, threw him into a boat, rowed some way out to sea, and flung him overboard.
But Nicolas broke his bonds,[2] as he had shivered the shackles, and swimming ashore, reached land before the monks, and mounting a rock, roared to them as his greeting, "Kyrie eleison!"
The monks despaired of doing anything to him, and abandoned him to follow his own devices. He ran wild among the mountains, and constructed a
188
