they came one eve of S. John[32] to a remote village of some size as it appeared where the people were holding a midsummer festival, but with strange pagan rites. Here at eventide they were greeted by a grave man saluting them most courteously and saying that he was the steward of the Lady Pelagia, who wished to give them entertainment in her palace. The missionaries, grateful of this kindness, were received with gracious welcome, and the mistress of the house, a patrician who was of the most surpassing beauty, led them to a banquet which had been made ready. Here Hilary sat beside her and she talked of many things, so that the good Bishop was moved with a great tenderness at her youth and her beauty. She thanked them in all humility for the honour they had done her villa, pressed them to sojourn long as her guests, and asked them many questions which the learned man was delighted to answer, whilst his companions sat as it were spell-bound by her charms. Presently, however, the conversation took a deeper turn and the lady poised shrewd problems in science and in theology, difficulties which S. Hilary was well-nigh hard put to it to solve neatly and in simple words. Yet she spake with such modesty and with such an air of seeking to know more of divine things that the holy Hilary was glad to expound these matters, albeit he thought the argument savoured somewhat of sophistry and wordy skill. At length she said in honeyed phrase, “I pray thee, good father, rede me this question aright: What is the distance between heaven and earth?” The Saint gazed in some wonder, when suddenly a voice, menacing and loud, was heard to thunder through the hall: “Who can tell us that more certainly than Lucifer who fell from heaven?” The Lady Pelagia arose and flung up her lovely white arms with an exceeding bitter cry, but the voice continued: “Breathe on her, Hilary, breathe upon her the breath of the Name of Christ!” And the Bishop, rising, fortified himself with the sign of redemption and breathed upon the beautiful woman in the name of the Lord. Instantly the light died from her eyes and the life left her limbs, and there was no longer the Lady Pelagia but a statue of marble which glistened exceeding white and fair. And Hilary knew it to be a statue of the goddess whom men worshipped in Greece as Aphrodite, but in Rome as Venus, who is also Pelagia, born of the sea. At
